WHEN MAX WOKE UP THE NEXT morning, Ali Baba was still there and the dog still wasn’t. He had to get up and get dressed for school. There was no time now to go back to Wishworks, Inc., no time to ask the old man about the guarantee. Maybe on the school bus.
At the breakfast table, he considered mentioning a big, beautiful, perfectly behaved dog again. But he didn’t have the nerve. He didn’t want to hear “no dog” even one more time. The more often his mother said it, the less likely she was to change her mind.
On the bus, Max tried to go to Wishworks, Inc. But Polly was sitting next to him, chattering on and on about her new friends. “Do you think Mom would let them come over after school sometime?” she asked. “Do you think Mrs. Chang would give them cookies?” She poked him. “I said, do you think Mom would …”
Max gave up.
At school Max scanned the school yard, looking for Nick and his henchmen before he would let Polly get off the bus. Maybe a first-grade bully wouldn’t go after a girl, but he wasn’t sure about Nick Berger. After a moment, he saw them standing around a very little boy up against the fence.
“Go find your friends,” Max told Polly, but she was already waving at a cluster of first-grade girls. Max imagined King at his side as he walked close to a group of fifth graders, keeping them between him and Nick Berger. Between the shoulders of the older kids, Max saw the little boy hand Nick something. It looked like a package of chocolate cupcakes.
When the fifth graders met up with their friends, Max slipped around them and hurried up the steps to wait right by the door so that he would be the first one in when it opened. He got to his classroom before Nick and his henchmen, put away his things, and hurried to his desk, King beside him. “Down, King,” he whispered under the noise of the other kids coming in. King lay down by his feet, his ears up, his eyes alert for danger. When Nick came in, shoving a couple of other kids out of his way, there was a smear of chocolate on his mouth.
During language arts, Nick went to sharpen his pencil at the back of the room and pulled Max’s hair as he passed by. King could do nothing to stop him. Max imagined the pencil sharpener gobbling up Nick’s pencil, then sucking in Nick’s fingers and sharpening them too.
On the way outside to recess, Rocco came up behind Max and bumped him so hard he crashed into a wiry boy named Jerome. “Watch yourself, Rocco!” Jerome called after him. “Those guys are trolls,” he said to Max. “Don’t let them bother you.”
Max nodded. Trolls — that’s just what they were.
When the other boys started a game of dodgeball, Max didn’t join in. But Nick threw a ball at him anyway, and hit him in the back of the head. Max imagined King biting the ball so that it went all flat and nobody could play with it again. But he also went and stood with his back to the one tree that grew up through the pavement on the playground. The truth was, having an imaginary dog for protection didn’t make him feel that safe.
Max kept one eye on what Nick was doing and one eye on the sidewalk outside the school’s fence. It had been a lot more than a little time since he’d made his wish. Maybe the real dog would come walking down the sidewalk and into the playground. But no dog came.
When the bell rang to signal that recess was over, Max breathed a sigh of relief. Math was after recess. Max didn’t have to pay attention to Mr. Malone talking about borrowing and carrying. He had had borrowing and carrying in his old school. Math was the perfect time to go back to Wishworks, Inc., and get his questions answered.
But when he got back to class, there was a policeman in the room with Mr. Malone. As soon as the kids came through the door, they all got very quiet. Everybody hurried to put their jackets away and sit in their seats. Max wondered if someone had called the police on Nick and his henchmen. As mean as they were, he didn’t think they’d broken any actual laws.
“Class,” Mr. Malone said when they were all in their places, “this is Officer Fisher, Jerome’s father. He is our parent of the month and he’s come to tell us all about his job.”
For the next half hour, Max couldn’t help paying attention. Everything Officer Fisher said was interesting. He told them he’d wanted to be a policeman since he was even younger than they were. He explained the training he had had to go through. One of the boys asked if he drove a police car. “I walk a beat,” he said. “I like to stay close to what’s going on in the neighborhood. I like to know the people I watch out for. I like to know who belongs there and who doesn’t.”
He told stories of the things that had happened while he was walking his beat. He had foiled a robbery at a jewelry store and arrested the robbers. He had found a lost toddler who had wandered away from his mother in a store. And when he saw bad guys hanging out where they didn’t have any business, he moved them along.
Officer Fisher took his nightstick out of his belt and gave it to Mr. Malone to pass around the class. When Nick got it, he pretended he was going to hit Caitlin, the girl who sat next to him. Mr. Malone took it away from him and gave it to Caitlin instead. When the nightstick finally got around to Max in the back of the room, he was surprised at how heavy it was. He could knock out a goblin or even a giant with a nightstick like this. He thought he would take one with him during Adventure Time that night, just in case. Officer Fisher showed them his gun too, but he didn’t let them touch that.
When Officer Fisher finished answering all their questions, he told them they should consider joining the force when they grew up. Mr. Malone thanked him for coming and the class applauded. As he was about to leave, Officer Fisher looked at Caitlin, then at Nick Berger, then back to Caitlin. “If you became a police officer,” he said to her, “you could protect people from anyone who thinks it’s okay to hurt other people.”
Max wondered if Jerome had told his father about Nick and his henchmen. The other kids laughed. Nick’s ears got very red.
Jerome Fisher was just about the luckiest boy in the world, Max thought. His father was a real person who had real adventures and did noble deeds every single day. No wonder Jerome could yell at Rocco. And no wonder, even though Jerome wasn’t any bigger than Max was, he could say not to let Nick and his henchmen bother him. A real policeman father was much better protection than an imaginary dog.
When Mr. Malone announced after lunch that it was time to catch up on the math they’d missed in the morning, everyone groaned except Max. Finally he would be able to go to Wishworks, Inc., and find out what was going on with his wish. He set his book up on his desk to provide some cover and closed his eyes. Immediately he was back on the sidewalk outside the shop. As he opened the door, the bell tinkled and the old man behind the counter looked up. He smiled when he saw it was Max. Max didn’t smile back.
“You said a real dog would take a little time. How long?” he asked.
“As long as necessary,” the old man said.
“Do you mean I might not get my dog till I’m all grown up?”
The old man’s smile faded. “Do you think that will be just a little time?”
Max shook his head. “That will be a long time.”
The smile came back. “Well, then! There’s your answer.”
“Is the guarantee only a money-back guarantee?”
The old man laughed and shook his head. “What good would it do you to have imaginary money instead of a real dog? No, no. Our guarantee is just what it says. A wish you buy from Wishworks, Inc., is guaranteed to come true.”
Now Max smiled. All he needed to do was wait a little longer, he thought.
“Max!” Mr. Malone’s sharp voice brought Max back to the classroom. “I asked if you can take eight from six!”
Max looked at the problem Mr. Malone was pointing to on the whiteboard at the front of the room. There was a thirty-six with an eight below it and a line underneath. Thirty-six minus eight. Easy. “You can take eight from six,” Max said, “if you borrow from the tens column.”
Mr. Malone, looking surprised, nodded. “Can you come up here and show us?”
Max went to the front of the room, stepping carefully over the foot Nick shot out to trip him. He took the marker Mr. Malone held out. He crossed out the three in thirty-six and wrote a two above it. “When you borrow from the tens column, the three becomes a two and the six becomes sixteen,” Max said and wrote a one squeezed in beside the six. “Sixteen minus eight is eight.” He wrote an eight under the line. “There’s nothing to subtract from the two, so you just bring it down.” He wrote a two beside the eight and handed the marker back to Mr. Malone. “The answer is twenty-eight.”
“Very good, Max!” Mr. Malone said.
Max started back to his seat. “I apologize,” Mr. Malone said. “I thought you were daydreaming again.”
Max ducked the rubber band Luis shot at him and shook his head. Whatever Wishworks, Inc., was, he felt sure it wasn’t a daydream.
