Make a Wish! (2 page)

“Gran, this one-eyed teddy bear smells disgusting,” Ali grumbled as they pulled into her driveway. She took her Lava lamp out of Gran's carton of books, which was next to her on the backseat.

“He'll be fine after he's had a good scrub-a-dub,” Gran promised, turning around in the driver's seat.

The front door opened and Ali's mom came out. “Hi,” she called as Ali got out of the car “More junk, I see!”

“They're interesting objects, dear, not junk!” Gran scolded out the window. “Don't fill my granddaughter's head with that poppycock.”

Ali leaned forward and gave her a kiss. “Bye, Gran. Thanks for the lamp. And for the lemonade and the funnel cake,” she whispered.

Gran kissed her back “Ali's got a surprise for you,” she told Ali's mom. “Bye.” She waved and sped off down the street.

“Hmmm, let me guess,” Mom said. “Doll clothes with missing buttons? Some old board games in dented boxes? Or is it a watch without a battery?”

“A Lava lamp,” Ali replied, holding it up in the sunshine.

“Hmmm.” Mom frowned at the dusty
object. “Does it work?” She followed Ali inside.

“Um, not at the moment,” Ali admitted. “Gran said you might be able to fix it.” She smiled hopefully. “You're so good at that kind of thing.”

Mom laughed. “You two are as bad as each other with your junk!” she teased. “I'll have a look at it later I've got some papers to go through, and then we'll have lunch before the boys get home. Okay?” Ali's mom worked in a bank Sometimes she brought work home on weekends.

Ali nodded. That meant she had time to clean up the lamp before her mom looked at it. She went into the kitchen and found a dust cloth and some cleaning spray.

Just as she was about to head upstairs to her bedroom, the phone rang. Ali picked it up. “Hello?”

There was a burst of noise at the other end. Then a familiar voice shouted, “Hi, Ali, it's me!”

“I know!” Ali laughed into her best friend Mary's ear. “I can hear your dad!”

Mary's dad tried to keep up with the music Ali and Mary listened to. He was always belting out the latest song from BoyFrenzy The trouble was, Mr. Connolly's singing voice sounded like a strangled sea lion, and he didn't know any of the songs' real words, so he just made them up as he went along. Mary thought he was very embarrassing. Ali thought he was funny.

“Hey, Dad! Give it a rest! I'm on the phone!” Mary yelled. “Can you believe school starts next week?” she asked Ali.

Monday was the start of a new school year at Montgomery Elementary School. “I know! I'm so glad we're in the same class again.” Ali sighed. “I hope we like Mrs. Jasmine.”

“Have you got your notebooks and stuff?” Mary asked.

“Not yet,” Ali said. Getting new supplies was the best part of going back to school. “Gran bought me this really old Lava lamp today.” She squinted at the glass. “It doesn't work, but my mom's going to fix it for me.”

“Cool,” Mary said. “Maybe I can come over tomorrow and see it.”

There was the muffled sound of Daniel, Mary's thirteen-year-old brother, shouting in the background. “You're not the only person who needs to use the phone, you know!”

Mary and Daniel were always arguing. Daniel was tall, noisy, and dorky Ali's mom said it was because he was thirteen. Luckily, by the time Jake turned thirteen, Ali would be doing something very grown-up and sophisticated.

“Sorry Ali,” Mary said, sounding exasperated. “I'd better go before Daniel explodes. See you tomorrow!”

Ali clicked off and ran upstairs. She put the lamp carefully on her desk She tucked her light brown hair behind her ears and studied the lamp for a moment.
Then she sprayed some cleaner on the dust cloth and started to wipe away the dirt.

“Ick!” Ali said as little flecks of grime rained down on her floor The dust on the lamp was so thick it left grubby smears at first, so Ali rubbed harder

Suddenly she stopped. The glass felt warm underneath the dust cloth, and a faint pink glow was coming from the lamp. It grew stronger and stronger Small pink blobs of wax began to float dreamily around in the pale turquoise liquid.

Wow!
Ali thought.
It does work!
The man at the flea market had been wrong. “I bet he'd be mad we only paid three dollars,” she said to herself.

Fascinated, she stood back and
watched as more pink bubbles of wax floated upward. Then she frowned. “Wait a minute,” she said out loud. “I didn't plug it in. Did I?”

Ali grabbed the lamp. When she held it up, the plug dangled in midair She froze, clutching the lamp tightly. If she hadn't plugged it in, how was it working?

One of the pink wax bubbles caught
Ali's eye. As she watched, the bubble stretched and twisted, and twisted and stretched, until it didn't look like a bubble at all. And the liquid became bluer and brighter Ali peered through the glass, straining to see. She blinked. Then she blinked again.

The bubble had grown arms and legs. And now it was growing a little head, topped with a bobbing ponytail.

There was a tiny girl in the lamp!

She swam gracefully among all the pink bubbles, swooping and diving inside the glass tube. She was wearing wide brightly colored pants, a tight-fitting top, and golden slippers with curled-up toes.

Ali's heart thumped crazily She was seeing things. She
had
to be seeing things.

Then the tiny girl waved to her

Ali gasped and quickly put the lamp back on the desk. A puff of pink smoke swirled around the lamp, hiding it from view. The smoke made Ali cough, and her eyes watered.

“Hi, Ali,” called a high-pitched voice. “We meet at last!”

Rubbing her eyes, Ali spun around.

Who was that? There was no one else in the room!

“Down here!” the voice called.

It was coming from Ali's desk. As she looked down, the smoke began to clear

Waving and smiling up at her was the girl from the lamp!

“Groovy!” The tiny girl danced up and down on the edge of the desk. “I can't believe I finally got out of that lamp after all these years. What a drag!”

Ali stared. Was this really happening?

The tiny girl smiled. “Hey don't flip your wig. Just snap your fingers.”

Ali stared some more.

“If you snap your fingers, I'll be full size,
just like you!” Then the tiny girl frowned. “You do know how to snap your fingers, don't you?”

Ali gave herself a shake. Feeling so excited she could hardly breathe, she nodded.

Snap!

Instantly the room was filled with a cloud of pink smoke, brighter this time. Ali coughed and spluttered again.

“Out of sight!” The tiny girl—who was now a regular, full-sized girl—waved her hands as the smoke began to fade away. “Ah, much better,” she said, stretching her arms over her head. “I haven't been able to do that in years.”

“How—how long have you been in there?” Ali asked. She sat down on her
bed with a thump. Okay there was a girl in her lamp. Okay, the girl from the lamp was now standing in the middle of her bedroom floor Okay, she was crazy.

“About forty years, give or take a few,” the girl said sheepishly. “I was never very good at transformation magic. That's what comes of missing so many lessons at Genie School. But now that you've made me grow once, I'll be able to do it myself.”

Ali stared. The girl grinned at her. “Little Genie, at your service,” she said. “Well, not so little now! But I am quite small for a genie, you know. My friend Genius the Genie is over ten feet tall.”

Ali's mind whirled. Had the girl really said
genie?

“I'm very pleased to meet you,” Little Genie went on. She bent over in a low bow. As she did, her long blond ponytail got caught in the curved toe of one of her slippers. “Ow!”

Ali shook her head and closed her eyes. “This must be a dream,” she whispered. “You're not here, and I can't see you.”

“Of course you can't,” Little Genie said, sounding puzzled. “Are you playing with a full deck? You've got your eyes closed.”

Ali opened her eyes. “Are you
really
a genie?” she breathed.

“Well, of course,” Little Genie replied. “And you freed me from the lamp, so now I belong to you. That makes me
your humble servant. Do you think I should call you Lord and Master?” She looked doubtfully at Ali.

“I don't know,” Ali said, surprised. “I've never met a genie before.” She glanced over at the Lava lamp. “That doesn't look like the kind of lamp a genie would live in,” she pointed out.

“Hey!” Little Genie sounded hurt. “That lamp was the coolest thing ever when I first moved in, back in 1964.”

“So that's why you talk like that,” Ali said, giggling.

Little Genie frowned. “Like what?”

“Never mind,” Ali said. Who cared what this girl sounded like? She was a genie!

“It was a real bummer that I couldn't
get out for so long,” Little Genie mumbled, looking down at her curly-toed slippers. “Honestly, genie lessons were so boring, Ali. Sorry. Lord and Master,” she corrected herself.

“Just call me Ali,” said Ali. “But why were the lessons boring? Don't you like doing magic?”

“Oh yes, I do!” Genie nodded so hard, her ponytail bounced up and down. “But before they let us do magic, we had to take classes like How to Keep Your Lamp Clean and Math for Modern Genies.”

Ali couldn't imagine fitting a vacuum in a Lava lamp! And math wasn't one of her favorite subjects either Maybe genies had problems with the same sort of stuff humans did.

“But you got to learn magic too, didn't you?” Ali wanted to know.

“Sure.” Little Genie nodded. “But the teachers wouldn't let anyone do magic on their own to begin with. And I was stoked to try out my spells.”

“So what did you do?” Ali asked curiously.

Little Genie looked very embarrassed. “Well, when the Grand Genie came to visit, I decided to give everyone a surprise and clean the school.” Her ponytail sagged. “I did a spell and got all the brooms and dusters working on their own.”

“What happened next?” said Ali.

“I couldn't stop them,” Little Genie replied glumly. “There was soapy water and furniture polish everywhere. The
floor was so slippery, the Grand Genie fell over!”

Ali giggled. “Did you get in trouble?”

“Well, it wasn't exactly the first time I'd gotten a spell wrong, so the teachers expelled me from school.” Little Genie sighed. “Everyone else got to start doing magic, but I wasn't allowed to. One of the teachers, Miss Spelling, was nice to me, and she let me choose the Lava lamp to live in. I was supposed to stay in there and learn about magic, to make up for the missed lessons.”

Little Genie stared at Ali, her eyes sad. “I've been in there for
ages
, because I had to wait for the eleventh owner of the lamp to release me.” She brightened up. “And that's you, O Mighty Lord and
Master—I mean, Ali.” She bowed, holding her head sideways so that her ponytail didn't get caught on her slipper.

“That bowing and stuff—is that all part of what genies do?” Ali asked. “It doesn't look very comfortable.”

“Of course!” said Little Genie, looking surprised. “We learned that in Traditional Manners. I didn't miss
all
my lessons, you
know. Now, what do you want for your first wish?”

“My first wish?” Ali repeated.

“Are you thicker than a five-dollar malt?
Your first wish,”
Little Genie said slowly. “Don't you know anything about genies? You know, three wishes and all that?”

Ali didn't know what to say Maybe she
was
thicker than a five-dollar malt. “Are you sure you weren't expelled before Traditional Manners?” she said finally.

She watched as Little Genie's pink cheeks pinkened even more. “Scratch that. Let me start over O Lord and Master, for you I will capture the stars and harness the winds from the four corners of the earth. Your wish is my
command.” She bowed. “How did that sound?”

“Um, great,” Ali said. “So, can I have my first wish right now?” Even though she still wasn't sure this was really happening, excitement bubbled inside her like cream soda.

Little Genie beamed. She gave a little dance of delight. “Yes indeed! Go right ahead. Oh, this is so exciting. After all those years, I finally get to do my first wish! Quick, think of something!”

This was the biggest moment of Ali's nine-year-old life, and she couldn't think of a single thing. She and Mary had sometimes talked about the things they would wish for. But right now, Ali's mind had gone totally blank.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed one of her magazines lying open on her pillow. She could see an advertisement for Tiger Chocolate, with a cute purple-striped cartoon tiger sitting on a chocolate bar.

“I want a tiger,” Ali blurted out. “That's my wish.” If Little Genie could make that wish come true, Ali told herself, then she would really and truly believe that she had her very own genie.

Little Genie raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure?” she asked skeptically. Her ponytail whizzed up and formed a question mark “A real tiger?”

“Sure I'm sure.” Ali grabbed the magazine and held the picture up. “Oh, maybe you don't have tigers where you come from. You
do
know what a tiger is, don't you, Genie?”

“Of course I do!” Genie looked hurt for a moment. Then she frowned, screwing her whole face up with concentration. She took a deep breath and snapped her fingers.

More smoke filled the room. It was lilac-colored this time, and even thicker than before. Ali began to cough. She could hear Genie coughing too. Smoke
billowed all around them in great clouds, and Ali couldn't see a thing.

But she could hear something.

A loud roar, ringing around the room.

It was the roar of a wild animal.

A tiger.