"Summertime... and the (Un)living is Easy..." A "Sleepwalking" short story

This week's blog post is actually a short story I began last summer. It stars Veronica Dawson, the protagonist of my yet-to-be-published young adult novel, "Sleepwalking". It began as a short story but turned into a 17,000 monster as I wrote. So it's, what... a novella now?  I don't know. (I've hidden most of it behind a cut so it won't fill your screen )

This previous week commemorated the 6th anniversary of the day I started the original story that would become "Sleepwalking"'s proto-manuscript, at Panera Bread on a snow day.

This is also the very first piece written from the "Sleepwalking" world not told from Ronnie's perspective.

If you'd like to read Ronnie's other misadventures, check out 'Taking Flight'.

________________________________________________________

I probably shouldn’t have hated summer, but I did. Which sucked, because summer was supposed to be a happy time. No school. Sunny mornings. Late evenings. Lemonade. 

But lemonade was too sour for my tastes. Without school to go to every day, I was constantly bored. I was sort of scrawny, so when I sweated t-shirts tended to cling to me and show off just how scrawny I was. And I absolutely, positively hated being hot. 

I pulled the baseball cap off my head and instantly regretted it. My hair was soaked with sweat, and it stuck to my forehead in wet, limp strands. With a groan I shoved the hair back into place and crammed the disturbingly damp cap back onto my head. 

“Isn’t this awesome?” My sister Crystal said from the driver’s seat, next to me. 

“Have I mentioned how much I hate summer?” I yelled in reply, over the sound of the wind roaring through the station wagon’s open windows. 

“Once a mile for the last three hours,” Crystal said with far too much glee in her voice. 

“I have to side with Drew, here,” said a voice from the back of the car. “It’s like… a bajillion degrees in here.”

I turned and saw an angel in a white v-neck shirt. She had an old Atlanta Braves cap of mine crammed on her head. I’d loaned it to her before we’d left home. It looked so much better on her than on me. 

I smiled at her. “Thanks, Ronnie.” 

Ronnie gave me a wink, then directed her attention back to my sister. “Have you seen me?” She asked. “White is not my color. I’m so pale, I can’t even be considered white. I’m like, clear. If you were wearing this, you’d look like a cute hipster chick. I just look like I haven’t done laundry.” She tugged her bra back and forth through the thin material. “I have boob sweat. Me. I barely have boobs to have boob sweat beneath, and yet still my body manages boob sweat.” 

At that precise second, I somehow found a way to choke on my own tongue. I coughed uncontrollably, seeking air. 

Ronnie placed her hands on her hips and looked at me pathetically. “Oh, come on. You’ve lived with us for a year now. Like this is even close to the most awkward girl conversation you’ve unwillingly been a part of.” 

Ronnie took her phone from her pocket and swiped at the screen a few times. She waved at Deidre, her adopted sister, who sat in the seat beside her. “Hey, take a picture of me. I want to keep Facetagram updated of our epic summer road trip.” 

Deirdre was making faces at her own phone and snapping rapid-fire selfies. With her earbuds in, she might as well have been the only person in the car. 

Ronnie rolled her eyes at Deirdre. “Drew, will you take my picture?” 

These days, I tried my hardest not to let every little word Ronnie spoke to me set my heart aflutter. At least, I tried not to show it in front of her. She was my friend. And nothing more. “Sure,” I said taking her phone. 

Ronnie didn’t smile much. Not because she was unhappy or morose… simply because that was her personality. More often than not, she’d always have a piece of sarcasm or wit to hand out instead of a genuine smile. But when I raised the phone to her, she briefly set aside the I’m-a-deep-and-complicated-individual moroseness to blow a kiss at the camera. She puckered her lips, eyes half-lidded, and held her mouth just above her palm, fingers extended toward me. 

I froze, my finger hovering over the screen of her phone. Geeze, she was so beautiful. 

Snap. She was forever captured in that moment. 

“How’d it turn out?” Ronnie asked, reaching for her phone. 

I blinked slowly at the picture. The sunlight made the porcelain skin beneath Ronnie’s plunging neckline glow opalescent. She blew that kiss at me in slow motion, and when I stared at the screen the right way I swore I could see her moving. “Um,” I swallowed. “It looks great.” I handed the phone back to her, and Ronnie glanced at it and nodded in approval before pressing her screen and sharing it with the entire world. 

“How much further?” I Deirdre suddenly asked, returning me to reality. 

As the designated navigator, I had been mapping our route on my phone. “It says less than twenty minutes,” I told her. “Didn’t you see the signs for Vance city limits when we arrived in town?” 

Deirdre looked skeptically out the window. “I must have blinked and missed it. Besides, I think ‘city’ is a bit of a misnomer, Drew.” 

She wasn’t lying. Since we had (supposedly) arrived in Vance, I had counted one streetlight, a grocery store, a bank, and four fast food joints. But we had left the signs of civilization behind more than a mile ago, and now the two-lane road wound through woods that got denser the further we drove. 

“I haven’t lost cell service yet,” I told the car at large. “It says we stay on this road for another three miles, and then turn left and drive for another two miles before we get to the Langly Estate.” 

Ronnie peered out her window. “That is, if we don’t run out of road before then and get kidnapped by some crazed hillbillies.” 

Crystal rolled her eyes behind her aviator sunglasses. “There are no crazed hillbillies.”  

“No, I think Ronnie’s right,” I added. “There are always crazed hillbillies. Don’t you watch the news? Haven’t you seen stories of people disappearing in the woods and then being found chopped to pieces eight months later? More victims of the killer hillbillies!” I gasped, and opened my eyes so wide I imagined they filled my glasses. “The killbillies.” 

“You always think Ronnie’s right,” Crystal laughed. I looked away, shyly. “No one has ever been chopped up by killer hillbillies.” 

“Then they’ll turn us into forced laborers instead!” Ronnie cried. She and I shared a smile. “They’re always looking for lost city folks to enlist to work their whisky breweries, or something like that.” 

“Still,” Crystal said. 

“Still, what?” I asked, momentarily pulled from our paranoid tirade. 

“You don’t make whisky in a brewery, you make it in a big copper cooker called a still,” Crystal finished. 

“What?” I asked, flabbergasted. “How do you know?” 

Crystal lowered her sunglasses and flicked her eyes to me. “You’re kidding, right? Dad had one out back. It was inside that ‘extra shed’ that he always kept the huge padlock on.” 

My jaw dropped, and I momentarily forgot the act about killer hillbillies. Crystal had just shaken my entire world. “He told us he kept farm equipment in there! We weren’t allowed in because it was dangerous!” 

“We didn’t even have a farm! What on earth would he need farm equipment for?” 

“I always thought it was a work in progress, sort of a bucket list thing. And how exactly do you know about it, anyway?” My phone beeped, and I quipped, “Turn here,” and pointed to a small side road approaching on the left. 

Crystal used her turn signal, even though we hadn’t passed another car in miles. “Do you remember Rebecca, a girl who was in my grade? She and I found the key, once, in one of the drawers in the kitchen. And then, one day while Dad was at work and you were at band practice, she and I sort of… snuck in there.” 

If possible, my eyes got even wider. “No way!” 

“You were in a band?” Deirdre exclaimed from the back seat, still oblivious of most of the conversation happening around her. 

“Not a band, the band,” Crystal corrected. “He was in the marching band. He played the tuba.” 

“How many times do I have to tell you, it was the Sousaphone!” I jabbed. “And you’re avoiding the subject. What did you find in the shed?” 

“I already told you: a still,” Crystal said. “It looked like a big, copper ball, with all these tubes and stuff coming from it. I didn’t know what it was until Rebecca told me.” 

I tossed my hands into the air. “Am I the only one in the world who hasn’t heard of this thing? How did Rebecca know what one looked like?” 

“Apparently her grandfather had one,” Crystal said. “Turns out, a lot of people back home were making bootleg hooch.” 

“Did you try some?” Deirdre asked, sitting forward in her seat.  

A small smirk played on Crystal’s lips. “Rebecca dared me, so I took a big drink from one of the jugs. I ran outside and threw up about ten seconds after that. We thought we put the jug back where we found it and locked it up tight. We figured there was no way Dad would find out. But he must have known, because later in the week the lock was changed and the keys weren’t in the kitchen anymore.” 

“You’re my sister!” I cried. “My little sister! How is it you know more about this than I do?” 

Crystal stuck her tongue out at me. 

Ronnie, who had been sitting in silence for most of the conversation, was staring at Crystal in awe. “Wow,” she finally said. “Those killbillies are definitely going to chop you up last, since you have so much previous experience with whisky.” 

Before we could continue down the road of Crystal’s adventures in our dad’s illegal bootlegging operation, my phone mercifully chirped. “Hey, looks like we’re here,” I said.  

Just as my phone’s robotic voice said, ‘You have arrived at your destination,’ Crystal turned right onto a long, gravel driveway. At its corner was a beaten, old aluminum mailbox that had Langly lovingly scripted on its side in flaking gold paint. 

The station wagon crunched across gravel and flattened the weeds that grew through the driveway. Long thrushes reached toward the driveway and brushed the car like delicate fingers. 

“Wow,” Deirdre marveled, squeezing herself between the front seats to get a better view through the windshield. 

At the end of the drive was a white, two-story house. It looked like it had been built a hundred years earlier, and hadn’t been cared for since. Most of the shudders had been blown off by wind and rain; those that remained dangled dangerously. The paint was cracked and peeling. Weeds grew so high that I couldn’t tell exactly how tall the porch was because it was completely hidden. 

“I take back everything I said about there being no such thing as killbillies,” Crystal said darkly. 

“Are you kidding me?” Deirdre chirped. “This place is great! Just look at it! I’m sort of sad that we’re only spending a week here!”  

“I have to agree with Deirdre,” Ronnie said, smiling at our temporary home. “But maybe that’s because we grew up in a ramshackle old house. The smell of old wood and poor ventilation reminds me of home.” 

“You grew up in a ramshackle old church,” I corrected. “Sort of different.” 

“Hey, no air conditioning is no air conditioning, no matter where you are.” 

Crystal put the car in park and turned off the engine. “Okay, crew. We have one week. We have a long list of stuff we’ve got to get done if we each want our four-hundred dollars. What do we do first?” 

“Unload our stuff?” Deirdre suggested. 

Crystal nodded and gestured out the windows, to the sea of nearly waist-high grass that surrounded the car. “Problem. We have to cut our way to the front door. So who’s it going to be?” 

Deirdre, Crystal, and Ronnie all turned to me. 

“Oh, come on,” I complained. “Crystal is at least as good with a weed whacker as I am.” 

“But you’re the only one wearing jeans,” she countered. “I’m wearing shorts and flip flops. What if that grass is concealing deer ticks, or chiggers, or snakes?” 

“Oh, come on. You wore shorts and flip-flops just because you knew they’d give you an excuse not to pick up the weed whacker!” 

Ronnie shrugged one shoulder seductively and batted her eyelashes at me. Then she ran her index finger beneath my chin and said, in her sweetest voice, “It sure would be manly and heroic of you to cut us a path to the porch, Drew.” 

Something inside my chest fluttered with happiness. I shuddered and smiled, but managed to slap her finger away before the blush crept along my neck and spread to my ears. Great. As if it wasn’t hot enough outside. Now I had a blush that would turn my skin into a griddle. “That is unfair. That is so unfair.” I murmured, lowering my eyes from her. 

But I opened my door nonetheless and slogged outside into the sea of grass. When I closed the door behind me, it snipped the heads off several rushes. Seconds later I opened the back of the station wagon and removed the weed whacker we’d brought. It soon roared to life. 

Yeah, it was totally unfair for Ronnie to use her feminine wiles to get me to do things. But that didn’t stop her from doing it, on very rare occasions such as this. And it didn’t stop me from absolutely loving every time she did it. 

Ronnie, as well as Deirdre, Crystal, and everyone else on the face of the planet, it seemed, knew that I had a huge crush on Ronnie, and I had since the moment we’d met, just over a year before. Of course, Ronnie wasn’t my first crush (I was sixteen when we’d met, for crying out loud), but she was definitely the most important. 

I couldn’t even put a finger on what it was that attracted me to Ronnie. Maybe it was her nose, which I knew she hated (she called it huge, bulbous, and many other self-deprecating things). Maybe it was because she was almost as tall as me, which I also knew she hated. Maybe it was the way I knew she’d always stand up for her friends and family, even when it terrified her. Maybe it was because she was so strong-willed and independent. 

I hated making lists of the things I liked about Ronnie; it wasn’t those traits that made her so wonderful, but the combination of them all that transformed into her personality, something so uniquely Ronnie. 

Ronnie was special. And yeah, I know that all guys think the girls they have crushes on are special. But Ronnie is a different kind of special. 

Because Ronnie is a Sleepwalker. 

A few years ago, she was hit by a car in front of her school. She died. But then she inherited an ancient curse that had passed down through her family for five hundred years. She’ll spend eternity as the walking dead, even though she only looks like a zombie between midnight and sunrise. 

Which means she’ll live forever, like everyone else in her family. And I won’t. 

She was special, and wonderful, and beautiful, even though she didn’t think she was any of those things. Sometimes it blew my mind to think about it; I couldn’t understand how one person could fail to see so many wonderful things about themselves. But it made sense; if she didn’t understand her own worth, of course she couldn't understand why I loved her. 

Yes. I used the L word. 

I had never used it in front of anyone, of course. There’s not much more pathetic that saying you love a girl who has told you, time and time again, that she will never like you as anything more than a friend. 

Still. I had to have hope.

Crystal and I didn’t know much about our biological father. But as far back as we could remember, Charlie, our stepdad, had been everything to us. Our mother didn’t know she’d fallen in love with a Sleepwalker. And that was how I’d met Ronnie. 

A bunch of crazy stuff went down the summer I met Ronnie. Charlie took the fall for a crime he didn’t commit. Crystal and I had nowhere to go, until Sylvia, Ronnie’s five-hundred-year-old grandmother, took us in. 

I thought that living in the same house as the girl of my dreams would be a dream come true. Instead, Ronnie had started to treat me the same way Crystal treated me: like an older brother. 

I’m not sure what I expected. Ronnie told me the very first week that she only liked me as a friend, and she’d never really done anything to show feelings more than that. In fact, she’d been very careful to give me no reason to even suspect that she would ever have stronger feelings for me. 

Still. I had to have hope. 

Grass sprayed all over my jeans, shirt, glasses, hat, and every exposed inch of sweaty skin. By the time I’d cut a passable swath to the front porch, I looked like the Jolly Green Giant.  

Now with a navigable path, the girls carried all our bags from the back of the station wagon to the front porch. The paint on the concrete was chipped and flaking, much like every other square inch of the house. Crystal’s shorts were so short that she couldn’t get her entire hand into her pocket (I still say she wore those simply so she wouldn’t have to cut weeds), so she used her thumb and index finger to fish around for the key to the front door. 

After a few seconds, she extricated the key and jammed it into the ancient lock. She jimmied the key, and flecks of rust flitted onto the porch. With one last shove, the door popped open, and it swung inward with a creak worthy of any haunted house in the country. 

The inside of the house was lit by milky sunlight from the grimy windows. The open door cast a beam of light into the foyer the likes of which the house probably hadn’t seen in years. Motes of dust drifted like a million tiny moths in the sunlight. 

“Awesome,” Deirdre marveled, stepping around Crystal and into the house. “Which room are we going to sleep in?” 

“Whichever one has the least dust in it,” Crystal replied, crossing the threshold with bags under her arms. 

“I have a feeling that will be whichever room we decide to clean first,” I put in, following. 

We picked what had probably once been the living room, judging from the ancient record player and scuff marks on the hardwood floor where furniture had once been. Crystal insisted I leave before they started cleaning (“Out! You’re dropping grass clipping everywhere!” she had insisted, jabbing my chest with her index finger). 

I stepped back onto the front porch and fired up the weed whacker again. It’s probably better this way, I told myself as I hacked mercilessly at the weeds in the front yard. The front yard has to be clipped. And the longer you’re around Ronnie, the more opportunities you have to stick your foot in your mouth. Better steer clear of her for a while. 

I grumbled at my inner monologue, but continued cutting weeds. 

An hour later, when the front yard was finally clear, my stomach was grumbling so loudly that I could her it over the roar of the weed whacker’s engine. I clicked it off, stepped to the front porch, and hollered through the open door (I didn’t dare step inside, for fear of Crystal’s jabbing finger). 

“Hey! Do we have any food?” 

Deirdre and Crystal appeared in the foyer, carrying a filthy, moth-eaten rug. 

“Did we bring any food with us?” I asked, stepping toward the living room. “I could literally eat a horse. Like, put a horse between two pieces of bread and give it to me right now.” 

The girls carried the rug past me and tossed it onto the front yard, where it landed in a heap. “Our plan was to go to the grocery store when we got here, remember?” 

I dropped my hands by my side in defeat. A cloud of grass clippings showered from me. “Which, of course, we haven’t.” 

“Why don’t two people go, and two people stay here?” Deirdre suggested. “The more work we get done, the quicker we can get to exploring.” 

My brain spun into motion. 

Part of me really wanted to be alone with Ronnie; the part that was, apparently, desperate to put my foot in my mouth as quickly as possible. And that part of my brain tended to take control much more easily when Ronnie and I were alone together. 

I sighed. I loved her. I knew I did. Which was why I didn’t want to look like a complete idiot in front of her. 

“I’ll drive,” Ronnie said. “I remember the way to the grocery store.” 

I took off my glasses and tried to wipe the grass from them on the inside of the neck of my shirt. It definitely wasn’t helping. “Look at me. I can’t get into the station wagon like this,” I said, trying to keep all emotion out of my voice.  

Ronnie nodded. “Okay, Deirdre and I will go shopping, then. Do you have any special requests?” 

“Those red, white, and blue popsicles,” Crystal commented, emerging from the living room. “Those things taste like summer.” 

“And watermelon,” I added. “And the sugariest cereal you can find.” 

“Okay, geeze. We’re trying to make a profit this week, remember?” Ronnie joked. She jingled the car keys and she and Deirdre headed for the door. “See you two in a little while.” They gave one last wave, and the door closed shut behind them. 

Crystal immediately returned to the room she and the other girls had been cleaning. “I’m going to finish mopping this room. It’s still got a long way to go if we’re going to sleep here. Could you try to find the breaker box? There’s no electricity right now, and we’re going to need to vacuum, like, everywhere. Not to mention that all our phones need charged, and we need power for the refrigerator.” 

“Okay,” I said, stepping through the foyer.

“Woah!” Crystal cried. “Where do you think you’re going in those grassy clothes! Dust yourself off first!” 

“Oh, come on!” I protested. “The house is already a wreck! What harm could some grass clippings do?”  

Crystal jabbed me in the chest with the handle of her mop, wielding it like a spear. “Out. Out. Out!” 

I gave her a sour look and stepped back onto the porch. When she seemed satisfied that I wasn’t coming back in, she padded back to the living room. 

“Don’t tell me what to do!” I sneered, when I was sure she was out of earshot. “I’m older than you!” 

I stared down at my grassy clothes. My shirt wasn’t so bad, but my jeans were so covered in grass clippings that I couldn’t discern their original color. There was no way I was going to be able to dust off enough grass to make Crystal happy. 

Heh. I thought. I’ll show her.  

I unzipped my jeans and dropped them around my ankles, then stepped out of them. I was now standing on the front porch in my boxer shorts, but I didn’t care. No grass to track into the house. 

When I stepped inside the house, I carefully avoided the living room in my search for the breaker box. I checked every closet downstairs, with no luck. Some old coat hangers, a dilapidated cardboard box filled with god-knows-what, and a huge spider that totally freaked me out, but no circuit breaker. 

Also, I found a creepy set of stairs that descended into damp, musty darkness. A basement. 

I tried the light switch on the wall. Of course, nothing. You’re on a quest to reset the circuit breaker, remember? Dummy. 

I’m not sure if there’s such a thing as a fear of basements (basementophobia?), but if there is, I have it. That goes double for dark basements. But my friends’ cell phones were counting on me to restore electricity to the house. So I turned on my phone’s flashlight and tried to think happy thoughts as I stepped onto that first stair. 

And, of course, my ‘happy thoughts’ went back to Ronnie. 

I hadn’t ever told anyone, but I had never kissed a girl. Unless you count the time Margaret Donahue planted a huge, wet kiss on my lips in the 8^th grade spring formal. Which I didn’t. As far as I’m concerned, any kiss received while wearing a clip-on tie doesn’t count as a real kiss. 

I had always sort of hoped that I could give that kiss to Ronnie.  And yeah, because I had waited for her, I had graduated high school having never kissed a girl. And yes, she had already kissed one boy (that I knew of), so there was no way a kiss between us could have that ‘first kiss majesty’ for her. But none of that mattered to me.  

Last spring, when I had asked her to be my date to the senior prom (and she had miraculously said yes), I thought I was going to get my chance. 

We danced the entire night. No, not exclusively with each other, because I’d told her we weren’t going as ‘that kind’ of dates. Did I wish we had gone as ‘that kind’ of dates? Of course. Did I really want to dance with anyone else besides her? Of course not. But I knew that’s what she wanted. So, even though I didn’t get that magical first kiss with Ronnie, she and I danced, more often that not, with each other. It was worth it. 

I couldn’t imagine how the little, bare light bulb hanging by a cord could have made the basement any less terrifying, because it was positively the most terrifying place in the whole world. Against the wall was some kind of tool shelf, where heavy metal hardware had been meticulously arranged. Since I knew nothing about tools I had no idea what any of them did, but from the layer of dust I could tell they hadn’t done anything in a long, long time.  

I swept my light around the room and was glad none of the girls were around to hear me scream like a frightened child. A huge, dark shape suddenly loomed in front of me. I backpedaled until I crashed into the tool bench, which rattled noisily as long-forgotten tools shook from their hangers and clattered to the floor. 

A furnace. It was only a huge, iron, pot-bellied furnace. It looked like it hadn’t been used since I’d been born. 

“Easy, Drew. Easy,” I told myself. “Nothing in here is going to hurt you.” I started toward the furnace, toward the other side of the basement. Just in case, I took a heavy wrench from the tool bench in my right hand and held my flashlight with my left, like a shield. Of course, my 'shield' couldn’t survive being dropped into a cereal bowl (don’t ask me how I know), so I’m not sure what I was hoping it would protect me from. 

I eased around the side of the furnace. Behind it, set into the basement’s brick wall, were two metal-paneled boxes. Finally, I thought. Since I couldn’t afford to put down the flashlight, and there didn’t appear to be any boogeymen around, I set the wrench on the floor and opened the breaker boxes. It looked like the rows of switches used to have words written on them, showing what parts of the house they controlled. The words had long since faded away. To be thorough, I meticulously flipped each of them to the “off” position, and then to the “on” position. 

The lights in the basement didn’t come on. 

Of course not. You didn’t flip the switch on your way down, remember? Once again feeling like an idiot, I turned to make my way back to the stairs. 

Something by the furnace moved as my flashlight beam swept the room. Something fell to the floor with a metallic tinkling sound. 

I jumped so high I nearly hit my head on the low ceiling. I tried to tell my feet to move, to run like the wind to the stairs and never return to this terrifying basement, but they didn’t want to listen. 

“Hello?” I peeped. “Is someone there?” 

Nothing. 

It was just your imagination, I tried to tell myself. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? 

I couldn’t believe I’d just thrown fate such a question. It seemed that, lately, whenever I wondered, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’, I almost always found out. 

I took a tentative step forward. No more movement. No sounds. And, hopefully, nothing that would jump out and try to rip my face off. I took another fearful step. Again, nothing. With confidence growing, I padded around the side of the furnace and aimed my cellphone light where I thought I’d seen movement. 

The light instantly glinted off of something on the concrete floor. I blinked, and crouched to get a better view. It was golden, round, and it definitely had not been there a moment ago. 

Curiosity squashed my fear. I picked it up, letting the light from my phone wash over it. It was a gold coin, about as big as the top of a soda can. Turning it over in the light, I tried to make out any inscription on it, but it was so old that the words and pictures etched on its surface were nearly worn away. 

Could I have simply overlooked it a minute ago? It was possible. I had been pretty freaked out by the furnace; maybe I disregarded it while I feared for my life. But I was fairly certain I couldn’t have overlooked something that shiny. I went against everything I knew about my ADD.

I shrugged. No matter where it had come from, the coin looked cool, and it would make a great souvenir. I hid it in my tightly-gripped palm and left the basement, already less terrified of the dark than I had been seconds before. 

“Power’s on!” I yelled as I emerged from the basement, closing the door behind me. 

“Awesome!” Crystal called. She stepped into the hallway, and instantly her jaw dropped and her eyes shot open. “Why aren’t you wearing pants?!” 

I froze for a second. In the midst of the fear and excitement in the basement, I had completely forgotten that I’d left my pants on the front porch. 

I thrust my chin defiantly at Crystal. “Don’t tell me what to do!” I huffed at her before hurrying back to the front porch and my discarded pants. 

Flipping the breakers had restored power to the house. The outlets in our makeshift bedroom were working, so I plugged up my cell (using the GPS and flashlight had really drained its battery) and then set out to find what other parts of the house had been made more livable by the addition of electricity. The refrigerator, despite looking like it came out of World War 2, was working. Thankfully, the previous owners hadn’t left it full of nasty, rotten food. It was still filthy on the inside, so I started scrubbing it with a sponge so we could safely use it. 

Just as I was finishing the fridge, Ronnie and Deirdre arrived home with groceries. Once everything was put away, we made lunch – bologna sandwiches, which were delicious, if not very creative – and then got back to work on the house. 

The time inside had left me feeling sort of claustrophobic. I dug a pair of gardening gloves out of our bag of supplies and went outside. It was sickeningly hot, and the humidity instantly made my t-shirt cling to my skin. 

You’re the one who wanted to come out here, I told myself as I opened the back of the station wagon and removed a pair of hedge clippers. You could’ve stayed inside with Crystal and Ronnie and washed windows. 

Hedges ran the length of the house, and they were horribly overgrown. I clipped at them more ferociously than they deserved. With my luck, I’d have said or done something that made Ronnie want to run even further from me. I was better off outside. 

“What’re you up to?” Someone asked. 

I stopped in mid-chop. A half-severed shrub flopped listlessly on its stalk. I wasn’t sure whom I expected to find when I turned around; Ronnie and Crystal were both inside, and Deirdre was taking a turn with the weed whacker, which buzzed rhythmically in the distance. 

I definitely wasn’t expecting to find nothing. 

“Hello?” I said tentatively. 

“Down here,” a voice replied from behind me. 

I spun and looked, but once again found nothing. Nothing, that is, except for the shrub I’d been hacking away. It actually might have looked a little worse, with the hatchet-job I’d given it. 

In my years living with Sleepwalkers, I’d been exposed to a supernatural world that most people don’t know even exists. I’d met gargoyles and crazy cultists, fought monstrous bats and owls and frogs, and watched normal people turn into zombies in a matter of seconds. I’d heard rumors and stories of loads of other creatures that go bump in the night, but hadn’t had the chance to meet many of them. 

I just wished I’d asked someone to tell me which were friendly, and which wouldn’t hesitate to tear me limb from limb. 

Also, which might live in our area of the country. 

Also also, which might look like a shrub and really dislike being hacked apart with a pair of hedge clippers. 

I took a slow step back from the bush and said, warily, “…Hello?” 

“Down here, genius,” a brusque, slightly accented voice said. 

I lowered my eyes, and found myself staring at a squat, stumpy, naked green man. 

I blinked and stepped backward quickly. He wasn’t exactly naked; he wore what looked like a toga made of fresh leaves. His legs and arms were round, almost like a baby’s, but they were thick with muscle instead of baby fat. He had a round nose like a boxer; it even looked it had been broken a few times and healed not quite straight. On top of his head was a small plume of green hair, which looked like it had been directly transplanted from one of those plastic troll dolls. 

Words failed me for a second. I very rarely met new supernatural creatures, and I didn’t think one had ever spoken to me. Probably sounding like a complete moron, I stammered, “Um. Hello?” 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, formalities,” the squat man said again. He tapped one of his green feet on the ground. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” 

My eyes combed the yard for my friends, but none of them were around. Briefly I considered yelling for them, but I had no idea what this creature was, much less how it would react to an unexpected audience. “I’m just… trimming this hedge,” I replied, waving the hedge clippers. I suddenly gasped. “Oh, no! Was this hedge a friend of yours? I’m really, really sorry!” 

The green guy rolled two mud-colored eyes. “Oh, please. What, do you think holding on to it is going to make it gain interest? Well, it won’t. It’s worth the same now as when it was first minted. So cut the games. Out with it.” 

Whatever this guy was, he certainly wasn’t interested in making casual conversation. “What are you talking about?” 

He blinked at me, as if I was a rather slow child. “You’re… you’re kidding, right? Good grief, kid, did you just wash up on shore? How long have you been living with Sleepwalkers?” 

“Wait a second,” I interrupted. “How do you know I live with Sleepwalkers?” 

“Oh, I can tell,” he said. “Sleepwalkers are always brooding in their own self-loathing. Oh, woe is me, I used to be mortal and now I’m something else. How shall I ever adjust to this new state of being? What an identity crisis!” 

Indignation for Ronnie’s honor filled me like I’d swallowed a cup of hot coffee. I straightened my spine and looked incredulously at the little green guy. “Ronnie does not brood!” I said, only then realizing the he might not know who Ronnie was. “And my stepdad is a Sleepwalker. He pretty much raised my sister and I.” 

The green guy huffed out a breath through his oversized nostrils. “And no one’s told you about Greenmen in that time? Well. I feel a little insulted.” 

“Greenmen?” I asked. “Is that what you are? A Greenman?” 

“Some traditions call us leprechauns, but I always hated that name. And the cartoons are just racist caricatures.” He cracked his beefy knuckles. “All right. Tell me what you want.” 

“You’re a leprechaun? A real-life leprechaun?” I cried, suddenly excited. The Greenman lowered his brow and glared at me, and only then did I process his statement about hating being called a leprechaun. “Oh, I mean… opps. Sorry. But, what should I call you? What’s your name?” 

“Oh, no,” he countered, waving a sausage-like finger at me. “You’re not getting my name. Sleepwalkers can do hellish things to a creature when they have its name.” 

“I’m not a Sleepwalker,” I sighed. I figured he would have gotten that from our previous conversation.

“You live close enough to them. Better safe than sorry.” 

He continued to glare suspiciously at me. It was true; a name was a dangerous thing, in the hands of someone who knew how to use it. But Ronnie had once told me a story of a woman who had trusted her, helped her when no one else would. She’d said that monsters didn’t have names. The simple act of giving something a name made it friendlier, more relatable. So I decided that, if I wanted to get a little trust, I’d have to give a little, first. 

“My name is Drew,” I told the Greenman. 

He still eyed me with suspicion, but some of the tension left the Greenman’s shoulders. “I’ve met a lot of people in my life, kid, and almost none have ever given me their names,” he said. “Probably because they understood what I could do with it.” 

A sliver of fear crept into my stomach. He was right. I hadn’t even known what a Greenman was, five minutes ago. I certainly didn’t know what kind of powers he possessed, much less what he could do with my name. Giving it to him so quickly might not have been the smartest move. 

But I couldn’t take it back. What was done, was done. “I’m not like a lot of other people,” I said simply. 

His face softened. “Certainly not. For one, you’re mortal.” Gently, he bowed his head in greeting.  “My name is Tuck.” 

“Pleased to meet you, Tuck,” I said, nodding. “Now, what were you talking about a second ago? About wanting me to ‘get on with it’?” 

Tuck crossed his arms across his chest. “Boy, one thing you said is definitely true: you’re no Sleepwalker. Every Sleepwalker I’ve ever met didn’t hesitate to use that little piece of gold to get whatever they wanted of me.” 

I blinked, then placed my hand on my pocket. Something round and solid rested there. I slid my hand inside and pulled out the oversized gold coin I’d found in the basement. 

“What?” I asked. “You mean this? This is yours?” 

“Yep,” he replied. 

“Did you lose it?” 

“No,” he said. “It was stolen from me.” 

I blanched backward. “I didn’t take it! I found it!” 

He rolled his eyes again. “I know that. I didn’t say you took it. It was taken by the guy who used to live here. He found it a long time ago. And when I approached him about getting it back, he instead decided he’d rather horde it. It’s been here ever since.” 

“Oh.” I looked at the coin again. I still couldn’t read its faded inscription. I reached it to Tuck. “Here you go.” 

Tuck sighed. “I can’t take it like that. I have to trade something for it. That’s how being a faerie works. We always have to make equal trades for things.” 

“The basement,” I realized. “You followed me down there. You couldn’t just take the coin, so you made sure I noticed it. So I could trade it back to you.” 

Tuck bowed gently. “Guilty. So what can I do for you?” 

I had been rolling the coin around in my hands, but I looked back to Tuck at his question. “Um, that’s a good question, actually. I don’t really know what you can do for me. What is the standard trade value of one of these coins?” 

Tuck crossed his arms across his chest and smiled at me with no small amount of pride. “One wish,” he said. 

My mouth opened, but I closed it again. 

A wish? A serious, honest-to-goodness wish? 

Several seconds had gone by before I asked, “Anything I want?” 

“If it is within the reach of my magic,” he added. “Greenmen have power, but we’re not talking phenomenal, cosmic power or anything. I can’t do world peace, can’t send you back in time, can’t reshape creation into your image. And, of course, wishing for more wishes is out. But if you’ve got an enemy, I can hurl them into the sun for you.” 

“No hurling people into the sun,” I quickly added. 

“Hey Drew, are you out here?” Deirdre’s voice called from the back yard. Shoes tromped heavily through the now-leveled sea of weeds. “I could use some help winding more string onto the weed whacker.” 

I had been so involved in my conversation with Tuck that I hadn’t noticed the weed whacker was no longer buzzing in the background.

“Think about it,” Tuck said, taking a step back into the shrub. “Call me when you’re ready. Oh, and if you could keep this between us, I’d appreciate it.” 

“Wait,” I said. “Why can’t I tell anyone?” 

Tuck had nearly disappeared into the hedge. Deirdre’s shoes tromped closer. “The faer folk appreciate secrecy,” Tuck’s face suddenly became serious. “Mr. Langly didn’t appreciate that fact. And now you know why Mr. Langly left his home and his leprechaun gold before he was able to use his one wish.” 

With that, Tuck slunk back into the bush. Deirdre stepped around the corner the next second. “Oh, there you are,” she said. “Could you give me a hand?” 

I was already on my knees, prying apart the hedge with my hands, but Tuck was nowhere to be seen. Numbly, I stood, unable to take my eyes from the place the Greenman had disappeared. “Um. Yeah, sure,” I stammered. Deirdre turned, and I followed her into the back yard, still trying to process what had happened in the last ten minutes. 

After helping Deirdre wind more string into the weed whacker, I went back to clipping the hedges. Tuck never reappeared. Apparently I was right when I assumed he wasn’t at all interested in small talk. It appeared my further questions about Greenmen would go unanswered; Tuck would only show his face again when I was ready to make my wish. 

Most people spend their whole lives saying, “If I had one wish, I’d wish for…” Heck, I’d said it multiple times in my life. But now that I had a real, genuine wish, I had no idea what to do with it. 

The second half of the day was as hot, sweaty, back-breaking, and disgusting as the first. After the hedges were trimmed, I decided to work the rest of the day inside. The evening was simply too hot, and I felt only a few minutes away from shriveling up into a raisin. 

Even though Crystal and Ronnie had abandoned their crusade on dirty windows and instead spent all afternoon cleaning the kitchen, it still wasn’t finished by dinnertime. So, though it was still sweltering outside, we built a bonfire in an ancient fire pit in the backyard and roasted hot dogs. Soon my stomach was full of franks and watermelon, and the four of us were talking and laughing, like we did every night. The sky turned deep purple as the sun disappeared over the horizon. 

Deirdre yawned boisterously, stretching. 

“Stop,” Ronnie said, beginning her own yawn. “Don’t you know yawns are…” she finished the yawn. “…contagious?” 

Crystal was reclined in a chair she had hauled outside from the dining room. Her long legs were stretched out before her, flip flops discarded in the grass at her feet. “It’s been a long day,” she stated. “Maybe we should all get some sleep. We’ve still got a lot of work to do. The earlier we can get started on it, the better.” 

I stared into the fire, mesmerized by the shades of yellow and red and blue. “You’re probably right,” I added. “Have you seen the bathroom? It doesn’t have a shower; instead, it’s got an old, claw-footed bathtub. And I am NOT taking a bath in that thing until it’s been cleaned. It looks like a failed science experiment.” 

Crystal nodded and rose. “I’m going to set up my sleeping place. You’re all welcome to join me, but I can’t promise I’ll be awake by the time you make it.” The screen door clattered behind her as she stepped into the house. 

“Me too,” Deirdre added. She stood. “I have to change into my pajamas.” 

“Pajamas?” Ronnie asked her. “But you’re filthy and you haven’t showered.” 

“Yeah, but I’m not going to get into my sleeping bag wearing these,” Deirdre replied, gesturing to her cut-offs and volleyball t-shirt. “I have to sleep in that bag all week!”  With a final wave, she stepped into the house, screen door slamming. 

That left just Ronnie and I. 

I huffed a laugh through my nose. “I can’t go in yet. There’s too great a chance I’ll see my sister in her underwear. I don’t think I can bear that level of awkwardness.” 

Ronnie smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? Even after you subjected her to that very sight this afternoon?” 

The temperature of my neck raised about a thousand degrees. “Oh. She told you about that, huh?” 

Ronnie took a deep drink of her lemonade, then laughed quietly with her mouth closed. “Yep.” 

“It’s her own fault,” I defended as the blush crept across my cheeks and nose. “She said no grass in the house. I was just obliging her.” 

A few minutes of silence seemed to stretch on for hours, Ronnie and I staring into the fire. Inside the house, a light went out; obviously, Deirdre and Crystal had gone to bed. Ronnie’s face was painted in beautiful hues of orange from the fire. She blinked her big, brown eyes and sighed contently, stretching her long legs. 

I loved moments like this; any time she and I got to spend, just the two of us. But I knew I couldn’t be trusted. If I kept flapping my gums, I was bound to say something that further convinced Ronnie that I just wasn’t boyfriend material; it was only a matter of time. 

Might as well get it out of the way, I thought. 

“Ronnie,” I began. I took a deep breath, as if I was about to dive underwater.  

She braced herself. She knew I was about to say something she didn’t want to hear. And when she had that look on her face, like she was about to be forced to drink a glass of vinegar, I wanted to dig a hole and hide inside it forever. 

She found my feelings for her literally disgusting. 

So I changed what I was about to say, blocking off the profession of feelings and sending out something else instead. I didn’t even know what I was going to say until the words came tumbling out. 

“I know you don’t feel about me the way I feel about you,” I began. She winced. “…but I want you to know that it makes me really glad that you still want to be my friend. Not a lot of girls would do that. So thank you.” 

I looked back into the fire. In my peripheral vision, I saw Ronnie blink, the unease melting from her face. 

“Really?” She asked. 

“Of course,” I replied, not raising my eyes. “A lot of girls would think it’s awkward, hanging out with a guy who likes them. Thanks for staying my friend.” 

She frowned, slightly. “Of course, Drew. You’re one of my best friends. No amount of awkwardness is going to change that. Besides, have you met me? Awkward is sort of what I do.” 

I chuckled a little through my nose. Hopefully she didn’t grasp the bitterness underneath. I forced a smile and said, “Lucky for me.” 

Ronnie stood and smiled at me. I basked in the moment for just as second, even though it wasn’t the sort of smile I wanted. It would have to do. “I’m headed to bed. Catch you in the morning?” 

“Sure,” I replied. “I’ll come inside in a minute.” 

She nodded and smiled once more before disappearing through the back door. The screen door slammed and bounced against the frame a few times. 

I slouched in my folding chair, staring at the closed door for less than a minute before a voice from the darkness said, “Oh, I see what’s going on.” 

I jumped so quickly that my flimsy chair toppled over, dumping me onto the grass. I scrambled to my feet and found Tuck, sitting in the chair Ronnie had previously occupied. 

“Holy crap!” I hissed, pressed my hand to my heart. “You almost gave me a heart attack! If you do that again I might have to spend my wish on a defibrillator!” 

“Eh, you humans and your beating hearts. Your Sleepwalker friends don’t bother with such trifles.”  

I rolled my eyes. “What do you want?” 

“Just checking on you,” He replied, swinging his stumpy legs over the edge of Ronnie’s chair. “I don’t know if anyone has ever taken so long to call me back for their wish. I was afraid you’d forgotten about me, or were hoarding the coin like old Mister Langly tried to do.” 

I again wanted to ask what he meant by each of those statements, but something told me he wasn’t any more interested in small talk now than he had been earlier. Instead, I asked, “What did you mean by, ‘I see what’s going on.’” 

Tuck crossed his arms across his broad chest and gestured to the backdoor with his eyes. “Unrequited feelings.” 

“Oh.” I slouched back into my chair. “That’s Ronnie. She and I are friends. That’s all. And I’m okay with it.” 

Tuck looked at the door, as though he could see Ronnie through it. “Oh, so that’s her. Your Sleepwalker friend.” When I turned to him, he added, “You mentioned her name earlier. Remember?” 

I slouched in my chair. “Oh. Yeah.” 

“So. She’s a Sleepwalker. And you’re not. I can see your dilemma.”  

“There’s no dilemma,” I lied. “We’re just friends. And that’s okay.” 

Placing his elbow on his knee, Tuck put his chin in his hand and examined me appraisingly. “You’re unique, kid. You really are. I’ve never met anyone else like you. And trust me, that’s a good thing.” 

I cocked my head skeptically. I simply couldn’t get a read on Tuck, or Greenmen in general. Did he want me to be intimidated of him, or did he want to be my friend? 

“I’ll tell ya what I’m going to do,” he went on. “You’re having a hard time coming up with a wish. I get that. But I think I have a pretty good read of you. So I’m going to give you a trial wish. Twenty-four hours, to see how you like it. Sort of a try-it-before-you-buy-it scenario.” Tuck clapped his hands. 

“But that’s why I haven’t called for you yet; I can’t decide what I want,” I piped. “Even if it’s for twenty-four hours. This is why I’m the most indecisive person I know.” 

“Oh, you don’t have to decide. I decided for you.” 

My tongue suddenly felt too big for my mouth. I stammered for a second, pointing to Tuck’s hands. “When you clapped…” 

“Twenty-four hours begins now,” he interrupted. “Try this wish, see how you like it. If you come up with something else you want before tomorrow night, just call me and change the wish.” He hopped from the chair and stepped into the darkness beyond the light of the campfire. 

“Wait a second!” I cried after him. “Aren’t you going to tell me what you did?” 

I could only tell that Tuck had turned and looked back at me because the fire cast dancing, orange light into his eyes. “Now where would be the fun in that?” And with that, the Greenman disappeared into the forest, leaving me to stare at the darkness and wonder just what sort of Pandora’s Box I had opened. 

When it became apparent that he wasn’t coming back, I stood and went in the back door, trying to be as quiet as possible. I left my shoes by the door and tiptoed in my socks to the old living room. Through the moonlight in the windows I could make out four sleeping bags in a row. The second from the left was mine, and I quickly changed clothes in the darkness and slunk to my sleeping bag. 

The floor was hard beneath the thin layer of fabric, but even so I felt sleep descending on me almost instantly. Despite the drama of meeting a creature I hadn’t even known existed twenty-four hours earlier, I had worked my butt off that day. I curled into a ball on my side and wrapped my arms around my pillow, like I did every night. 

And then an arm draped across my stomach from behind. 

I froze and my eyes snapped open. In front of me, in the sleeping bag to my left, was Crystal. Deirdre was on the sleeping back on the far right, furthest from mine. 

To my right was Ronnie. 

In the silent stillness of the house, I heard Ronnie’s breath, heavy and rhythmic through her nose. She was still asleep, from the sound of it. 

What was I supposed to do? Ronnie clearly didn’t know that she had just made me her little spoon (which was ironic, because I was at least three inches taller than her). Should I wake her? Should I gently roll her over to the other side, where she might spoon her sister with sitcom-caliber hilarity? 

Or was it wrong for me to simply lie there… and enjoy the human contact? 

Ronnie’s touch set off sparks in my brain, and my heart started thundering in my chest. But it wasn’t the same as when we danced at prom; it wasn’t even the same as when she and I talked alone. I was certain it was because it wasn’t a real embrace… she had simply tossed her arm over me in her sleep, nothing more. 

Even so, it felt nice. 

I could have laid there all night and tried to over-analyze my motivations for letting Ronnie keep her arm around me, but I was simply too sleepy and too comfortable to let myself worry about it. I nestled into my sleeping bag, reveling in the warmth of Ronnie’s arm around me, and drifted pleasantly off to sleep. 

I awoke the next morning, still with the warm, lovely feeling I’d nodded off with, and for a moment wondered if I’d simply dreamed that Ronnie had inadvertently spooned me. But then I blinked, and actually became aware of the rest of my body, and the crushing presence on my windpipe that defiantly wasn’t a dream. 

I tried to sit up, and found myself on my back, with Ronnie’s arm thrown roughly over my throat. If she’d had really buff arms, she might have choked me to death in my sleep. Her face was smashed against the side of my head. She snored lightly in my ear, and I felt a wet spot in my hair where she had drooled on me. 

Next to me, Crystal sat up and rubbed her eyes. She blinked down at me as I started to untangle myself from Ronnie. “Wow,” she murmured. “Do you guys want a room?” 

“Shut up,” I huffed, pushing Ronnie back toward her discarded sleeping bag. “It’s not my fault if Ronnie is a violent sleeper. Maybe she has night terrors.” 

Ronnie mumbled something as I deposited back on her own mangled sleeping bag. She wrapped her arms and legs around it and proceeded to squeeze the life out of it. Apparently in my absence, it would also do for a fine little spoon.  

Everyone was awake and ready for breakfast by the time I’d combed Ronnie’s drool out of my hair. Before Crystal could tell Ronnie what she’d been doing in her sleep, I stepped into the kitchen and started cleaning a cast-iron skillet I’d found in a drawer. I then cooked an entire carton of eggs, which were doled out onto four plates. The four of us ate hungrily and started dividing up jobs for the first half of the day. When all was said and done, I was stuck with hoeing the overgrown flower garden (Which Deirdre couldn’t stop giggling about), taking down and repainting the shutters, and scouring the ultra-funky bathtub. 

Actually, I volunteered for the last one. I already wanted a bath more than I wanted my next meal, and I was too OCD to bathe in a tub that someone else had cleaned. If my skinny, white butt had to sit in it, I wanted to know that it was as clean as could be. 

After loading the sink with dirty dishes, we broke for our jobs. Even thought my hat was starting to smell because I had sweated in it so much the day before, I crammed it on my head and took the hoe to the garden. 

Heh… actually, that is pretty funny. 

Doing the actual hoeing was much less fun that talking about it, though. The flower gardens were as overgrown as the rest of the house. Even though I had sheered all the greenery away with the weed whacker the day before, the ground was tough and hard with roots. I hacked away at it with the hoe, turning up the fresh soil and tossing weedy roots into the lawn so the sun could incinerate them. 

After an hour of digging in the dirt, I was liberally drenched with sweat, but the first flowerbed was ready for new seeds. 

“Need some help with that hoe?” Said a voice from behind me. 

Everyone in the known universe must have gotten together and decided it would be fun to speak to Andrew Deavereux while his back was turned, because it was the third time it had happened in less than twenty-four hours. As a result I jumped, startled, and dropped the hoe. 

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Ronnie said as I spun to face her. She looked as sweaty and exhausted as I was. She was still wearing my Braves hat, but she had turned it around backward.  It still looked better on her than it did on me. She’d rolled up the sleeves of her shirt until her alabaster shoulders were exposed. She’d also ditched her usual jeans for a pair of shorts I’d never seen before; they were so short that they looked more like something Crystal would wear. Except Ronnie looked much better in them than my sister did. 

Crap. Ronnie was so hot. 

She also held a glass of water in each hand, and she offered one to me. 

Discarding all impure thoughts of my friend, I took the glass and drained it in five huge gulps. It was cold and wonderful on my parched throat. 

“Thanks,” I breathed, when I finally came up for air. 

“No problem,” she said. “Got to stay hydrated out here. It’d be pretty embarrassing if you passed out and I had to drag you inside and give you mouth to mouth.” 

My stomach did a nervous flip, and I subconsciously lowered my eyes to my shoes. “Oh, I don’t think I’m in any real danger,” I mumbled. “The water helped. And I’m, um, in the shade, so you know…” 

Ronnie patted one of my cheeks with her fingers, and my eyes leapt up to hers. They were half-lidded, and she gave me a smirk and said, “Oh. Darn.” 

My mouth opened, but no words came out. Whatever clever statement I’d been preparing died a quiet death in my throat, and I was stuck staring at Ronnie. 

She turned her eyes from me and inspected my work on the flowerbed. “Awesome work,” she said. “I always thought you’d be good with a hoe.” 

I choked out a laugh. Heh. It was still funny. With my voice found, I said, “Just between you and me, I took this job just because the jokes are so easy. They practically write themselves.” 

Ronnie snorted a laugh. “Pervert.” She then took my water glass. “Do you want some more water? I’m heading back inside to clean out the upstairs closets.” 

“No, I’m probably okay,” I said, as an odd, fluttery feeling ran wild in my chest. “These flower beds aren’t so bad. And I was in those closets yesterday, looking for the breaker box. They’re gross. Better wear some gloves.” 

“Okay, I will,” Ronnie replied. She took my glass and headed back to the front of the house, but then she tossed me a smile over one shoulder. “I’ll be upstairs. But let me know if you need help in a bed.” 

My jaw dropped, and I gawked after Ronnie as she strode around the side of the house. 

My brain was suddenly firing on all cylinders. “Tuck!” I hissed between clenched teeth. “Tuck, get out here, now!” 

“Ah, now that’s how I’m used to being spoken to,” came the husky voice of the Greenman. I spun on the spot, looking for Tuck, then a pinecone dropped from the sky and bopped me on the head. I lifted my eyes and found the stumpy little man sitting on the gutters of the house, swinging his legs. An impish grin graced his face. 

“What did you do to Ronnie?!” I hissed, jabbing my finger in the direction she had left. 

“Exactly what you would have done, if you had the guts to use your wish on what you really want,” Tuck replied. 

“This isn’t funny!” I replied. “You can’t just mess with people’s emotions. Making Ronnie think she feels things she doesn’t actually feel is just plain wrong. I would never use my wish on this!” 

Tuck crossed his arms, an expression I was getting used to seeing, and leaned further over the edge of the gutter. “Oh yes, you’re ever so noble. I’m sure this never went through your head yesterday, while you were stewing over all the possibilities for your one wish.” 

I stood bolt upright. Eek. The Greenman had me, there. I had wondered what it would be like, if Ronnie had feelings for me. But of course I hadn’t actually considered using my wish for a full-fledged emotional hijack.

Even though I’d never felt this way about anyone. 

Even though I was pretty sure I’d never feel this way again. 

“Look, I saw that look in your eyes last night, as you watched her leave,” Tuck replied. His voice softened. “Would you have really used your wish like this? Only you know. But I’ve been in the wish-granting business a long time, kiddo, and I’ve seen people wish for things they didn’t long for half as badly as you long for this girl.” 

I took a steadying breath, then let it out through my nose. “How were you even able to do this? I didn’t think you could use wishes to make people fall in love.” 

“Oh please, as if Hollywood has any idea what real wishes can do,” Tuck spat. “And, for your information, I didn’t make her fall in love with you. I took the feelings she already had for you and… turned them up a little bit. It wouldn’t have worked if she wasn’t already so fond of you.” 

“Of course she is,” I replied, my eyes locked with Tuck’s. “She’s my friend. We trust each other.” 

Tuck sat up straight and raised his palms in defense. “I can see I’ve struck a chord. If it makes you feel better, consider this: I didn’t force her to feel anything that she couldn’t feel on her own, if she decided to.” 

“But she didn’t decide,” I interrupted. “You decided for her.” 

Tuck bowed his head and closed his eyes. “If you really want, I’ll undo what I’ve done. But remember, it’s only for twenty-four hours. It’ll undo itself later tonight, and then you’ll get to decide what you want to spend your wish on.” 

Ronnie had never so much as flirted with me. It hurt, having her shoot me down every time I expressed my feelings for her. And it never got easier; if anything, it got continually worse. To be rejected over and over again, by the only girl I’d ever had serious feelings for… it was pain I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. 

To have Tuck’s magic accomplish what I had never been able on my own – convince Ronnie that I was worthy of her time, that I was worthy of her – was a mockery to the feelings I had for her. 

But, oh my god… Ronnie had flirted with me. With me. 

I didn’t have an immediate response for Tuck, and I hated myself for it. It’s only the rest of the day, I told myself. What harm could it do? Maybe this is what you need, to convince you to finally stop fawning over Ronnie and move on with your life. Either way, no permanent harm is going to be done. 

“I don’t have time to talk about this now,” I said, picking up the hoe from where I’d dropped it earlier. “Leave things as they are, for now. But no more meddling with my friends. And me and you will talk about my wish, tonight.” 

I expected some kind of wise-cracking, introspective response, but one didn’t come. When I raised my eyes to the gutter, I found that Tuck had already disappeared. 

The backyard flowerbed, it turned out, had been the easiest of the three. The one on the side of the house contained more rocks than dirt, it seemed, and I spent the majority of the time prying them out of the ground with my gloved hands. The flowerbed in the front yard had been taken over by some kind of vine, and I first had to pluck them from the ground before I could start digging with the hoe (hee hee… that just doesn’t get old). Lunchtime had arrived before I knew it, and I hadn’t even gotten to the shutters or the bathtub. 

Everyone else seemed to be just as behind on their jobs as I was. Deirdre’s weed cutting excursion had hit a snag when she’d cut straight into a patch of poison ivy, and she’d been forced to wash every exposed inch of skin before she broke out in red welts. Crystal managed to get three more rooms vacuumed before all that electricity usage kicked the circuit breaker. Since then she’d had to return to the basement every fifteen minutes to reset the circuit. Ronnie had gotten the most done of any of us, after she realized she didn’t have to carry the filthy, moth-eaten boxes from the closets and simply started tossing them out the second-floor windows, to be picked up later. 

“When you found this job on Craigslist, how much work did our employer expect us to finish?” I asked Crystal as I swallowed a bite of an apple. “Did he want the house looking like new? Or did he merely want it livable?  Because livable, we can do. But we could be here until the end of summer and not have this place looking new.” 

Since she was chewing a bite of sandwich, Crystal held up her index finger instead of answering. She then whipped her phone out of her pocket, swiped her finger across the screen a few times, and handed it to me. I squinted at the email on the screen, then read aloud from it. 

“ ‘Wanted: Cleaning Crew. Old home on family estate needs major cleaning, minor repairs, minor landscaping. Cleaners may stay on estate during cleaning process. Must be finished by the end of July. Payment: $1600, possibly more with quality of work. Serious bids only, please. Contact for full list of required tasks. It is NOT okay to contact this seller with similar offers.’” I scrolled further down the screen, to the correspondence between Crystal and the homeowner. “All rooms in main floors ready for furniture, bathrooms thoroughly scrubbed, weeds removed, yadda yadda yadda…” I sighed and passed the phone back to Crystal. “Well, the good news is that we don’t have to paint the outside of the house. The bad news is that we have to do pretty much everything else.” I dropped the crust of my sandwich onto the plate. “If I have to hoe one more bed, I’m going to scream.” 

“Heh,” Deirdre chuckled. “Dirty.” 

I flung my crust at her. She nimbly snatched it out of the air and threw it back at me. I didn’t try to dodge as it bounced off the bill of my hat. 

“Where did you even find this job?” I asked Crystal, who had finally swallowed her bite. 

“Just looking around for work opportunities,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “And it seemed like an adventure.” 

“Whoever you contacted in the email… did they say what happened to the person who used to live her? Mr. Langly?” 

“With a house this creepy, I guarantee he was called ‘Old Man Langly’,” Ronnie added. 

Crystal shrugged again. “I wanted to ask, but it didn’t seem like my place, you know? I mean, we’ve seen mutant owls and people that turn into bears and gargoyles flying with zombies on their backs… so it’s easy for us to imagine there’s some sort of weirdness behind it. But what if he just died of cancer, and no one had the heart to clean up his house?” 

I pretended to be intently reading the label on my bottle of Gatorade. Sure, maybe Crystal was right… or maybe Old Man Langly had broken the gag order from Tuck’s wish, and the little Greenman had done something horrible with him. 

I looked up, caught Ronnie’s eyes, and she gave me a small smile. 

Something in my chest felt like it had wings and wanted to take flight. I returned her smile.

“I’m going to get to work on the bathtub,” I said, unlocking my eyes from Ronnie’s. After draining the last of my Gatorade in one gulp, I added, “If we go much longer without bathing, we’re going to have to sleep on the porch instead of in the living room.” 

I excused myself from the kitchen table (which was still in desperate need of some elbow grease) and took some cleaning supplies from our pile by the front door. The bathroom was upstairs, which was unfortunate since the second floor was at least ten degrees warmer than downstairs because of the shoddy air conditioning. Still, it was at least twenty degrees cooler than outside, which was a minor improvement. 

I traded my gardening gloves for a pair of blue rubber gloves. The bathtub was even worse than I had imagined. What I thought was one layer of deep, black grime was actually several layers. Scrubbing off one layer simply exposed the tougher, nastier, more stubborn layer underneath. After fifteen minutes of scrubbing I opened the bathroom’s tiny window to let out the almost overwhelming cleanser fumes. After thirty minutes my shoulders felt like they were on fire and I had pulled a muscle in my back I hadn’t even realized was there. 

I crashed, butt-first, onto the tile floor when I couldn’t scrub any more. Barely half the tub was clean. 

“This sucks,” I huffed to myself. “This freaking sucks. I don’t even want my share of the money anymore. I just want a bath.” 

You still have a wish, I reminded myself. You could wish that all the cleaning was finished. Then you and your friends could spend the rest of the week goofing off and exploring instead of working yourself into stinky, sweaty exhaustion. 

The aches in my shoulders and back told me that was a very good idea. But it felt like sort of a stupid use for my wish. I probably wouldn’t ever get an opportunity like this again. Did I really want to use it to get out of a week’s worth of hard work? 

Don’t spend it on that, something else said. Tuck’s shown you a pretty good idea, hasn’t he? 

I sighed, and stripped the rubber gloves from my hands. I imagined Ronnie, somewhere downstairs, scrubbing windows. She was probably thinking of me, but not because she wanted to… because a little, green man had bewitched her to. 

Yes, he did, I told myself. But it’s wrong. It’s so wrong. 

Tuck told you himself: he didn’t change her feelings all that much. That means she’s already got some feelings for you. 

“She. Is. My. Friend,” I said to no one through gritted teeth, digging into a stubborn stain with every word. I flung the sponge into the tub and turned on the water, to wash away the grime I’d loosened.  

I swished the water around the tub with my hand. It already looked a lot better. Maybe it was because I was scrubbing with new, added frustration, but scrubbing the back of the tub took half the time it had taken to scrub the front. A few minutes later I was looking at a pearly white, porcelain finish. 

A bead of sweat dangled off the end of my nose, and I wiped it away with a swipe of my hand. 

For a second I held my breath and listened. There were no other noises in the house. Everyone else must have taken their jobs outside. 

I really should get to those shudders, I thought, but I was unable to pull my eyes from the tub, and its promise of clean, soapy nirvana. 

I couldn’t help myself. Yes, I still had work to do, but dagnabbit, a guy has to have creature comforts, too. Before anyone could find me neglecting my duties, I ran downstairs, grabbed a towel, soap, and shampoo from my duffle bag, and dashed back upstairs. Slamming the bathroom door behind me, I barely had time to turn the faucet and plug the drain before I’d peeled off my two-day work clothes. The water was cold (I wasn’t sure how long it had been since anyone had used the hot water heater), but I closed my teeth over a gasp as I slid into the tub. 

I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of the water from the tap and the birds singing outside the open window. After a few minutes the water began to warm, and soon the tub was a much more pleasant temperature. I managed to turn off the faucet with my foot without spraining anything, and then I slipped down to my chin in the water. 

Even though I wished they hadn’t, my thoughts traveled back to Tuck, my wish, and his twenty-four-hour trial period. 

Why does life have to be so complicated? I wondered. I just want Ronnie to like me. I don’t want to get it from a wish. I want to earn it. I want to be the kind of guy she wants to be with. 

I exhaled, and it made ripples in the water around my face. 

I didn’t even know what kind of guy she’d want to go out with. As far as I knew, she’d only dated one boy, and that had ended horribly. 

Silently, I promised myself that if I ever had the pleasure of meeting Ben Lincoln, the first thing I was going to do was punch his stupid face. 

Don’t be so hard on yourself, I told myself. You’ve been there for her through some really tough times. If she sees how much you love her and still doesn’t return your feelings, then you’re probably better off without her.  

I squeezed my eyes shut. No matter how much I tried to rationalize it, ‘better off without her’ was not a phrase I could convince myself was true about Ronnie. 

Then what do I do? I can’t force these feelings for her to stop. But I can’t use my wish to force her to like me back. If that’s the only way I can have her, then I don’t truly deserve her. 

I blinked slowly at the ceiling. For some reason, I always did my best thinking in the tub. 

I started to call for Tuck, to end what he’d done to Ronnie before the twenty-four hours was up, but then I remembered I was naked in the bathtub. I wasn’t sure the Greenman would even show up while I was in the buff… but I was sure that I was very uncomfortable with the idea of him seeing me naked. 

Even though I wasn’t exactly clean, I couldn’t wait another minute; there was no way to be sure what kind of emotional havoc Tuck’s magic was wreaking on Ronnie. I already hated myself for letting him have the spell on her for as long as he had.  

It was time to set things right. It was time to get out of the tub. 

I climbed out, slipped on the wet tile and nearly killed myself (were it not for my keen reflexes), and started drying off with the towel I’d brought. 

Thirty seconds later, I realized that I hadn’t actually brought a change of clothes into the bathroom with me. 

The dirty clothes were out of the question. I had already worn them for two straight days. Two hot, sticky, sitting-in-the-car-for-hours, using-a-week-whacker, and various-other-sweaty-jobs days. 

I physically shuddered at the thought of putting them back on. No. They’d be staying here. 

Opening the door a crack, I listened through the house again. Still, nothing; everyone was apparently still working outside. 

With my towel wrapped around me, I dashed from the bathroom and down the stairs as safely as I could (I didn’t know if I’d pick up a splinter in the old hardwood floors, and my luck I’d catch some horribly painful infection and die in the most humiliating way possible). Downstairs, I rummaged in my duffle bag with one hand while using the other to keep my towel secured around my waist. 

“Drew?” 

I stood up so quickly that I almost lost my towel. And then, when I tried to make out the blurry shape across the room that was making its way toward me, I realized I had left my glasses on the sink in the bathroom. 

But I didn’t need twenty-twenty vision to recognize Ronnie’s voice, or to recognize her shape as she gradually came into view. 

“Oh. Hi, Ronnie,” I said. My voice cracked. 

“What’re you doing?” She asked, standing much closer to me than she would have yesterday. 

“Oh. Um. The tub is clean,” I stammered, gesturing toward the staircase with the boxer shorts I had gripped in my right hand. “And I. Ya know. Was trying it out.” 

Ronnie’s eyes traveled up and down my chest, and her glance felt as real as a physical touch. “Have you been working out?” She asked. 

Whatever I was going to say about the state of the bathroom got lodged in my throat. I managed to squeak, “Just with the cross country team,” in reply. 

The corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly. “It shows.” She placed one index finger lightly beneath the hollow of my throat and slid it slowly down my chest. 

I stepped backward from her so quickly that my wet feet slipped on the hardwood food and I fell with a crash onto my rear. My towel stayed on only because I had it in a vice-grip with my left hand. 

“Are you okay?” Ronnie asked, diving to her knees next to me. 

“No, I’m fine, really,” I stammered. “Nothing’s hurt, I can get up on my own, thanks.” 

With one hand holding the towel and other helping me stand, I didn’t have a hand free to fight off Ronnie. She’d placed one cool palm on my back and other on the my left wrist; the one holding the towel. I scrambled away from her before she tried to help me up by that arm, which would have made the situation go from bad to disastrous.

“I… I’ve got to get dressed,” I stuttered, walking quickly to my duffel bag. I didn't have time to sort out clothes, so I slung the whole thing over my shoulder and scampered around Ronnie and up the stairs, diverting my eyes from her the whole time. 

I shut and locked the bathroom door behind me. Gripping the sink, white-knuckled, I glared at myself in the mirror. 

Everything I had ever wanted had been right in front of me. Everything I had ever dreamed about, longed for, lost sleep over, and yes, even shed tears over. The girl of my dreams. And she wanted me. She wanted me. 

It would be easy to spend the wish. For her to finally be mine, forever. 

“Drew?” Came Ronnie’s voice from the other side of the door. “Drew, are you in there? Look, I’m sorry. I… I didn’t mean to say or do anything to make you mad. Please, let’s talk for a second, okay?” 

My breath came in great huffs that fogged up the mirror. “Sure. Just a second,” I replied. I slid my glasses onto my face, then pulled some clothes from my duffel bag and climbed into them. I started to towel my shaggy hair dry, decided it didn’t matter, and then gathered every ounce of courage I could. 

When I opened the door, Ronnie was standing so close that it almost hit her. She took an awkward step back, crossing her hands in front of her. Her chin was lowered, but she raised her eyes to me. She looked guilty. Like she’d done something wrong. 

Guilt twisted like a snake in my stomach. 

“I’m sorry,” each of us said at the same moment. 

She looked confused. “What are you sorry about?” 

Once again, I found myself at a lost for words. Instead I just lowered my eyes and shook my head. “Ronnie,” I said after a moment. But then I stopped again. What was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to tell her she was under the enchantment of a little green faerie? That I was the most horrible person on earth for allowing her to spend the whole day like that? 

There was no way she was in the frame of mind to believe me, or even understand what I was telling her. 

“Look,” she began, before I could. “I know you’ve had feelings for me for a long time. And for a long time, I just ignored it, hoping you’d forget about me, that you’d move on and not waste any more time on me. Because…” she took a deep breath. “Because I feel like you deserve better than me.” 

I blinked. “What?” 

“You will never have a normal life with me as your girlfriend,” she went on, now wrapping her arms defensively around her stomach. “If we were together, you’d be running from cultists, watching me turn into a zombie every night, fighting mud men and shape shifters and god knows what else. And I… I don’t think I could bear to put you through that.” 

Was this the truth? Or was this more of Tuck’s enchantment, going full-pirate on Ronnie’s mind? 

“I don’t care about any of that,” I said, ignoring my own question. “I’ve never cared about that. You’re worth it.” 

She stepped closer to me. I didn’t move. “How can you believe that?” She asked. “How can you honestly believe that? Don't you want someone you can grow old with? Have a family with? Have a life with?” 

My mouth was moving on its own, without any communication with my brain. “If I can’t have any of those things with you, I don’t want them.” 

It was everything I had ever wanted to say to Ronnie. Everything that I knew would have pushed her away, would have made her even more uncomfortable to be around me. But this Ronnie didn’t mind. This Ronnie wanted to hear it. 

She stepped closer again, now only inches away. She was smiling. “I know I'm special. Special in a bad way. But you make me feel special. Special in a good way. More special than I deserve.” 

Again, I had no idea if the words were true. Were these Ronnie's real struggles? As before, there was no way to know the truth. But I didn’t have time to contemplate it as she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around my back and laid her head on my chest. 

I’d held her like this once before, at Prom last year. We’d danced the final song together. I don’t even remember what the song was. I simply remember the cool touch of her skin, without a heartbeat to warm it, the scent of her hair, the way I could feel her back rise and fall with her breaths, even though she didn’t technically need to breath. 

I wrapped my arms around her back and held her gently. She melted against my arms, and then lifted her face. She and I looked into each other’s eyes just long enough for me to realize what was going to happen next. 

Then she kissed me. 

My eyes flew open in shock. Ronnie’s drifted closed, and then a dreamy sense of realization drifted over me. I held Ronnie closer, and she pressed her lips harder against mine. They were cool. Not cold, but cool to the touch. Mine must have felt like they were on fire compared to hers. She opened her mouth and slid her tongue into my mouth, and I mimicked the motion. Even though it was the first time I had ever done it, the whole thing was very intuitive, like my body knew exactly what to do.

She sighed contentedly through her nose, and her breath was warm on my face. One of her hands made its way into my hair. 

She was soft. She was gentle. She was perfection. She was everything I’d ever wanted. And she was mine. 

Something in the perfect world I’d crafted in my head began to crack. Because that was the problem: Ronnie wasn’t mine. 

The words she’d spoke had really sounded like Ronnie. They’d come from Ronnie’s mouth. They’d been spoken in Ronnie’s voice. They’d even sounded like things Ronnie would actually say. 

But it hadn’t been Ronnie. It had been Tuck’s magic, pulling her strings like she was a marionette. 

Veronica Dawson was strong-willed. Stubborn. Hilarious. A great dancer. Pretty good at video games. A lover of strong coffee. She was sometimes as awkward as me, but she stood up for what she believed in, and never let anyone push her (or her friends) around.  

No, Ronnie wasn’t mine. Even if something were to ever happen between us, I wouldn't want Ronnie to be mine. Ronnie belonged to herself, and no one else. 

And no matter how much I loved her… I could not live with myself if I took that away from her. 

It felt like I had waited my entire life for the moment Ronnie actually wanted to kiss me. But now that it had arrived, it felt wrong. Tainted. 

My heart screamed at me not to let her go. It warned me that this moment may never come again. That I may live my whole life without another kiss that meant as much as this one, that Ronnie may never again be in my arms like she was in that moment. 

If I have to have her like this, I told myself, I don’t deserve her. 

So I pulled away from the kiss.  

Ronnie slowly opened her eyes. She looked a little disappointed that I had ended the kiss, but a satisfied smile drifted across her face. “You’re a good kisser,” she said. 

I would never know if she was telling the truth. “Thanks,” I said anyway. “So are you.” 

She looked nervous, but in a good way. “So, what now?” 

I swallowed hard, for what I was about to do. “Wait for me downstairs,” I said softly. “I need to gather up my shower stuff. We should tell Crystal and Deirdre together, don’t you think?” 

She nibbled her bottom lip, an expression I had never seen from Ronnie but one that looked absolutely beautiful on her. “Okay,” she whispered. She popped up on her tiptoes and planted a quick kiss on my lips before skipping to the stairs and starting down. I had never seen Ronnie skip. 

My lips still tingled where she had kissed them. Inside, it felt like a rusty fork had just been shoved into my heart. 

I closed the bathroom door behind me and went to the room’s tiny window, which was still open. “Tuck!” I called out of it as loudly as I dared.

“It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours,” came a hoarse voice from behind me. I turned and found Tuck sitting on the tank of the toilet, one leg crossed over his knees. “I guess you didn’t need the entire trial period to decide on your wish. Am I right?” 

I swallowed. The idea had occurred to me the moment Tuck had first told me about my one wish, approximately one second after I’d first entertained the thought of wishing for Ronnie to be in love with me. I’d dismissed it just as quickly. 

But after seeing what Tuck’s wish could do to Ronnie… what it would make her become… the wish made sense. In fact, it was the only logical choice. 

“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t need the whole time to decide. I’ve made up my mind.” I squared my shoulders. “I want you to make me a Sleepwalker.” 

Tucks’ hands had been raised, as if he was ready to clap them together. But he froze and stared speculatively at me. “You what?” 

“I want you to make me a Sleepwalker,” I replied, before I could talk myself out of it. 

“Are you out of your mind?” He groaned. “I can’t do that.” 

Before, I had been nervous about the wish. But now that Tuck told me I couldn’t have it, there was nothing I wanted more. “Why not? I thought you could give me anything!” 

“Anything within the reaches of my magic,” he corrected. “Being a Sleepwalker is a lot more complicated than that. Hasn’t your Sleepwalker friend told you that?” 

Last year, there had been a lot of hubaloo when Ronnie and her Sleepwalker family had discovered what truly makes them, them. I didn’t understand a lot of it, simply because I didn’t know much about their supernatural world. 

“Plus, you’d have to die,” Tuck went on. “And trust me, without their family curse, you wouldn't like that. Do you have any back-up ideas?” 

If I’d been a Sleepwalker, I could experience the same life Ronnie did. The same woes. The same cares. The same excitement. If I couldn’t share a life with her, then sharing an unlife with her was the next best thing. 

And if I couldn’t have that… there was a third option. 

“I do,” I said, bracing myself again. “I… I want you to erase all my feelings for Ronnie.” 

Once again, Tuck had been ready to clap his hands, and once again he froze and glared at me. “You what?” 

“What? Is this beyond your magic, too?” 

He jabbed a stubby index finger at me. “Don’t get sassy. You know very well I can do that. My question is, why would you want me to?” 

“Why do you care?” I shot back. “I though you just wanted me to make my wish so you could get your gold back.” 

Tuck kneaded the bridge of his oft-broken nose with his index finger and thumb. “Look, kid. Humor me. Lord knows I’ve humored you, waiting on you to make your wish and giving you a twenty-four hour free trial at your wildest dream. Why do you want to forget about her?” 

“Because it’s time to give up,” I said, a little too much emotion leaking into my words. “Ronnie is never going to feel the way I feel about her. She’s just not. It’s time I accepted that. And, before you say it, using my wish isn’t the solution. It’s just a larger, more destructive version of the same problem. Ronnie not returning my feelings is the most agonizing thing I’ve ever gone through. But to have her return feelings for me solely because I forced her to?” A tear touched the corner of my eye. I angrily wiped it away. “I can’t imagine hell being much worse than that.” 

Tuck studied me, his thoughts unreadable on his blocky face. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, kid. But, for the first time in a few centuries, I am refusing to grant that wish.” 

“What?” I balked. “You can’t refuse a wish!” 

“Oh, looks who’s the expert on Greenmen all of a sudden,” he mocked. “Kid, I can do whatever I want. The wish was a trade, remember? To get my gold back. I just happen to think that this particular wish isn’t worth trading my gold for.” 

I had stashed the gold coin in my duffel bag. I dug it out and held it up. “But… but this thing is probably worth a small fortune.” 

“It’s worth a small fortune in human prices,” Tuck went on. “To a Greenman, his gold is priceless. And yet, I’m still not trading you that wish for it.” 

I thought I completely understood Tuck. Turned out, he was a lot more complicated than he seemed. “Why not?” 

“Kid, you don’t really want to forget this girl, do you?” 

“Of course not,” I replied instantly. “But it’s just not going to happen. And… and I don’t think I can simply forget her on my own. I can't move on. I’m not strong enough.” 

Tuck placed his stocky hands on his knees. “I’ve granted a lot of wishes in my time. A lot of wishes. And let me tell you what ‘not strong enough’ really looks like.” He hooked his thumb in the direction of the door. “What you got out there? That little girl, the one you’re in love with, falling over herself to be with you? Someone who’s ‘not strong enough’ would have spent his wish on that. Someone not strong enough would have taken the easy way out, and would have never known if that girl could develop real feelings for him.”  

I sat on the edge of the old claw-footed tub and placed my head in my hands. I couldn’t take the easy way out and wish that Ronnie would love me, because I’d hate myself forever. And I couldn’t take the easy way out and erase my feelings for her. No matter what, I was going to have to live with the constant rejection, and simply hold onto hope that one day she’d feel share my feelings. 

Now what was I supposed to do? 

“I don’t want the wish,” I murmured. “You can just have the dumb coin.” 

“I already told you, it doesn’t work like that,” Tuck replied. “I have to trade something for it.” 

“There’s nothing else I want!” I cried, throwing my hands at my sides. “All I want is for Ronnie to feel the way about me that I do about her. I don’t want riches or power or anything like that.” The corners of my eyes stung again. “All I want is to share everything with her.” 

The room was silent for a second, and I briefly thought Tuck had disappeared again. Then he said, “Question.” 

“Shoot.” 

“Will you give me permission to use your wish for you?” 

I sighed. “Do whatever you want. Just don’t force her to fall in love with me. Or hijack her head in any way. Or blow anything up. Aside from that, go crazy.” 

There was a sound from the toilet, and I looked up to see that Tuck had climbed down and was standing before me. “Drew, you’re all right. And I don’t say that about many mortals. It’s been interesting getting to know you.” He held out one stout hand. 

Despite myself, I smiled. “You too, Tuck. Stay cool.” I shook his hand. It was rough and calloused, and much stronger than its size would suggest. Then with one last smile Tuck clapped his hands. 

And he was gone. 

“Drew! Drew! Where are you? Get down here, now!” 

I wasn't sure how long I sat on the edge of the claw-footed tub after Tuck disappeared. Ten minutes. Maybe twenty. Maybe thirty. But Crystal’s voice dragged me screaming back to reality. I wasn’t sure what my sister wanted, but I was pretty sure it had something to do with me not getting back to work immediately after my bath. It certainly didn’t have to do with Ronnie professing her love for me, because Tuck had promised not to leave Ronnie in that condition. 

When I saw her again, Ronnie would not throw herself into a kiss. That moment had come, and gone. 

I gathered my duffel bag and trudged from the bathroom, ready to face the exact same world I’d existed in before I’d met Tuck. 

Only the world I walked into was a lot… cleaner. 

The hardwood floors beneath my feet not only looked like they’d been freshly scrubbed; they looked like they’d been waxed, buffed, and sanded. In fact, they looked new. The wallpaper wasn’t peeling and faded. It was pristine, like it had been hung only hours ago. The light fixtures filled the house with warm, white light. 

The biggest change was the temperature. It was easily fifteen degrees colder than it had been earlier. The summer humidity was outside, where it belonged. 

The old house had air conditioning. 

Dropping my duffel bag, I charged down the stairs two at a time. They looked as new as the day they’d been crafted. Downstairs I found Crystal, Deirdre, and Ronnie, all gazing at the house in wild-eyed wonder. 

“Is anyone else seeing this?” Deirdre asked. “I’ve got to make sure I didn’t accidentally hack into a patch of magic mushrooms with the weed whacker and I’m not imagining this.” 

Crystal spun to Ronnie. “How could you? How could you make us break our backs for two straight days when you could whip up some Sleepwalker curse mumbo-jumbo and make the house look like new?” 

Ronnie stared, wide-eyed, around the living room. The hardwood floor looked like someone had just finished laying it. The windows were spotless. “I didn’t do this,” she marveled. “I don’t even know of any curses that could do this. This is amazing.” Ronnie then turned to me. “Where were you just now, Drew? What did you see?” 

Ronnie looked at me the same way she had every other day I had known her. That is, every day except the last twenty-four hours. Not only was she free of the spell, but she apparently didn’t remember any actions that had been influenced by it. 

I wanted to tell them about Tuck. But then I remembered that Mr. Langly, the pervious owner of the house, had disappeared under what was most likely Greenman-related circumstances. 

And, after what he’d done for me, Tuck probably would appreciate some discretion. 

“I was in the bathroom,” I said. “I’d just cleaned the tub, so I decided to… test it. I was just getting dressed when Crystal called for me. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary… but I wasn’t really paying attention, either.” 

“Well, I was paying attention,” Crystal interjected. “I was elbow-deep in grease from the oven. I closed my eyes to wipe some sweat off my forehead… and when I opened them, the house looked like this!” 

“No one put anything funny in our breakfast this morning, did they?” Deirdre asked. “Because if  I’m hallucinating, I do not want to come down.” 

“Something weird’s going on, that’s for sure,” said Ronnie. 

“Isn’t something weird always going on?” I put in. “I’ve seen you have out-of-body experiences, age backwards, and blast monsters out of the sky. Maybe something weird is going on in our favor, for once.” 

“Doesn’t this worry you?” She asked me. “What if this is an illusion? Or something is inside our minds and making us think the house is clean?” 

“If something in this house had that kind of power, why in the world would it only make us think the house was clean?” I countered. 

Ronnie opened her mouth, as if she was going to argue, but then closed it again. 

“I’m with Drew on this one!” Deirdre chimed in. “Let’s just be happy it’s done and thank our lucky stars that whatever cosmic force we encountered today was on our side!” She cracked her knuckles and admired the handiwork on the house again. “This beats running away from crazed cultists any day!” 

Crystal had produced her phone from her pocket. "I’m going to email Mister Tuck and tell him the house is finished! The sooner we can get our money, the better.” 

“Wait a second. Did you say Mister Tuck?” I gasped. 

“Yeah. That was the guy’s name. Jeremiah Tuck. I guess he inherited the house when Old Man Langly died. He’s the one who placed the ad.” 

I put my hand on Crystal’s before she could reply to the email. “Hold that thought,” I said. “I’ll be right back. I want to… check on the outside. Make sure everything is up and running before we try to get our pay.” 

Before any of the girls could question me, I ran onto the front porch and leapt onto the grass. The front yard looked like it had manicured by a professional. “Tuck!” I whispered. 

“You know, I left you with a really grand exit. I had hoped you wouldn’t call on me again, so you’d remember me by how amazing it was.” 

I turned and found Tuck mostly canceled in the bushes beneath the front window. “You placed the ad on Craigslist?” I asked. 

“I figured it was the best way to get someone out here,” he replied, shrugging his stocky shoulders. “What’s a few hundred bucks if I can get my gold back?” 

“I don’t understand.” 

Tuck rolled his eyes. “You’ve got the rest of the week to spend with your friends here. You have no more work to do. And all it cost you was one wish. So make the most of your time. And don’t give up on that girl, either.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “There’s a lake about a half-mile northwest of here. There’s a clear hiking trail that leads right to it. Take your girl there. She’ll love it. I guarantee.” 

Stunned at Tuck’s advice, all I could do was choke on a small laugh. “I don’t know how to thank you.” 

“Kid, you’ve made me think differently about mortals. No one’s done that in a long time. Consider it paid in full.” He crossed his arms over his chest and smirked. “Just make sure you and your friends are out of here by the end of the week. The check’s in the mail.” 

I started back to the porch, and when I turned to look, Tuck was gone. And this time, I was fairly certain I would never see him again. 

No, Ronnie didn’t feel the same about me as I did about her. But Tuck was right: I couldn’t give up on her. Sleepwalker, human, whatever… a girl like her doesn’t come around very often. I had to keep hope alive. 

I climbed the stairs and went back into the house, where I found everyone in the same spots I’d left them. “The outside of the house looks fine. Nothing suspicious.” I couldn’t contain my smile as I thought about a week of goofing off, no work, and four hundred dollars waiting for me at home. And, of course, being able to share the entire experience with Ronnie. “But I did find a hiking trail at end of the estate. Anyone up for some exploring?”