Whoever my great-great grandmother times a hundred was had it way easier. Unlike when humans believed in spirits, magic, and the unknown, today, changing someone’s life overnight risks exposure. We need to research and learn all we can about our candidates in order to grant their wishes in a way that won’t attract attention, that won’t reveal our magic. My unlucky generation of Jinn is granting wishes in an age when every human with a cell phone, which is essentially every human, holds the ability to out us in the palm of their hand.
This, my mother claims, is why she chose Mrs. Pucher. Since I’ve lived next door to her my entire life, I should know her well. She even babysat for me a few times when I was little. My mother rationalizes that this connection means I’ll be more relaxed, more at ease, and more able to focus solely on my magic.
“That may have been true,” I said yesterday when we were role-playing as seventy-five-year-old Mrs. Pucher, the easy wishee, and newly sixteen-year-old Azra, the frustrated genie, “if I wasn’t still ticked off that her new dog was yapping away, ruining my birthday plans to go back to sleep.”
My mother hesitated. “New dog? I’m pretty sure she only has Pom-Pom. Are you positive you heard something? You didn’t actually see anything, did you?”
“No, but I heard barking. And it didn’t sound like Pom-Pom.”
“Well, that’s good,” my mother said with relief.
I wrinkled my nose at her.
“I mean,” she said, “good that if there’s another dog, it’s probably not right next door.”
If that new dog doesn’t belong to Mrs. Pucher, then picking her was a mistake. She doesn’t love anything more than her Pom-Pom. My bet’s on her using the one wish she gets to clone him.
After practicing late into the night, my mother let me sleep in this morning. I’m supposed to be using my remaining time to read through the cantamen and further prepare myself for granting my first wish.
For centuries, the cantamen’s main goal has been to guide and inspire new Jinn as they hone their magic. Part rulebook, part spell book, part history book, part memoir, part diary, the pages and pages of entries are a hodgepodge of information. Each family maintains its own cantamen, building on and adding to it as rules are enacted, as practices change, as new members are born, as someone invents a self-proclaimed unparalleled recipe for fudge they feel the need to share.
Passed down from generation to generation, each Jinn in my family has recorded the wishes they’ve been asked and how they went about granting them. In detail—minute detail.
Reading that entire tome before I grant Mrs. Pucher’s wish is a feat I cannot accomplish. What I can accomplish is altering my concession-stand uniform.
When I was hired last week, the manager gave me two beige polo shirts with the beach conservation’s logo stitched on the left pocket. Like all my tops, the tees now skim my belly button. I concentrate the same way I did when my mother was teaching me to light my first fire. The beige fabric extends. I slip it over my head to test it. The hem has moved the perfect amount. And it’s even all the way around. Who needs to study the cantamen?
The only requirement for the bottom half of my uniform is the color. I can wear pants, shorts, even a skirt, so long as they’re khaki or white. I pull on the white jeans I bought for my first day. They are now cropped pants. About to lengthen them, I channel my inner Hana and fashion them into shorts.
So what if I’m a bit chilly on the cooler days? Even I can admit my long legs look killer in these. Maybe even murderous enough that a cute lifeguard will notice.
Right, Azra. “A” cute lifeguard? Not “the” cute lifeguard? The one doing timed sprints up and down the beach while you were lying to Ranger Teddy about your knowledge of deep fryers?
I spin around in front of the mirror, more excited for drizzling cheese sauce on nachos than any normal teenager would be.
“Azra, it’s time,” my mother calls from downstairs.
My excitement fizzles out. Moving as slowly as I can, I change out of my uniform. I’m hit by the tiniest pang of regret at not flipping through the cantamen. Who knows? Maybe I could have found a loophole.
*
Mrs. Pucher disappears into her kitchen to make a third pot of tea. My mother stares at me from the flowered armchair next to the grandfather clock—the clock that has ticked for a full hour. I haven’t been able to muster the courage to begin the wish-granting ritual.
Though my mother walked me through this at least ten times yesterday and once more before leaving the house, my palms are sweating so much I’m afraid I might short out the bangle.
“Can’t I just do the stupid dog?” I whisper to my mother.
She picks a wad of white fur off her denim skirt. “You can do this, Azra.” Checking to make sure Mrs. Pucher’s back is turned, she dumps the contents of her teacup in the fern. “No pressure, really, but do you think you might do it soon? I can’t stomach much more of this stuff.”
I could say it serves her right for choosing Mrs. Pucher, but I know how hard it is to swallow the old lady’s bitter, barely sweetened Earl Grey. I bowed out after half a cup, claiming too much caffeine might give me a migraine.
Mrs. Pucher returns to her seat on her yellow tufted couch. “Thank you, dear, for the tomatoes,” she says to my mother, who brought a basket of our homegrown tomatoes as an excuse for our uncharacteristic stopping by. “I’ve always been jealous of your green thumb. I mean, my tomato plants barely have flowers, and yet you’ve managed to coax yours into giving you plump, red fruit!”
My mother squirms, clearly not having considered that it’s only June, far from the height of tomato season in New England.
“Yes,” my mother says, “well, it’s a special variety. Maybe I can plant it for you next year.”
Mrs. Pucher clasps her hands in her lap. “Oh, that would be lovely. Maybe the young man from across the street can help. He was here just yesterday mowing the lawn. Wouldn’t take a penny, if you can believe that in this day and age. He was kind enough to take a gander at the sorry state of my vegetable garden. Even offered to bring me some fertilizer. Such a sweet boy…”
Enough.