Find something to say, Viola. Find something to do. I sink farther back into the couch. Maybe it can swallow me, so I don’t look like a silent loser sitting here all awkward and shy. Maybe I should leave.
No.
I want to belong. I need to belong. I can belong. Without a wish. I exhale and force myself to sit up straight. I lean forward to glimpse Jinn and Lawrence sitting together on the patio. They’re here—one is invisible, true, but still. If they can do this, I can do this. I tap Aaron’s shoulder lightly, forcing a confident smile as he turns to face me.
six
Jinn
I FOLLOW LAWRENCE through a thick cloud of people and cigarette smoke, past a kitchen full of coolers and a few couples groping while they think no one is looking. Lawrence holds the door to the deck open for me. I glance back to Viola, who is just lowering herself onto the couch beside Aaron. She’s fine. Besides, if she has a wish, she’ll call me…no sense in me hanging around.
Why am I so concerned?
A girl calls out to Lawrence and rushes over. She starts talking fast—Lawrence looks like he wants to run from her. I look up at the scattered stars that peek out from behind a thick layer of clouds. Minutes pass—maybe longer. I’ve begun losing track of the exact count.
The unofficial goal for all jinn is to get three wishes granted in three days: “Three in Three.” I’ve never fallen short before now—this is day three, and there’s not a wish in sight. The deep sick feeling of aging isn’t as strong as it was, but I can still feel moments ticking by, and I can still see Lawrence changing fluidly in front of me. I wonder what’s happened in Caliban since I’ve been gone. Not much, I imagine—Caliban is sort of a smooth-running machine, really. Very few surprises—the Ancients make sure of that.
“Jinn?” Lawrence whispers sharply, and I suddenly realize he’s been talking to me for the past minute or so. Thoughts of Caliban fade away and I lift myself onto the deck railing. Jinn. He considers it my name, just like Viola does.
“Sorry. I forgot you can see me,” I answer.
“No problem. You’ve just been totally silent for a half hour.”
“That long?” Wow. I really am losing track. “How long is this thing going to last?” I ask.
“A few hours. Just long enough for her to realize keg parties aren’t her thing, hopefully.”
“You go to them,” I respond. “They’re your thing?”
“No, not really. I mean, I don’t hate them. At first it was cool to get invited and to be there and everything. Now it’s all just…” He shrugs. “Vi…this is no place for her. It’s not that I don’t want her to feel like she belongs again. I do, and I want to help. I just don’t want her to do it like this. I’ve tried telling her she isn’t invisible, that she can belong to whatever and whoever she wants, but after how I hurt her, I guess I have no right to stop her from doing whatever it is she thinks will make her happy.”
Finally. From Lawrence emerges a wish. In the time I’ve been around him, he hasn’t had a single wish—unusual for a mortal. But now the wish is clear in the way his eyes graze the floor: a wish to end his regret.
“What happened with you two?” I ask.
“The person who will be granting her wishes should know, I guess,” Lawrence says with a forced smile. A few of the chattering girls are looking at Lawrence, their penciled-in eyebrows raised—he appears to be talking to himself.
“Rehearsing lines for a play,” Lawrence tells them quickly. They look doubtful, but shrug it off.
Lawrence sighs and begins, “Viola and I were best friends growing up. When we were freshmen in high school, we decided to try dating. It was weird and wonderful all at once, because we weren’t really nervous around each other, you know? It just seemed natural that we’d end up together, like the best friends always do in romance movies.
“I loved Viola, but I was starting to realize that it was in a different way than she loved me. I loved the security, having her there to talk to, having someone who understood me, someone I understood. As a friend. So one night Viola tells me she loves me, and we kiss, and I know that this time it’s going to go much further than kissing.”
“But you’re—” I start.
“Gay. Yes. I am. And I shared that information with her right around the time she took off her shirt,” Lawrence finishes, grimacing. He picks at the leaves of a nearby potted plant.
“Great timing.”
Lawrence nods. “I didn’t even know for sure that I was gay until we’d been together for almost a year, to be honest. So, anyway, I tried to explain, but she threw me out. Didn’t talk to me for weeks. She got quieter, shyer,…lonelier.”
You broke her. Or she thinks you broke her, anyhow.
“But then why doesn’t she just—” I stop midsentence. Wish you straight? is what I’m thinking, but I’m afraid to say it. I’ve never really spoken to the possible subject of a wish like this before. Yes, Lawrence, I can manipulate you. Viola can wish, and I can change how you are. I look away from him.
Lawrence shakes his head—he can see where I was going with that. “Not Viola—she won’t. She’s my best friend; she’d never wish to change me like that.”
“But being with you would make her happy.”
“Yeah, yeah. But it’s not that easy. What a tangled web we weave, my friend,” Lawrence says with a grin. “Just do me a favor and don’t grant any stupid wishes for her.”
Once a wish is made, I have to grant it, but I don’t want to tell Lawrence that. He’s not talking to me as a jinn, somehow. He’s just talking to me. To Jinn. It’s strange, and I’m not sure I want it to end by reminding him of protocol about respecting masters and wish rules. But doesn’t he realize I’m just supposed to be a wish granter?
Lawrence takes a long sip of the beer he’s holding. “Speaking of, can you see her in there? I don’t want one of the football players to convince her to play beer pong or something.”
I lean back on the railing and can just barely see the couch through the kitchen doors. But not Viola. She and Aaron are gone, leaving only an indentation and a few girls who look like they’re withering into the cushions.
“She’s gone. They’re both gone—they were on the couch,” I say with a grimace.
Lawrence sighs and wrinkles his brow in worry. “Help me find her?” he says. I nod. We go back inside, and Lawrence moves toward a dining room, where the table is covered in cards and shot glasses. I go in the opposite direction.
Masters and jinn are linked to each other, so usually I can find my master anywhere and reappear at her side. But right now, it’s like the line between us is hidden by a thick fog. Though maybe it’s because I’m trying to find her when it’s not to grant a wish. I’m breaking the third protocol—helping her without a wish prevents me from getting back to Caliban as soon as possible. How many times have I broken all three protocol for her, now? I really shouldn’t have pulled that stunt at the door, but they shouldn’t have treated her like that. Like she didn’t matter.
I don’t see her anywhere on the lower floor, so I head for the staircase.
The upstairs is dark and cool, unlike the balmy lower floor. The music here is obscured, so all I can make out is the thudding bass, and the conversations that are so noisy downstairs are blurred into muted chatter. Every breath I take up here is loud, which is how I find her—the ragged sound of her breathing from the other end of the darkness.
“Viola?” I see her move in the black, and a feeling of relief crashes over me. “What are you doing?” I whisper. She’s kneeling beside a door, fingers gripping the doorframe so hard, her knuckles are white. I look into the room that she’s staring at, as if in a trance. Ollie and Aaron are locked in a tight embrace, Ollie mostly undressed and looking like some sort of ballerina or Roman goddess in the moonlight.
I turn back at Viola, and she breaks her gaze to look at me. The deep wish, the wish to feel whole, looms in her eyes.
“They’re so beautiful…see how they belon
g to each other?” she mumbles thickly. “I don’t…I just don’t…I didn’t mean to watch. I just saw them and…” She releases the doorframe and shakily grabs my hand, then turns her face to me.
I hesitate.
I shouldn’t help her without a wish. Third protocol. I should convince her to wish for belonging, right now, while she’s desperate. Just like the Ancients demand. I should do everything in my power to return to Caliban as soon as possible.
I look back at Aaron and Ollie, then at Viola’s eyes. She needs me. Me, not wishes, not a wish granter. Just me, just Jinn. No one has ever needed me, not like this. No one in Caliban needs anyone else. How could we need one another there, when we aren’t even individual enough to have names?
Her hand is in mine. I turn her away from the door, resting her back against the wall and pulling her hair away from her lips. She pulls her knees to her chest, no hint of laughter or cleverness in her eyes. “You don’t have to belong here, with these people,” I say after a struggle for words.
seven
Viola
THE FOUR BEERS I drank are causing the hallway to sway and pitch. It’s spinning even though I’m leaning against the wall, so I grab Jinn’s shoulder to make it stop. He tenses, then leans closer to give me a better grip. I inhale the scent of honey and spices that always surrounds Jinn.
“I wasn’t always so pathetic,” I mumble. “I used to belong. I thought Lawrence and I would be one of those epic romances, the childhood friends who grow up loving each other and all that. Then one day, out of nowhere, he doesn’t love me anymore….” I close my eyes, and a few tears fall. “It was horrible. Suddenly there was no way I could ever, ever be what he wanted. No matter what—it didn’t matter how I did my hair, or dressed, or smiled. I could never be what Lawrence wants. I can never have the epic romance. I can never have…” I let my words trail off.
I don’t want to, but I can’t help remembering the night Lawrence told me. My bedroom was shrouded in blue light, and the Flamingo Dream walls became a pale lavender that made everything look beautiful. Lawrence kissed me—my last real kiss—and I melted toward him and drew closer. Skin on skin, tingling closeness and lack of shame, and beauty and touching and love. And then? His words: Wait. I have something to tell you. And it was all over. And a part of me was ripped away.
Everyone else saw it coming, a voice in my head reminds me. No one else was surprised.
I exhale—I can smell the alcohol on my own breath—and shut my eyes. They knew. But I didn’t. The same thoughts have been circling my mind daily since the moment Lawrence told me. Underneath those, however, lies another thought that scolds me.
Viola, you knew from the start.
You chose to see talking late at night, holding hands, fencing lessons, skin on skin, and lack of shame.
You closed your eyes to his sideways glances at boys, to the way that even when he kissed you, he didn’t put his hands on you.
Because if I knew, then it’s my fault.
It’s your fault you’re in pieces like this.
My stomach writhes, and I want to hold Jinn’s hand and run from here, but my knees feel flimsy and weak—though if they’re weak from the alcohol or from the memories, I’m not sure.
“I want to feel the way I used to feel when I was with Lawrence. I want to be whole again.”
“You don’t need him for that. You don’t…you don’t need anyone for that. You’re already…” He looks away, then runs a hand through his hair nervously, like he’s worried someone is watching. “You’re already whole, and strong, and funny, and you don’t need them.” Suddenly I’m very aware of my right hand gripping Jinn’s forearm and my left hand entwined with his fingers, aware of the fact that his skin is flawless and smooth and unlike anything I’ve ever touched. I bite at my lips, and my jaw trembles.
“Leave this house,” Jinn says quietly, with an intense, penetrating stare, like he’s reading from the back of my mind. “You don’t need anyone here. I’ll take you home.”
Home. Away from these people, away from the only real social gathering I’ve been to in who knows how long. I shake my head. “But I just…I want to belong again. I want to be a part of something, so I can feel whole. Right now it’s just…” I look back toward Ollie and Aaron. “I just wish I could belong like they do—” I stop.
My breath stops somewhere between my lungs and lips. Wish. I didn’t mean to. Why am I so stupid? I release Jinn’s arm, my heart pounding.
Jinn is watching me carefully, studying my face. He smiles but somehow looks sad. He rises with all the fluidity of a dancer and slowly pulls me up with him—when the hallway swirls, he locks his arms on my waist till I can meet his eyes again. What have I done? What did I wish for? I can’t stop trembling. I try to tell Jinn to stop, but the words get lost in my throat.
Jinn exhales slowly and takes his hands off me, like he’s steadying a vase. He places one arm across his stomach, the other behind his back. He bows just a little, taking his dark eyes off me at the very last moment. Quietly, so quietly that I almost don’t hear him, he speaks as he rises back to standing.
“As you wish.”
eight
Jinn
THE WISH PULLS at me like I’m standing in a rushing stream. I can shape the way it’s granted, plunge my fingers into the water to make it flow the way I want. I grant it carefully, more meticulous than I’ve been in a long time. It would be easier to just let the wish flow through me and grant itself, but it might not be exactly what Viola had in mind; I want it to be right, not just the result of rushed, uncontrolled magic. I have to involve Aaron, unfortunately, and Ollie…all of them. I part the magic, let it flow together again. Even though I know it’s just a mortal mind trick, I can’t help hoping that I can grant the wish so she really will feel whole again. Maybe I can make her whole.
And then it’s done. All laid out perfectly, like a rosebud flowering into flawless, symmetrical blossoms. I hear Aaron in the bedroom, telling Ollie he needs to leave, the rustling of clothes. Viola looks at me, and her watery eyes dry and fill with the same spark they have when she laughs—I’m instantly glad I included that spark in the granting of the wish. I want to watch her change, watch her sadness fall away, but I know that Aaron will come sweeping out of the bedroom at any moment and…no.
I vanish from the hallway—the magic will take care of everything now—and reappear in Holly Park. I collapse beneath the oak tree, staring into its branches at the night sky beyond. Maybe I should have stayed to make sure it all went as planned. Or to tell Lawrence about it. Or something.
No. Nothing.
I force my fingers into the dirt, as if I’m growing roots to hold me in place. She’s my master, she made a wish. Nothing more to it.
Think of Caliban. Every wish gets you closer to Caliban. That’s what’s important. Not whether she thinks of you as a wish granter or not.
Think of all the things wrong with humans. The aging. That party. The way they’re always answering phones. Microwave food. Dogs in shirts.
The way Viola laughs differently around you, the way she’s not afraid to tell you off—
No, stop. Dogs in shirts. You’re just a jinn—if you weren’t granting Viola’s wishes, it’d be some other random jinn. You’re not special. She’s not different around you.
“One wish in three days? It’s your worst record yet!” a voice calls out through the early morning fog. I leap from the dirt, my heart racing in surprise.
Another jinn, a tall, golden-skinned boy with copper hair and bronze eyes, is standing beside the oak tree. I breathe a sigh of relief—he’s a friend. Sort of. As good a friend as jinn typically have, anyway, though I’ll admit that knowing Viola and Lawrence has redefined the term for me—they care for each other far more than this other jinn cares for me, I’m sure.
“Still better than your record was,” I respond. I push him jokingly, and we both laugh. It’s good to see one of my own kind again.
“Yeah, yeah. How
are things?”
“Are you asking me as an ifrit or a friend?” I ask. He’s wearing his work uniform, a dark blue tunic with a swirly I embroidered on the front. He’s aged—a lot. The ifrit come and go between Caliban and Earth more often than average jinn do—whenever a press is needed—and the aging has started to show on his face. The boy—the man, actually, since he must be physically over twenty—laughs.
“You should have become an ifrit, my friend, and you wouldn’t be stuck here granting wishes to begin with!” he says, dodging my question.
I nod and force a smile. Maybe he’s right. The Ancient Jinn wanted me to be an ifrit once, not too long ago. I read mortals especially well, better than most jinn. So pressing came easily for me; I could tell exactly what would make the master snap, exactly what buttons to press to force him to wish.
“It wasn’t for me,” I answer, hoping to change the subject. My brief stint in ifrit training isn’t something I enjoy reflecting upon.
The ifrit laughs and shakes his head. “All because you couldn’t complete a simple car wreck press.”
“What can I say? I’m a wimp,” I reply with a steely look. I hate it when people bring that up.
The ifrit realizes he’s pushed too far and holds his hands up. “Sorry, my friend. Didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Right,” I say, shaking my head. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Well, let me know if you need me to press her for the last two,” the ifrit says.
“No! No…I don’t need a press,” I answer fast as my throat suddenly dries. The idea of Viola in a car wreck makes every muscle in my body tighten.
The ifrit shrugs. “Right. Anyway. I’ve got to go. There’s a housewife in England trying to hold off on wishing. Thinks the jinn will crack and give her more wishes if she does.”
I roll my eyes and relax a little. “Where do they get these ideas? I’ll see you later. Don’t worry about it—Viola will wish.”