Free Wishes

Chapter 1
It's full of dreams..

Free Wishes-

Magic? Let me tell you something about magic. It’ll totally mess up your life. No, I’m not kidding. Magic is real, and if you’re not careful, you’ll end up like me. Or worse.

It all started about six months ago. I was with my little sister Emily at the mall, when she got this wide-eyed expression on her face and started dragging me towards a store I’d never seen before. It had this old, faded sign that read Spells ’R Us. Yeah, just like the toy store.

And they did sell toys here, among other things. You see, it was a magic store. You don’t see magic stores outside of movies, really. It had all the stuff you’d want, magic boxes, top hats, wands, and a lot of other stuff besides. Of course, Emily started begging me to buy her something.

The guy running the place was wearing some kind of bathrobe with silver stars pasted on it. He had long white hair and a beard, and I didn’t trust him. Especially the way he looked at my sister. Ok, maybe that wasn’t fair, but he was kind of creepy, and Emily, well, Emily is a very pretty girl.

Anyways, she found this piece of cut glass that looked like a big diamond. The old guy claimed it was a bauble, something used to help hypnotize people. It cost ten bucks, and I felt like I was being ripped off, but Emily...she had to have it.

As I was about to leave, he grabbed my arm. “Be careful, boy. That stone is full of dreams. And not all dreams are pretty.”

The way he said that sent chills up my spine. I wish I’d listened to him.

-

Emily kept carrying that thing all night, until we got home. Mom wasn’t home yet from work, so I started dinner. Nothing fancy, just Hamburger Helper.

Emily frowned. “Seriously? Hamburger Helper again?”

I shrugged. “Sorry, you know I’m not a good cook.”

She sighed. “If you were a girl you’d be a great cook.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’d make a terrible girl, Sis, trust me.”

She shook her head. “No, you’d be beautiful.”

I chuckled. Emily got her looks from Mom. Me? I got them from my dear old deadbeat Dad. What she’d ever seen in him, I couldn’t tell you. “Not hardly. Besides, if I was a girl, what would Marcy say?”

Emily just smiled mysteriously. I love my sister to death, but she can be creepy!

Mom got in late, just as I was getting Emily ready for bed. She, of course, had to show off her prize. “Look Mom! It’s a magic crystal!”

Mom gave me a look, and I just shrugged.

“That’s beautiful, honey. What does it do?”

Emily grinned. “Lots of stuff. Like it will give us each one wish!”

I groaned, but Mom is a real trooper. “Just one?”

“Uh huh! Then you have to let other people make wishes, so it can get it’s magic back!”

“I’m not sure what to wish for, what do you want?”

She smiled. “I wish Luke was a pretty girl, so I could have a cool older sister who could cook and stuff!”

I made a choking sound, and Mom laughed. “That’s a nice wish, but do you think Luke would be happy as a girl?”

Emily frowned. “Maybe not at first. I guess that was a bad wish?”

Mom ruffled Emily’s hair. “Sometimes change is a good thing, but it’s better to let people decide for themselves. I mean, what if someone made you into a boy?”

Emily seemed thoughtful. “That could be fun? But...what if I didn’t like being a boy?”

“Exactly. Now run along to bed.” Mom hugged Emily and gave her a kiss. “Don’t forget your wishing stone, dear!”

“Keep it, Mommy, you have to make a wish! And you too, Luke!”

“Yeah yeah, get off to bed.” I shook my head and started cleaning up.

-

After Emily was gone, I massaged Mom’s shoulders. “Oh Luke, that’s so nice of you.”

“It’s ok Mom, I know you work hard for us. Sorry about this dumb rock; I know we don’t have the money to waste, but she wanted it so badly.”

Mom touched the crystal. “Wouldn’t it be nice if it could grant wishes? I feel so worn-out lately, I just can’t keep up with Emily. She has all that energy!”

Mom didn’t look as young as she used to. I really felt sad that she was using up all her youth for us. I picked up the rock. “Well, if this thing did work, I’d wish you were ten years younger, Mom.”

She chuckled. “Would you?”

“Yep. I’d say, hey dumb rock, make Mom ten years younger.”

She actually giggled softly. “Only ten? I wish I was fifteen years younger myself!”

We both had a good laugh, and then it was time to get some rest.

-

I woke up early that morning with the strangest urge to cook breakfast. I stretched and yawned sleepily. I got up and headed for the kitchen. In the back of my mind, I knew something was wrong, but I was too focused on the task at hand. Before long, I had waffles, french toast, and eggs cooking, and it smelled really good. I smiled, happy knowing that my family would have a good breakfast.

I knew something was wrong about that thought, but I dismissed it. I opened the cabinet to get out the syrup bottle, but it was out of my reach. Weird. The sleeves of the old shirt I wore to bed seemed awfully baggy as well, as did my boxers. Oh well.

I got a chair and stood on it to reach for the syrup, when I heard Emily behind me.

“Mm...that smells good, you shouldn’t have made breakfast, Mom.”

“Hey, it’s not Mom, silly.” I turned to look at her.

She stared at me, her eyes suddenly wide. “Who are you?!”

I blinked. “Duh, it’s me, Luke!”

“MOM!!!” She ran for Mom’s room.

Oh jeez, now what? I got down off the chair, and my boxers slid off my waist, and hung on my hips. I quickly bent down to pull them up, when a lock of blonde hair got into my eyes. Damn this long hair, it’s such a hassle! I brushed my bangs back with a delicate hand and...

Wait. What? I reached up and felt my long blonde hair. It felt really soft, not unlike Marcy’s hair. Funny, didn’t I used to have short brown hair? I looked down at myself, and noticed my too-large shirt had a pair of small bumps protruding through the chest. I touched them, and was rewarded by a shiver running down my spine.

Oh that’s right, my breasts. How could I have forgotten them? Sure, they were still on the small side, but maybe if I was lucky, they’d grow in a few years and...

I blinked. I was a girl. Just as I began to process that thought in horror, I heard a high-pitched scream from Mom’s room.

I didn’t even think about it, I ran, holding up my boxers with one hand.

-

“Mom? What happened? You’re smaller than me!” I heard Emily’s voice.

“This can’t be happening!” Another girl replied.

I entered the room, and saw Emily hugging a girl a little younger than she was. The girl was wearing a nightgown that was way too big for her. Looking at it, both girls had the same blonde hair (although the younger girl’s hair was longer) and green eyes. They looked like sisters..

The young girl looked at me and gasped. “Who are you?”

Emily turned and looked at me, then at the other girl. “Um...” She looked back. “Luke, is that you?”

“Yes, of course it’s me! Who else would I be?”

Emily frowned. “But you’re a girl! And really pretty...and you cooked breakfast...and...uh oh.”

Then it hit me who the little girl was. “Oh no, Mom?!”

Mom’s lower lip quivered. “I...this is just a dream...it can’t be real!”

I sat down on the bed. “How old were you when you had me, Mom?”

She blinked. “I was nineteen, you know that.”

“Which makes you almost thirty-three. But I wished you were ten years younger, and you wished you were fifteen years younger. Which means...”

She looked down at her body. “Oh God. I’m seven!”

“Almost eight.”

Emily blinked. “Wait, I’m eight and a half, so that means...”

Mom looked ready to cry. “I’m younger than my own daughter!”

-

We managed to find some of Emily’s old clothes that more or less fit Mom. I wasn’t so lucky, Mom was a tall woman, and, as a girl, I was quite a bit shorter than I’d been as a boy, so nothing any of us owned fit me.

We finally did eat breakfast, and while it was very good, I didn’t blame anyone for not noticing. Oh and the wishing stone? It seemed to have lost it’s luster, and somehow I knew it wasn’t going to be any help.

“What are we going to do? I can’t work like this!” Mom gestured to her body. Ironic, really. Most women Mom’s age would kill to be young again. But this was too much of a good thing by far!

“I’m not old enough to work either..” I wasn’t really freaked out by being a girl. Maybe it’s because Mom’s situation was worse? All I knew was, my family needed me to be strong, so I’d have to wait until later to go quietly nuts.

“Oh Luke, I’m sorry. This has to be terrible for you.” I guess Mom was thinking on the same wavelength.

“I..it’s really weird, that’s for sure. I mean, I can cook now, and I don’t know, you’re both more important than my problems.” I frowned. That was certainly true, but would I have said that before?

Mom sighed. “You seem so much more mature. I want to be proud of you, but...”

I gave her a hug. “It’s ok Mom. Right now we have to figure out how to fix things. Look, Emily, you said the stone gets it’s power back if other people make wishes? Were you making that up?”

Emily frowned. “I..don’t think so. I think it told me. But I really didn’t believe the wishes would come true. I’m so sorry for this!”

I ruffled her hair. “Relax, Sis. We’ll just go to the mall and talk to the guy who sold it to us.”

-

Which is how we all ended up on the bus riding to the mall. Mom and Emily were very quiet, and I knew I had to lighten the mood. “So what should I call myself?”

They looked at me. “Well, I mean, Luke isn’t a girl’s name. So if you call me that, people will think it’s weird.”

“If you had been a girl....I would have named you Lucy.” Mom spoke in a very low voice.

“What do you think, Sis? Lucy?”

Emily managed to smile a little. “It’s only for now, right? You’ll be Luke again?”

I shrugged. “I guess? I don’t know...I’m trying not to think about it too much. Ok, so I’m Lucy now.”

“I guess you should call me Erika.” Mom looked at us. “I mean, I’m not even old enough to babysit you two, let alone be your Mother.”

Emily hugged her Mother tightly. “Erika is a pretty name. But you’ll always be my Mommy.”

Mom..I mean, Erika, started to cry, but she was smiling. I blinked away a few tears of my own. We were still family.

-

No surprise, the store was gone, and no one remembered it had ever been there. “There’s a trope for this.”

“What’s a trope?” Emily looked up at me.

“I’ll explain later. Ok, plan B, we have to get other people to make wishes.”

I looked around, and I noticed an empty kiosk. I had an idea.

-

We had to buy some construction paper and markers to make the sign. THE AMAZING WISHING STONE. ONE WISH TO A CUSTOMER! FREE WISHES!

“Shouldn’t we charge?” Erika seemed dubious.

“Then we can get in trouble for solicitation without a license. This way, we’re just some kids fooling around. We can say it’s a school project!” Don’t ask me where that came from! I guess a ’cool sister’ knows this stuff.

At first people would just walk by, but then Emily got into the act and started rounding people up. And let me tell you, people don’t think wishes through very well! To be honest, I wished I’d written down all the wishes that were made, because there would be stories to tell later!

For example, a young couple came by. The girl was pretty, if on the skinny side, and almost as tall as her boyfriend. Her boyfriend wished that she was shorter, which got him a punch in the arm from the girl. “Shorter?! Jerk, I wish you knew what it was like to be a girl!”

I stifled a groan. I knew where that was going.

-

An older woman came by, her granddaughter in tow. “What would you like to wish for, dear?”

The little girl, who was all of five, frowned. “I wish I had really long pink hair! With sparkles!”

Her grandmother chuckled. “Oh wouldn’t your Mother enjoy that! The imagination you kids have! I tell you, though, what I wouldn’t give to be young again. I met her grandfather when I was sixteen, you know. And I was so pretty back then. I wish I could be sixteen again, let me tell you.”

Erika shook her head. Be careful what you wish for, indeed!

-

There were others. So many others. And a lot of their wishes were...well, bad wishes. Like take the three teenaged girls that were arguing when they came by. One of them grabbed the stone.

“God, you two are so much alike, I wish you’d just start dating each other!”

Or the mother with her teenaged daughter.

“God, I feel like I’m the parent sometimes!” The daughter exclaimed, exasperated.

“Oh really?” The mother put her hand on the stone. “Fine, then I wish I was your kid, so you you’d know what it was like to raise a spoiled brat!”

The daughter laughed. “I’m not old enough to have a kid your age!”

We all looked at each other. This could be trouble.

You get the idea.

-

At the end of the day, we took the rock home. Did it have more luster than before? Only time would tell.

Mom was able to email her office and take an emergency leave of absence. But that would only last for a week, and then things would get tricky. We managed a similar excuse for myself; we found the note my Mom had signed back when we’d thought I would have to have my appendix taken out.

It had been a false alarm, but Mom saves things like this. Just in case.

While Emily was at school, Mom just spent the day watching television while I busied myself about the house. It felt good to clean and take care of everyone! I couldn’t wait to go shopping later, so I could make a good meal!

On some level I knew that wasn’t right, but it felt good at the same time. Granted, I still wasn’t going to try and wear girl’s clothing. The heck with that! You had to draw the line somewhere!

-

After Sis got home, we went to the mall. And one by one, we’d see people from the day before.

For example, there was a tall, confused looking girl, being led around by a much smaller girl wearing clothing much too big for her.

“Oh wow, is that the girl and her boyfriend from yesterday?”

“She really did get shorter! She’s only a little bigger than Emily!” Mom sounded fairly stunned.

Or then there was the five year-old with the long pink hair (with sparkles!) walking with a dazed sixteen year old (who was very attractive).

“Good luck managing that hair!” I could definitely relate; having long hair was something I was just starting to get used to.

Two girls who were holdings hands, and obviously very much in love, trailed by their friend, who had an absolutely shocked look on her face?

“Aw, they look so nice together!” Emily smiled.

The teenaged girl who was just showing signs of pregnancy, her mother conspicuously absent?

“And I thought I had it bad!” Mom/Erika looked a bit pale.

-

“The thing I don’t understand, is why they didn’t come to us? I mean, those were some bad wishes.” I frowned.

“Do you think that was enough?” Mom/Erika looked at the stone hopefully.

A gruff voice could be heard behind us. “I’m afraid not.”

We turned to find the old man who ran the magic shop. “Come with me.”

We walked behind him in silence as he led us to his store. I was no longer surprised to find it had returned.

“You girls certainly made a mess. What possessed you to hand out free wishes to the entire mall, anyways?!”

Emily shrunk back, and even Erika seemed frightened. That wouldn’t do.

“Now just a damn minute! It’s your fault for selling something so dangerous!”

He grunted. “I did try to warn you, boy.”

“Fine! I accept responsibility, even if it was a bad warning. But you have no right to yell at my family like that!”

He rubbed his beard thoughtfully. “But do you realize the mess all those bad wishes caused? I tried my best to straighten things out, but I mean...there’s a girl pregnant with her own mother!”

“Then I’ll just have to help you.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Come on, you have to have something around here that can fix things? If you’re so busy, then I’ll do the work for you!”

“That’s going to take awhile. Years, even.”

I shrugged. “If it means you can help my family, I don’t care.”

Erika hugged me then. “Oh Luke...I mean, Lucy...I’m so proud of you. When did you get so mature?”

“Well, there was this wish...”

The old man chuckled. “No, the person you are now was always there. It just took a crisis to bring him...ah..her, out. Ok, fine, I’ll tell you what. I’ll make you my apprentice, and teach you what you need to know. Of course, that means you work for me now.”

“Work, huh? There’s money in this?”

“Well...room and board, maybe a small allowance...” Hah! So that was his weak point, his cash register!

“Room and board for me and my family, you mean.”

He nodded. “Well of course, I can’t put them out on the street. Means you’ll have to travel.”

I smiled at Erika. “You hear that? One of these days, I’ll fix everything!”

“Well...I guess I could stand to grow up again.”

Emily hugged her Mother. “Oh Mom, it’s going to be great, I promise, you’ll have so much fun!”

-

So yes. You may think you want that little thing you’ve found just now, but trust me. Magic can totally mess up your life. Look at me, I used to be a guy!

Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. That’ll be 49.95, with tax. Pleasure doing business with you, I hope you have better luck than the last poor sap who bought that thing.

Hm? Oh what about Marcy? Well, that’s another story...and also none of your business!

Bleah. Another satisfied customer. I don’t even want to know what he’s going to with that thing anyways. I swear, the old man is such a pervert!

 

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