Wishful Thinking (14 page)

“Why do I have to clean it up?” Malik pouted. “I thought I explained about the cockroach. You can't blame me for that.”

“Yes, well, strangely enough, I can't exactly tell my mom that the ghost djinn who has been using my computer all day thought that he saw an imaginary cockroach, so you're just going to have to suck it up and. . . 
oh, that's it!
”

“What?” Malik yelped in alarm as he disappeared from sight and instead called out with a disembodied voice. “Where's the cockroach? Have you killed it already?”

“Malik, there's no cockroach,” Sophie snapped as Malik reappeared, carefully perched up on the computer chair so he could inspect the floor. “But I just had the best idea. I mean, my mom had no idea that you made all that mess. So if you fooled her once, you can do it again.”

“You want me to pretend that I can see more cockroaches?” Malik, who had finally convinced himself that the room was bug free, now proceeded to wrinkle his nose. “Because that doesn't make any sense.”

“No.” Sophie gave an impatient shake of her head. “I want you to scare off prospective buyers by letting them think the place is haunted.”

“And how will I do that?' Malik finally sat down on the computer chair and looked at her with interest, one leg crossed over the other.

“What do you mean how will you do that? You're a ghost, so all you need to do is some freaky ghost stuff. It will be easy.”

“Hmmmm. You know that sounds really undignified to me, so I think I'm going to have to pass.” Malik pulled a face as he smoothed down his too-small-for-him T-shirt.

“What?” Sophie blinked at him. “I've been turned orange, and now I keep granting random wishes—not to mention getting the crippling stomachaches—and all you're worried about is your stupid dignity? Look, we need to do whatever it takes to convince my mom not to sell the house. At least not until I've got my powers back and can figure out a way to conjure us up loads of money. So are you with me?”

“Well, I'm still not—” he started to say, but after obviously catching Sophie's annoyed glare he held up his hands. “Okay, fine. I'm in. I'll help you convince your mom not to sell the house. But let me tell you that when it comes to you filling out my Trainer Evaluation form for the Djinn Council, you had better give me lots of gold stars.”

“Malik, I promise. You can have as many gold stars as you like, just as long as you help me out here.”

“Fine,” he muttered as he pulled another bag of Cheetos out of his pocket and muttered something about Ryan Seacrest not having to do anything dumb like this. But Sophie ignored him as she started to scoop up the mounds of clothing on the floor and shove them into the closet. Right now Ryan Seacrest was the least of her problems.

S
O AREN'T YOU EVEN A LITTLE BIT FREAKED OUT?” Harvey asked the next morning as their homeroom teacher called the roll.

“Of course. I mean, who wants to move to Montana?” Sophie whispered back. “It's the worst thing ever. But hopefully Malik does his job.”

“Do you really think he will?” Kara asked from the other side as she pulled out her sketch pad and started to draw a picture of Malik in a rapid-fire motion, as was her habit when she was worried. “It's just, I get the feeling that he's a bit”—she paused for a moment as if searching for the polite way of calling him a lunatic—“a bit. . . unstable,” she finally finished with an inadequate wave of her hand.

“And that's just his good points,” Sophie agreed. “But the way I figure it, he's also an accident waiting to happen, so hopefully he will scare the stuffing out of the people even if he doesn't mean to.”

“Actually.” Harvey coughed. “I wasn't talking about Malik, I was talking about you and this RWD. I mean, aren't you freaking out that your magic has gone all wonky?”

“Oh, right.” Sophie nodded. To be honest, she had spent most of last night freaking out about it, before reminding herself that positive thinkers didn't freak out, they positive thought it out. After that she had been a lot better (okay, so there had been one more minor tantrum, but she had dealt with it, all right). “The thing is,” she explained, “not only did I stand on my head for two hours last night, but I also totally nailed my chanting, cleansed my djinn ring, and most importantly I came up with a foolproof plan to avoid hearing anyone say ‘I wish.' So as long as Malik comes through with all the poltergeist stuff, I should be fine to hold out until this is all over.”

“You did? What is it?” Harvey demanded, “because I've been searching all night for some kind of solution, and I haven't found anything.”

“Neanderthal Joe.” Sophie grinned as she held up her iPod for a moment and then tapped at the small earphones that were hidden away behind her blond hair.

“But you're not supposed to listen to music during class.” Kara looked worried.

“Yes, and I'm not supposed to randomly grant wishes to anyone who asks for them,” Sophie retorted. “Besides, it's such a perfect plan.”

But before she could turn on her iPod, Mr. Collins, her homeroom teacher, came up and pointed to it. “You know you can't bring those things to school. Now hand it over. You can collect it from me this afternoon. Class, I know it's Friday, and you're all excited about the weekend, but I really wish you would all zip your lips together for two minutes and listen,” he said, and, as Sophie doubled over in pain, she realized that perhaps she hadn't really thought this through properly.

*  *  *  *  *

“Okay, so that wasn't so bad,” Kara said in a bright voice at the end of the day.

“What?” Sophie widened her eyes as the bus rumbled to a halt and they scrambled off. “Not only did I have my iPod confiscated, but our entire homeroom almost ended up in
The Guinness Book of Middle School Freaks
. How's that not so bad?”

“Yes, but it only lasted for two minutes,” Kara reasoned. “And when you think about it, it was a lot easier to listen when no one was talking, so really you were doing us all a favor.”

“And the Britney Spears CD that I made randomly appear just because someone behind me in the cafeteria wished for it? How was that a favor?”

“I'm sure that Cheryl Robson was more than happy with it.” Harvey chimed in before sighing. “But yeah, I see your point. It's a bit of a land mine. Is there anything you can do to speed up the process of cleansing the ring?”

Sophie shook her head. “I don't think so. I can't actually read Malik's book because it's in some crazy language, but I made him check it thoroughly. According to him, until Monday night, it's Sophie the Random Wish Disorder Djinn at your service.”

“It's not all bad,” Kara reminded her. “At least it's the weekend now, so you've got a couple of days to come up with a new plan.”

“Actually,” Sophie said as they came to a halt at the bottom of her path, “I've already figured it out. I mean, the whole problem with this RWD thing is that if anyone says ‘I wish,' I grant it.”

“Well, yeah.” Harvey blinked. “But that's not exactly fresh news.”

“I know, but since I can't use my iPod at school anymore, then the next best way to avoid hearing what people say is to just not be around them. I'll be fine over the weekend, but there's no way I will be able to go to school on Monday. I'm just going to have to convince my mom to let me stay home until my djinn ring is cleansed and everything is back to normal.”

“Except aren't you forgetting that your mom isn't a fan of sick days?” Harvey reminded her.

“I know,” Sophie agreed. “But yesterday she was so worried about me that she was almost begging me to stay at home. So I'm sure if I put the groundwork in today and then act sick all weekend, by Monday I won't have anything to worry about.”

“Well, I think it sounds like a perfect plan,' Kara said in a kindhearted voice before insisting that Sophie IM them as soon as she had spoken to her mom. Once Sophie promised (three times), she waved good-bye to her friends and hurried inside while trying to get herself into sick mode. Which, considering how awful her day had been, wasn't actually that hard to do.

“Hey,” she said in a feeble voice as she let out a loud cough and closed the door behind her. There was no sign of Meg under the couch today, but her mom was over in the bay window, with her laptop perched on her knee. The minute Sophie walked in, her mom shut down the computer and looked up.

“Hey to you, too. How was school?”

“Actually, not so great.” Sophie coughed some more and clutched at her stomach. Would a limp be overdoing it? “I think I might have to stay home from school on Monday.” And possibly Tuesday, just to catch up on all the homework she kept forgetting to do.

“Really?” Her mom folded her arms as a frown marched across her face. “And does this have anything to do with the fact that Mr. Collins called me this afternoon and said he was concerned with some of your behavior over the last couple of days?”

“What?” Sophie blinked, since she had been expecting more on the sympathy and less on the frowning. “But that's crazy. All I did was have an iPod in homeroom.”
And zipped everyone's lips together, but that was beside the point since no one seemed really to realize what had happened.

“Apparently, there have been a few incidents with your Spanish teacher as well. Mr. Collins thought it would be better to call me right away so we can nip it in the bud.”

“Nip what in the bud? I'm fine,” Sophie protested before remembering that she was actually sick. She coughed. “Well, I'm not fine, fine. I'm sick, but apart from being sick I'm fine. If you know what I mean.”

“MG was worried you might say that.”

Sophie blinked some more. “Who is MG?”

“She's one of my new online friends. I had been going onto the ‘Single Moms Band Together' Web site, but after you and Meg complained about the brownie recipe, I thought I'd give Facebook a try. It's lots of fun; plus, everyone there is so supportive.”

“You have a Facebook account?” Sophie was momentarily distracted as she made her way over to where her mom was sitting and peered over her shoulder to see a photograph of a woman about her mom's age with dark hair and an overly bright smile. It was obviously MG.

“Of course. You didn't think it was just for kids, did you?”

“I don't want to think about it, period.” She shuddered. Seriously, she had been through a lot of weird stuff in the last five days, but this definitely had to take the cake. However, she finally remembered that right now she didn't have time in her schedule to get freaked out over her mom talking to strange women called MG on Facebook, she had too many other problems. First up, ensuring that she didn't go to school on Monday. Second, making sure that her mom didn't sell the house until after Sophie got her powers back so she could zap them up some more money.

“So anyway,” her mom continued, oblivious to Sophie's problems, “MG explained that in order for you to try to make me feel guilty about my decision to sell the house, you might act out at school and at home.”

“What? That's crazy,” Sophie protested. And completely untrue, since the real reason she was pretending to be sick was because she didn't want anyone to know that she was a djinn who was stuck with a temporary case of RWD. So take that, MG!
And what sort of name was MG anyway?

“Is it?” Her mom lifted an eyebrow. “Because even if Mr. Collins hadn't called me, I've still noticed that you've been acting strangely at home. You've been secretive and edgy, not to mention the mess you made in your room yesterday. Do you have an explanation for that?”

Yes, and a very good one as well.
Unfortunately, it wasn't one that she could tell her mom about. Instead, she just shook her head. “Honestly, there's nothing going on. You've got it all wrong.”

“Really?” Her mom didn't look convinced. “So how come you haven't asked me how the showing went today then? I've just been speaking to the real estate agent.”

“So what happened? H-how did it go?” Sophie gulped as she realized she had been so busy trying to avoid granting wishes for people that she had completely forgotten about the showing. She shot her mom a cautious glance.

“It went very well. Apparently, the people thought it seemed like a perfect family home.”

“Oh.” Sophie's face dropped.

“You look disappointed. What were you expecting them to say? That there was a weird smell in the basement and they got a creepy feeling about the place?”

Yes.
Sophie shrugged.
That was exactly the sort of thing she had been hoping for.

“Look, Sophie, I know you like to believe in positive thinking and signs, so don't you think this might mean that we're actually meant to sell the place?” her mom continued in a soft voice as she reached over and gave Sophie's hand a gentle squeeze.

“Of course it doesn't mean that.” Sophie gave an adamant shake of her head.
As far as she could tell, the only thing it meant was that Malik was the worst djinn ghost imaginable. After all, how hard was it to haunt one measly house?

“Well, I'm afraid it must, because the people are coming back on Monday for another look,” her mom continued. “And I really wish that—”

Oh, no. Sophie stared at her mom in horror as she realized that she was about to wish for something, and that no good could come from it. She immediately clamped her hands over her ears and started to sing, “La la la la la la,” to help drone out the words.

“And what was that for?” Her mom was starting to look a bit little annoyed now, but at least it had distracted her from finishing her sentence.

“Sorry.” Sophie gulped while metaphorically wiping her brow in relief. “Er, it's Neanderthal Joe's new song. I guess it just got stuck in my head.”

“Really?” Her mom didn't look convinced, but thankfully at that moment Meg came running into the room and demanded to know if she and Mr. Jaws could watch a shark documentary on cable. Sophie took the opportunity to hurry upstairs.

She just needed to have some peace and quiet in her room so that she could figure out a new plan, since it was fair to say that her last plan was officially screwed up. Instead, she walked into her room and saw Malik sitting at her computer wearing a
PAULA WILL ALWAYS BE MY IDOL
T-shirt and eating some of Meg's Halloween candy from last year.

“Hey, dog, what's up?” Malik demanded as he made a Randy Jackson–style hand move. Sophie didn't feel she could comment. On any of it.

“I'll tell you what's up,” she said instead. “My mom just told me that the people are coming back to look at the house again on Monday.”

“She said that?” Malik looked surprised.

“Yes, and you know what else she said?”

“What?” Malik looked at her with interest.

“Nothing,” Sophie retorted. “As in, there was no mention of anything unusual about the house during their showing. In fact, it almost sounded like it was ghost free.”

“Or, perhaps they were just too dense to notice my subtle approach?” he pondered as Sophie glanced at his harem pants. These were pink with some bright green trim, and they clashed violently with his Paula Abdul T-shirt. Sophie had problems believing that Malik had ever been subtle in his life.

“Or too busy watching
American Idol
on YouTube,” she said instead as she reluctantly grabbed a pillow from the bed and went over to the wall. “Please, Malik, you have to promise me that you'll do something majorly big to scare them off on Monday.”