Fair Coin (9 page)

“Ephraim? What's wrong?”

Ephraim closed his hand around the coin in his pocket, squeezing it in its plastic bag. “Never mind. It'll all work out.”

“I know,” Jena said. She straightened and took a deep breath. “It's out of my control. There's no sense stressing about it.” She tugged on the cart again, and this time Ephraim let it go. She walked backward, pulling the cart along with her. She smiled brightly, her eyes shining. “If you're ever in L.A., look me up, will you?”

“When are you leaving?”

“In a week.”

Ephraim nodded.

Not if I can help it.

When Ephraim got home, Nathan was lying on the floor by his bed, leafing through a stack of the old
Playboy
magazines Ephraim had rescued from the trash after his father left.

“How the hell did you get in here?” Ephraim asked.

“Madeline let me in,” Nathan said. “These are so awesome.” He was looking at an article that promised to teach “32 Surefire Ways to Put a Woman in the Mood.” Presumably, none of those included the aid of a magic coin.

Ephraim dropped his bag on the floor and noticed a plate of oatmeal cookies on his desk beside an empty glass of milk. “My mother gave you cookies?” She never let Ephraim snack on junk food before dinner, especially in his room. He popped a cookie in his mouth whole.

“She lured me in with them,” Nathan said. “I couldn't resist.”

“Don't make that sound naughty. She's my mother.” Ephraim slumped into his desk chair and woke his computer up from hibernation. “Where is she, anyway?”

Nathan closed the magazine and put it aside. “She went out. And I have to say, she looked really hot.”

She must have another date tonight.

“You didn't take a picture, did you?”

“What do you take me for?” Nathan asked.

“Hand over your camera.”

“There's no picture!”

“Nathan,” Ephraim said.

“How was work? Have fun with Jena?” Nathan asked. Everything that he had said sounded suggestive. He was being more of a pervert than usual.

“Why did you come over if you knew I wasn't home?” Ephraim asked.

Nathan's eyes were glued on a platinum blonde who was leaning over with her breasts cradled in her arms.

“I wanted to thank you for last night.” Nathan wiggled his eyebrows.

“Okay, you have to cut that out.”

Nathan tossed the magazine on the floor and picked up another one. “Mary really likes you,” he said. “Why'd you have to ignore her like that?”

“I just couldn't think about anything but Jena leaving,” Ephraim said.

“Why do you suddenly like her more than Mary?”

“I just do. Why do you like Shelley?”

Nathan grinned.

“Okay, besides her obvious assets.”

“What's wrong with liking someone because they're attractive?” Nathan flipped over onto his back and held an open magazine over his face.

“Because there's more to them than that. Why do you like Shelley instead of her sister? They look the same.”

“Because she likes me.” Nathan lifted the magazine and looked at Ephraim. “Thanks to you. I guess she probably wouldn't be as interested in me without your coin.”

Ephraim smirked. “So you believe me now.”

“I think I might need more proof. What's our next coin trick?”

“What?”

“Well, this was just the start. We can have anything we want,” Nathan said.

“I still feel bad enough about what we did to Shelley.”

“What we did to her?” Nathan sat up and dropped the magazine into his lap.

“Hey, be careful with those.” Ephraim went over and began stacking the magazines neatly.

“You don't think she could like me without the coin?” Nathan asked.

“I didn't say that. But we made her like you, so we'll never know, will we?”

Anger flickered over Nathan's face. “You did the same thing to Jena.”

“That was different.”

“Of course it was.” Nathan jumped up from the bed then flopped into the desk chair. Ephraim left the magazines on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed facing him. “It was an accident when I did it.”

“But you didn't feel bad about it when you realized what had happened, did you? Do you?”

Ephraim drew in a breath. “No.”

“See?”

“I don't think we should use it to manipulate people anymore. It doesn't feel right.”

Nathan laughed, a harsh sound that Ephraim wasn't expecting.

“What?” Ephraim asked.

“Because it's me who's getting the girl?”

“No, that's not—”

“I thought we were going to share the coin.”

“I never agreed—”

“If I had found it first, I would share it with you.” Nathan crossed his arms.

“I
am
sharing,” Ephraim said.

“Look, what do you think this coin is for? What do you think we should wish for? World peace?”

“Something like that.” Ephraim frowned. He'd been too preoccupied helping himself to consider that he could use it for some greater good. Maybe Nathan was right and he shouldn't keep this to himself. “But we don't really know how the coin works. I think we should take it slow, and try to figure out what its limits are. It hasn't always done exactly what I expected; if we wished for world peace, we could just as easily wipe out everyone as get them to stop fighting. It's like the coin makes arbitrary trade-offs when it gives us what we want.” Like how Nathan's wish had led to Jena's impending departure from Summerside.

Nathan nodded. “Okay. We'll take it slow for a while. Stick to small wishes.”

“And we won't use it to change people's feelings or force them to do anything they wouldn't want to do,” Ephraim said.

Nathan snorted. “Whatever. People manipulate each other every day without the benefit of a magic coin, but if you want to play it safe…”

Ephraim took out the coin. “We also have to make sure we're touching when I make the wish.”

“Now who's being pervy?” Nathan asked. “So what's it going to be this time, boss?”

“I'm going to wish that Jena doesn't have to leave.”

Nathan coughed a word: “Hypocrite.”

“This doesn't count as manipulating her feelings. It's true that I don't want to lose her, not now that things are starting to work out. But she doesn't want to move either.”

Nathan yawned. “Well, let's do it.”

Ephraim grabbed Nathan's left hand with his and made his wish.

“I wish that Jena didn't have to move away,” he said.

Ephraim told himself that he was doing this for Jena, not just for himself. He flipped the coin in his right hand and caught it.

“Tails,” he said.

Ephraim felt a sideways lurch, like he was on a train that had braked abruptly. The air around him rippled, and a moment later he wasn't in his room anymore. He was sitting in a booth at a diner. And Mary was across from him holding his hand instead of Nathan.

“Uh,” Ephraim said.

Mary jumped in surprise and blinked at him. Ephraim covered the coin in his hand.

“Whoa,” she said.

“How did I—” Ephraim closed his eyes and opened them again. He was still in the diner. Ephraim looked around, but Nathan was nowhere in sight. “What…what was I saying?” Ephraim asked as he casually slid the coin into his pocket. Whenever he thought he'd figured out how the coin worked, it always threw him for another loop. Why had it transported him to the diner this time? And where had Nathan ended up?

“Um. Weren't you wearing a blue shirt a second ago?” Mary asked.

Ephraim looked down at his T-shirt. It was black, the same one he remembered picking out that morning. “I don't think so.”

“I thought…” Mary frowned.

Ephraim didn't know what she'd seen, but he knew the coin was involved. He snapped his fingers. “I wore that shirt yesterday,” he said. “It looks just like this one, but you know…blue. Dark blue. Almost black.”

“Yeah, I guess that's it.” She popped a french fry into her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully, staring at his shirt.

“Hey, have you seen Nathan around here?” Ephraim asked.

“Nathan? Shelley's out with him.” Mary sniffed. “We don't have to do everything together. No matter how many times Nathan asks.”

Ephraim gripped the edge of the table. “She's out with Nathan? Right now?”

“What's wrong?”

Ephraim looked at their plates and saw Mary had already finished her burger. Half of one remained on his plate, but he wasn't hungry.

“I'm not feeling well,” he said.

“Oh no! Was it the food?”

He feigned a pained expression. “I think so. Would you mind if we called it an early night?”

“Oh. Of course.” She looked disappointed.

“I'm really sorry. I just don't think I'll be very good company like this.” He had to find Nathan right away.

He signaled for the check. Mary picked at the fries on her plate and didn't look up.

“I'm…glad we did this,” he said.

Mary perked up. They were obviously on a “real” date, and strangely enough, it seemed to have been going well up until he ruined things. The coin had dropped him in the middle of an awkward situation. It had actually moved him from his bedroom to the diner, which he hadn't even known it was capable of doing.

He was still missing something important. Flipping a coin implied a random outcome, heads or tails. The coin had landed on tails when he made his last wish. It had also been tails when Mrs. Reynolds sprained her ankle so he could talk to Jena.

What had happened when it turned up heads? He thought back to his earlier wishes. It had been heads when he wished his mother out of the hospital, and again when he wished she were a better parent, with good results each time.

Had it been tails when he wished Shelley liked Nathan? He thought so. And that was when he found out Jena was moving, the worst outcome of all.

“When's Jena moving?” he asked suddenly.

Mary frowned. “At the end of the week.”

So that was still the same. He'd wished that Jena weren't moving, and the coin hadn't done a thing about it—it had just pushed him deeper into some relationship with Mary. He couldn't piece this together at all.

“Ephraim, what's going on?” Mary asked.

“That's what I'm trying to figure out,” he replied.

“What?”

“I'm sorry. I need some air. How about I walk you home?” Ephraim asked.

He set the last of his money down on the table and held the door for Mary as they left. As they walked together, his head buzzed with discovery. The coin hadn't granted his wish, at least not yet. Jena was still going to move, but other things had obviously changed. If something bad happened, that would support his hypothesis that getting tails on the coin flip meant trouble.

Some of the shops they passed looked different from what he remembered, but stores were always closing and new ones opening in this section of town. He knew he was getting paranoid about the extent of the coin's alterations to the world, but it was important to understand the magic before they messed with it again.

“Hey, can I ask you a personal question?” he said.

She glanced at him sidelong. “Sure.”

“This has been bugging me for a long time. Why Mary and Shelley? How could your parents do that to you?”

Mary laughed. “It's not so bad. Most people don't even get it, until teachers make a point of bringing it up in class. But the responsibility lies with my father. He's an English professor with a fondness for his work. Mama never would have let him get away with it, if they hadn't met in a Lit class on the Shelleys as freshmen.”

“That's romantic,” Ephraim said.

“Gothic, actually,” Mary replied.

Ephraim groaned.

“If you liked that, imagine hearing it over and over again for your entire life. That probably did more psychological damage than the weird names. Though, try telling that to my brother Dorian.”

Mary stopped walking. “This is me,” she said. They had already arrived at her house.

“Do you think Shelley and Nathan are back yet?” he said.

“Our window's dark, so I don't think she's home.”

“Right. What would they be doing in a dark room?” he asked innocently.

She batted him lightly on the shoulder. “Hey! That's my sister you're talking about.” Her hand lingered on his arm. He realized with sudden certainty that she expected him to kiss her.

“So, I'll call you,” he said as he took a backwards step.

“If you're feeling better, you could come in for a little bit. My parents are out. This is their bridge night.”

“No, I'd better not push it. I should go home and rest.”

Suddenly she leaned up and kissed him. Her lips were cool, but then they opened and he felt her hot tongue slip into his mouth. Now he really felt dizzy.

She pulled away, her hands on his chest. “I know you're shy, it's adorable, but really—I've been wanting to do that since our first date. Not that it isn't good to take things slow,” Mary said. “I see how fast Shelley and Nathan are moving and I wonder if it's me…”

“Well, that's Nathan for you.”

“And my sister. She becomes attached really easily.”

Mary walked up her driveway then whirled to face him. “It would be nice if you asked me out instead of the other way around, for a change.” She turned and walked up the path to her door. She stopped again and looked over her shoulder at him. “Was that too obvious?”

“You can never be too obvious for a guy,” Ephraim said. His head buzzed with shock and pleasure. Then feelings of guilt began creeping in.

“That's what Shelley says. Take care, Eph.”

“Good night.”

He still felt her lips on his. He had never kissed anyone that way before.

He wondered what it would be like with Jena.

Ephraim's mother jumped up from the couch as soon as he entered the apartment. “Finally! Where have you been?” she said.

“What's wrong? Who died?”

“Don't make jokes like that.”

Uh-oh.

“I have something to tell you,” she said.

Ephraim followed his mother into the kitchen. She filled the tea kettle with water and put it on a burner but forgot to switch on the flame. She leaned against the counter and looked at him somberly.

Ephraim sat down at the table. “What is it, Mom?” He was getting scared.

“Linda called,” she said.

“Linda?”

“Linda Kim, Jena's mother.”

“Oh.” Ephraim gripped his knees, digging his nails into the warm denim. “Is Jena…is everything all right?”

“Her father's at the hospital. He's had a heart attack.”

Ephraim started breathing again. “Is it serious?”

“Of course it's serious. It was a heart attack. He's in the ICU. The doctor says he has a fifty-fifty chance.”

“Oh God,” Ephraim said.

“Jena's obviously upset. She's still at the hospital, just in case…” At the expression on his face, his mother put a hand on his arm.

“Should we go there?” he said.

“I don't think there's anything we can do there except get in the way.”

Ephraim put his hand into his pocket.

A fifty-fifty chance. Might as well flip a coin.

His hand twitched. It was his fault. If he hadn't made that wish, none of this would have happened.

“Do they know what caused it?” he said.

“It's hard to say. He's been under a lot of stress. The new job. The move.”

“I guess…they won't be leaving, then.” He stared down at the table.

“Not anytime soon, I imagine. If at all, after this. Are you all right, Eph?”

He stood. “I'll be in my room.”

His mother nodded. Then she remembered. “Oh, don't you want tea?” She turned to the stove and realized she hadn't turned on the burner under the kettle. “It'll be a minute.”

“No, that's all right.” Ephraim stood. “I need some time alone.” He walked to the door, then turned, struck by a thought. “How do you know Jena's mother, anyway?” he asked.

His mother looked at him, one hand still on the handle of the tea kettle. “We're on the PTA together.”

“Since when?” His mother had never shown any interest in his school. It was just the place he went to every day, the way she went to work. As long as he stayed out of trouble and got decent grades, she didn't care to know more. But this was a new mother—the one he had wished for.

For the first time he missed his old mother, the one who'd raised him. He loved her, flaws and all. There was so much he didn't know about this woman. What had their life been like together until now?

“For over three years. We've had the Kims over for dinner plenty of times. Honey, I know this must be hard for you, after what happened to your father—”

Ephraim stepped back. “What?” he said.

“Ephraim?”

“What happened to Dad?”

His mother's eyes teared up. “I know what you're thinking. But Mr. Kim is in much better shape than your father was when he died. John Kim doesn't drink, for one.” She shook her head.

Ephraim's father was
dead?
Even though his parents were divorced, he still liked knowing that his father was out there somewhere, thinking that one day he could be a part of their lives again. He wasn't supposed to be dead.

“You look pale. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything,” she said.

“I'm worried about Jena, that's all.”

His mother nodded. “He'll make it,” she said. “I know he will.”

Ephraim shut himself in his room and sat on his bed. He turned the coin over a couple of times. Heads then tails. Heads. Tails.

It was too risky to keep using it.

Every wish brought other changes that he didn't ask for, things he didn't know how to handle, like Mary liking him, and his father…

Why did that bother him exactly? His father was barely in his life at all before. What did it matter if he was alive or dead? He wasn't a good man—he probably got exactly what he deserved for hurting his mother. For hitting her.

Ephraim had made a mistake. He needed to make one more wish to fix it, then he would stop.

He had also made a promise, he remembered. Nathan was sharing the coin with him now; he'd come with him this far, and he had to be included in it. Ephraim rolled the coin over his fingers. But there wasn't time. If he waited too long, Mr. Kim could die. Besides, if he made the wish now, Nathan would never know.

Ephraim sighed. He put the coin down. He'd told Nathan about the coin to make up for betraying their friendship. He couldn't do that again. He would find him, and they'd make this last wish together. Once he explained what he'd figured out, he was sure Nathan would understand why they shouldn't make any more wishes.

“I don't understand. Why do you want to stop using it?” Nathan stabbed a french fry into a glob of ketchup.

“It's too dangerous. It's unpredictable.”

“What's unpredictable? You make a wish, you flip the coin, you get your wish. Am I missing something?”

Ephraim tried to stir his straw in his black-and-white milkshake but the ice cream was too thick.

“Bad things keep happening, things we didn't ask for. Whenever the coin lands on tails.”

“Nothing bad happened last night,” Nathan said. He had reported a similar experience to Ephraim's after their wish: he'd appeared in a movie theater with Shelley. But he'd taken to the abrupt shift with more enthusiasm. “If Mary is anything like Shelley, you'll see the coin is the best thing that ever happened to us.”

“Charming. I don't want to hear any more about it. And I don't want to see any more pictures.” Ephraim nervously separated the layers of his paper napkin. “Listen, we don't know anything about the way this magic works,” Ephraim said. “I found those instructions, and I followed them without thinking it through.” That excuse only worked for the first time, though.

“It just doesn't seem that harmful to me.”

“I gave Jena's dad a heart attack.” Maybe he should try a different tactic. “It's not just changing things. It's changing
us.
Doesn't that scare you?”

“You're right, Eph. You weren't always this selfish.”

“Selfish? I want to help Jena's dad. You're the one who's changed. You didn't always have such a bad temper. You used to care about other people more.”