Chicago was very far. The nice lady at the gas station said we were nearly thirty hours away! We had no choice but to drive on. By our estimates, we wouldn’t arrive at Lake Michigan until dinnertime the next day. Talk about a colossal waste of time! But I wasn’t going to wish for a faster means of transportation. Not while we had a truck that Tina was paying for.
Vale and Tina took turns driving. The girls didn’t dare let me or Ridge behind the wheel, and I couldn’t blame them. We drove fast, the no-crashing feature of the wish protecting us from harm, and the Universe’s magical shield stopping us from getting pulled over by the police. I was sure we were shaving time off our travel.
But it was still a long ride.
Sometime in the dark, early hours of the next morning, I awoke from a horrible dream. I couldn’t remember it upon awakening, but I knew it had been awful. You’ve had those, right? They’re not the kind that let you quickly fall back to sleep.
I sat up and looked out the window. The two genies were asleep in the backseat. Tina was at the wheel to my right, or maybe it was my left. I couldn’t decide.
“How you doing?” I kept my voice low, but it still sounded loud in the silence of the truck.
“We used to go on road trips,” Tina said.
“We did?” I asked, still groggy from sleep.
“Not you and me,” said Tina. “Me and my mom.” She smiled. “She used to do the most ridiculous things. Anytime we stopped at a traffic light, she’d burst into some opera song at the top of her lungs.”
“Is she a good singer?” I asked.
Tina raised an eyebrow. “Not at all. But it made me laugh.” She shook her head. “Our house was a mess. Mama collected all kinds of weird things. I used to be embarrassed by the knickknacks she’d put on the shelves. Old buttons, a dirty sock, pebbles, toothbrush . . . I never understood why she did so many strange things. But that’s part of what makes me love her.”
I wasn’t sure why Tina was opening up to me. Maybe she was overly tired. “You have a big family?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Just me and my mom now.” She bit her lip and I saw her eyes glistening in the dark cab.
“It was your mom, wasn’t it?” I said. “The woman in the hospital?” Now Tina nodded. But she didn’t say anything more about it, so I pressed ever so slightly. “How long has she been there?”
Tina swallowed hard. “Going on three weeks,” she muttered. “She got so bad we couldn’t stay at home. And our little town didn’t have the medical care she needed. That’s what brought us to St. Mercy’s.”
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“Our house is a few hours outside Omaha,” Tina answered. “But I’ve been staying in my mom’s room at the hospital. Nowhere else to go. Doctors don’t know exactly what’s wrong with her. But she’s . . . she’s in a lot of pain.”
I grimaced. “I don’t know what it’s like to have a mom,” I admitted. “But it can’t be easy to go through this.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I went for total optimism. “She’ll probably start getting better soon.”
“No,” mumbled Tina. “No. She’s getting worse, Ace.” Tina gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “And there’s nothing I can do about it.”
I glanced toward the genies in the backseat. “What about Vale?” I said. “You could wish it.”
“What do you think I tried, the moment I opened that lip balm jar?” Tina said. “I wished a dozen variations of the same thing. But it was just too heavy. Some consequences you just can’t accept, no matter how badly you want the wish.”
I knew exactly what Tina meant. It had taken me two days to work up the courage to ask Ridge about my past, only to be dealt an impossible consequence. And no matter how desperately I wanted answers, I thought it must have been worse for Tina to watch her mother suffer.
“This Undiscovered Genie that Jathon was telling us about,” said Tina. “Do you think he can really grant a free wish?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Jathon and Thackary seem to think so. There must be something different about him. Roosevelt’s head said the genie was powerful. Like, scary powerful. And the cotton candy man said the jar was locked away for a reason. Don’t you wonder what that reason is?”
She shook her head. “Does it matter? We’re talking about a free wish, Ace. Anything you want.”
“The matron at the orphanage used to say that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” I lifted an eyebrow, wondering what she might say if she knew I had paid for a lifetime supply of lunches with a smudge of peanut butter on my cheek.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tina said.
“That everything has a price—a consequence,” I answered. “Like cereal box toys. You didn’t just get a free toy. You bought the cereal, didn’t you?”
“You just compared the Undiscovered Genie to a cereal box toy?”
I shrugged. “All I’m saying . . . From the warnings we’ve heard, I get the impression that the Undiscovered Genie isn’t exactly the kind of genie you want to work with.”
This seemed to upset Tina. She scowled a bit, squeezing the steering wheel. “You don’t understand,” she whispered. “If our genies can’t fulfill our greatest desires, then what’s the use in being a Wishmaker?”
“Umm,” I said, reminding her of the obvious quests. “Saving the world?”
“But did you really go with Ridge just because you thought the world needed to be saved?” she asked.
“Well, no,” I muttered.
“Exactly,” whispered Tina. “If our genies can’t get us what we really want, then I have to believe there is another one out there who can.”
I couldn’t deny that the same thought had crossed my mind. It was no wonder Thackary Anderthon was so driven to find the Undiscovered Genie. If he could really do what Jathon claimed, wouldn’t you want him to fulfill your greatest desire?
“That’s a lot to think about,” I said, feeling my heavy helmet clunk against the window as I rested my head. “I just need to focus on my quest and stop the world from ending. It’s the only thing I have control over.” I glanced at her. “And you should focus on saving Thackary.”
She was quiet for a moment, and then she muttered, “I don’t think I will.”
“You can’t give up!” I said. “There’s still time.”
“Time for what?” she asked. “If you succeed, Jathon fails. If Jathon succeeds, you fail. The world is going to end, Ace. Unless . . .”
“Unless?” I probed, but she didn’t reply.
We drove in silence for a while and I felt sleepiness nipping at my eyelids once again. But I pushed past it, deciding instead to stay awake for Tina. In case she decided to say anything else.
She didn’t.