My Wishful Thinking (5 page)

I bring the cash drawer from the back and slip it into the register. Eugene’s disco ensemble is still on the floor over by the dressing room. I can’t really blame him for being messy, since I was hurrying him out of here. I fold the jumpsuit and lay it on the counter with the platform shoes on top. That’s when I notice the magician’s signed contract behind the register.

Immediately, I get goose bumps and a queasy feeling. What should I do with it? The bag is in Em’s room. When Marcia sees this, she’ll want to see the new piece, especially one I valued at fifty dollars. I could bury it with last week’s inventory, like it was misfiled. That won’t work. The forms are numbered, and Marcia’s pretty anal about bookkeeping.

What if I just rip it up? Or I could take the contract and tell Marcia the customer changed their mind? But then, if I bring the bag to store… What am I thinking? It’s Eugene’s home. It’s not like I can put a price tag on it.

I hate being sneaky.

The idea of lying to Marcia. To anyone, really. Makes my stomach roll. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to avoid it this time. She
cannot
sell this bag‌—‌with or without Eugene.

I fold the contract into an itty-bitty square. Slipping it into my wallet, I feel worse than when they dropped me off. My life in the last twenty four hours has spiraled out of control – weird magicians, a semi-cute guy popping out of a smoke-filled bag, and now I’m lying to Aunt Marcia. Will things ever get back to normal?

About a quarter to eleven Marcia bounces into the store, wearing a kaftan in fall-leaf colors, all-Earth Mother. Her white, dandelion-fluff hair bounces with her. She opened this store when she retired ten years ago, which sounds ridiculous, I know. Retirement is supposed to mean
no
work. She doesn’t get it, I guess. Besides, she has way too much energy for a woman her age.

Aunt Marcia is really my Great-Aunt Marcia, sister to my grandmother, who originally pushed‌—‌excuse me, I mean
persuaded
‌—‌Marcia to hire me two years ago as a family favor. I’ve worked here ever since.

She smiles at me. “Hi, sweetie. Has it been busy?”

“Hardly. I’ve kept myself busy cataloguing all this stuff that was dropped off by Caryn.” That’s one of our regulars who lives out in Lake Mary. Her hand-me-downs are better than most people’s first-hands. And she’s here so often, with so much, that we never do the contract when she’s here. We just check it all into inventory and she picks up the contract later.

With the eyes and hands of an expert, Aunt Marcia ruffles the pile I’m working on in search of gems. She stops and pulls out Eugene’s Sly Stone jumpsuit. “Wow! This is so different from what Caryn usually brings in.”

“Yeah, it is.” I deadpan, my voice not giving away the panic that I feel.

Then she spies the platforms.
Crap.

“Oh, my! These are incredible.” Marcia hooks two fingers into the shoes, dangling them in front of me.

My heart thumps in fright. What was I thinking, leaving Eugene’s clothes in plain view?

“Yeah, it must have been some Halloween party.” I put as much blasé into my voice as I can muster. “I don’t think they’re worth much.”

“Really? They look pristine to me.” Aunt Marcia’s puff bounces as she tosses her head from side to side.

“Oh, they are
pristine
, but they lack the
cool
factor. We’d better not price them too high or they’ll never move.” And now I have to hope that no one else will want them, since I need to buy them back for Eugene as soon as I’m alone in the store.

What’s up with that? He’s supposed to grant wishes, and I’m already using part of my paycheck on him. Maybe he’s not that different from other guys after all. “Ten bucks max,” I tell Marcia, feeling guilty.

As she moves to tag them, my phone dings, startling me. It’s a text from Emily:
Eugene is talking to all the customers! What should I do?

I fire back, telling her to sit him in the corner.

“Is everything okay?” Marcia asks.

I shrug my shoulders. “Fine.” I mean, what am I gonna say? My genie is too chatty…we think he may have‌—‌
SAT word, here
‌—‌logorrhea.

Behind her thick glasses, Aunt Marcia’s walnut-sized watery eyes seem to grow worried. That super magnification is the only thing that belies her age. “How’s your mom doing?”

Her question is predictable and spot-on. Ordinarily, Mom would be the trigger for me to shut down.

When I don’t respond, Aunt Marcia nods her head, and the dandelion fluff bounces. “Does she seem happy?”

I shrug again‌—‌a regular shrugging machine as stiff and silent as Betsy. Because how do I answer that?

I have no idea.

“I don’t know if you remember,” Aunt Marcia says in a near whisper, “but your mom was always such a light-hearted person before your dad left.”

An unwelcome memory rushes in of a time when I was seven, or maybe eight, and mom was teaching me how to make banana bread. She showed me how to mash up the fruit, so overripe it was turning black and looked rotten. We measured each ingredient precisely. I got to stir. She expertly poured the batter into loaf pans and then they went into the oven.

While they baked, the sweet, warm scent filled the kitchen. Mom put on a favorite song of hers‌—‌I don’t remember which one‌—‌and sang into her rubber spatula microphone. I accompanied her on wooden spoon.

She belted out that song, taught me a few old-school dance moves, and right before the buzzer went off, grabbed both of my hands, twirling me around and pulling me into a hug.

“I remember,” I tell my aunt.

She and I share a smile that has more melancholy than happiness in it. Like Mom these days, I guess.

“Maybe I’ll stop by to see her later.”

“She’d probably like that,” I say. “Hey, would it be all right with you if I left a little early today?”

“Sure, sweetie. You’ve been such a big help the last couple days.” She’s working her way through a pile of consignment forms for the month of June.

Help?
On one hand, it gave me a twinge of guilt when she decided to go through these today. On the other, my decision to keep the magician’s contract folded up in the zippered compartment of my wallet was definitely the right call.

I look at Betsy, who seems to be holding the secret over my head. Thank God she’s made of plaster.

CHAPTER 12

I HAVE TO LOOK AROUND when I walk into Perks before I spy Eugene tucked into a booth near the bathroom. Smart girl, that Emily. And not just SAT smart today, because she took my advice and stashed Eugene away from the customers.

Despite Em’s tremendous brain power, she sometimes misses the obvious.

Perks, it turns out, is a perfect place to hide your genie in plain sight. They don’t really care if people sit there for hours and a lot of the regulars are a little weird, so Eugene looks less strange by comparison. Em sets a coffee on the counter for me. I grab it, cream it, and head back to the booth, scooting in across from Eugene.

Unbelievable. Em has lent him her laptop and launched the Internet for him. This is exactly what I meant about missing the obvious. Eugene’s fingers tippy-tap the keys.

“How’s it goin’ there, Eugen-ie?”

His brows knit. “I do not think it is going well at all,” he says in his typical robo-speak.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s difficult to be out of my bag for so long around people, people, more people. I’m used to being alone.”

Yeah. I get it. This must be stressful for him, especially after such a long time.

“Then Emily gave me this.” He continues while motioning to the laptop. “It seemed to be such a simple machine, but I might have broken it.”

That is
not
good news. “What do you mean it’s broken?” I feel a slight panic.

He sighs. “Nothing moves. Even my magic cannot make it work.”

That does sound serious.

Angling the laptop on the table between us, I take one look at the screen and immediately know what the problem is. He’s opened too many windows. Like, maybe a hundred. “You have to close things out,” I tell him, but he’s right‌—‌it’s frozen and I can’t close anything. Time to reboot and pray everything works fine after that.

“What were you looking for?”

“I was trying to decipher which of you is my master.”

“Hmm…I don’t think you’ll find the answer there.”

“Emily said, ‘Here, this might keep you entertained. You can find anything on the Internet.’”

I laugh. “That’s just an expression.”
I think
. “So, you haven’t figured it out yet?”

Eugene’s shoulders droop. “Emily made a wish earlier. I could not grant it,” he says, tight-lipped.

She did, huh?
I wonder what she wished for. Before I can ask, my phone rings. It’s a one-word text from Rafa:
tonight?
I type back:
busy.
Seconds later, I get:
whooz the lucky guy?

“Would you like to try?” Eugene asks in the automated phone voice.

I feel the heat rush up my face as I stuff the phone into my bag.
“Huh, try what?

“To make a wish.”

“Sure. Why not? I wish‌—‌” I close my eyes then open one and tease, “‌—‌that you were more like a normal guy.”

He doesn’t laugh at my joke and there are no sparkles or shimmers emanating from his forehead. “Are you sure that is what you want?”

I crack up. “Nope. Not at all.”

The computer has shut down, re-booted, and is almost through with its start-up routine. This time I don’t launch the Internet for him but open up solitaire instead.

There. Good thinkin’. I take a sip of my coffee‌—‌still too hot‌—‌then show him how to play.

“That was kind of you.” His gaze, which is brown-eyed and streaked with flecks of gold, holds mine for a second longer than required. An impish smile plays on his lips.

I can’t help myself from smiling back. “Yeah, I’m a regular Mother Theresa. I only seem bitchy and use mannequins as weapons when strange guys appear out of smoke at the end of my day. It tends to freak me out.” Holding the cup between both hands, I blow across the top. “You know, I’ve been thinking.”

Eugene has finished his game of Solitaire; the cards are doing the little spring-sproing routine they go through when you win. Apparently he’s a quick learner. “What did you think about?”

Will I ever get used to the way he talks?
“What if you granted our wishes because we said it together? I mean, we opened the bag together.”

“You opened it together?”

Is there an echo? “Yeah, well, neither one of us could open it by ourselves.”

Eugene looks more worried than when he thought he broke the laptop. He swipes his shaggy bangs off his forehead. “That is not possible. I have never heard of a genie having two masters. Remember, I could not grant your other wishes.”

“Well I don’t know all the genie rules, for sure, but you did grant the wish to stop the rain when we said it together. And we didn’t even
mean
to say it together. Plus, don’t forget the Frosties.”

“That’s true, bu‌—‌” But before he finishes his sentence, it’s almost as if a shadow falls over our table. Eugene is looking up, so I do too. Oh no, it’s…

Dawson.

Great. My current heartthrob, or whatever throb he really is, shows up and I’m hanging with the wacky guy who lives in a bag; a really nice bag, but still.

Not good. I don’t know what we’re gonna do about this situation. If he can’t lay low here, where will we put him all day? Em’s totally against making him hang out in the bag, but we can’t let Dawson, Aunt Marcia‌—‌or anyone else, for that matter‌—‌learn about his genie skills. Unfortunately, Eugene can’t grant my wish to act normal. At least, not with anything magical.

Dawson places both palms flat on the table, leaning over us. The cuff of his short sleeve shirt tightens around his bicep as he flexes it. “Lo, you are lookin’ gooood,” His baby-blues are half-closed in a sexy ooh-la-la look that makes my toes quiver. Then, he stares at Eugene like he’s waiting for an explanation.

“Oh, Dawson, you too.”
Did I just say that?
“This is Eugene. A distant cousin of Emily’s.” The lie comes to me at the last second.

Surprisingly, Eugene plays along. “Yes. Emily’s cousin.” He grins at me.

Yeah, Emily’s cousin. Because you’re way too innocent for anyone to believe you’re related to me.

Dawson
heys
at Eugene and then hypnotizes me with his eyes. “So you know about the party at Sasha’s house on Friday?”

I shake my head and bark a hard laugh. “She must have forgotten to include me.” Sasha and I will never‌—‌
I repeat, never
‌—‌be friends again. Not after what she did sophomore year. It’s unlikely that Dawson gets this. Although he’s incredibly hot, he’s only, like, forty watts. Not the brightest bulb.

“Well, stop by Santino’s later. You never know. We might have a pie somebody
forgot
to pick up.” He puts emphasis on the word
forgot
like nudge, nudge, get it, get it? He’ll give us a free pizza. I wonder if Eugene could grant a wish to up his IQ by a point or twenty.

“Okay. We’ll probably come by.”
Especially if your bicep will be there.
“See you later.”

Dawson cocks his chin at me, at Eugene, then spins around and saunters off.

Eugene, tight-lipped and tense, stares at me, waiting for me to speak first.

“What?”

“Do you have a wish about Dawson?”

“Several,” I say with a grin.

“Tell them to me,” Eugene says, like there’s nothing more he’d like than granting them. Like there’s nothing more he’d like than making me happy.

His earnestness turns me serious. “Yeah, um, I wish a better guy, a guy I could care about, was interested in me. Can you grant that?”

Eugene’s forehead wrinkles in confusion. “I do not understand when you say ‘a better guy
’
.”

“He’s only someone to mess around with, but there’s no true love or anything,” I explain.

“I do not understand ‘mess around’
.
”