My Diary from the Edge of the World (18 page)

Hovering in the shadows at one side of the pond was the genie. He was large and dim—at least eight feet tall—and green. He had a long flowing mane of dark hair and large bright green eyes that twinkled with intense cleverness, and he nibbled at his lips like he was dying to eat. A tendril of greenish smoke reached from
the tips of his feet (which levitated in the air) to a golden bottle tucked snugly away under one of the trees.

Attached to the cave wall behind the bottle was a large white wheel, full of numbers and symbols and the words
WIN A WISH, LOSE A BET
dividing the circle in half.

We walked closer, and the genie watched us, waiting until we'd come within a few feet. His eyes gave me the chills.

“What are your wishes?” he asked. “I have a maximum of three.”

He seemed eager, polite but with a thin thread of malice in his voice.

“We only have one,” my Dad said. “I want to get rid of a Cloud. It's trying to take my son.”

The genie surveyed us and smiled. “Yes, yes. I could do this for you.” He smiled and turned his enormous green eyes toward Millie, then back to my Dad.

“And what will you pay for a chance to win this wish?”

Dad looked at me and Millie. “Kids, please wait outside. Your mom and I want to talk with the genie alone.”

I knew what Dad was going to offer him. I knew it the moment he said that we should leave. And I hated it. But the truth is, I didn't need to be asked twice to leave the presence of the genie, and I guess neither did
Millie. There was something about him that made you feel prickly and terrified, like he was looking right into your soul and amused by what he saw.

We let out loud sighs as we emerged into the fresh air, as if we'd both been holding our breath the whole time, though Millie still looked pale and nervous. We stared up at the crescent moon, the few thin clouds in the sky, and our Cloud hovering just above the lip of the canyon.

A few minutes later Mom and Dad emerged, their faces expressionless.

“Well?” I asked.

“He'll let us play. Tomorrow at dusk.”

My feelings were all mixed up at once. I felt relieved, even elated, about the chance to save Sam. But I'd also guessed the sacrifice we'd have to make if Dad lost.

“It's our house,” I said, my voice catching. “You bet our house.” Despite everything, despite how far we were from home and how far we might still go, I'd always held out hope we could get back home somehow.

Dad looked down at me, put his right arm around me, and readjusted his glasses with his left hand. “I did what I had to do,” he said.

*  *  *

The one positive development was that on our way home we climbed the stairs up to KFC and got a big bucket of chicken and mashed potatoes to bring back to the Gulch Inn. Mom charmed the cashier into giving us the mashed potatoes for free, and that night in the parlor we feasted, though Mom was quiet and Dad's brow was furrowed like he was headed into one of his swamps. In bed afterward I thought about how I'll probably never be able to charm people into anything like my mom can, or be beautiful like her and Millie, so I'll have to be rich somehow. Then I won't need to sweet talk people into anything. When I brought this up to Millie, who was sitting on her bed looking out the window, she said, “You're less of a charmer, and more of a ‘fury from the depths of hell' type of person.”

Oliver and Sam came in a few minutes later, and we played cards on the bed until the boys went to their room to sleep. I went on playing solitaire next to Millie while she tried to read, and kept on thinking it was the perfect time to ask her about the Cloud. Still, I kept playing and playing like my life depended on it, procrastinating. I kept losing, and my tolerance for losing is very low, so finally I gave up.

“Millie,” I ventured, pushing the cards back into their
box, “I saw something one night, back in the plains. With you . . . and . . .” I hesitated. “I thought I saw you outside, talking to the Cloud. When everyone was asleep.”

Millie lay completely still, her eyes on her book, as if she hadn't heard me.

“I was wondering what you were doing?” I asked, picking at the bedspread and feeling my face heat up, as if I were asking her something deeply embarrassing, like if she secretly had a crush on someone. (Millie always has a crush on someone but is never all that secret about it.) “What were you saying to it?”

Millie sighed. “I was trying to see if I could trade something for Sam. Like my hair, or something like that.” I felt triumphant for knowing her so well.

“Did the Cloud say anything back?” I asked.

Millie was silent for a few moments, then she shook her head.

“I guess we'll never see our house again,” I said, “if Dad loses. I guess the genie will own it. What do you think a genie wants with a house, anyway, if he's trapped in a cave? Will he have someone sell it for him?” She didn't reply—she was gazing up at the ceiling now.

“I wish Dad hadn't gotten us lost,” I went on. “Then
we wouldn't have gone over the edge of the Grand Canyon, and we could have bet the Trinidad. He's so absentminded. If he wasn't . . .”

Millie shook her head to stop me. “You're so dense,” she said.

“If we do ever try to move back to Cliffden . . .” I continued, ignoring her.

Suddenly, Millie sat bolt upright, her eyes flashing and her cheeks pink. “How can you be so stupid! Haven't you figured it out? Do you think the genie would really settle for something as useless as our house, or
money
from our house?”

I stared, shocked into silence.

Millie sank back down against her pillows, as if she were exhausted. And suddenly a new and horrible truth settled down all around me. I knew what she was going to say before she said it.

“His
life
,” Millie said flatly to the window. “Dad bet his soul.”

My heart was suddenly flapping around wildly in my chest, and Millie turned to me, biting her lip, looking guilty.

“They told you that?” I breathed.

She shook her head. “I asked Mom,” she admitted.
“She didn't deny it. She asked me not to tell you.”

“Well,” I sputtered, “he has to take it back.”

“You
can't
take it back. Once you've bet on the genie's wheel, that's it. It's a binding contract.”

*  *  *

Sometimes I'm afraid I've got a monster inside for a soul. If I drew my heart it might not look like a circus at all, but like a cavewoman with raw meat hanging out of her mouth and a club in each hand to hit people with.

I didn't sleep that night. I kept thinking how even though he isn't perfect, my dad has always taken care of me, and I haven't given him much in return. I thought about the night when he and Mom told us we were leaving Cliffden, how he'd called me one of his baby stars.

Since we'd lost the Winnebago, I had none of my good luck charms to wish on, but I still believed that if I
thought
how I wanted things to end,
enough
times, someone might hear me.

He wins. He stays with us. He wins. He stays with us. He wins. He stays with us,
I kept saying inside my head. The wish needed to be extra powerful, so I didn't stop; I forced myself to stay awake as long as I possibly could. Dad wouldn't lose. He couldn't.

I repeated it over and over to myself until the darkness outside of the windows began to lighten, and the pegasi next door began to nicker good morning to each other, and I finally fell asleep.

Even though it's been over
a week since it happened, I remember the awful feeling of waking up that next morning perfectly. A shaft of sunlight was beaming down into the gulch, and, looking out the window and up, I could just make out the Cloud far, far above, keeping an eye on us. Down in the barn lot next door, the pegasi were still nickering back and forth to each other, and I could see Oliver leaning over the fence, feeding them carrots out of his hands. I walked out to join him, after first making sure Medusa was nowhere to be seen.

“Where'd you get carrots?” I asked.

“Harriet let me have them.” He didn't look up at me, but slid a couple carrots into my hand, then gently pushed one of the pegasus's muzzles in my direction.
Her sandpapery tongue tickled my palms as she snuffled for the carrots, and I glanced up at the windows of the house nervously, looking for her owner.

“My dad bet his life on the wheel,” I said, not looking at Oliver but instead focusing on the pegasi instead.

“I figured,” Oliver said. The pegasi were vying for our attention, and Oliver gave away his last carrot.

I was buckling under the guilt, like I should have known better what my dad was walking into. I wondered how everyone had figured everything out but me. My mom says sometimes I ignore things I'd rather not know. She said that's why I always get Cs in classes like Cotillion and Life Skills.

Oliver leaned back from the fence and put his hands on his messy hair, leaving a bunch of hay stuck there, unwittingly. He looked up at Medusa's house, intent, like he was counting the windows or the numbers of shingles. I expected him to say something encouraging, which he's usually good at, but he appeared to be lost in his own thoughts. It wasn't like him, considering he's usually the most considerate person I know.

*  *  *

Dusk came too quickly. We spent the morning and most of the afternoon in the parlor (the chimney, it turned out,
was blocked by an old poltergeist Harriet had been trying to have exorcised for years, so we couldn't light a fire in the fireplace), watching the clock and willing the moments to go slower. Oliver had offered to stay with Sam again while the rest of us went to see the genie. Mom and Dad hadn't even bothered to try to deter Millie and me from coming with them. I think, in a way, they were relieved to have us along. It would mean a little more time with the four of us together.

“How do I find you?” Oliver asked.

“Find us why?” I said.

“If you don't come back or something. I'd feel better if I knew where you were.”

Relenting, I drew a little map on the back of a Trump Western Gem tourist brochure of how we'd gotten to the cave.

Sam was actually feeling better for the first time in weeks, sitting in a blanket on the couch and smiling, blissfully unaware of the fear hovering over the rest of us. “Ask the genie for a new Winnebago,” he kept insisting.

Finally, around five thirty, we got ready to go. Dad sat for a moment at Sam's feet on the couch and squeezed his toes, then leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, smiling as if we were going out to dinner, or like
he and Mom used to do with each of us before they left us with a babysitter and went out on a date. It made me wonder how many other times my dad has put on a brave face for us without our noticing.

*  *  *

As night fell and we wound our way down into the gulch, I prayed; I wished on stars and my favorite constellations; I tried sending telepathy to the guardian angels in LA.

“What are you murmuring about?” Millie whispered, walking beside me.

I shrugged. “Just making wishes,” I said.

“I'm going to wish too,” she said. “Can you tell me how you do it?” She actually listened attentively as I pointed out which stars (well, at least the ones visible from the gulch) I thought were best for wishing on.

At the entrance to the cave, Dad tried to talk us into staying outside while he and Mom went in alone, but Millie shook her head furiously. “Absolutely not,” she said, sounding very adult. “We know what we're facing. And we're coming with you.” I marveled at her courage again. Finally Dad relented, and we followed them both into the darkness.

The genie was exactly the same as we'd found him the night before: hovering in the shadows at the edge of the
grotto, calm but with a malicious eagerness simmering under his smile. The mournful sounds of the Underworld issued from the cave beyond him just as they had the night before.

“Spin the wheel . . . you made the deal . . . ,” he said, and Dad swallowed nervously.

“Dad, please don't,” I said, reaching for his arm. “There's got to be some way you can back out. Pay something else. Break your bet.”

“I wouldn't do that, Gracie, even if I could. This is for Sam.”

Dad turned to Mom and grabbed her hand tightly for a moment. She clutched his fingers and her lips trembled. I've never been very good at picturing my mom and dad as two people in love, instead of as just my mom and dad. But at that moment I could.

*  *  *

You'd think that something so important, so enormous in your life, would happen in slow motion, but that's not how it was at all. Things began to happen so quickly that it took my breath away.

Dad stepped forward, reached for the wheel, and gave it a hard spin. I held my breath as the arrow pointed alternately to the blurred words, then, as it slowed,
WIN A WISH, LOSE A BET, WIN A WISH, LOSE A BET.
Millie reached for my hand and squeezed it, digging her nails into my palm. I could feel myself growing woozy because I'd stopped breathing, but I couldn't get myself to take a breath.
He wins. He stays with us,
I kept saying in my head.
He wins, he stays, he wins, he stays. . . .

Tick tick tick.
The arrow clicked along the pins more and more slowly, lingering on
WIN
, then more slowly on
LOSE
, then, more slowly on
WIN
. Finally, it came to a complete stop. We stood in stunned silence.

“No,” Mom said very quietly. “No. No. No.”

Beside me Millie let out a choked sound. She let go of my hand. I felt adrift, like I was spinning away from the ground and sharply, horribly lonely. I felt like a howl, like a person wrapped in a moan.