I grunted. “I guess I’ll take it. . . . Bazang.”
Suddenly, I could hear everything going on inside the room as though the door were wide open. There was a soft humming, punctuated with an occasional beep from some machines. The gentle rustle of blankets on a bed. And then I heard Tina’s voice as clearly as though she were talking to me. There was only one problem.
Tina was speaking Spanish.
“What’s she saying?” Ridge asked. “Who’s she talking to?”
What a waste of a wish! Hearing through the door was useless if I couldn’t understand what they were saying!
“No comprehendo,” I said to Ridge. “Tina’s speaking Spanish.” Then I heard a woman’s voice reply in the same language. What if the stranger and Tina were making nefarious plans to turn against me? “I wish I could understand Spanish.” It seemed like my best option.
“Well, if you want to know Spanish,” said Ridge, “then you’ll only be able to speak French for the rest of the week.”
“Do you speak French?” I asked.
“Sí, señor,” he answered.
“I’m pretty sure that was Spanish,” I pointed out.
“Hmm,” said Ridge. “Then, nope. I guess I don’t speak French.”
“But you speak Spanish?” I was rather impressed.
“Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis.” Ridge paused. “That’s all I’ve got.”
I was less impressed.
“Well?” Ridge gestured to my hourglass. “Are you going to take the consequence?”
Something told me that would be a bad idea. Stopping Thackary was probably going to be hard enough even with Ridge and me speaking the same language.
“I don’t accept,” I said, my shoulders sagging slightly in defeat. “Maybe if I just take a peek inside . . .” I reached out slowly and gripped the door handle. If I just cracked it open, I’d at least be able to get a glimpse of Tina’s mysterious meeting.
I pushed the door inward, just enough to see Tina and Vale standing at the foot of a hospital bed. I got a clear glimpse of the patient, too. I didn’t know what sort of illness she had, but the Hispanic woman looked like she was in pain. Even breathing caused her face to wince from the discomfort.
She had a dozen tubes draped around her, an oxygen mask on her face. Her hair was matted back, and her ear . . . I squinted to make sure I was seeing it correctly. The woman’s ear looked like it was attached upside down.
Tina didn’t seem to notice my intrusion, so I risked pushing the door open just a little farther to see if anyone else was in there.
And then the door came off its hinges and crashed to the floor with a deafening bang.
Chapter 9
I was just grateful that the heavy door didn’t crush anyone when it came off its hinges. You see, I had sort of forgotten about that consequence. So Ridge and I did the sensible thing as soon as the door fell down.
We ran.
Of course Tina spotted us, and by the time we got outside, she and Vale had caught up.
“You followed me?” Tina shouted. “I can’t believe you two!”
“It was Ace’s idea,” Ridge said.
I shot him a glare and tried to explain to the girls. “I had to see what you were up to. For all I know, you could be secretly working with Thackary Anderthon.” I glanced back at the hospital. “Who was that woman you were talking to?”
Tina took a couple of deep breaths. When she spoke, it didn’t answer my question at all. “We’re basically down to six days now. If we want to complete our quests, then we’d better get moving!” She set off at a brisk pace in the opposite direction from the hospital, Vale jogging to stay close.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Where are you going?”
“You tell me,” Tina called back. “You’re the one with all the information on how to find Thackary.”
I sighed, moving hastily to catch up to her. Arguing and distrusting was going to make for a long quest. As I moved, I swung my backpack around and pulled out a couple of sandwiches. If Tina was as hungry as I was, then maybe she’d take this as a peace offering.
I handed one to Ridge and extended two others to Tina and Vale. “You want a sandwich?” I asked. “I have plenty.” To prove my point, I pulled open my backpack so they could see how stuffed it was.
“What’s with the sandwiches?” Vale asked, taking one.
I shrugged, shouldering my backpack. “I like peanut butter. Is that a crime?” I didn’t feel like explaining how my first wish had been for something so ridiculous. I peeled back the plastic bag and took a bite.
“Mmm . . .” Ridge muttered behind me. “These are good!”
Tina glanced at me from the side of her eyes, and then snatched the sandwich that I still held out for her.
“Who’d have thought . . .” I said with a chuckle, trying desperately for conversation. “Peanut butter . . .” I took another bite. “Was Vale’s creamy or chunky?”
“Hey!” Vale cut in. “You calling me chunky?”
“No,” I stammered. “I mean the jar.”
“What are you talking about?” Tina finally said through a mouthful.
I fumbled in my backpack once more, producing Ridge’s jar for her inspection. “Didn’t Vale come out of one of these?”
Tina reached into her pocket and withdrew a small object. It was a little jar of lip balm, raspberry flavored. The lid was missing, but the red balm didn’t appear to smudge onto anything.
“This is Vale’s genie jar.”
I felt a tiny pang of jealousy. Not that I wanted to carry around a jar of raspberry lip balm, but look at that size! It was a fraction of the peanut butter jar I had to lug around.
“But . . .” I stammered. “Your lips are chapped.”
“Really?” Tina smirked and tucked the jar back into her pocket. “We should talk about where we’re going. What did you learn from that page of the notebook?”
“I learned that we’ve got a long ways to go,” I said. “Anybody been to Mount Rushmore?”
Tina shook her head. “Have you?” she asked me.
“Not that I remember,” I said, giving my standard reply. I knew I hadn’t been to Mount Rushmore in the last three years. But before that . . . I really had no idea what I’d done. It was frustrating to have a blank memory.
“What about you two?” I asked Ridge and Vale. She took a bite of sandwich and kept walking.
“Mount Rushmore,” Ridge said. “That’s the one with the big faces carved in the mountainside, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Four presidents of the United States.”
“Ever wonder what happened to the rest of their bodies?” Ridge asked. “I mean, it’s kind of freaky that it’s just a bunch of floating heads.”
“How are we going to get there?” Tina asked. “Mount Rushmore’s in South Dakota. That’s way too far to walk.”
“We’ll have to wish for something,” I said.
“Ugh,” Tina grunted. “I figured out within the first hour that it’s better to do as little wishing as possible. I can’t deal with these consequences.”
“You seem to be doing fine,” I said, polishing off my sandwich and stuffing the empty bag into my pocket. “What have you got so far?”
Tina shot me a disapproving glance. “Seems kind of impolite to ask another person about her consequences.”
“Sorry,” I replied. But my apology seemed to spur Tina into telling me anyway.
“Next time I eat ice cream, it’ll taste like olives. One of my fingernails can’t be trimmed for a year, and I can’t tell blue from orange for the rest of the week.”
“So the sky looks orange to you?” I asked. Not at that moment, of course—it was practically dark.
She nodded. “It’s weird.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle at Tina’s misfortune. “What did you wish for?”
“Lots of things,” she answered thoughtfully. “But there were only a few that I could accept.”
“I know
what you mean.”
Tina looked at me and conspicuously wiped her cheek. She kept staring, persistently scraping at a spot next to her mouth. “You’ve got some leftovers,” she finally said.
My hand shot up to my face, only to encounter the everlasting smudge of peanut butter. “That’s a flavor saver,” I said.
“Gross,” she replied, but it got her to smile.
“You think your consequences are bad,” said Vale, “you should hear about some of my previous Wishmakers.”
“I bet you’ve got a lot of stories,” Tina said.
Vale nodded. “I once had a Wishmaker who grew an upside-down mustache for a year.”
“What’s an upside-down mustache?” I asked.
“You know, the hair grows up instead of down.”
“That would be awful,” I said, unconsciously scratching my upper lip.
“Yeah.” Vale took the last bite of her sandwich. “She hated it.”
“How many Wishmakers have you had?” I asked the question to both genies, but only Vale responded.
“Too many.”
“Do most of them succeed at their quests?” I asked.
“Most,” she answered. That was reassuring, at least. Odds were in our favor.
I turned to Tina. “You never told me your quest’s consequence,” I said. “You’re supposed to save the life of an ex-Wishmaker, but what happens if you don’t?”
“Bad stuff,” she answered. “Basically, the end of the world.”
“Hey, me, too!” I said it like we had the same pair of shoes, not like we were talking about the world ending.
“If I don’t succeed,” said Tina, “the whole world will be flooded with lemonade.”
“I happen to like lemonade,” I said.
Tina gave me a deadpan look. “Not if it causes the end of the world. Floods can destroy huge cities. Not to mention that lemonade is acidic. Nothing will survive for long.”
She had a good point. I never would have thought the world could end by lemonade.
“If I don’t stop Thackary Anderthon,” I said, “then all the cats and dogs in the world will turn into zombies and eat everyone. You have any pets?”
“I had a poodle,” she replied.
“Undead poodle,” I said. “Sounds ferocious.”
Tina laughed. For that brief second, whatever worries she carried seemed to melt away.
“A world-ending consequence isn’t very common,” Vale said. “Wishmakers often have consequences that would cause earthquakes, start wars, wreck economies, destroy chocolate . . .”
Tina and I gave her a puzzled look. “I’m serious,” she said. “I once had a Wishmaker who had seven days to pick a leaf from a very old tree in Patagonia. If he failed, chocolate would go extinct.”
“Hmmm,” I said in mock thought. “No more chocolate”—I held up my hands as if weighing the consequences—“versus zombie pets destroying humanity.”
“Don’t downplay it, Ace,” Ridge cut in. “Imagine a world without chocolate!” He said it with a hint of desperation in his voice.
“Imagine a world without people!” I replied, reminding him what was expected of Tina and me. It didn’t seem fair that the Universe had put that kind of responsibility on us. I guess I should have read the fine print on the genie jar’s warning label.
Chapter 10
We slept in a barn. A ray of sunlight pierced through the slats in the wall and woke me up. I sat forward abruptly, confused about where I was and what I was doing. Then it all came flooding back to me.
I had a genie. I was on a quest to save mankind.
I looked around for Ridge. He was still asleep in the corner of the barn, curled up around a barrel. It seemed odd that genies needed sleep the same way we did. More and more, I was realizing that Ridge seemed like an ordinary kid. He didn’t know everything; he got blisters; and as I learned the night before when we crept into the stranger’s barn, he was sort of afraid of the dark.
I spotted Tina sitting on an overturned bucket, her face toward the open door. I wondered when she had finally drifted off to sleep the previous night and how long she had been awake that morning. She seemed troubled.
There was something about Tina that I couldn’t grasp. I had a lot of questions for her, starting with the woman in the hospital bed. But so far, Tina didn’t seem interested in answering them. I’d have to get to know her, break down her defensive barrier. After all, if you were going on an impromptu road trip with someone to save the world, wouldn’t you want to know them better?
I approached her in time to see her tinkering with the watch on her wrist. It looked nearly identical to mine. My approach must have startled her, because Tina quickly lowered her hand as though trying to hide what she’d been doing.
Her behavior caused me to turn to my own hourglass watch. I ran my thumb around the leather band, but there was no clasp. How was I supposed to take the thing off? Using my fingers, I tried to slide it over my hand.
“You can’t take it off,” Tina said, watching me. “That’s what I was just trying.”
“I guess the Universe wants us to have a fair amount of time to think about each consequence,” I said, giving up on the watch.
Tina raised her eyebrows. “Not much of what the Universe does seems fair.”
I thought about stepping outside and catching some fresh air, but I didn’t know how far that would put me from Ridge. I glanced back at him. Snapping the tether would be a very rude awakening.
“Have you snapped your tether yet?” I asked. Tina shook her head. “It’s painful. I’d recommend staying close to Vale for the next six days.”
“Six days,” Tina repeated. I hoped that was enough time to complete our quests.
“How do you think it will happen?” I asked. “When our time runs out, all the pets instantly start devouring people? One minute we’re walking along, and the next minute we’re over our heads in lemonade?”
“The consequence might not happen immediately,” Vale said, causing me to turn. I hadn’t realized she was listening to our conversation. “It’s not like the Universe wants it to happen. It’ll be a result of someone’s choice.”
“My choice?” I asked. I didn’t see how failing to stop Thackary would result in zombie pets.
“Think of the bigger picture,” Vale continued. “If this Thackary person opens the Undiscovered Genie jar, he’ll have wishes. Maybe one of those wishes will be to transform all pets into zombies.”
I stood up, sighing. It didn’t seem fair that my big consequence could happen as a result of someone else’s choice. But then, I agreed with Tina that nothing about the Universe’s methods seemed fair.
Tina glanced over at Vale. “Time’s ticking. We should get moving.”
I awakened Ridge, and the four of us ate a breakfast of peanut butter sandwiches from the backpacks. I could tell the day was going to be a hot one, and I was already thirsty. I was just about to wish for something to drink when Tina unzipped a backpack and handed me a bottle of cold water.
“Where’d you get the backpack?” I was pretty sure she hadn’t had one yesterday.
“Wished for it this morning,” Tina replied. “Full of water bottles, but it doesn’t get too heavy.”
She was a smart one. I probably wouldn’t have thought about the weight of carrying water bottles around. I twisted off the lid and took a long drink.
“That’s why we’re a team, right?” Tina continued. “To share the load. I figured, you’ve got the sandwiches, so we should get the drinks.”
“What was your consequence?” I asked.
Tina grunted. “Next time I touch someone’s hand, our fingers will lock together for five minutes.”
I quickly tucked my hands into my pockets. Magically holding hands with Tina would be plenty awkward.
“How are we going to get to Mount Rushmore?” Ridge asked.
I still hadn’t told anyone about what Thackary was planning to do once he arrived there. His notebook had
given me details, but I didn’t want to share them with Tina. If she was going to keep secrets about the woman in the hospital, then I’d keep my own secrets.
“We could fly,” Tina suggested.
Ridge and I both groaned.
“I tried that already,” I explained. “Flying is a lot harder than it sounds.”
“And may I suggest a method of transportation that doesn’t require Vale and me to get stuffed into our jars?” added Ridge.
“That’s a good point,” said Tina. “There are two of us Wishmakers now.” She looked at me. “If we take turns wishing for transportation that can accommodate all four of us, then we’ll only need to make half as many wishes.”
“And that means half as many consequences,” I said, feeling enthusiastic about Tina’s approach.
The four of us stood in awkward silence until Tina finally said, “You go first, Ace.”
I took a step back. “No way! I got us sandwiches.”
“And I got us water,” Tina rebutted. “And technically, you wished for the sandwiches before we even met, so that doesn’t count. Either way, it’s your turn.”
“I don’t like the idea of taking turns,” I replied. “Wishing for a supply of water had nothing to do with our quests. Wishing for transportation to catch Thackary will probably have a more serious consequence.”
“Then I don’t see how we’re supposed to work together,” Tina said. “If you won’t wish, then we’ll have to get to Mount Rushmore the old-fashioned way.” She turned abruptly, moving out of the barn with Vale behind her.
I gave Ridge a puzzled look. “What’s the old-fashioned way?”
Chapter 11
Walking.
Walking was what Tina considered the old-fashioned way of getting places. The four of us reached the interstate pretty quickly on foot. It was midmorning by now, and the summer heat seemed to be increasing with every step.
Cars whizzed by at high speed, not even slowing to acknowledge our ragtag group. Tina and Vale led the way, with Ridge and me following a few yards behind. Neither pair spoke to the other out of a stubborn determination not to be the next Wishmaker to wish.