Sealed with a Wish (5 page)

CHAPTER SIX

I landed hard, but instead of cracking open my head, I felt myself bounce off something firm, but weirdly soft.

“Whoa!” said someone nearby.

As I settled down, I could only gape at my surroundings. I was in a big, bright messy bedroom. I had landed in the middle of the bed, which was a good thing considering the hard wood covering the floor (although maybe the scatter of dirty clothes would have broken my fall). Off in one corner, I saw a little flat-screen TV and an Xbox and, right beside it, there was a little bookshelf that was filled mostly with athletic trophies.

I groaned, partially from nausea, but mostly because I suddenly had a good idea about where I was. My head felt a little spinny, as if I had just stepped off a roller coaster. If I puked, I planned to do it all over Sean’s pretty blue bedspread.

Sean’s eyes were like saucers as he stood half-in, half-out of a wheelie office chair in front of a desk. “Oh, man,” he breathed. “It’s true.”

“Did you think I was telling you just for my health?” I shook my head, trying to clear the fuzz from my brain as I sat up.

“Layla, umm,” Sean said, “do you want to borrow...?” Jeez, again with the stuttering. You’d think he had never seen a genie before.

“You know,” I said, “you really need to work on--” But the words jammed in my throat as I caught a glimpse of cotton candy pink.

I was still wearing a robe.

Just
a robe.

On Sean Fabry’s bed.

Abruptly, the lint in my brain disappeared. I gasped and squashed myself into a ball, tucking my robe around me as tightly as I could. “Turn around, perv!”

Sean spun his chair around to face the opposite wall. “Sorry! Sorry!”

But even with Sean’s back to me, I felt way too exposed. Knowing that I was almost naked (as in,
totally without clothes
) made my cheeks flame up. With frantic hands, I pulled Sean’s blanket across my shoulders. “Okay. I’m decent, or whatever.”

When Sean turned back to me, he looked as red-faced and frightened as I was. His eyes traveled all
around
me, but never quite looked at my face. Too casually, he said, “Hey, Layla. What’s up?”

It was such a completely normal thing to say that I couldn’t even think of a sarcastic comeback. Neither of us spoke while I waited for my heart to stop hammering and Sean allowed his eyes to readjust. I glanced around again, and this time, my eyes settled on a dog-eared MAXIM magazine on the floor. At least it was better than finding another Hooters calendar, though I couldn’t help wondering where he kept all the, umm,
other
magazines in his collection. If Sean was as dim as I thought he was, he kept his private stuff in the most obvious place: under the mattress.

That meant I was probably sitting above a big stack of porn right now. Oh, joy.

An eternity later, Sean cleared his throat. “So, are you okay?”

I shrugged. Come to think of it, my shoulder felt a little tight after hitting the bed at such a weird angle, but it was better than landing on the floor. “I’m fine. I had a good landing pad.”

Sean slid his chair a little closer. “So, you were telling the truth today. You really are a genie.”

I couldn’t help but squirm as Sean’s attention lingered on me. “More or less.”

“Yeah...” He looked at his shoes for a thoughtful moment, after which I hoped he might stutter out his first wish. Instead, he only smiled and shook his head.

Wait one damn second. Was he actually
amused
by this? What the hell was so great about me on his bed, half-naked and sweating bullets? Actually, ew... I didn’t want to know the answer to that.

He must have caught the murder in my eyes, because he held up a hand and said, “Sorry. It’s just... Well, girls don’t magically appear on my bed every day, you know.”

Not yet, they don’t,
I thought.

“What did you mean by ‘more or less?’” Sean asked.

I took a deep breath. It felt weird telling anyone about this (let alone Sean Fabry), so the words rushed out. “I’m not exactly normal. Like, for a genie. I grant wishes and stuff, when I have to. But, basically, I’m a regular person.” The last part came out like a desperate squeak, despite my best efforts to sound confident.

“I get it, sort of,” he said. “You’re just... not exactly what I expected.”

My first thought was to ask Sean just how the hell he had expected
anything
, considering he hadn’t believed in genies until about two seconds ago, but then another thought made me go rigid. “What did you expect, Fabry?” I asked, my voice hard.

“Umm, n-nothing.” Sean scooted his chair back about a foot.

“You were thinking I’d be some blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl in a belly-shirt, weren’t you?”

“No! You’re great. Really.”

I glared. Like I even
cared
what he thought of me. “You’ve seen too many slutty Halloween costumes, pal.”

Sean opened his mouth, but instead of spitting out incoherent syllables, he decided to snap his jaw shut and stay quiet.

“You know,” I said in the silence that followed, “a blonde genie is basically impossible. Genies are middle-eastern.
Hello?
”

“I’m sorry, okay?” He hesitated, his forehead creased with worry. “Uh... You’re not going to turn me into a turtle or something, are you?”

“You think I’d do that? No, of course...” I trailed off, thoughtful.

Oh man, how could I not have realized this before?

Sean’s eyes turned into shaky, blue dinner plates. “You were going to say ‘not,’ right? Layla?”

I didn’t bother to answer. My brain was going a hundred miles-per-hour. I knew now that I couldn’t wish for Sean not to have my ring, but what if I could force him to waste his wishes on small, useless things? That way, no one would get suspicious and start sniffing around, and I wouldn’t end up granting other people’s wishes for the rest of my life (or locked in my bedroom, if my parents found out first).

The idea made my head spin, but it was worth a try. “I wish...” I began.

Biting my lip, I looked for a notepad or something. I would have to be pretty careful about this. Tempting as it was, I didn’t think it would be very nice to rush through the wish and accidentally scramble Sean’s brains (though I wasn’t sure if anyone would be able to tell the difference).

“I wish that you, Sean Fabry, would... Umm...” I tapered off again.

Sean shoved his chair backward, rolling across the room in one strong push. Then he dived to the closet and plunged his arms in, grasping for something. I was too surprised to be scared, though I guess he could have been reaching for another coat hanger.

A moment later, Sean held up a hockey stick and a tennis racket, sticking them together at an angle. “Stop right there!” he said.

“What are you doing?” I squinted. “Is that supposed to be a
cross
? Dude, I’m a genie, not a vampire.”

Doubt fluttered across his face, and Sean responded by holding the “cross” even tighter. He was quaking with fear, as if I had just threatened to tell him all about my last period or something. “The power of Christ compels you!”

Okay, now he was just being rude. “Could you stop doing that? I really wish you would.” I couldn’t help saying the magic words--he was being such a jerk. Still, images of Sean puking again, or worse, lying comatose on the floor, made me hastily add, “...and I only want you to put the stuff down, not anything else. Just put it down.”

“No freaking way,” he exclaimed.

Wait a second...
I blinked, as if my eyes needed to reboot. Sean still crouched on the floor, holding the tennis racket and hockey stick, totally unaffected by my wish.

“I wish you would put those things down,” I repeated more firmly.

Nothing happened.

“Of course,” I sighed.

“What?” said Sean. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t burst a blood vessel, Fabry. I can’t hurt someone who has my ring.”

“Y-you can’t?” he asked.

I shook my head. Why should a genie be able to control her so-called master? Just the way Sean couldn’t wish for more wishes, I couldn’t cheat, either. Man, it sucked to be me. “Fabry,” I said, partly as an experiment and partly because I meant it, “I really wish you were a nematode. A pink one.”

Sean threw his arms over his head, flinching against a wave of magic that never came. A minute later, he checked himself for any nematode-iness and, finding everything intact, stood.

“Listen,” I said, “I think we--” I broke off to watch Sean run across the room to his desk.

He grabbed my ring, and thrust it out at me. “Take it back, Layla.”

Instinctually, I ducked underneath the covers. The heavy comforter muffled my voice as I told him, “I can’t take it back. You have to make your wishes first.”

Sean growled with so much frustration that, for a moment, I thought he might just reach underneath the blanket and force the ring into my hands. If he did, I really would turn him into a nematode--I’d figure something out, damn it.

But then I heard footsteps falling in a worried rhythm, and I poked my head out from my blanket cocoon to find Sean pacing in front of me. “Wishes. Right. Okay,” he said to himself. He walked the room over and over, muttering scraps of sentences.

If he took much longer, my bath water would get cold. Wishing hadn’t been this difficult for my parents, but then again, they weren’t exactly asking for important things. They had only wished for an ice cream sundae or another slice of pizza, that kind of stuff, just to see if we could work around my powers.

As he continued to pace, Sean might have mumbled something about iPods and “unlimited downloads,” but I couldn’t be sure. I was surprised he hadn’t moved on to the dirty stuff yet, but then again, I didn’t know exactly
what
he intended to download.

My stomach sank as I remembered that I would still have two more wishes to grant even if he decided on something tonight. If Sean saw how easily I could zap up some internet porn, what else would he make me bring?

I tucked myself tighter underneath the blanket. So far, the biggest wish I had ever granted was to make Mom’s baby weight disappear. What if I
couldn’t
zap up a dozen Swedish supermodels, or whatever ridiculous thing Sean might ask for? What might happen to me then? I shuddered, hoping Sean would wish for something small and easy.

“I got it,” he said, jumping like he had been struck by lightning. “World peace!”

I screamed. Loudly. Couldn’t help it.

Most people would have asked for money or fame or power. Sean wanted
world peace
? Give me a break. If I even tried it, my head would probably explode. The upshot was that I wouldn’t have to grant his next two wishes. However, the downside was... Yuck.

My scream was so horror-movie-worthy that Sean grabbed his hockey stick and crouched down to fight some invisible monster. When he realized that no one else had appeared in his bedroom, he straightened up. “What the hell?” he demanded.

Great, now my “master” was mad at me. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to freak out. It’s just that I don’t know if I can
do
that. The world peace thing.”

Sean stepped forward. For a second, it seemed like he was going to sit beside me, but he changed direction and eased into the computer chair, instead. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I told you, I’m not a regular genie. I’m sort of...
mixed
or whatever. I don’t really know what my limits are. It’s not like I use my powers all the time.”

Just to get out of public speaking,
I thought.

“Okay,” he said. “What would happen if you couldn’t give me what I wished for?”

I bit my lip. “When I don’t grant wishes right away, I get sick and stuff. If you wish for something that big, I don’t know what’ll happen if I can’t do it.”

Sean nodded, his brow creasing thoughtfully. After a minute, he said, “So, no world peace?”

“No world peace,” I repeated. Relief loosened the knot in my belly, and I smiled a little.

He shrugged, one corner of his mouth turning up. “Eh... Don’t worry about it.”

“No, really. Thanks. That’s cool of you.”

Sean shrugged again. Maybe it was just a trick of the light, but I thought I saw his cheeks go pink for a split second.

I tilted my head. Was it my imagination, or had I just
convinced
Sean not to wish for something? As the silence ebbed between us, I pulled my gaze down to my lap, marveling at the contrast between the bright pink terry cloth and the darker blue of Sean’s blanket. It was too bad I hadn’t brought my camera, but what girl carries one of those when she’s taking a bubble bath?

Never mind. Don’t answer that.

“Wait a second,” I said, looking back up at Sean. “How did I get here, anyway?”

“I don’t know. You just kind of...” He made a zapping sound and gestured to the bed.