Authors: Courtney Sheinmel
“Don't worry, I have an idea.” How come I didn't think of this already? “Just make a wish saying you want to go back to who you were before.”
“I want to be who I was before,” Quinn says.
Nothing.
“It's not working because you were Quinn before, and you're still you. You need to say you want to be Trey again. And say âI wish.' ”
Quinn folds her arms across her chest, like she really doesn't want to be bothered saying it, but she doesâprobably because even if she thinks I'm a nut job, she still hasn't figured out how I got her into this bathroom in the first place. “I
wish
I were Trey again.” She waits for about the amount of time it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings. “Nope. Didn't work.”
“Go into the bathroom stall and come out again,” I say. “That's what worked last time.”
Quinn turns around and heads into the same exact stall as before. The stall where the magic happens. But as soon as the oak door closes, my heart starts to pound. After all, I don't know where Trey disappeared to when Quinn popped up in his place. And I don't know where Quinn will be going now. Maybe home.
But maybe not.
Maybe she'll disappear FOREVER!
“Quinn!” I shout.
“Yeah, nut job,” she says.
“Oh, thank goodness,” I say.
She opens the stall door and steps back out. “What do you have to be thankful for?”
I can't tell her the answer. Instead, I stare down at my big toe, at my genie bite. The one I inherited from Uncle Max. “Let's call Uncle Max,” I tell Quinn.
Another thing I can't believe I didn't think of. I'll call Uncle Max, and he'll come here and do whatever genie tricks need to be done to get it all sorted out.
“So we need a phone,” Quinn says. “I don't have one and neither do you, since Mom won't let us get cell phones.”
“But I know just where to find one.”
I
push open the bathroom door extra slowly and peek out into the hall to make sure it's empty. Then I motion for Quinn to follow. “Where are we going?” she asks.
“We have to retrace my steps back to the chapel,” I tell her. “That's where Trey's cell phone is.”
“His cell phone is in a chapel?”
“It fell out of his backpack, and it's lying on the floor.” I silently scold myself for not grabbing it up when I had the chance.
“Why didn't he pick it up?”
“It's a long story,” I say. “Come on.”
I tiptoe down the hall. Quinn is following me, but apparently she didn't get the memo that we're supposed to be acting stealthy. Nope, she's walking down the middle of the hall like she thinks she owns it, and she's jabbering away: “I must be dreaming. That's the only logical explanation. Madeline went home, and I had dinner and went to bed. I don't remember those things, but they must've happened, and now I'm fast asleep.” She lifts her left arm and pinches the skin with her right fingers. “Okay, I felt that. But maybe that's just a rumor, that you can't feel anything in your dreams. It's not like we can really prove it.”
“Can't you be quiet for once?” I hiss.
“It doesn't matter if anyone hears me if I'm dreaming,” Quinn says, even louder.
“You're
not
dreaming,” I say. My voice is barely a whisper. “You're just in the denial stage.”
Uncle Max said there was a denial stage for finding out you're a genie. Apparently there's also one for finding out about your genie brother.
At the end of the hall I glance around the corner to make sure no one is there. When I'm sure the coast is clear, I make a mad dash for the lobby.
But Quinn is just standing there taking it all inâthe checkerboard floor and chandeliers, the maroon walls and the oil paintings in gilded frames. “Whoa.”
“Come on,” I tell her. “Come
on
.”
I've already crossed the room and pushed open the front door. Quinn comes over and steps outside. Her eyes skim the expanse of lawn in front of us, perfectly groomed, the palm trees lining the borders, and the huge redbrick buildings. Above us the clouds are light gray, but they look heavier in the distance. Quinn, of course, isn't worried about them.
“California, did you say?” she asks, and I nod. “It's always been my dream to go to California. But in real life I would pick someone else to travel with.”
“Yeah, well, me too,” I tell her. “Anyway, that way is the under-construction athletic center.” I point as I remember. “And to get back to the chapel we have to . . .” It's hard to retrace your steps when you made a stop in between them, but I don't want to go all the way back to the Dumpster first, because that would mean having to spend even more time outside. “I think we go that way.” I turn around in a circle, trying to figure it out. “I need a map,” I say to myself. And just like that, there on the limestone sidewalk, the different buildings and pathways are carved out and glittering, like stars in the sky.
“Holy smokes! Look what I made!”
Quinn is barely impressed, until she notices one building on the map, the one labeled “Food Hall.”
“I'm so hungry,” she says. “I can't remember ever being hungry in my sleep before. Maybe I went to bed without eating dinner.” She pauses. “At least I don't remember having dinner.”
“Because you haven't had dinner yet,” I tell her.
If not for this whole genie thing, Uncle Max probably would've made cheeseburgers for him and me. He has a very special way of making themâhe chops up the cheese and puts it
inside
the burger part. It's actually quite genius.
That's genius, and NOT genie.
I could eat five Max burgers in one sittingâeven if I wasn't hungry. They're just that good. And thinking of them makes me VERY hungry. But I shake my head. We cannot go to Food Hall. There is no time for a pit stop right now. “We've got to get to the chapel and grab Trey's phone and call Uncle Max.”
“Can you stop it with that story already? This is ONLY a dreamâand since it's MY dream, Food Hall must have all my favorites.”
It's annoying how Quinn can't get it through her head that this genie thing is real, but I guess it's
dumberstandable
.
Dumberstandable
. Adjective. When someone is behaving in a dumb, and yet somewhat understandable, way.
Quinn starts marching up the pathway toward Food Hall. The chapel is just a few yards away. There's no sign out front like the other buildings, but there is a large stained glass window on the side, so I know it's the right place. I grab Quinn's arm. Which is, of course, the exact wrong thing to do, because before I even know what's happening, she's holding
my
arm behind my back.
But I arch my back and twist free. It's the first time I've ever been able to break out of Quinn's grip.
“Whoa,” she says, shaking out her hand. “You've never been . . . that powerful.” She's clenching and unclenching her hand. “Actually, I can't make my fist as tight as I usually can.”
“Come on,” I say. “Let's get Trey's phone. The chapel isn't far.”
We sprint together, but when we get there, I pull open the door extra slowly and peek my head around. “The coast is clear,” I tell my sister.
We step inside. I'm about to head to the aisle, just left of the pews, where the backpack and all of Trey's stuff had been. But Quinn has stopped in her tracks. “Whoa,” she says softly. “It looks just like . . . you know, it looks like . . . where we had Dad's . . .”
“I know,” I say. “But come on, the phone was right over here.”
Except now the aisle where Trey's stuff had been strewn about is totally clear. I walk down the length of it to make sure. But there isn't so much as a rubbed-down eraser on the floor.
“Where's the phone?” Quinn asks.
“It's gone,” I say. I hear a rustling noise coming from behind a back door I hadn't noticed before. “Quick, Quinn!” I say. “Duck for cover!”
“What?”
There's more rustling. When I look toward
the door, I see the knob turning, turning.
“Between the pews, and fast!”
But while I nose-dive toward the navy-blue cushions, Quinn just stands there like a deer in headlights. I hear the door open, and the
clomp, clomp, clomp
of heavy footsteps. From my vantage point on the ground, I spy a man wearing the same MA shirt as the Reggs and Trey (I mean, Quinn). Except this guy's shirt must be size XXXL. He's the biggest man I've ever seen. He's holding a broom in one hand and a big black garbage bag in the other.
“Zack,” my sister says, glancing down at me, and I can't tell if she's nervous or just irritated.
“No, I'm not Zack,” the man says. His voice is deep and gravelly.
“Sorry, I was talking to my brother.”
“You visiting him?” the man asks.
“I guess you could say that,” Quinn says. “But he's hiding.” With her thumb, she points to me lying beneath a pew.
“Hiding, huh?”
No use in hiding now. I come out from under the pew. I have to tip up my chin to see the top of this guy's head. He has to be at least nine feet tall. Or maybe ten feet tall. Double-digits height!
“Shouldn't your brother be in class?”
“Class? On a Saturday?”
“There's class every Saturday at Millings Academy,” he says. “Your brother never told you that?”
“No, but he doesn't go here, exactly.”
“What exactly does he do?”
“We have to go,” I say. “Now.”
“Wait,” Quinn says to me. She looks back upâway upâat the man. “Can I ask you something?” The man nods. “Well, we were looking for a cell phone. My brother said this kid Trey left his on the floor in hereâdon't ask me why he did, but that's what Zack said. Anyway, I wondered if you'd picked it up. Or maybe swept it up, and it's in that garbage bag you're holding.”
“I don't know what the rules are at whatever school you attend, missy,” the man says. “But here at Millings Academy, we don't encourage people to take property that belongs to others.” He reaches an arm as thick as a leg toward Quinn. “I think you better come with me.”
“Uh, Zack,” Quinn says.
“Zack?” the man repeats.
“Never mind,” I say. “We don't want anyone else's property.”
I try to pull Quinn out of the man's grasp with my superhuman genie strength. But it seems right now all I have is regular Zack strength. (Or, more accurately, regular Zack lack of strength.)
My heart feels like it's knocking around in my chest, and my brain hurts trying to think of a way to get us out of this.
Think, Zack. THINK!
If only there was a way to knock the giant off his feet, then he'd drop Quinn's arm and she could get away . . . Wait a second. Maybe there
is! This morning I'd made a shoving motion with my hands, and Quinn had been knocked to the ground.
I do it again. And again, and again. But it's not working, and time is running out. He's twisting around and pulling Quinn with him.
And then, from behind the man's big basketball head, I notice a bumblebee flying toward us. My eyes do their click-click thing. I can see the bee's yellow and black stripes as clear as if they're under a microscope, and I can see, tucked between little fibers of hair on its legs, wads of pollen.
I'm allergic to pollen, and all of a sudden I feel a heaviness in the back of my eyes. They squeeze shut involuntarily, and from the deepest part of my chest comes the biggest, loudest sneeze of my whole entire life. Ahhhh ahhhh ahhhh AHHHH AHHHH CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
There's a sound like the wind in a category-five tornado. When I open my eyes, the man is
flying across the chapel.
CRASH!
He smashes against the back wall, and a potted plant falls on his head.
Quinn herself is fine. She's standing there, right next to me. I guess she wasn't in the path of the tornadoâer, the sneeze.
There's no time to waste. I grab her hand and call, “Sorry,” over my shoulder. It's not like I wanted to hurt the guy, after all. Seconds later we're out the door and hiding around the corner of the building. I pull Quinn behind a tree, which frankly, isn't that much bigger than the man. We are both huffing and puffing a bit from running so fast, but Quinn is huffing and puffing an extra amount. In my head I see Drew Listerman in the television studio. “That was amazing, Zack.” And I see everyone at home watching their TVs, nodding: amazing.
But when Quinn finally catches her breath, does she tell me I was amazing, or say thank you, or anything like that? Nope. She rubs her arms
and says, “Ew, Zack, you spit on me!”
“I
saved
you,” I tell her.
Not that Quinn can give me credit for anything. “Yeah, well, now what?”
I'm about to admit that I don't know, when suddenly, it comes to me. “How do you talk to Bella on the phone?” I ask.
“We don't talk on the phone,” she says. “We Skype.”
“Exactly.”
“So?” my sister asks. “What good does that do us now? Do you have a computer in your pocket?”
“No, but check yours.”
“You think I have a computer in
my
pocket?” She's rolling her eyes as she reaches in and pulls out a white piece of plastic in the shape of a credit card. “Huh. I don't know what this is.”
“Quinn,” I say. “It's a key.”
“T
rey showed me the key before,” I explain to Quinn. “It's to his dorm roomâto
your
dorm room.”
“I don't have a dorm room,” she says. “Just a regular bedroom in our regular house. Though I wouldn't mind having a dorm room right now. If I went to school with Bella, I wouldn't have to see you!”