My mouth is open but I’ve forgotten how to make words come out. If I could speak, I would say: Oh, the quinnsanity!
Quinnsanity. Noun. Insanity that involves Quinn.
Quinn, meanwhile, isn’t having a problem talking, and her words come out in a rush.
“Where am I?” she asks. “Where’s Madeline? What is this place? And why are these things on my face?” She knocks Trey’s glasses to the floor. The remaining unsmashed lens now smashes, too, making the glasses completely useless. Quinn looks down. “Why am I wearing these . . . these clothes?!”
Clothes are important to Quinn. She takes about an hour to choose an outfit in the morning, and usually goes through several “test” outfits before settling on the one she’s actually going to wear for the day. But now she is dressed in nothing she’d ever pick out for herself: khaki pants, a green-collared MA shirt, thick white socks, and brown loafers.
There’s something else strange about her, and it takes me a second to realize it’s her hair. It’s parted down the middle with the left half up in some kind of braid, and the right half hanging loose across her shoulder.
But I still can’t get any words out, and she’s not done speaking anyway.
“Zack? ZACK? ZACHARY NOAH COOLEY, I’M GOING TO TELL MOM ON YOU AND YOU’RE GOING TO BE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE!”
“I . . . I . . . ,” I stutter. I move past her and glance into the stall she just came out of, looking for Trey. But he’s not in there. Not that I expected him to be. In fact, I suspect I know what’s going on, but my suspicion is insane, and out of this world. It’s absolutely, positively the most crazmazingest thing I’ve ever suspected before.
For just a second, the bathroom is silent, except for the slightest gurgle, gurgle from the sink. Quinn puts her hands on her hips. “You have three seconds before I start to scream. Three. Two. O—”
“All right. All right. I was at Uncle Max’s and he gave me a bottle and—” I stop short. “The problem is, if I just tell you flat out what happened today—that I learned I’m a genie—you’re not going to understand me.”
“What?” she asks.
“I tried to tell you before,” I say. “It’s not my fault the words don’t make sense. It’s a safety mechanism the board put in place.”
“A safety mechanism? From the board?” Quinn repeats. She’s shaking her head. “You’re right you’re not making any sense. And hey, genius, if you’re a genie, where’s your bottle, then?”
“The Reggs took it with them,” I say. But then I cut myself off. “Wait, you understand me?”
“I understand you’re a nut job and a liar.” Her eyes scan the room and I can practically see the wheels turning in her head, trying to figure out where she is and how I managed to get her here.
But there’s something I just figured out. “Holy smokes! I just discovered an exception to Genie Board Decision two hundred and fifty-eight!”
“Zack!” Quinn says. “Tell me what’s really going on here!”
“I am telling you,” I say. “It’s supposed to come out like gibberish when I talk about genie stuff. That’s what Uncle Max said. But I can tell Trey, of course, since he’s the one who rubbed the bottle. And if he makes a wish and I turn him into you—”
“The one who made the wish that brought you here,” I tell her. “You turned into him. Well, sort of. It’s you, but you’re wearing his clothes.”
“You expect me to believe that this kid, this Trey—someone I’ve never met—made a wish to become me?”
“Not exactly,” I say. “He wished to turn into someone people liked. And you popped into my head because, well . . .” I toe the ground, feeling a little embarrassed. I may be a genie, but I don’t know how to be popular, like Quinn does. “People like you,” I mumble.
“That’s right, they do,” Quinn says. “Unlike some people I know.”
“Don’t get such a big head about it,” I say. “I don’t think Trey would actually like being you. But at least it helped me discover the exception. So I can talk about being a genie and you’ll understand.”
“I understand that you need serious help,” Quinn says. “Mom will probably send you to a mental hospital when I tell her.”
“She will not,” I say. But really I’m not so sure. After all, I was convinced Uncle Max had Alzheimer’s disease when he first told me. And explaining things to Mom might be impossible with Genie Board Decision 258 in place. Unless there’s a second exception to the rule, in the event your mom is about to have you committed. I’ll have to ask Uncle Max about that—if I ever see him again. Which reminds me, I have bigger problems right now.
“You know what else I think?” Quinn asks, and she keeps on talking without waiting for my answer. “I think there was another pair of twins being born at Pinemont Hospital on this exact day, ten years ago, and you got switched out with my real brother.” She’s nodding to herself now. “Yeah, that’s it. We’re not really related after all!”
“Wishful thinking,” I mutter.
“I know you love to play make-believe and pretend to swoop in and rescue people, but you’ve gone too far this time.”
“I’m telling the truth, and I can prove it to you.”
“Oh, really? How?”
“Isn’t being here proof enough?”
“I don’t know where here is!” she says.
“This is Millings Academy,” I tell her. “In California.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Fine, if you don’t believe me, I’ll prove it another way.”
Uncle Max had licked his finger and twirled it in the air. So I do that, but nothing happens. There’s certainly no car-horse-zebra-dinosaur combination.
“This is ridiculous,” Quinn says.
“Okay, look,” I say. “See those sinks on the floor, and how their pipes aren’t hooked up?” Quinn nods. “Well, I made water come out of them! Just before you got here—I turned the faucet and the water rushed out. Here, watch.”
I twist the dial on the same sink I used before, but nothing. I try the knobs on the other two, but their spouts remain dry.
“Nice try,” Quinn says.
“No, really,” I say. “Look—I’m all wet from before—the water just came rushing out and—” But even as I say it, I realize my shirt and my pants and my feet are bone-dry, like I really had made the whole thing up. “Maybe genies can’t get wet,” I tell her.
“I don’t have time for this stupid game,” Quinn says. Her voice is shaky. I think she may even start to cry. “Madeline was in the middle of braiding my hair. She’s waiting for me. I’ve GOT TO GET HOME!”
“Don’t worry, I have an idea.” How come I didn’t think of this already? “Just make a wish saying you want to go back to who you were before.”
“I want to be who I was before,” Quinn says.
Nothing.
“It’s not working because you were Quinn before, and you’re still you. You need to say you want to be Trey again. And say ‘I wish.’ ”
Quinn folds her arms across her chest, like she really doesn’t want to be bothered saying it, but she does—probably because even if she thinks I’m a nut job, she still hasn’t figured out how I got her into this bathroom in the first place. “I wish I were Trey again.” She waits for about the amount of time it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings. “Nope. Didn’t work.”
“Go into the bathroom stall and come out again,” I say. “That’s what worked last time.”
Quinn turns around and heads into the same exact stall as before. The stall where the magic happens. But as soon as the oak door closes, my heart starts to pound. After all, I don’t know where Trey disappeared to when Quinn popped up in his place. And I don’t know where Quinn will be going now. Maybe home.
But maybe not.
Maybe she’ll disappear FOREVER!
“Quinn!” I shout.
“Yeah, nut job,” she says.
“Oh, thank goodness,” I say.
She opens the stall door and steps back out. “What do you have to be thankful for?”
I can’t tell her the answer. Instead, I stare down at my big toe, at my genie bite. The one I inherited from Uncle Max. “Let’s call Uncle Max,” I tell Quinn.
Another thing I can’t believe I didn’t think of. I’ll call Uncle Max, and he’ll come here and do whatever genie tricks need to be done to get it all sorted out.
“So we need a phone,” Quinn says. “I don’t have one and neither do you, since Mom won’t let us get cell phones.”
“But I know just where to find one.”