I don’t know her name. She doesn’t fit in with the Royal Family; her eyebrows are ungroomed and her clothes aren’t ridiculously tight. Yet even so, she doesn’t look intimidated or even nervous about approaching the table. Instead, she looks defeated, like she’s already anticipating being ignored or passed over.
“Hi. The marching band is selling candy to go to Philadelphia. One dollar per bar, anyone interested?”
No one hears her—no one but me, anyhow. The Royal Family continues chattering without looking up. As if she’s invisible. She sighs and scouts out another table.
“Wait,” I say, just as she’s about to step away from the table. The girl raises her eyebrows at me; does she remember that I was just like her only a few days ago? Or did Jinn change that as well?
“I’ll take two,” I say, digging through my purse for two dollars bills. I hand them over and take two packs of Skittles from the blue cardboard box.
“Ooo, candy!” a Royal Family girl says from the end of the table.
“What are you selling it for?” one of the guys says, throwing a dollar into the box and grabbing a Twix. The band girl rolls her eyes a little, and I can’t help snickering. She repeats the spiel and, when she’s finished, gives me a sort of grateful nod. I return the nod and look away only to see Jinn watching me, leaning against the trophy case with a sort of satisfied smile. I raise an eyebrow at him, and he shrugs, then vanishes.
When I arrive at the art room after the last bell, I head straight for the pink paint. And violet. And orange. Somehow I feel like I can paint with all of them, can splash color on the canvas and be carefree about it all. I shove my old paintings aside and pull up a new sheet of canvas, not even caring when my fingers accidently smear paint on the clean edges. I step back and look at the blank space.
But what to paint? There’s so much that’s shiny and sparkly and would lend itself to an amazing piece of art. I press my lips together.
“Paint a picture of me being bored at a park for the last eight hours,” Jinn says. I turn and grin at him.
“I couldn’t do you justice, sir,” I reply. “Besides, you were here this morning, so it wasn’t really eight hours.”
“Fair,” Jinn says, stealing the remaining pack of Skittles from my purse. “I just wanted to make sure things are going okay.”
“They are. Things are going great, actually.” Jinn lifts himself onto a table while I turn back to the canvas. “Though I have to admit, I thought painting would be easier. I mean, I know I want to use these colors, but…wow. Painter’s block.”
“Wait…,” Jinn says. He steps up behind me and takes the paintbrush from my hand. “I’ve got it. It’ll be brilliant.” He dips the end of the paintbrush in crimson paint and slowly paints a smiley face in the center of the canvas.
I laugh, but Jinn steps back and folds his arms, admiring his work, before motioning for me to have a shot at the picture. I rinse the brush and dip it in fuchsia, then add spiky hair to the face. I pause as the paint dries—it looks sort of like the Punk Guy from my Shakespeare class. I didn’t think about sketching him today, like I usually do. Didn’t even occur to me.
“Viola?” Jinn says when I haven’t spoken for a few moments.
“Sorry,” I say, turning to him. “Your turn?”
He shakes his head. “Nope. You can’t add to perfection.”
“Naturally,” I answer. I’m about to continue when I hear footsteps approaching the art room. Aaron appears in the doorway.
“Hey, baby,” he says, eyes sparkling. He looks at the smiley face painting as he walks toward me. “That’s…um…”
I blush. “We—I—was just playing around.”
“Hey! That was serious art,” Jinn says behind me.
“Well, it’s magnificent,” Aaron teases me. He kisses my cheek and entwines his fingers with mine, while I try to avoid touching his clothes with my wet paintbrush. Aaron is warm and inviting, but I’m very, very aware of Jinn’s dark eyes on me.
“Great,” Jinn says with a look of resignation. “Another four hours sitting in a park.”
Sorry, I mouth. He sighs, but gives me a wry smile before he vanishes.
Aaron wraps an arm around my waist. “Come on,” he says, and steps toward the door, pulling my hand with him.
“Wait,” I say, motioning toward the painting. “I really need to work on the Expo stuff….” Aaron runs a hand across my back. It sends a pleasant shiver through me.
“I need to put my stuff away at least,” I half-heartedly protest.
Aaron raises an eyebrow. “Put it away later. I have something to show you.”
I bite my lip, and he leans in to kiss my forehead. He slides one hand down my arm and gently plucks the wet paintbrush from my fingers, dropping it onto the counter. I should put it in water—it’ll ruin the brush, leaving it out to dry too long. Aaron pulls me toward the door.
The halls are empty of everything but the sounds of teachers complaining in the break room and the whir of the janitors’ vacuums. Aaron stops just as we reach the theater doors.
“Wait just a second,” he says, and reaches into his back pocket. He pulls out a shred of cloth that I’m pretty sure was ripped from the school’s Juliet costume.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I say through a smile as he moves to tie it around my eyes.
“You know, you don’t make it easy for a guy to be romantic,” Aaron answers. I laugh and give in. Awkward or not, who am I to turn down a romantic gesture?
Aaron puts his hands on my shoulders and leads me into the cool theater. It smells like spray paint and mildew, and I can hear my steps echoing as we walk. Aaron navigates me up the wing stairs and onto the stage.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, a little breathless.
Aaron sweeps the blindfold off my eyes. It’s almost completely dark in the theater. In the blackness of the ceiling, tiny glowing lights appear, fake stars that haven’t been used in a show for ages. Aaron nods toward the lighting booth, where a few of his friends are hanging out. They give him a thumbs-up, then hit the stage lights, illuminating Aaron and me in a pale blue-violet glow.
“Get it? Like it’s nighttime?” Aaron says, motioning at the stars above.
I nod and give as girlish a laugh as I can muster. Aaron turns around to where a blanket is spread out in the center of the stage, with a Gatorade bottle and a bag of miniature Snickers beside it.
“I got bored painting Grease sets, so I made us a picnic under the stars instead,” Aaron says, looking pleased with himself. I grin so hard, it nearly hurts. He did this for me. Even Lawrence never did anything like this for me.
Aaron and I sit down on the blanket, and he swigs from the Gatorade bottle—I can smell the beer inside that’s replaced the actual Gatorade. He leans on the scaffolding that’s right behind us, sweeping his hair back. I wonder where the rest of Aaron’s friends are—I thought they always hung out together. It’s a little strange, being with Aaron alone in an empty theater. I look up at the fake stars.
“You know, this sounds stupid, but I mean it when I say I had a great time with you Saturday,” Aaron says, holding my gaze. I blush—I can feel my cheeks heating up—and nod in return. Aaron leans in and turns my face toward his. I struggle to swallow the mini Snickers I bit into just a moment before. Our lips touch.
Aaron’s kiss is powerful, strong, like he might push me backward if I don’t return it with just as much force. It makes my heart pump and my hands shake. I can smell his cologne; the scent is overpowering. Jinn would have something to say about a cologne bath, but I wouldn’t blame him. I’ll take the honey-spice scent of Jinn’s skin over a bottle of Ralph Lauren any day. I wonder what he’s doing, hanging out in a sketchy park…. I shouldn’t have ditched him this afternoon.
I pull away from Aaron and smile. He grins and takes another swig of his drink.
“I can’t stay out too late,” I say after a moment’s silence. I look up at the fake stars.
“R
eally? I wanted you to come over and watch a movie or something.”
I press my lips together. “No, I want to, it’s just…” I sip my drink to stall and give me a moment to think. I can’t exactly say that I feel guilty about Jinn being alone. “Don’t you have to finish the Grease sets today?”
Aaron laughs. “True, true. I just like spending time with you, I guess. But lame musicals wait for no one!”
When Aaron drops me off at home, it’s already dusk outside. My mom looks up from starching a row of her white blouses as I walk in the door.
“And where were you?” she asks, eyeing Aaron’s car as he drives away.
“I was…on a date, I guess,” I say as I open the refrigerator and hunt for a can of Diet Coke.
“A date?” my mom says, her voice an odd mix of doubt and relief. She sprays down the closest shirt with the can of starch. “You didn’t tell me you had a date. With whom? Or was it Lawrence?”
“No!” I snap, defensively enough that my mom rolls her eyes. “It was with Aaron Moor. He’s from school. Did you want me to start telling you that sort of thing?”
“Oh, no, it’s okay. I was just wondering,” my mom says. She pauses for a moment, a thoughtful look on her face, then sets the can of spray starch down. “He’s nice, then?”
I nod. Relationship talk is not something my parents and I are good at.
“Good, good.” She crunches the sleeve of a blouse as I open my drink and begin to head to my room. “Viola,” she calls out after me. She leans against the kitchen table. “I don’t need to worry about you or anything, right? We can have the talks if you want.”
“The talks?”
She furrows her eyebrows and shrugs. “You know…sex talk. Drinking talk. Love talk. We’ve never had them. Just don’t think I’m too busy with work for the talks if you need them. I think I can order a DVD about teenage sexuality. I guess I should have done it while you were with Lawrence but…better late than never, right?”
If there’s one phrase I never want to hear my mom say again, it’s teenage sexuality. I want to burst out laughing, but my mom seems so perplexed and sincere that I can’t bring myself to embarrass her. Instead I shake my head furiously as I open my bedroom door. “I’m good, Mom. But I’ll let you know if I need any talks.”
“Talks?” Jinn says as I shut the door behind me. He’s leaning against the wall by the window, arms folded, with an amused smirk on his face.
“Sex talks,” I say with a grin. “Apparently there’s even a DVD.”
“You, Aaron, and your mom should probably watch that together. You know, educational experience,” he replies with a serious expression. I throw a pillow at him, which he dodges at the last moment.
“So how was the hot date?” he says as I lay back on my bed and inhale the scent of old quilts.
I smile. “It was…strange. And it was great.”
“Right,” he replies so quickly that it’s clear he doesn’t want to hear the gritty details of my afternoon. Jinn runs a hand through his hair several times, paying close attention to the moment the hair slips from his fingers.
“Four days,” Jinn says under his breath. I sit up and look at him. “I’ve been here four days.”
“That doesn’t seem right,” I reply, tallying numbers in my head. “It feels like you’ve been here weeks.”
Jinn rolls his eyes like he’s annoyed, but his voice is soft. “It just seems like longer because we’ve spent so much time together.” He runs his hand through his hair again. “My hair has grown. A lot. Four days is a long time if you’re not used to aging.”
“Four days…only four days.” I don’t even like saying it. I watch him finger his hair again. We both smile.
twelve
Jinn
“I CAN CUT it,” Viola says from the nest of quilts, a sly look in her eyes.
I laugh. “No amount of wishing is going to convince me to let you anywhere near my head with a pair of scissors.”
“No, I’m serious! I used to cut Lawrence’s.”
“I don’t care if you cut Keanu’s hair, stay away from me,” I say, folding my arms over my chest.
“No? Fine. Then…I guess you want to hear all about my afternoon with Aaron…,” she begins carefully.
“Not especially.”
“Oh no, it was wonderful. I’ll be sure to go into all the sappy details…. I mean, it’s just as well you don’t trust me enough to cut your hair, because if you did, I’d be too busy focusing to talk, but—”
“You can really cut hair? Promise?” I’m not sure I can stomach another few hours of her talking about Aaron. Over breakfast was enough.
“I wouldn’t offer if I was going to butcher your head. Really. If the length is bothering you, let me cut it.”
I study her carefully. Her eyes are pleading, her lips curved in a small smile and her fingers, I can tell, itching for scissors.
If we aren’t supposed to call our masters by their first names, I’m pretty sure haircutting is out of the question. But I sigh and nod. I’m pretty desperate not to hear the details of her date with Aaron.
Viola motions toward her desk chair, then sweeps a blanket on the floor around it. I sit down as she shuffles around in her bathroom, emerging with a pair of silver scissors. She snaps them at me and laughs.
“I’m having second thoughts.”
“Aaron and I kissed—”
“Cut away,” I say, holding up my hands in defeat. She leans on her desk behind me, wiping the scissors down with a wet cloth.
“I told you, relax. I really do know how to do this. Well, enough for a guy anyhow.”
“That’s not especially reassuring. Somehow I don’t believe that a sixteen-year-old can cut hair.”
“Well, do you know how?”
“No. But our hair doesn’t grow in Caliban—”
“Yeah, yeah. And how old are you?” she asks, stepping around to the front of my chair.
“A hundred and seven,” I answer.
Viola raises her eyebrows but laughs. “Then you’re overdue anyhow. How short is it supposed to be?” She sits down on the bed, ours knees inches apart, and watches as I pull the hair on my forehead straight.
“It’s hard to remember, actually.” I can’t believe it’s hard to remember four days ago. “I think maybe to here?” I say, placing my forefinger where I’m guessing my hair should be. She nods and rises, moving behind me and out of sight. There’s a strange pause, and then she pulls her fingers through my hair. She smiles—I’m not sure how, but I can tell she’s smiling—and I relax back into the chair.
“It can’t seriously have grown that much in four days,” she says, running her fingers through a second time. Her fingertips feel like flower petals, and she spirals them down around the nape of my neck.
“It grows faster when we’re here, like it’s catching up or something. Four days’ worth is a lot.”
Viola steps in front of me again, and bends down so her face is even with mine. I know she’s actually looking at my hair, but it looks like she’s looking straight at me—I close my eyes to avoid the stare.
“Okay,” she says, pinching the hair by my temples between her fingers. “Ready?”
“You’ve got scissors near my head. I don’t have a choice.”
“This is true,” Viola says, and I can hear the grin in her voice. The scissors swish and click sharply right by my ear. I open my eyes just a crack to see the black curl in Viola’s palm. “That wasn’t so terrible, right? Now hold still—”
“Stop,” I say, staring at four days’ difference in her hand. If she cuts it all off, what do I have to even show that I’ve been here? It’ll be like she never summoned me.
Viola looks from the cut she’s about to make to my eyes. “I told you, you can trust me!” she says, sounding both amused and exasperated.
“No, no.” I lean away from the scissors. “It’s just…I don’t know. I’ve never had long hair. Er—longer hair. Maybe I’ll see how it goes bef
ore I let you hack away at it,” I tease. Viola smiles and drops the scissors on her desk.
“Then I guess I get to go into detail about my afternoon without you?”
“Please, no,” I say. I’m smiling, it sounds light, but the truth is, there’s nothing I want to hear about less than how the wish is working on Viola.
“Fine, fine, I’ll spare you for now. But I’m going to a movie with him tomorrow. You’re going to have to hear the details one way or another. Unless I get drunk again and make two more wishes and you leave,” she says, grinning at her own joke.
“Eh, I’m sort of used to you not wishing,” I reply quietly. The idea of her and Aaron alone in a theater darkens my mood. His hands on her, the way he looks at her hungrily…it’s disturbing. I shake the image from my mind. “I should go, I guess. For the night, I mean.”
Viola shrugs, and her cheeks turn a little bit pink. “You don’t have to go now, unless you want to. I mean…I don’t want you to watch me sleep or anything. That’s weird. But you don’t have to leave altogether.”
I lean back in the chair, balancing it against the edge of the desk. “We’ll see. I like the park at night. And I don’t know about sitting in this chair for eight hours.”
“Hey! That’s a great chair,” she says, smiling as she tosses her quilts back and climbs into the bed. She studies me for a moment before reaching over and pulling the chain on her bedside lamp, casting the room in darkness. The air conditioner kicks on, billowing her curtains back just enough that I see a glimpse of the stars outside.
“I have a question,” she says, her voice a little muffled from the blankets.
“Yes?” I reply, rising and going to the window. I part the curtains and look at the stars.
“Are you happy here?”
I’d expected some question about Aaron and wish mechanics or something, so her words startle me. I close the curtains and turn toward her.
“I…why?” I stumble on my words. The question tugs at me gently, but I can feel her good intentions: She’s giving me the choice not to answer.
Viola sits up, pulling the blankets to her chest and avoiding my eyes. “I just…you’re my friend. If you’re still miserable here, I’ll make two more wishes so you can go back,” she says, trying to mask the reluctance in her voice.