The Art of Wishing by Lindsay Ribar Read Free Book Online Page A

believe.
    I bit my lip, more torn than I could say. Make three wishes now, when my brain was full to bursting and I could barely think, or lose my chance to make wishes at all.
    “Vicky had your ring before me, didn’t she,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but he nodded anyway. “So why not just let her wishes be the last ones you grant?”
    “Why not indeed,” he said, an edge of bitterness in his tone. “Well, she made a wish that . . . let’s just say she wasn’t happy with the result. But instead of letting me fix it, she abandoned my ring. That’s when you found it,” he added hopefully.
    So she’d made crappy wishes, and he wanted me to do better. No pressure at all. I shook my head. “Listen, Oliver, thanks for all this—the mind-reading, the teleporting-me-to-a-café thing, the wishes—but I can’t do it. Not this fast. If you want me to keep the ring and make wishes, then I will, but I have to make a plan first.”
    “A plan?” he said, raising his eyebrows.
    “Yes,” I said firmly. “I can’t just pull wishes out of thin air, you know? I need time to think about them.”
    “How much time?”
    “I don’t know! Just . . . time. A day or two, maybe.” I paused, taking in his troubled expression. “And you obviously don’t have a day or two. Look, you said you can leave if I give the ring back to you. So here’s me, giving it back.”
    I pushed the ring a few inches toward him. He looked at it with suspicion, but didn’t move to take it back.
    “Go ahead,” I said. “It’s your choice.”
    He was silent for a moment as he studied me with a gaze so keen that I found myself fighting the urge to sink down in my seat. “A day or two won’t kill me,” he mused thoughtfully. Then he smiled—a small, hopeful smile that spread slowly until it reached his eyes and made them shine.
    “I think you should keep it.”

Chapter FOUR
    “ I f you had three wishes,” I asked Naomi, after we’d finished our in-class assignments in French the next day, “what would you wish for?”
    “Random,” she said, resting her chin in her palm. “Probably the usual stuff. Winning the lottery, finding true love, world peace. What about you?”
    “I don’t really know,” I replied, which wasn’t exactly the truth. I had some ideas, most vague, one very specific. But world peace—I hadn’t even thought of that. Should I wish for world peace? That’s what any decent person would do, right?
    “Then why’d you ask?”
    Because if I’m going to be the sort of person who believes in magic, I want to do it right
. But obviously I didn’t say that. What I did say was, “Just curious. I watched
Aladdin
last night.”
    That part was true. I’d dug out my DVD last night after dinner, which had thrilled Mom. She and Dad had raised me on a steady diet of all the Disney classics, and she was quick to turn my hour and a half of genie research into a full-blown popcorn-fueled family night, just like when I was a kid. Not that any of the research paid off, of course. Aside from a few interesting wish ideas—I mean, who wouldn’t want their own pet monkey?—all I’d ended up with was a weird dream about Oliver Parish piling baklava on top of me, then vanishing in a puff of blue smoke.
    She grinned. “Aw, I love that movie. Hey, remember my Princess Jasmine costume? Second grade, right? I won the costume contest that year.”
    The memory of Naomi in a blue tiara and poofy pants made me laugh. Which, of course, brought Mlle Bernstein slinking suspiciously over to our desks. She gave extra credit assignments to Naomi and me, mostly to keep us quiet until everyone else finished. That was fine by me. I was counting down the minutes until the bell rang and I could find Oliver in the hallway, and the extra work kept me from watching the clock.
    World peace. Huh.
    When French finally ended, I darted into the hallway—and there was Oliver, waiting for me just outside the door, wearing a backpack and the same