Sealed with a Wish (18 page)

Compared to what I knew would happen next, death by Chinese food didn’t sound so bad.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

When I came to, all I could think about was how much I hated Sean Fabry. At first, I didn’t even notice that my ring was hooked around my thumb, zapped back to me by some magical courier service.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to consider just
which
shade of pink that Nematode Sean would be, because my parents seriously went ballistic. I really thought Mom’s head would explode.

There were questions... Lots of them. So many that my head spun and wouldn’t stop spinning.

I told Mom and Dad everything about Sean’s wishes, including the fake date for Wish Number Two. I watched silently while Mom and Dad had a half-hour long debate about whether or not I should scramble Sean’s brain into forgetting the entire thing. Dad was happy to risk sending Sean to the loony bin, but Mom didn’t care for the idea of erasing almost a month’s worth of information from Sean’s memory. Something about potentially taking away motor skills.

So no wiping Sean’s brain, they decided. I wanted to tell them that it didn’t really matter--he had already forgotten me on his own.

Two hours later, as I trudged up to my room, my tired brain was still happy to consider all the possibilities for my revenge.

Why wasn’t there some kind of cosmic tribunal for people who did totally crappy things? Sean should have gotten a million years in a pane of glass, floating through the empty reaches of the universe like that Zod guy in the Superman movies. I would even make sure he wore the dorky outfit.

“We had a deal,” I muttered as I climbed upstairs.

I slammed my bedroom door louder than I should have, and winced. Mom and Dad hated that. Still, they had pretty much grounded me for life. What was one more minor offense?

Growling, I flopped down on the bed.  From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the sparkly shopping bag from Diana’s makeup counter. The bath gel and makeup were still unopened inside, a total waste of sixty bucks that I could have used to buy a homeschooling program.

I should have known that Sean would throw me under the bus. He couldn’t even wait an extra day--
one damn day!
--to suck on Diana’s face like an ice cream cone. What if I had still been babysitting? What if I had been out in public somewhere, or dodging traffic on my bike?

Obviously, he hadn’t cared about the consequences or about
me
.

From inside my backpack, my cell phone chirped an incoming call. I should have ignored it, but I crawled over and checked, in case it might be Natalie. When I saw who was calling, it was like biting into a candy bar and finding a cockroach inside.

And that cockroach was named Sean Fabry.

He didn’t even wait for me to say hello. The second I smashed my thumb into the green button and accepted the call, Sean’s voice grated my ear. “Layla?” he shouted. “
Is this Layla?!
”

What, was he drunk or something? It figured.

“Who the hell do you think this is: Jesus? Leave me alone!” I yelled, then snapped shut the phone. That didn’t feel dramatic enough, so I threw it onto the floor, where the phone gave a weak
plonk
as it hit the thick carpet. Ugh, where was an old-fashioned, corded phone when you needed one? Those were perfect for slamming.

I crumpled onto my bed again, defeated by modern technology. By now, any lingering happy-full feelings from the peanut chicken had disappeared.

My room shifted into soft focus, and I felt my eyes grow moist. I was just gearing up for a full-on crying jag when someone knocked on the door. I sat up, wiping my face. “Come in.”

Mom flinched a little when she saw that I had been crying, but she didn’t give me her usual coos of sympathy.

“I guess you’re not here to tell me there’s dessert in the kitchen,” I said.

Mom’s frown made it clear that my (totally lame) attempts at humor weren’t going to fly. “We’re going to put your ring in the safe deposit box tomorrow afternoon. Your father’s meeting with clients all morning and I’m booked up until lunch, so I need your ring for safekeeping.”

“Mom, I’m not going to lose my ring in between now and--”

Her voice was frosty. “I don’t want to hear it, Layla.”

I didn’t have the strength to argue. Instead, I pulled the ring out of my pocket and handed it over.

“Stay in the house until then,” she said.

No arguments from me, Warden.

Outwardly, I only nodded and stared at my lap. As Mom left, I listened to her footsteps fade down the stairs. She was probably headed to the locked drawer in the home office.

I imagined my ring sitting among the passports and old documents, untouched and tucked away. My chest ached, but whether it was for my ring or because of everything else, I wasn’t sure.

#

The next day, I didn’t realize that Mom and Dad had let me stay home from school until I woke up around noon, my eyes puffy and my nose still red. Maybe they
had
tried to wake me up this morning. I honestly couldn’t remember. I preferred to believe they had taken pity on me and let me stay inside my room-cocoon.

I would have been glad to stay in bed for the rest of the day, but my bladder had other plans. Once I staggered out of the bathroom, I decided that I might as well do something to quiet the hungry rumbles in my belly.

Trudging downstairs, I tried not to wonder what Sean and Diana were doing now. Were they at lunch, kissing some more? Did he even
remember
what had happened with him and me? And, more importantly, why did that matter to me at all?

I found some leftover peanut chicken in the refrigerator. After heating it up in the microwave, I took the whole carton into the home office, figuring it might be nice to be near my ring again. My time with it was kind of limited.

When I walked into the study, I expected relief to rush over me, but nothing really changed. I still felt grumpy and hungry and totally uninterested in leaving the house ever again.

Sure, I knew that my ring was here with me. I could feel it lying in the desk drawer, almost like it was waiting for me, but this didn’t make me as happy as I thought it would.

Fifteen minutes later, I shuffled out of the office with my now-empty Wong’s carton, wondering how else to kill time. On the way to the living room, I caught a glimpse of myself in the hallway mirror and frowned at my tangled hair. If Natalie had thought I looked bad yesterday, she would have mistaken me for Bigfoot today.

“At least I’ll always have my looks,” I said, trudging away.

Whoever Sophia Loren was, I hoped she was doing better than me (not that
that
would be so difficult right now). Even if I did have some kind of resemblance to her, it was most likely buried under a night of crying and grumbling to myself. Diana had probably just been trying to earn some extra commission last weekend.

It made perfect sense that she would be just as big a jerk as her ex-boyfriend-now-current-boyfriend was.
Those two deserve each other,
I thought, slumping onto the sofa.

But the words didn’t sit well with me, even when I tried to drown them out with a billion-dollar action movie. I didn’t really think Diana was a jerk, not after talking to her face-to-face. Before last weekend, I couldn’t remember a time when we had spoken, just her and me, but I had already assumed I knew everything about her.

I had to admit, I had been kind of a jerk lately. And by
kind of
, I meant,
colossally and to epic proportions
.

I had been a jerk for losing my ring, a jerk for lying about it, and a jerk for spilling Natalie’s secret to Sean just to prove some kind of stupid point. I could admit all that--but I wasn’t a jerk for kissing Sean.

Oh, no. I had just been under some kind of lip-induced stupidity. At least I had snapped out of it in time. If I had still been in that dumb kiss-daze when Sean had asked to have Diana back, he would have hurt my feelings a million times more.

Not that my feelings
had
been hurt last Saturday. Of course they hadn’t. It was just annoying how rude he had been, that was all.

I shook my head and focused on the busty, gun-toting redhead cavorting on the screen, who seemed happy to do complicated gymnastics even in a low-cut tank top. As she wasted yet another bad guy, I sighed. Agent What’s-Her-Face was making the best of a bad situation--maybe I should do the same.

With my ring locked up, I would have to go back to school like normal, but maybe I could convince Mom and Dad to let me study at home. Teaching myself couldn’t be that hard. Half the time in class, I daydreamed about being somewhere else, but I still made pretty good grades. If Mom and Dad said yes, then I could stay here all day, eating bad food and watching even worse movies (after homework, of course).

“Sounds great,” I said, though the words came out with a sarcastic twinge.

Ugh. I couldn’t even manage not to annoy
myself
.

#

A few hours passed, then Mom and Dad came home. They didn’t bat an eye at me sitting on the couch in the middle of the day, like a bum.

Mom asked, “Have you eaten lunch?” And when I nodded, she sent me upstairs to get dressed.

We were going to the bank.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Mom and Dad didn’t even let me carry my ring on the drive over, like I was going to lose it in the seat cushions or something.

The bank appeared in front of us sooner than I expected. It felt like only a minute had passed since I slid into the backseat, but there it was, looming in front of me. We parked, and my parents stepped out of the car while I stayed hunched in the backseat.

“Not going,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

I didn’t care how immature I looked. And I didn’t care that a cute, young guy leaving the bank was trying pretty hard not to stare at the two frowning parents and their bratty, teenage daughter. The sooner Mom and Dad shoved my ring into a box, the faster I could get home. The promise of more solitude was enough to keep me from begging to have my ring back.

Outside, Mom and Dad gave one another a long look. Mom shook her head and said something that I couldn’t hear through cracked window. Dad shrugged and shook his head.

For a second, Mom locked eyes with me. She said something else--I couldn’t tell what, and before I could ask her to speak louder, she had already stepped inside the bank.

Dad watched her go, craning his neck to catch her as she stepped through the revolving glass doors and disappeared into the depths of the lobby. He settled back into the driver’s seat, staring straight ahead.

For a minute, the car was way too quiet, but then he said, “It’s really difficult for her to do this, Layla.”

I went rigid. “Difficult for
her
? I’m the one who--”

“Just wait a minute. She knows it bothers you, all right? I’ve wanted to put your ring in the bank for years, but your mother always said no.”

“She... What?” That didn’t make sense.

From the rearview mirror, I caught Dad’s deepening frown. “You think either of us
wants
to see you in pain?”

“No, but...” I shook my head, too confused to say anything else.

And then, to my surprise, Dad chuckled. “Do you remember when you were going to go to kindergarten, and we actually tried to
reason
with you about locking up your ring?”

My mouth twitched into a smile. “Of course I remember. It was the last argument I ever won.”

“Now, I wanted to just
tell
you to do it,” continued Dad, “but your mother knew you wouldn’t stand for it, so she told me, ‘You’re the lawyer, you go negotiate with her.’”

We both chuckled.

“She’s always looking out for you,” he said. “You know that, right?”

My stomach sank. “Of course I know that. Come on, Dad, I already feel guilty enough, okay?”

“This isn’t a guilt trip, kiddo. I know you’re going through a hard time. Just try to remember it isn’t easy for your mother, either. She’d do anything not to put you through this, and so would I.”

“Yeah, but...” I began, wanting to tell him how unfair it was that my ring had been taken from me again, especially after losing Natalie and getting screwed over by Sean.

But, suddenly, it didn’t seem so important. Instead, I wondered how Mom and Dad had felt the first time we did this, before kindergarten. They were only trying to keep me safe, but I had screamed until my face turned blue and probably made them feel like the worst parents in the world.

From then on, Mom and Dad must always have felt some anxiety for me, knowing that I could potentially screw up my life forever just by misplacing my ring. I could forgive myself for the first tantrum--I had only been five-years-old, so maybe that should have been expected--but at fifteen, I had no excuse for behaving like an angry toddler, which was how I had been acting all morning.

I stared ahead at the bank’s entrance, knowing Mom wouldn’t come out for another few minutes, but still feeling impatient. I wanted to show her I was okay and definitely
not
screaming my lungs out this time.

Before I could chicken out, I let the words tumble out of me. “Dad, I’m really, really sorry.”

He turned, his brow knitted with surprise. “What did you say, kiddo?”

“I should have thought more about how you guys felt,” I continued. “It’s not so bad without my ring. I feel okay.”

I wasn’t lying; I really did feel fine. I would have preferred to have ring in my pocket right now, ready for me to hook a nervous finger around the band, but I didn’t
need
to have it there. A few weeks apart had weaned me from it, I realized.

My father nodded, the shock still etched on his face. “Thank you, Layla. That’s really mature of you.”

I smiled. It had been a while since anyone had said
that
to me, but then again, I hadn’t done much to deserve over the past few weeks. “Thanks, Popsicle,” I said. “Now let’s talk about homeschool. I Googled some stuff last night, and it’s not really that expensive if--”

“Whoa, hold on a minute.” He cocked his head. “What did you just say?”

“I said I Googled--”

“No, no, no. You just told me you wanted to talk about homeschooling.” He should have been relieved, but Dad just looked at me like I was trying to set my own hair on fire. “Sweetheart, you can go back to regular school on Monday. We’re not forcing you to stay in the house.”

“Oh, no, don’t worry about that,” I said. “You guys wouldn’t be forcing me. I think it’s the best thing.”

By now, Dad should have agreed that homeschool
was
the best option and then maybe congratulated me for being so responsible--but he didn’t. Instead, his eyes narrowed with thought. “I see,” was all he finally said.

I sat up, my skin prickling. “You see what?”

Dad only frowned, letting the silence bloat between us.

“You know, it’s not like I’m running away from everything,” I said. “Is it so weird for a human being to want some time alone? I’m actually super-independent, you know.”

“Layla--” Dad started.

“And lots of people who were homeschooled are doing fine today!” I broke in. I wasn’t sure why my voice had gotten louder, but it seemed to emphasize my point, so I ran with it. “Like Britney Spears. Her parents pulled her out of school at my age and look how she turned out.”

Dad uttered a cough that sounded suspiciously like a smashed-down laugh. “That’s not exactly the best evidence.”

“Well, I’m kind of grasping at straws here, Dad. I mean, don’t you
want
me to be in homeschool? Haven’t you been worrying about how risky regular school is since, like, forever?”

“All right, you’ve got me there. Homeschool might technically be safer for you, yes.”

Triumph jolted through me. “Exactly! So what’s with all this talk about me running away from things?”

“Layla,” Dad said slowly, “
you’re
the one who said that, not me.”

“What? No, that’s not right.”

Dad shook his head. “The only person in this car who thinks you’re running away is you.”

I shook my head, wanting to argue, but unable to find the words. Dad was right; we both knew it. I had leapt up to defend myself against things that I hadn’t even been accused of yet, which meant...

Ew. I hadn’t been trying to convince my dad, I had been trying to convince
myself
.

But who could blame me for wanting to run away? I had made a royal mess of my life, starting with that stupid wish in Public Speaking class. Turns out getting puked on isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you.

“So,” Dad said, “what’s going on? Is this because of your fight with Natalie?”

“Kind of.” I hesitated, not sure if I wanted to discuss my love life (pathetic though it was) with my father.

Dad watched my face for a minute before nodding. “And I’m guessing it has something to do with that Fabry kid, right?”

“Actually, yeah. How’d you know?”

“Father’s intuition,” he said. “I get bouts of it, sometimes.”

I let out the ghost of a chuckle and stared out the bank’s revolving doors. Inside, my ring was being put into a locked box, safe as could be. I knew it was for the best, but it would have been nice to have my ring in my hands as I admitted, “Everything’s screwed up, Dad. I just don’t want to think about it anymore.”

He nodded. “We can put you in homeschooling, if you like.”

I looked up at him, wide-eyed. “Really?”

“Sure. We can afford it and I think you’re focused enough to learn on your own.”

“Dad, that’s awesome. Seriously! I promise I’ll be super responsible and...” Something about the gravity that lingered on his face stopped the words from bouncing out of my mouth.

“Is that what you want, though?” he asked.

“Of course it is.”

“Really? Or is it just easier than facing things with Natalie and Sean?”

I opened my mouth to argue, but again, no words came out. I sank back against the cushy seat, the breath whispering out of my lungs.

Of course
I wanted to be homeschooled--why wouldn’t I? Even with my ring in the safe deposit box, it would always be safer to avoid regular people. Sean was living proof of that.

Safer,
I thought, clinging to the word for as long as I could.

Which was probably ten seconds, max, because
safer
didn’t always mean
better
or
braver
or
happier
. My heart thumped as I realized what I had to do. My brain felt ready to explode.

A second later, Mom stepped out the bank. As she settled into the front passenger seat, she looked between Dad and me, her forehead crinkling. “Layla?” she asked. “Are you feeling okay?”

I nodded, taking a deep breath. “Mom, I’m really sorry,” I said, forcing my voice above a squeak. “I should have put the ring away a long time ago, but I was selfish. I don’t want you guys to worry about me all the time, not anymore.”

All at once, a glowy look flooded Mom’s face, almost like I had rigged a spotlight to the ceiling. Her eyes looked shinier than usual as she said, “Honey, that’s so...”

“Responsible?” I shrugged. “Yeah, I thought I’d give it a try.”

“Really. I can’t believe how sweet you’re being.”

“Mom!”

“Oh!” she said. “Well, you know what I mean.”

I couldn’t help but nod because, yeah, I kind of did. After a pause, I said the next words in a rush so I wouldn’t back out in the middle:

“Can you guys drop me off at Natalie’s house? She and I have some stuff we need to talk about.”