As You Wish (16 page)

I EXHALE AND
open my eyes. Something feels wrong, but I can't pinpoint it—it's as if I've just woken up from a nap and am still too groggy to truly understand where I am. The campfire sputters in front of me, and I lean forward to warm my hands, inhaling the scent of burned sugar from the marshmallows that have rolled into the embers. Lawrence is sitting across from me, looking slightly dazed as well. We study each other, as if one might have the answer to the other's confusion.

A stick snaps to my right. Lawrence and I turn our heads and inhale sharply at the same time. Jinn is kneeling just out of the firelight's glow, a look of defeat on his sweaty face. He's
never looked more human, but then, he's never looked worse. He's shaking. He looks up at me. His mouth smiles a little, but his eyes don't—in fact, he looks like he wants to cry.

And then I remember. I cry out softly, unable to form in my throat the words I want to say—
I'm sorry, I didn't want to, I didn't mean it.
Jinn's eyes meet mine, and I'm terrified to blink for fear he might disappear. He rises from the ground and runs the last few steps between us, reaching for my hand and sweeping me up into his arms. I inhale his scent and close my eyes, letting my head rest against his chest. Lawrence is stammering apologies from behind us, but I can't hear much of anything beyond the soft beating of Jinn's heart, the sound of his breathing. I entwine my fingers in his shirt and tighten my arms around him.

“Viola,” he whispers my name like it's something precious.

“I couldn't…I had to stop it, but I couldn't let Lawrence just…,” I say through the sharp feeling in the back of my throat.

“I know,” Jinn answers.

“You're still here. You're staying. You have to stay….” My voice shakes.

“Just for a moment,” he answers, and then I realize he's glowing. It's an ever-brightening glow coming from within Jinn's body; his skin radiates warmth and brilliance, making the firelight look dingy by comparison. He's leaving. My eyes flood with tears I don't bother trying to control.

“Please, please don't go. I'll break again,” I say through uneven breaths.

Jinn speaks in an unconvincing voice, smoothing my hair with one hand. “You'll be all right. You'll keep changing, healing. You're whole already, remember?”

“But more so with you. You can't…,” I say, my words broken apart by tears and gulps for air.

“It's what I am. I have to. I can't…I want to…” He stops speaking and kisses the top of my head.

“I'm so sorry,” I mumble into his chest. Jinn lowers his head till his cheek is next to mine and raises one hand to tilt my chin toward him.

“Don't be sorry,” he says, then runs his fingers down the side of my face. I want to speak—there are so many things to say—but none of them seems important right now. Jinn looks
into my eyes. He glows brighter, and the arm he has around me loses a little strength. I shake my head in protest, and Jinn sighs.

His lips touch mine, and we're kissing, although I'm not sure when the kiss began. He tastes somehow of fresh air and sugar and starlight, and his lips are soft and gentle on mine. One hand strokes the side of my cheek in a way that makes me melt against him. It isn't until I open my eyes that I realize he's gone. The kiss, as seamlessly as it began, is over.

I tremble and feel cold, lifeless. Alone.

Footsteps crunch in the leaves behind me, and suddenly Lawrence's arms wrap around me. He wipes tears from my face with the back of his hand, ignoring the teardrops streaming down his own face.

“It'll be okay, Vi. You'll be okay. I just…” Lawrence sighs and looks back at the campfire. “I can't believe he's gone.”

I frown at Lawrence. “Can't believe who is gone?”

RETURNING TO CALIBAN
usually isn't as bad as being pulled
from
Caliban to the human world. When other masters made their final wishes, I welcomed the warm feeling of the Caliban sun washing over me—the way their world faded out and my own faded in. The way that, upon reaching Caliban, the sensation of aging comes to a grinding halt with the first deep breath of fresh, clean air.

But I struggle to hold on to Viola even after I feel myself slipping away. I can feel the Caliban sun on my skin, but I fight to linger in the chilly backyard. One moment longer, just one more, I think as I inhale the coconut scent of her hair. But then
it's gone—she's gone, they're gone, everything is gone, and I'm on my own, staring at the violet-gold Caliban sunset.

 

How do you go back to a beautiful life you no longer want?

I hate to complain about it. After all, despite everything, I still love my job. I still love Caliban, even. My apartment, the sunsets, the trees, birds, the other golden-skinned jinn—it's nice to finally be visible to everyone in a room again. But there are no stars, no rain, no mall carnivals or Flamingo Dream bedrooms. And there's the raw feeling where a piece of me has been torn away, like a piece of plastic snapped off a toy, leaving behind a sharp edge.

I remember what Viola said about being whole to begin with. I was whole before I met her. I'm whole now.

Yeah, right.

Is this how she felt when she lost Lawrence? Because then it makes sense why she didn't know what to wish for to feel whole again. What is there to fix? What could possibly make me feel right?

When not delivering flowers, I spend most of my time in
my apartment, ignoring the unmade bed and the nearly bare walls. It's not unusual, for a Caliban apartment—jinn spend more time outside our homes than in them, since to us, experience is more important than nostalgia. And who is there to be nostalgic with? Rarely does anyone stick around long enough. Just the way jinn are supposed to like it.

I've now realized something: Jinn are boring.

Late in the evening, a few weeks after returning, I throw open my balcony doors and lean on the railing to watch the sunset.

There's the rushing sensation of a fellow jinn appearing behind me, just inside my apartment. I don't move; my eyes are locked on the low sun ahead. I don't want to speak to him. When the silence continues, the ifrit finally speaks to me.

“You should come out tonight.”

“No.”

“It'll be good for you.” The ifrit steps forward and leans on the railing next to me. The city below glows with nightlife. The lights of dance clubs, the scent of restaurants preparing
dinners, the sound of jinn laughing, meeting up with one another in the streets.

“I don't want to. Sorry,” I respond as I turn around to lean my back against the railing.

The ifrit sighs. “I thought you'd be through with all this by now. Let it go. She's forgotten you already. Go out, find a jinn to take her place—one of your own kind. Move on.”

I shake my head—how can he know so little? “I can't move on, don't you get it? Nothing moves here. I can't move here. There aren't any pieces to add to me, to cover up the place where Viola broke away. Everything about me is frozen, including the feeling of losing her.”

“It'll go away,” the ifrit protests.

“I don't
want
it to go away,” I say through gritted teeth. No matter how badly it hurts. If it goes away, it'll be like it never happened.

The ifrit looks like he's grasping for any sense of sanity in me. “You'll probably be earthbound again before too long, so maybe then you can become…‘unfrozen.' You'll get past it
all, and then you'll come back here to your normal—”

“I never want to be earthbound again.”

“But—”

“I can never go back without wanting to see her,” I say, turning to the ifrit. “So I'll go to her, at some point—if not the next time I'm earthbound, then the time after that—it'll happen, eventually. I'll watch her change, grow older without me, without even the slightest memory of me. Then I'll come back here, be frozen in time again, and return to see that she's twenty, thirty, forty. I never want to go back. It can never be like it was. I can never be like I was.”

The ifrit shakes his head, looking at me like he's trying to read something in my eyes. He sighs and looks out over the city. The sun is so low in the sky that it's merely a brilliant red line on the horizon.

“You have a hearing tomorrow with the Ancient Jinn,” the ifrit says in a defeated voice. “You broke all three protocols too often for them to ignore. I'll see you there.” As the ifrit who pressed for my return, he's obligated to be at my hearing. I nod carelessly, and the ifrit vanishes. I don't care about the Ancients,
don't care what they do to me—I knew it was coming.

I trudge inside, leaving the balcony doors open so the sounds and scents of the night can fill my room. I wrap myself in a navy-blue blanket and fall into bed, alone.

I STARE AT
the canvas. Something is missing, and if I wait long enough, I'll figure out what it is.

That's it.

I grin and splash blue paint across the canvas like I'm trying to rip it apart with the bristles of my brush.

“You're still here?” Ophelia asks, smiling at me from the doorway.

“Has it been that long?” I turn to look at the clock and sigh when I realize it's almost seven. I've been in the art room since school ended. “I finished this one, though,” I say, hoping to justify the hours that probably should have been used to finish my
Shakespeare homework.

“I like it, I think. It's kind of creepy, though,” Ophelia says of my painting, tilting her head to the side and stepping through the door. The painting is bold and dark—night-black colored swirls, bright golden circles, and a royal blue gloss that looks silken now as it dries. All the colors feel important to me, like they're a part of me. Still, I'm having trouble putting them together correctly; they seem to belong to some greater picture I can't see clearly. Creativity—go figure.

“Anyway, do you need a ride tonight? Xander is picking me up,” Ophelia says, tugging her honey-colored hair into a ponytail.

“I won't turn one down,” I answer. Going to the coffeehouse where Lawrence works has become a Friday night ritual for me and a handful of other art students.

“I'll meet you out in front of the school then? I've got to run by my locker,” Ophelia says. I gather my materials, ignoring the fact that my jeans are now speckled in blue paint. I'm on my way to put the paint in the supply closet when my eye catches a canvas shoved behind several others on an easel. It
looks unpainted, but then I see a tiny streak of magenta. Curious, I let my supplies tumble into a pile on a table and step toward the easel. I pull the front canvases forward, letting them rest on my shoulder as I peer around to see what the rest of the fuchsia painting is.

I sigh.

This is why the art department is always broke. People waste supplies.

The painting is of a smiley face with spiky magenta hair. That's it. An entire canvas for a painting of a stick figure. I'm about to roll my eyes and walk away when something about the painting tugs at me—a memory, I think, but then I can't figure out what the memory is. Either way, I find myself grinning at the smiley face…yet at the same time, a strange, empty feeling washes over me. Like I've forgotten something important.

Weird. I shake my head and push the top canvases back, covering up the smiley face.

 

“Park Place. I believe that means you owe me all your red chips, sir,” I tease Xander. He gives me a mock evil eye and passes me
a stack of Connect Four chips. All the board games at the coffeehouse are missing pieces, so you have to sort of combine the remainders into one big game, then make up your own rules.

“Here, you can have my black chips,” Ophelia offers, kissing him lightly on the cheek.

“I don't want your pity money,” he replies, but there's no edge to his voice, and she intertwines her fingers with his lovingly.

“I'll take some pity money,” Sarah Larson says, tapping her turquoise-polished fingernails on her tiny stack of chips. I slide her one of my chips and she grins. “Pity money is better than none at all.”

“What are the Candyland cards for?” Lawrence asks as he sets another tray of lattes down on the table. The coffeehouse is empty except for us, and I see the other barista gathering her purse to leave.

“Those are for when you land on a Truth or Dare space,” Ophelia says casually, pointing to the Chance spots on the board. Lawrence shakes his head as he drops to the floor beside my legs.

“I don't know if I even want to try and join this game,” he says, eyeing the Candyland cards. “I'll just be on your team, Vi.”

“Only 'cause I'm winning,” I answer, nudging him with my knee.

“No kidding—you don't really expect me to join forces with Xander, do you?” Lawrence replies.

Sarah hands me the dice, which I give to Lawrence. “Go for it.”

Lawrence drops the dice on the board, where they accidently scatter a few black chips placed in the center. Seven. I pick up the Scottie dog and bounce him seven spaces, to a Chance spot.

“Ah-ha, let's see,” Sarah snickers, and pulls one of the Candyland cards for me. Two red blocks. “Oh, this'll be good. Double reds. Relationship-related truth question.”

“How long did it take you guys to make this game up?” Lawrence says. The rest of us shrug.

“I've got one for her,” Ophelia speaks up, raising an eyebrow. The other barista waves to Lawrence as she leaves, hitting
the overhead lights—Xander's hair glows even brighter blue in the dim light. I cross my arms, waiting for my question.

“Okay, so I don't mean this to be awkward, but it's about Aaron,” she begins. I'm surprised for a moment—the Ophelia sitting in front of me is so different from the Ollie who dated Aaron Moor, sometimes I forget they're the same person. Lawrence rolls a few of the Connect Four chips between his fingers—he isn't a big fan of rehashing my Aaron Moor days, for whatever reason.

“Not awkward at all,” I reply. “But I can't know much scandal about him that you don't—you guys dated way longer than he and I did. It wasn't even a messy breakup.”

“Oh, it's not about him. I was just wondering—who was the other guy?”

Lawrence chokes on his coffee. I shake my head. “There was no other guy. It just wasn't working out.”

“Really? Well, that's boring,” Ophelia says, grinning. “Sorry—he said something to me about it, right after you broke up…what was that, two, three weeks ago? Said that on the phone you told him you were in love with someone else.”

“Ha,” I answer. “I definitely don't remember saying that. I haven't really been in love with anyone, honestly, since handsome Laurie here.” I playfully elbow Lawrence as I say that last bit.

Instead of teasing me back, like I expected, Lawrence firmly sets his coffee down on the table and jumps up. He hurriedly ducks behind the counter and grabs a broom, all but attacking the floor as he becomes very suddenly invested in sweeping. The other four of us make uncertain eye contact.

“You okay, Lawrence?” Sarah asks.

“Yeah. I just need to finish closing up,” he says gruffly. The other three are fooled, but I know Lawrence better. I signal to them to give me a moment, and follow Lawrence as he disappears behind the forest-green
EMPLOYEES ONLY
curtain.

“Lawrence?” I say in a low voice as the heavy scent of coffee beans fills my nostrils. Lawrence turns to me, and his eyes look watery even in the room's scant lighting. He suddenly slams his hand down on one of the shelves, sending a few bottles of creamer spinning off the edge. I cringe, and he drops to the ground to pick them up.

“What's going on?” I ask as gently as I can. He stretches for one of the creamers that rolled under the wire shelves. “Lawrence, please.”

“I just…,” he says toward the cement floor. He shakes his head. “It won't make any sense. God, sometimes I wish I could forget, too….”

“Come on, at least
try
to tell me what's up,” I say, lowering myself to the ground beside him. I take a creamer from his hand and wrap my fingers around his. Lawrence sighs and sits up. He squeezes my fingers lightly and pulls his hand away.

“It's…” He brushes a few coffee grounds off his jeans, his eyebrows furrowing like they do when he's choosing his words carefully. “It's just that it makes me…sad…to hear you say you haven't loved
anyone
since me.”

“That's it?” I say, wondering if the shock registers in my voice. “That's what you're so upset about?”

Lawrence shakes his head. “I told you it wouldn't make sense….”

He's got a point. I mean, I'm glad he isn't thrilled that I'm single, but punching shelves seems extreme.

“I'm sorry,” he says, shaking his head like he's casting the emotion away. “You know, it's nothing. You've just done…you're such a good friend to me that I guess I wish you still had someone, that's all.” He gathers the bottles and sets them back on the shelf in a row.

“I don't still
want
Aaron, though. And besides, I've got you and Ophelia and a handful of Connect Four chips.” I grin. “I'm fine.”

“Right. Sorry, Vi. Minor freakout.”

“Okay, then we can go back to playing Super Monopoly Dare without you smashing things?” I say, folding my arms.

“Back to playing
what
? We really need new games,” Lawrence says, rolling his eyes. There's still some hint of sorrow there; it sort of reminds me of the way I used to feel, back when I was so destroyed over breaking up with him. He steps around me and hurries back toward the board game. Still confused, I return to my circle of friends just in time to play my turn.