As You Wish (8 page)

“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.

“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 before 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.

It's that simple. Right now, she'll wish.

“No,” I reply.

“Oh. Okay, then I'll just wish—”

“No!” I cut her off sharply. “I mean, don't wish. I don't mind being here, staying until you decide what you really want. They're your wishes; you should take your time. Caliban isn't going anywhere.” I sit down in the armchair.

I just said that. I just turned wishes down.

“Good,” she says, and lays back down. “I just…I'd miss…” She trails off and her cheeks flush bright red. She picks at the loose threads in her quilt. “Anyhow. So what's Caliban like?” she asks quickly.

I smile and let my head rest against the back of the armchair. “I don't know. It's still. Everything is very still, compared to here.”

“Boring?” Viola asks.

“No, not boring. I just mean…no one ages. No one hurries. No one gets excited about Art Expos or dates or whatever, because…well, you have a lifetime for that sort of thing.”

“What does it look like, though?” Viola replies.

“It's like…you know how before they build a new skyscraper or apartments, they put up a picture of the building surrounded by trees and flowers and everything?”

“Yeah—only it never ends up being surrounded by much more than concrete.”

“But in Caliban, it is. You have the giant glass buildings but then…the flowers.”

“It sounds like Oz,” she says. “Like in the movies, I mean, with the Emerald City….” As she drifts off, I'm suddenly very aware that she's looking at me. Our eyes lock for a long time. “You're sure you want this place instead of a fancy city garden?” she adds.

I exhale and nod. “This place has its charms, too. You don't have the Ancients breathing down your neck here, talking about repopulating Caliban and all that. You want to hear some sex talks….”

Viola laughs, and though I can't see her face, I know it's lit up in the shadows. “Repopulate? So wait, you said there are only a few thousand jinn, right?”

“Give or take, I imagine.”

“Why so few?”

I run my hands along the chair arms for a moment, enjoying the rippling of fabric beneath my fingers. “Well, if you believe the Ancients, it's all part of our punishment.”

“Punishment?”

My eyes are growing used to the darkness, and I can just
make out the outline of her form, sitting up and hugging her knees in bed.

“It's this old story, sort of like our own little creation tale. The myth is that ages ago, jinn and humans lived here together. Jinn had magical powers, but instead of using them for the good of everyone—human and jinn alike—they used it for personal gain, power, selfishness, that sort of thing. So as punishment, jinn were made the servants of wishing humans and banished to Caliban.”

“It doesn't sound like it's a terrible place to be banished to.”

“I never figured out that part either, to be honest. But keep in mind, that part is all just a myth. The only hard facts are that as the population here grows, more and more people have wishes. Eventually there were too many mortals with wishes for the jinn to keep up with, so instead of everyone getting their wishes granted, the Ancients select a few hundred at a time—I think they try to spread out the wishes so you don't have too many people in one area suddenly winning the lottery or becoming rock stars. But the more often we're called,
the more often we're here. The more often we're here, the more often we age. And the more often we age—”

“The more often you grow old and die,” Viola finishes for me.

“Exactly,” I answer, leaning forward to rest my elbows on my knees. “Combine that with the fact that we don't attach to one another like you people do, and you don't exactly have a recipe for a booming population. That's why there's all the protocol, all the rules, all the desperation to increase the population. The Ancients want us in, out, and back to our normal lives; they make our masters forget all about us so there's no risk they'll tell other humans that we exist and can be summoned. They're afraid that we'll die out.”

“I don't want you to die,” Viola says in a small voice.

My head jerks up. “No, no. Don't worry about that,” I mumble quietly, as if I'm afraid the Ancients will hear me from Caliban.

“I'll wish if you want. Really.”

“I told you, no. They're your wishes.”

“Right,” Viola sighs. “Well, let me know if you…if you change your mind. About me wishing now, I mean.”

“Okay.”

But I know I won't.

I GRUMBLE AND
swat at my alarm. No matter how many times I've been late to school because of hitting the
SNOOZE
button, I know it's an unbreakable morning habit. The pop song blasting through the tiny speaker is silenced, and I prepare to fall back asleep for seven minutes. A soft laugh interrupts the quiet.

Jinn. I sit bolt upright in the bed, clutching the covers to my chest. Jinn is sitting in the arm chair, legs swung up over the side and arms folded.

“You stayed,” I say, trying to cover my surprise.

“You abuse alarm clocks,” he responds.

“Something like that,” I answer, and try to smooth the tangled nest that is my hair. “Decided the park would be fine by itself for a night?” I kick my legs over the side of the bed—no point in trying to fall back asleep now.

“To be honest,” Jinn says as I step into the bathroom and let the shower water heat up, “I forgot to leave. I was just watching stars and then…it was morning.”

“The exciting life of a magical creature,” I tease. Jinn rolls his eyes.

I shower quickly and dress in the bathroom; when I emerge, Jinn is flipping through old copies of
Seventeen
with a look of mild disgust.

“So, you're going to a movie with Aaron tonight? I imagine that means more park time for me?” Jinn asks, shutting the magazine and pushing it away.

“It's only a few hours,” I explain. “We're not even going to dinner, just to see some horror movie or something.”

“But you hate horror movies,” Jinn replies. He says it in a matter-of-fact way that tells me he simply read it in my eyes—the wish not to see movie murders.

“I don't
hate
horror movies. I just…don't watch them,” I say, opening and slamming drawers in an attempt to find a hairbrush.

“Why is he taking you to see a horror movie when you hate horror movies?” Jinn asks, studying my eyes and, I'm sure, reading my distaste for gore. I have to admit that I've sort of gotten used to him reading me. It's even nice, sometimes, to be able to explain everything with just a look. Jinn rises and grabs my hairbrush from under a stack of shirts, then hands it to me. I blush and nod in appreciation before I respond.

“It's not about the movie, it's about doing something together. That's the point of dates, you know, dark theaters and cuddling or whatever.”

“Right,” Jinn says, cringing. “Sounds…great. Really.”

I laugh. “It's nice to feel attractive and…um…appreciated,” I say, trying to be tactful.

Jinn grimaces. “Don't tell me about it,” he says as I head downstairs. “I guess I'll see you after then?”

“Yes. I mean, unless you had big plans for the park?” I'm only half teasing; the idea of Jinn just waiting around for me
to call him is a little uncomfortable, though I have to admit it's pleasant knowing he'll always be there when I want him to. He studies me for a moment, reading the concern in my eyes.

“No,” he says, smiling. “No plans—and it's my job to be here when you need me, you know. Don't worry about it.”

 

Jinn was right. I hate horror movies.

Even the poster I'm staring at freaks me out a little. I mean, how many of these
Saw
movies do they have to make before people get sick of watching teenage girls be tortured? I shiver even though it's not cold, and look longingly at a poster for a generic Meg Ryan comedy.

“I've got the tickets, baby,” Aaron says from behind me. I tear my eyes away from the poster to see him holding two orange tickets and motioning to the theater door. Aaron wraps an arm around me and tugs me close to him as we enter, heading straight to theater twelve without stopping for snacks. It's probably for the better anyhow, since I'm not sure I could eat Twizzlers while someone's eyeball is melting on screen.

“I really think you'll like this,” Aaron says as we find a
spot toward the back of the theater. “I mean, I don't think you'll be able to walk away from this and say you still hate horror movies.”

“I doubt that,” I mumble nervously. I can feel my cheeks burning pink—what kind of sixteen-year-old is afraid of a movie?

I sigh and sit back as the theater darkens and the previews begin. Aaron raises the armrest between us and kisses my forehead—it still makes me feel warm, even with the impending eyeball destruction. I force myself to think of things like forehead kisses, things that make me happy. How about the fact that, for once, I'm not sitting alone in the art room after school? That I'm on a date with Aaron Moor, my
boyfriend
? Better to be in a scary movie with someone who likes me than sitting at home alone. Well, not
alone
really. Since Jinn showed up, the whole sitting at home thing has been a little less painful. Still, I'm actually on a date. One melting eyeball scene is a fair trade for a social life, right?

Aaron slides a hand behind my lower back and lets it rest on my hip as the actual movie begins to roll. I try not to pay
too much attention, since getting attached to the perky blonde starlet will probably ensure her horrible death. Aaron grins at me, then shakes his head at my obvious nervousness, pulling me closer. I turn my head to his shoulder and squeeze my eyes shut when a starlet is quietly offed, and the rest of the beautiful cast decides to split up and look for their missing friend. Mental note: Tell Lawrence and Jinn that if I ever go missing in a creepy house, don't bother looking for me.

“Baby, you're missing it,” Aaron whispers to me.

“Good,” I mutter back. Aaron laughs quietly and squeezes me. At least this is romantic, curling up beside Aaron…even if I'm doing so while the sounds of bones breaking shoots through the theater. It's hard not to yank my hands up and cover my ears.

“You're really scared, aren't you?” Aaron realizes.

“Told you I'm a wimp,” I whisper back without removing my head from the folds of his shirt. Aaron chuckles and tilts my head toward his, then kisses me on the mouth. It's a slow kiss, deep, and I worry for a moment about the other moviegoers watching us. Not that anyone should be ashamed to be seen
kissing Aaron Moor, but still, it makes me feel weird. I pull out of the kiss, returning my head to his shoulder.

Aaron laughs under his breath, then guides my face back to his, this time leaning in on me, blocking my view of the screen. I try to ignore the feeling of eyes on us and kiss him back. I pull away slightly, attempt to make it a little less passionate, but when Aaron presses harder against me, I give in.