Any Which Wall Read online

  Susan swore quickly, with a giggle.

  Emma’s eyes were gigantic as she repeated after Susan. Sacrifices and swearing all in one day!

  Roy appeared cool and thoughtful. “I solemnly swear,” he said, “though I reserve the right to revisit this issue at a later time, since we just don’t know what’ll happen. Okay?”

  Henry gave a brief head shake that meant “Yes, okay, sure, whatever you say, Roy” and also “That won’t happen, goofball” before he went on in a rush of excitement. “And I swear too. Okay! Now, do you realize what we have? We have a wishing wall! We can wish anything we want! We can wish for wings and to fly, or we can wish for piles of money and then buy a baseball team, or we can wish ourselves right onto the moon, or … or … or … pirates!”

  “And I can be a princess?” Emma was shivering with excitement. The pale blond curls danced on top of her head.

  “Sure!” said Henry. “As soon as we get back to that field, you can—”

  “Now wait a minute,” Susan cut in. “Even if it is magic and it’s ours, I think it’s too late to ride back there today. We’ll miss dinner.”

  “What?” Henry yelped. “You’re nuts! It’s just a little after four o’clock right now, and we don’t have to be home until the streetlights come on at six!”

  Susan shook her head. “Think! By the time we get all the way out there, it will be nearly five, and we’ll just have to turn around and come home again. There won’t be any time for wishing at all, and I don’t want to get home late and end up grounded. Then we won’t be doing any wishing for at least a week!”

  “Gah!” Henry was scornful of “thinking ahead,” in general. As a rule, it ruined fun, but in this case, it felt like sheer madness.

  “Besides,” Susan said, ignoring him, “there’s something else that has to happen first anyway.”

  “What, you want to call your mom and check in? You need to return your library books? You have to call Alexandria?” Henry asked in disbelief.

  “No, you bonehead.” Susan smiled. “What I need—is to drink a delicious—frosty—frothy—creamy—scrumptious—root beer float! An icy beverage to sustain me for the arduous ride home. And since I happen to have ten dollars in my pocket, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  With a decided flounce, she got up from the bench, stuck out her tongue at Henry, turned sharply, and pushed her way through the swinging doors.

  The others followed close behind, because Susan had ten dollars in her pocket and they did not, and also because, as even Henry had to admit, root beer floats are just another kind of magic.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Henry and Emma woke up early, raced through breakfast (Henry almost choked on a piece of too-dry rye toast), and began rummaging through the pantry shelves.

  “What? Where on earth are you going?” sputtered their father through his coffee and his mustache as Emma and Henry ran from the kitchen, his newspaper fluttering in their wake.

  “Aren’t you even going to watch your cartoons?” called out their mom as they tore down the hall with granola bars spilling from their pockets. By the time she’d finished her sentence, the screen door was already slamming shut.

  When they got to the yard, Emma and Henry found Susan and Roy cutting through the thick hedge that divided the two houses. They could make out arms, feet, and the shiny gleam of handlebars struggling through the thick foliage. Roy’s head popped through, grinning from ear to ear. “Hey, guys,” he said, pulling his body and bike into their yard and brushing off a few loose twigs. “We found a shortcut.”

  Roy was wearing his explorer uniform: khaki shorts and a matching shirt. Around his neck was a red bandanna. He appeared to be ready for a safari.

  “Will there be tigers?” asked Emma faintly.

  Susan, a few seconds behind her brother, pushed her way through the brambles with more than a few loud “oofs” and “ouches.” She looked back at the mess of bent and broken branches, spit out a leaf, and crouched to retie a shoelace as she said, “More like we made a shortcut.” But she straightened up and smiled as she continued. “Good deal that you guys aren’t still sleeping. I was afraid we were going to have to wake you up.”

  “Ha! I bet we were up before you were,” said Henry, folding his arms and waiting for Susan to finish pulling her bike through behind her. “We’ve been up forever. We would’ve been out sooner, but Mom and Dad made us eat breakfast.”

  “Ours too, which is totally unfair,” grumped Susan. “It was just cold cereal. I mean, I would’ve been happy to wait for blueberry waffles or something—but raisin bran?”

  “Let’s GO!” shouted Emma.

  About fourteen seconds later, they were on their bikes and moving fast, with their heads down and their eyes on the road before them. There was none of the previous day’s singing, hollering, wheelie popping, or swerving. They barely took note of the traffic lights, much less the summer leaves rustling in the cool morning air. This was unfortunate, since it was a perfect morning for a bike ride: slightly damp, with a bright sun just beginning to make its way into the sky.

  Periodically, Emma, who could not go quite so fast, would shout, “Hey, hey! Wait for meeee!” and the older kids would slow down so that she had a chance to catch up. But even so, in a short twenty minutes, they were back in the cornfields and rumbling down the rough dirt path.

  Then, as if it were a ship on the ocean, the wall rose up slowly from the field, as it had the day before.

  When they saw it, they sped up, but as each of them came close to the wall, they braked fast, planted their feet on the ground, and stared upward. First Susan stopped, then Henry, then Roy, and finally Emma—so that they stood in a line, each of them straddling their bike, each of them staring.

  “What are we waiting for?” asked Henry. And since nobody had an answer, they got off their bikes (which toppled to the ground in a haphazard clatter) and made their way to the keyhole.

  “Did you bring the key?” Susan asked Henry.

  “What do you think?” said Henry.

  Susan held out a hand and gestured. Her fingers said “Give it here.”

  Henry pulled the key from his pocket but did not pass it over. Instead, he polished it on his shirt, held it out before him, and admired the shine. He’d cleaned it with his mother’s toothbrush the night before.

  Susan stared him down. “Come on, Henry. Let me have it,” she said. “Everyone else, line up and put a hand on the wall!”

  Henry was unmoved. “It’s still my key,” he said, “and anyway, how do you even know we have to be touching the wall? Maybe we just have to be near it.”

  “Do you want to try not touching the wall and see what happens?” said Susan. “The rest of us will tell you all about our adventure when we get back.”

  Roy sighed. “I think you two are going to have to learn to take turns being bossy. I’m not sure we have room in this adventure for an oldest brother and an oldest sister too.”

  It should be explained that Henry and Susan weren’t really fighting. For ten years, they had been tussling this way, ever since two-year-old Susan had first tried to fit baby Henry into her pink doll bed.

  “Well, someone needs to turn it,” Susan said to her brother. “He’s wasting time.”

  “But I found the key,” Henry insisted.

  “Yes, but I’m the oldest,” Susan said, planting her hands on her hips.

  Henry planted his hands on his hips and did a pretty fair imitation of Susan, wiggling his head on his shoulders and flipping an imaginary head of hair. “And I’m the one holding the key. Anyway, Roy got to turn the key yesterday, and you made the wish for the root beer floats, so it’s only fair that I take a turn today. Or Emma,” he added generously.

  Emma shook her head wordlessly at that suggestion. She didn’t want to go first. She never went first. She wouldn’t know how.

  “Fine.” Susan relented in the name of speeding things along. “Fine, but let’s go! What are we wishing for? Magic awaits!” />
  So Henry turned the key until they all heard the satisfying click, and he shouted out fiercely, in his best pirate voice, “Arrrrrrr! Pirates! I wish we were pirates!”

  There was a deep moment of silence. A breezeless, birdless, wondrous moment of nothing.

  And then …

  Nothing happened.

  Nobody turned into a pirate. Nobody saw a pirate carousing off in the distance. There wasn’t even a salty breath of sea spray wafting around them or the faint odor of rum casks and unwashed sailors lingering in the air. Nothing!

  Henry’s face fell.

  Susan said, “Okay. You made your wish. It’s my turn.” She held out her hand again for the key.

  But Henry looked so disappointed that she withdrew her upturned palm. “Sorry,” she said. “Maybe we just need to wait a minute so that the magic has a chance to warm up.”

  Henry kicked at the dirt. “Or maybe it was just a one-time thing, a fluke, and we wasted it on root beer floats. Man!”

  “You really think so?” asked Susan.

  Henry sulked and nodded.

  “I suppose it’s possible that it was a one-time thing,” Roy offered. “Who really knows? But before we get too frustrated, let’s try to figure it out. Isolate our variables.”

  “What’s that mean?” asked Emma. “It sounds ouchy.”

  “It’s not a bad thing, Em. It just means we should figure out precisely what we’re doing, like in a science experiment. See, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. There might just be tricks to the magic. The way we turn the key, for instance. Maybe you don’t have to turn the key every time you make a wish. Maybe it’s more like a light switch and it stays the way you leave it, either on or off.”

  “Huh?” Now Emma was really confused.

  Roy explained. “See, yesterday, we turned the key, and the magic happened, so we assumed that we activated the wall by turning the key. If that were the case, it would make sense that we’d need to activate it every time we wanted to use it, whenever we wanted a wish. But if it isn’t like that, if it’s like an on-and-off switch, or a lock …”

  “That’s just what it is!” shouted Henry, looking up. “A lock! The whole wall is kind of like a giant lock, right?”

  Roy looked excited. “Sure! In which case, when we turned it yesterday, we unlocked it, but when we turned it today, we locked it again!”

  “Oh!” said Emma, beginning to understand. “We left it unlocked overnight?”

  “Exactly!” said Roy. “So now we just need to turn it again.”

  Susan beamed at her brother. “You know, as little brothers go, you’re pretty smart!”

  Hopeful again, Henry nodded, then crouched back down to the keyhole and turned the key. This time, he spoke respectfully, even carefully. He didn’t sound like himself at all when he said, “Please, wall, we’d very much like to wish for a pirate adventure, if that’s okay with you.”

  And this time …

  Nothing happened again!

  “I guess I was wrong,” Roy apologized sheepishly. “Try turning it back the other way?”

  “ARRGHHH!” Henry yelled, sounding even more like a pirate, but now by accident.

  Susan began to say, “Maybe we just need to wait for—” But before she could finish her sentence, Henry kicked the wall.

  “Don’t kick it!” Emma got upset. “Poor wall. You’ll make him angry.”

  Henry kicked it again. “I don’t CARE! Darn wall—”

  “Maybe,” Susan said, “maybe there’s another variable? Like, maybe the problem isn’t the wall but the wish. Maybe the wall just doesn’t like pirates, and you should try wishing for something else.”

  Henry thought about this and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, that’s possible. I’ll try.” He took a deep breath. Then, touching the wall lightly with the fingers of one hand, Henry said, “I wish I could fly.” After that, he stepped away from the wall and flapped his arms. He flapped them tentatively at first, and then harder, but other than fanning Emma’s face a bit, nothing seemed to be any different.

  “Maybe you need a running start?” suggested Susan.

  Henry tried that too, hurtling forward and launching himself very briefly over the tips of the young cornstalks, but then his sneakers hit the ground again, hard.

  Susan and Roy couldn’t help looking disappointed. Emma, who had been holding her breath, let it out in a gust.

  “Aw, man,” Henry said in a thoroughly frustrated tone. “It just isn’t working.”

  And everyone had to admit that it really didn’t seem to be working. None of them wanted to admit defeat, but they all (with the possible exception of Emma) felt a little silly standing for so long with their hands on the wall, which they’d been doing since before the first pirate wish. One by one, they sat down a few feet away, beside their scattered bikes. First Susan, then Roy, and finally Emma.

  All except Henry. Henry just stared at the wall, his teeth clenched, his hands balled into fists. He refused to be beaten, though the wall was proving a worthy adversary. He bellowed again and kicked the wall even harder. He mumbled some words he wasn’t supposed to say (words you certainly aren’t supposed to say) under his breath, kicked the wall a third time, mumbled another something, and turned beet red.

  Nobody was paying much attention to Henry by this point. Instead, they busied themselves with munching their emergency granola bars. Roy, who had cleverly rubber-banded a water bottle to his bike’s frame, took a swig and passed the bottle. Who needs supplies for an adventure that isn’t going to happen?

  But it’s too bad they were distracted, because the next second, as Henry kicked the wall a fourth time and said, “Aw, this is a waste of time. I wish I was at the CineSix instead—”

  He disappeared!

  The others didn’t. Sprawled in the scrabbly grass with their bikes, they were completely unprepared for Henry’s instantaneous departure. Emma saw him blink away out of the corner of her eye and shrieked. Susan’s jaw dropped, and a big mouthful of water spilled out onto her shorts. Roy threw down a handful of trail mix, jumped up, and ran to the wall, but not quickly enough.

  Susan and Emma scrambled after him, and because they were all scared to have lost Henry, they quickly touched the wall and shouted at the same time, as if they had rehearsed for this moment, “The CineSix!”

  Suddenly they were at the movies! Surrounding them was the scent of stale popcorn and the soft darkness of a completely empty theater.

  Thank goodness the magic was feeling kind and blinked them to the same spot it had blinked Henry to. It didn’t have to do this, since the Quiet Falls CineSix offers (as you might imagine) six fabulous screens, and the magic could just as easily have dropped Susan, Roy, and Emma in a different room. If it were feeling truly ornery, the wall could have chosen to send them to a different CineSix altogether, a movie theater in Baltimore or Boise. But the magic was generous and blinked them gently into the same theater as Henry. They found themselves facing the back of the room, with their hands against a carpeted wall. They turned around to face the screen, and found Henry a few feet away, looking grumpy. Even in the dark, they could see his crossed arms and cranky expression.

  “This doesn’t count as my wish,” he said in a surly tone. “I never would have wasted a wish on the movies. Plus, if I were going to wish for a movie, it wouldn’t be this one. Ugh. Look!” He uncrossed his arms and pointed.

  On the huge screen, a woman and a man were kissing loudly in the woods. The woman was wearing scant rags and the man looked terribly pained. He clutched one of his legs in such a way that suggested the leg was broken, but he kept on kissing the woman through his utmost agony and her lustrous hair, which kept getting in both their eyes. Near the couple was a crashed airplane.

  The four kids stared. Henry wore a look of true revulsion and Roy one of disinterest. Susan couldn’t help blushing. Only Emma was curious.

  “Why are they kissing when he’s hurt?” she asked. She looked to Susan for an answer. “W
hy doesn’t she go get help? Why doesn’t he lie down and get some rest?”

  “Who cares!” said Henry, louder than he meant to. “Why is this even playing? Shouldn’t this place be all locked up? The matinee shouldn’t start for hours yet.”

  “Maybe,” whispered Susan cautiously, “there’s someone here, watching it. Someone who works here.” She glanced around, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the theater.

  “Let’s go,” said Henry.

  They all made for the brightly glowing exit sign beneath the screen, and nobody spoke, but when Susan’s hand pushed open the door, a terrible alarm sounded, and they all ran as fast as they could. They bolted onto the sidewalk and ran straight for a row of hedges beside the building, where they huddled, hiding until it became clear nobody was coming.

  “Not exactly tight security, huh?” asked Henry, standing up and looking around.

  “Well, have you seen the kids who work here?” said Roy. “They all look half-asleep most of the time. We could probably watch the whole movie and nobody would even notice.” But nobody thought that sounded like much fun.

  Once they felt safe in the open, the kids prepared to head back to the field, until it dawned on them that they did not have their bikes. “I guess they weren’t touching the wall this time,” said Roy, smacking himself in the head and remembering the clatter the bikes had made falling to the ground.

  Henry groaned at the thought of walking all the way back to the wall. “It’ll take us forever to get there, an hour at least,” he said, sitting down on the curb, exhausted by the very thought.

  “Yeah,” said Susan, “it will, but maybe while we walk, we can figure out what we’re doing wrong. I mean, why won’t the wall work when we mean for it to? Is it a trick? Is that the secret of the wall? That it only does accidental magic?”

  Roy answered her. “How could the wall possibly know whether we’ve planned a wish or not?”

  “Magic knows stuff,” said Emma, sounding very certain. “It just does.”