As You Wish Read online

  As You Wish

  Jackson Pearce

  For Papa

  Contents

  One

  Viola Cohen

  Two

  A Jinn

  Three

  Viola

  Four

  Jinn

  Five

  Viola

  Six

  Jinn

  Seven

  Viola

  Eight

  Jinn

  Nine

  Viola

  Ten

  Jinn

  Eleven

  Viola

  Twelve

  Jinn

  Thirteen

  Viola

  Fourteen

  Jinn

  Fifteen

  Viola

  Sixteen

  Jinn

  Seventeen

  Viola

  Eighteen

  Jinn

  Nineteen

  Viola

  Twenty

  Jinn

  Twenty-One

  Viola

  Twenty-Two

  Jinn

  Twenty-Three

  Viola

  Twenty-Four

  Jinn

  Twenty-Five

  Viola

  Twenty-Six

  Jinn

  Twenty-Seven

  Viola

  Twenty-Eight

  Jinn

  Twenty-Nine

  Viola

  Thirty

  Jinn

  Thirty-One

  Viola

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  one

  Viola Cohen

  ALL I’VE LEARNED in today’s Shakespeare class is: Sometimes you have to fall in love with the wrong person just so you can find the right person. A more useful lesson would’ve been: Sometimes the right person doesn’t love you back. Or sometimes the right person is gay. Or sometimes you just aren’t the right person.

  Thanks for nothing, Shakespeare.

  I pretend to read along—the key is to glance up at the teacher occasionally so you appear interested—but really, I’m watching a guy to my right. He slouches back in his chair, slack-jawed, wearing a black coat covered in safety pins. The tips of his hair are magenta, and he has a row of piercings in each ear. He’s one of the Punk Guys, though he sometimes drifts into the Wannabe Skater crowd.

  I squeeze my eyes a little so his face blurs—it’s easier to imagine how I’d paint him if I let his features run together. My hands twitch, longing to hold a paintbrush instead of a pencil. A fan brush, probably, for the magenta spikes. I’d add a few shades of gray underneath his eyes to try to capture that sleepy, sullen look that all the Punk Guys seem to have.

  Everyone in this classroom belongs to one clique or another—a few Pretty Girls, a few Druggies, a Smart Kid or two, a large handful of Emo Girls wearing plastic bracelets. I’ve studied them all semester, hoping to understand their looks, movements, voices—and then trying to paint it all later. Like if I can just get it down on canvas, I’ll have the key to the social mystery of what makes them belong to something bigger than themselves. If I can figure out what it is that makes them belong, I can figure out why it is that I don’t—why I’ve become an Invisible Girl. The kind of girl who has a handful of friends and a lot of acquaintances, but who doesn’t really belong to anything. I guess being invisible is better than faking your way into belonging, but it doesn’t feel any less lonely.

  “So, basically, the moral of this play is, Wait until you see the person naked before you fall in love, just in case they have the wrong…equipment?” a voice says from across the room. The formerly drowsy class—including me—turns to pay close attention to the speaker.

  “There’s a little more to it, Aaron, but…yes,” Miss Collins says, putting two fingers to her right temple. She’s a young teacher, and she always looks scared when she has to talk about sex.

  Aaron shrugs. “I guess I’ll start asking girls to undress sooner.”

  We all laugh under our breath, and the teacher flushes. Aaron smiles—the kind of smile you usually see on Disney princes. He’s the only one I know who could deliver that line and not get administrative detention for it. He’s also the only one I know who somehow manages to belong to everything—his friends are the leaders of all the other cliques, the beautiful, high-school-famous people who seem to gravitate toward one another—the Royal Family. I try to imagine the way Aaron’s broad shoulders might look in watercolor. I wish I could figure out his secret—how to belong like he does. I wish I didn’t feel invisible.

  I sigh, wondering if I’ll be doomed to walk home in the rain like I did yesterday, and turn to my left to glance out the window.

  Dark brown eyes barrel into mine.

  I suppress a gasp—there’s supposed to be an open desk next to me. Where the hell did he come from?

  The eyes belong to a golden-skinned boy who’s sitting motionless like a cat preparing to attack a mouse. He’s staring at me so intensely that I can actually feel his gaze boring into my skin. His eyes are deep like an animal’s eyes—soft like a deer’s, sort of, but also intense like a wolf’s. Though I badly want to look away, I can’t, as if there are ropes linking me to him. The stranger’s skin sparkles even under the school’s bland fluorescent lights as the sound of Miss Collins’s voice drones on even more than usual. The world blurs at the edges of my vision.

  Who is he? I blink furiously to try and make the rest of the world come back into focus, but all I can see are his deep brown, watery irises. I’m drowning in them. This isn’t right. I shiver and force my eyes away from his. It hurts, as if he’d had his fingers wrapped around my gaze.

  I try to fixate on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom, but I can still feel his eyes on me. Chill bumps rise on my arms. I want to ignore him, yet another part of me desperately wants to look at him again. He had been looking at me, studying me, like I study everyone else. Why? I rub my lips together and carefully look back toward him, using a few strands of my hair as a shield between us.

  But he’s gone.

  Not just from his desk—from the classroom. No one has touched the room’s only door, but Strangerguy is nowhere to be seen.

  I’ve finally lost my mind, haven’t I?

  I jump when the bell rings. Class is over. I crumple my sparse notes and shove them into my bag, then head for the door. The rest of the class is sprinting to the hallway; the faster you get into the hall, the longer you can be social before your next class. I linger a moment longer, thinking maybe Strangerguy is just hiding behind a desk or something. But no—he’s definitely gone. I exhale and duck through the doorway, hurrying through the baby-blue hallways to the commons. My best friend, Lawrence, is waiting for me, rerolling the sleeves of his designer shirt.

  “Hey.” Lawrence smiles as I arrive. He pauses and studies me carefully. “Something wrong?”

  Lawrence can read me well—he’s always been able to, even after we stopped dating seven months ago. Seven months and four days, to be exact. The day I became an Invisible Girl. Up until then, I thought I belonged to something amazing, something different—we were in love, after all. We were special. Without him, though…well, I don’t really belong anywhere. Just another random Invisible Girl in a school hall, in the art room—even at home.

  I shake my head at him. “I’m fine. Just tired.” He gives me the “I don’t believe you” look, and we head toward our next class. Every few seconds, someone waves emphatically at Lawrence—revealing his sexuality has elevated Lawrence’s status from just a notch or two above mine to that of a full-fledged member of the school’s Royal Family. Every girl wants a gay friend, I guess. Now he gets invited to parties, socials, TV nights�
��the sort of thing I end up hearing secondhand gossip about for weeks afterward. I ignore the waving and glance around the commons for someone new to study. Someone different. Someone I can analyze, pick apart in watercolors…

  My stomach lurches.

  It’s him again—Strangerguy—leaning against the trophy case with an annoyed expression and an intense stare. With his golden-bright skin, he stands out like some sort of Persian prince in the crowd of mostly black and white faces. His glare is still unsettling, despite being strangely alluring. I grab Lawrence’s shirt.

  “Who is he?” I ask Lawrence through my teeth. Strangerguy runs a hand through his hair—his curls are almost ringlets, but not quite, and they hang around each finger like some kind of night-colored jewelry.

  Lawrence follows my gaze, wrinkling his eyebrows. “What? Who?”

  “Him! The guy over there by the trophy case.” I look back in Strangerguy’s direction, but he’s vanished again. Not a trace of golden skin against the pale blue walls, no brown eyes to drown in.

  My mind swirls. I think he—no, I know he was there. Lawrence gives me a worried look as we enter the science hall.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?” Lawrence asks as we reach the door of my classroom.

  “I guess so.”

  “Well, call me tonight, okay?”

  “Of course,” I answer—who else would I call? I hug Lawrence good-bye and turn into my biology classroom, which I’m relieved to see is totally void of Strangerguy.

  But his absence doesn’t last. By the end of the day, he’s been around at every one of my class changes, in the back of two classrooms, and in the cafeteria at lunch. His stare gets ever more intense, and the allure has been entirely replaced with fear. And what’s more, no one—no one—seems to see him other than me. People breeze by him in hallways. Teachers don’t even glance his way during roll call.

  It’s like he’s invisible. Actually, not “like”—I think he is invisible. Not the way I am; I mean really, really invisible.

  Invisible. Like a movie special effect or a magic trick, only real—right in front of me, following me, after me. I try to convince myself I’m being irrational, but I can’t think of any other explanation as to why the rest of the world seems oblivious to his existence—other than the notion that he’s actually, genuinely invisible.

  I’ve got to get out of here.

  When the final bell rings, I dash through the halls and out the back door instead of to the art room. Seniors wheel out of the parking lot in bright cars with preordered graduation tassels on the rearview mirror, flicking ashes from their cigarettes and shouting to one another through open windows. I live only a half mile from the school, so I’m stuck walking home with the freshmen. I trudge past them all, head down, partially afraid that if I look up, I’ll be accosted again by Strangerguy’s stare.

  My house is boring—two stories, blue shutters, piles of laundry throughout, and a fence out back that once housed a loyal golden retriever. And empty, since both my parents work now. I collapse onto the plaid living room couch. Lawrence is right. Too much time in the art room. I fold an afghan around my body and squeeze my eyes shut. But there’s no way I can sleep—I keep picturing Strangerguy materializing beside me, all haunting eyes and silence.

  I grab for the television remote and get sucked into some show—100 Greatest Kid Stars—which, though way more pop culture than I normally like, leaves me feeling pleasantly numb until my parents get home from work several hours later.

  “Were you sleeping? Are you sick?” my mom says when she walks in the door and catches sight of the pillow lines on my face. I rise and meet her in the kitchen.

  “Just stressed.” Keep things short and simple, and they ask fewer questions. And, to be honest, I’d rather not try to explain Strangerguy to anyone, especially my parents.

  My mom goes to the counter and begins opening boxes of Chinese takeout. “Stressed? Honey, you’re sixteen. How much stress could you have? Pass me a fork—I hate chopsticks.” She opens a can of Diet Coke and takes a long swig, then sighs. She looks at me and frowns as if remembering something. “Wait, that’s not what I meant. I meant to say: Would you like to communicate about what’s stressing you out?”

  “Um…no. Never mind,” I say quickly, grabbing a box of egg rolls. In between work memos and romance novels, my mom has been skimming a book called Reconnecting With Your Teenager. I’m pretty sure that burning the book would help us “reconnect” more than reading it will, but self-help books are my mom’s answer to everything, especially the fact that I don’t want to talk to her about Lawrence. My mom shrugs and thumbs through the newspaper as I grab a few napkins, then retreat to my bedroom to eat.

  When I was seven, I loved the color pink, and I begged my mom to paint my room this migraine-inducing color called Flamingo Dream, back before she returned to working full time. I wish she hadn’t listened to me, because nine years later it’s still Flamingo Dream. I yank my blinds shut; it sedates the pink a little. I fall onto my bed, which is covered in layers of old patchwork quilts and the stuffed animals I can’t convince myself to put in the closet just yet.

  I turn my head to look at the left side of the mattress. It’s the side Lawrence slept on when I snuck him into my bedroom late at night. It was nice, falling asleep to the sound of his breathing. People assume Invisible Girls are the types who get straight As and are on the debate team or something. But we aren’t. We want to be kissed and half undressed, before falling asleep next to someone we love, just like everyone else.

  It’s over. Let it go. My hand wanders to the empty side of the bed, playing with loose threads on the quilt.

  “Look, can we stop this already?” A male voice blasts through the silence.

  I scream so loud that my voice strains and cracks. My feet thrash as I fight with the quilts to find the floor, hair flying in front of my eyes and sticking to my face. I force my feet over the side of the bed, despite the fact that quilts are still snarled around my calves. Just as I find the floor, the pile of Seventeen magazines that I’m standing on slides; in a shredding of magazine paper, I yelp and collapse onto the carpet. Hard.

  “Um, right,” the voice says, irritated, but my heart is thudding against my chest so hard that I’m not embarrassed. I frantically sort my legs out and peer over the bed, panting heavily.

  He’s leaning against my dresser in jeans and a beat-up black T-shirt, with both eyebrows raised. He has high cheekbones and a square jaw, and he’s taller than I thought. The light glints off his animal-like eyes as his gaze locks on me in that expectant way I’m starting to recognize.

  Strangerguy.

  I can’t yell for help because I’ve lost my voice in fear.

  He folds his arms.

  “Do you have a wish this time, or not?”

  two

  A Jinn

  SHE SCREAMS.

  Of course. Mortal females tend to do that. It just had to be a female again. There’s nothing about this particular female that shouts “looking to summon a jinn,” but then, there rarely is—my masters tend to be random. Wannabe pagan teenagers, young mothers, liver-spotted old men. They’ve all got wishes. This one in particular has straight, paintbrushlike hair. She’s not fat, but I’ve granted “I wish I were thinner” wishes for females her size before.

  There’s nothing I can do until she calms down and stops shaking, so I lean back on her cluttered desk, knocking over a few bottles of nail polish. Seconds pass. Minutes. I shiver—I can feel myself aging here. Skin cells flake off my body, my hair grows slowly, millimeter by millimeter. My entire body is decomposing all around me, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Another minute passes.

  I sigh impatiently. I can’t help it.

  At least sighing gets a response from her. “Don’t come any closer!” my master cries shakily. “I’ll scream! My parents will come!”

  So we’re going to go this route?

  “You’ve already screamed,” I say, “and they ca
n come, but since no one can see me but you, you’ll look crazy. Just like you did at school when you tried to show me to your friend.”

  She grits her teeth. She’s known about the invisibility since noon—I could tell when she figured it out—but hearing me confirm it scares her even more. She longs for me to be a stalker, because that fact would be easier for her to swallow than my truly being invisible. I can tell what she wants, feels, wishes for, just by watching the motion of her eyes, the way she moves her hands, the flick of her hair. Mortals give themselves away too easily. Everything they want is spelled out like words on a page, easy to read if only you know the language.

  “Who are you?” she whispers, her voice brittle and frail.

  “I don’t have a name,” I respond. “Call me whatever you want. But can we skip the formalities and hurry this up? I’ve been here more than seven hours already. Seven hours I’ll never get back.”

  She folds her arms over her waist and backs up against the wall. “Hurry what up?”

  I run a hand through my hair—if I hold onto it, I think it’ll grow between my fingers like ivy. “With the wishes. What’s the first one? I want to get back to Caliban, so if we can knock out all three wishes by—”

  “What wishes?” The words explode off her tongue. She breathes heavily in the silence that follows.

  Wow. She snapped.

  All right. Try a different approach. Whatever it takes to get the wishes started.

  “Let’s start over.” Light, think light, airy, bubbly, like those glittery female classmates she stares at. “I’m a jinn. I’m here to grant three wishes because you had a real, true wish today, and you lucked out. A jinn—that’s me—was assigned to grant it. A wish in your Shakespeare class—of all places. You wished you didn’t feel invisible, whatever the hell that means. So, it’d be super-great if you could make your wishes, say, immediately, because until you do I’m stuck here instead of in my own world. So, please, tell me what you wish for. You can do it. Just say ‘I wish for great hair,’ and we can get this thing rolling. Master,” I tag on the end, rolling my eyes.