Millie lay completely still, her eyes on her book, as if she hadn’t heard me.
“I was wondering what you were doing?” I asked, picking at the bedspread and feeling my face heat up, as if I were asking her something deeply embarrassing, like if she secretly had a crush on someone. (Millie always has a crush on someone but is never all that secret about it.) “What were you saying to it?”
Millie sighed. “I was trying to see if I could trade something for Sam. Like my hair, or something like that.” I felt triumphant for knowing her so well.
“Did the Cloud say anything back?” I asked.
Millie was silent for a few moments, then she shook her head.
“I guess we’ll never see our house again,” I said, “if Dad loses. I guess the genie will own it. What do you think a genie wants with a house, anyway, if he’s trapped in a cave? Will he have someone sell it for him?” She didn’t reply—she was gazing up at the ceiling now.
“I wish Dad hadn’t gotten us lost,” I went on. “Then we wouldn’t have gone over the edge of the Grand Canyon, and we could have bet the Trinidad. He’s so absentminded. If he wasn’t . . .”
Millie shook her head to stop me. “You’re so dense,” she said.
“If we do ever try to move back to Cliffden . . .” I continued, ignoring her.
Suddenly, Millie sat bolt upright, her eyes flashing and her cheeks pink. “How can you be so stupid! Haven’t you figured it out? Do you think the genie would really settle for something as useless as our house, or money from our house?”
I stared, shocked into silence.
Millie sank back down against her pillows, as if she were exhausted. And suddenly a new and horrible truth settled down all around me. I knew what she was going to say before she said it.
“His life,” Millie said flatly to the window. “Dad bet his soul.”
My heart was suddenly flapping around wildly in my chest, and Millie turned to me, biting her lip, looking guilty.
“They told you that?” I breathed.
She shook her head. “I asked Mom,” she admitted. “She didn’t deny it. She asked me not to tell you.”
“Well,” I sputtered, “he has to take it back.”
“You can’t take it back. Once you’ve bet on the genie’s wheel, that’s it. It’s a binding contract.”
* * *
Sometimes I’m afraid I’ve got a monster inside for a soul. If I drew my heart it might not look like a circus at all, but like a cavewoman with raw meat hanging out of her mouth and a club in each hand to hit people with.
I didn’t sleep that night. I kept thinking how even though he isn’t perfect, my dad has always taken care of me, and I haven’t given him much in return. I thought about the night when he and Mom told us we were leaving Cliffden, how he’d called me one of his baby stars.
Since we’d lost the Winnebago, I had none of my good luck charms to wish on, but I still believed that if I thought how I wanted things to end, enough times, someone might hear me.
He wins. He stays with us. He wins. He stays with us. He wins. He stays with us, I kept saying inside my head. The wish needed to be extra powerful, so I didn’t stop; I forced myself to stay awake as long as I possibly could. Dad wouldn’t lose. He couldn’t.
I repeated it over and over to myself until the darkness outside of the windows began to lighten, and the pegasi next door began to nicker good morning to each other, and I finally fell asleep.
December 4th
Even though it’s been over a week since it happened, I remember the awful feeling of waking up that next morning perfectly. A shaft of sunlight was beaming down into the gulch, and, looking out the window and up, I could just make out the Cloud far, far above, keeping an eye on us. Down in the barn lot next door, the pegasi were still nickering back and forth to each other, and I could see Oliver leaning over the fence, feeding them carrots out of his hands. I walked out to join him, after first making sure Medusa was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’d you get carrots?” I asked.
“Harriet let me have them.” He didn’t look up at me, but slid a couple carrots into my hand, then gently pushed one of the pegasus’s muzzles in my direction. Her sandpapery tongue tickled my palms as she snuffled for the carrots, and I glanced up at the windows of the house nervously, looking for her owner.
“My dad bet his life on the wheel,” I said, not looking at Oliver but instead focusing on the pegasi instead.
“I figured,” Oliver said. The pegasi were vying for our attention, and Oliver gave away his last carrot.
I was buckling under the guilt, like I should have known better what my dad was walking into. I wondered how everyone had figured everything out but me. My mom says sometimes I ignore things I’d rather not know. She said that’s why I always get Cs in classes like Cotillion and Life Skills.
Oliver leaned back from the fence and put his hands on his messy hair, leaving a bunch of hay stuck there, unwittingly. He looked up at Medusa’s house, intent, like he was counting the windows or the numbers of shingles. I expected him to say something encouraging, which he’s usually good at, but he appeared to be lost in his own thoughts. It wasn’t like him, considering he’s usually the most considerate person I know.
* * *
Dusk came too quickly. We spent the morning and most of the afternoon in the parlor (the chimney, it turned out, was blocked by an old poltergeist Harriet had been trying to have exorcised for years, so we couldn’t light a fire in the fireplace), watching the clock and willing the moments to go slower. Oliver had offered to stay with Sam again while the rest of us went to see the genie. Mom and Dad hadn’t even bothered to try to deter Millie and me from coming with them. I think, in a way, they were relieved to have us along. It would mean a little more time with the four of us together.
“How do I find you?” Oliver asked.
“Find us why?” I said.
“If you don’t come back or something. I’d feel better if I knew where you were.”
Relenting, I drew a little map on the back of a Trump Western Gem tourist brochure of how we’d gotten to the cave.
Sam was actually feeling better for the first time in weeks, sitting in a blanket on the couch and smiling, blissfully unaware of the fear hovering over the rest of us. “Ask the genie for a new Winnebago,” he kept insisting.
Finally, around five thirty, we got ready to go. Dad sat for a moment at Sam’s feet on the couch and squeezed his toes, then leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, smiling as if we were going out to dinner, or like he and Mom used to do with each of us before they left us with a babysitter and went out on a date. It made me wonder how many other times my dad has put on a brave face for us without our noticing.
* * *
As night fell and we wound our way down into the gulch, I prayed; I wished on stars and my favorite constellations; I tried sending telepathy to the guardian angels in LA.
“What are you murmuring about?” Millie whispered, walking beside me.
I shrugged. “Just making wishes,” I said.
“I’m going to wish too,” she said. “Can you tell me how you do it?” She actually listened attentively as I pointed out which stars (well, at least the ones visible from the gulch) I thought were best for wishing on.
At the entrance to the cave, Dad tried to talk us into staying outside while he and Mom went in alone, but Millie shook her head furiously. “Absolutely not,” she said, sounding very adult. “We know what we’re facing. And we’re coming with you.” I marveled at her courage again. Finally Dad relented, and we followed them both into the darkness.
The genie was exactly the same as we’d found him the night before: hovering in the shadows at the edge of the grotto, calm but with a malicious eagerness simmering under his smile. The mournful sounds of the Underworld issued from the cave beyond him just as they had the night before.
“Spin the wheel . . . you made the deal . . . ,” he said, and Dad swallowed nervously.
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“Dad, please don’t,” I said, reaching for his arm. “There’s got to be some way you can back out. Pay something else. Break your bet.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Gracie, even if I could. This is for Sam.”
Dad turned to Mom and grabbed her hand tightly for a moment. She clutched his fingers and her lips trembled. I’ve never been very good at picturing my mom and dad as two people in love, instead of as just my mom and dad. But at that moment I could.
* * *
You’d think that something so important, so enormous in your life, would happen in slow motion, but that’s not how it was at all. Things began to happen so quickly that it took my breath away.
Dad stepped forward, reached for the wheel, and gave it a hard spin. I held my breath as the arrow pointed alternately to the blurred words, then, as it slowed, WIN A WISH, LOSE A BET, WIN A WISH, LOSE A BET. Millie reached for my hand and squeezed it, digging her nails into my palm. I could feel myself growing woozy because I’d stopped breathing, but I couldn’t get myself to take a breath. He wins. He stays with us, I kept saying in my head. He wins, he stays, he wins, he stays. . . .
Tick tick tick. The arrow clicked along the pins more and more slowly, lingering on WIN, then more slowly on LOSE, then, more slowly on WIN. Finally, it came to a complete stop. We stood in stunned silence.
“No,” Mom said very quietly. “No. No. No.”
Beside me Millie let out a choked sound. She let go of my hand. I felt adrift, like I was spinning away from the ground and sharply, horribly lonely. I felt like a howl, like a person wrapped in a moan.
LOSE A BET.
The genie smiled politely, but his tongue darted out to lick his lips like he was ready to eat. His fingers wiggled and twitched, as if he were holding himself back from just reaching out toward us. Was this how a genie took your life, I wondered—just by reaching out and grabbing it? The three of us clustered around my dad protectively.
“Say your good-byes,” the genie said. “I’ll wait.”
Dad turned to us, his face ashen, his freckles bright. He walked us a few feet away, toward the trees clustered in the entranceway. I felt the genie’s eyes on our backs, and Dad talked fast.
“Get to LA,” he said. “Any way you can. You can hire a ship in Santa Monica. Don’t linger too long before you set off.”
“Dad,” Millie said, shaking her head.
The world was spinning. Bright moonlight was filtering in from the hole above. Dad was feeling around in his pockets, handing Mom his wallet. He was counting on his shaking fingers, like he was running through his mind lists of all the practical things he needed to tell us so that we’d be okay.
“Dad,” Millie repeated. “No.”
“Girls, you’ll have to take care of your mom. You’ll . . .”
At that moment something hit me on the leg. I looked down to see it was a pebble. I glanced toward the cave entrance, and something—some tiny movement—drew my eyes into the trees clustered there.
The sight was so completely unexpected that at first I could only try to make sense of it. Hidden among the pines, panting and out of breath and practically invisible, was Oliver, staring at me with big, intent eyes. He held out his hands as if to show me something. There was a rope in his hands, glinting like gold.
Just beyond him, outside, I saw one small flash of white move past the cave entrance.
I made the connections crookedly but fast. I knew almost at once what that golden rope would be attached to.
I glanced back at the genie, who watched us, but from an angle where he wasn’t looking toward the cave door. And I was already gauging the distance: How long would it take to run from where we stood to the stand of evergreens? Five seconds at most? How fast was a genie? How far would you have to fly to get beyond his reach, beyond the city limits? Oliver met my eyes again when I looked back, and waved me forward.
I hesitated and glanced at Millie, and then Mom and Dad, trying to communicate to them with my eyes—but they were too deep in conversation. In the corner of the cave the genie was watching us and rubbing his lips with one hand. Finally, Millie noticed my expression and managed to follow my gaze. She looked questioningly at me, and I shrugged almost imperceptibly. I tried to think of a plan.
But Oliver wasn’t waiting for a plan. It turns out, he already had one. He emerged from the trees, and just as the others noticed him, he launched a hail of stones from both hands in the direction of the genie. It was only a futile gesture—for a moment the genie floated backward, surprised, though the stones went right through him. Still, it gave me the moment to grab Mom’s and Dad’s arms, each with one hand, and pull them forward. “We’re going,” I said. “Run!”
By some miracle, they obeyed. We reached the trees just as the genie let out a screech and the ground beneath us coughed out a thick green mist that shaped itself into hundreds of filmy hands. They gathered toward my dad’s feet and reached around his ankles.
It happened in seconds: We were running through the trees, we were outside with Oliver in the lead, and sure enough—there, in the little clearing of the gulch, were three pegasi, their muzzles fitted with golden bridles. Sam sat astride the tallest one, holding tight to its mane and waving us on with his other hand.
“Get on!” Oliver yelled. We hesitated for a moment, making sense of it. Then someone—either Mom or Dad—propelled me forward from behind.
There was a hungry scream from inside the darkness behind us as we flew into action, a sound I could never have dreamed could have come from the quiet, seething genie. I threw myself up behind Sam, and Millie scrabbled onto the pegasus next to us. It bucked under her weight as I tried to figure out where exactly to put my legs.
Mom was already awkwardly astride the third pegasus, though Dad was trying desperately to clamber on behind her and kept sliding down. Throwing a glance at the cave mouth, I could see the mist licking toward us along the ground, a pair of long, impossibly long, green arms stretching like taffy toward Dad’s heels. Dad looked back in terror as he tried again, this time flinging himself over the pegasus’s back, legs on one side and arms on the other. The animal backstepped, but he managed to hang on, and in another moment, with Mom pulling at his belt and Oliver jumping behind me with a “Haiyah!” our mounts all turned away from the trees and launched into a run at once, clattering down the gulch away from the cave. Braving another look back over my shoulder, I watched the genie’s hundreds of hands, like puddles of green smoke, grasping for my dad’s feet just as he was carried out of their reach.
It was an uneven and terrifying liftoff, the pegasus’s legs pumping underneath us as they ran first on the ground and then on pure air. We burst up above the tree line and I dug my heels in to steady myself. I was only able to look down behind me one last time at the cave, its gaping hole glowing bright green and pulsating with rage.
* * *
We shot into the sky above Luck City in an upward spiral, bumpily at first. Within seconds we were high enough that the city lay beneath us in a patch of flickering light, getting smaller and farther away. By the time we leveled out, the city’s light had fallen to our backs, only a shimmer peeking out of the canyon behind us, the Cloud a tiny dim shadow above it, being left far, far behind. The air grew cold quickly, the night dark. I could see, many yards away, the dim white glow of the other two pegasi and the figures astride them. Dad had finally righted himself so that he was properly astraddle behind Mom. I hugged tight to Sam and breathed deeply, my eyes throbbing, my throat aching with relief. “Thank you,” I whispered to no one in particular. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Below, the flat dark earth stretched in all directions, no towns or lights in sight. I turned to look behind us; I thought I might be able to see the dark bowl of the Grand Canyon, or where the dark patches of the continent controlled by the monsters met the small pockets of light inhabited by humans, but there was nothing except Oliver, returning my gaze.
“Are you okay, Gracie?” he aske
d. “I’m trying not to hold you too tightly.”
“We’re flying,” I said to him.
“Straight to LA,” he said.
Beneath our legs, our pegasus flapped her wings in powerful gusts, her white fur catching the dim moonlight.
I wish I could record the moment better. What I need to say about it has already started to get fuzzy in my head. I think it’s something about being so far above earth, but I’m not quite sure what. I think maybe what I want to remember is how it felt to picture what we must look like to a person on the ground. Far away, like a little dot of light. I think we must have seemed to disappear into the heavens like a shooting star.
December 5th
This morning I’m writing in the bath with a towel around my head, and big drops of water and steam are rising all around. And I guess now I’ll finally tell you where we are and where I’ve been writing the last couple of entries from. We’re in LA!
The lamps here all burn with whale oil, and we had to boil my water over a smelly oil stove. I’ve taken two baths so far this morning, just to pass the time. We’re all on tenterhooks (I’m pretty sure that’s the word) waiting for Dad to get home from his big errand.
Millie is sitting on the counter and plucking her split ends. Since we’ve been here, she never leaves me alone when I’m in the bath—she still thinks I’m a little kid even though I’ve told her I need my privacy. She always comes in to brush her hair in the mirror or clip her fingernails, but it’s more like she just wants company. I’ve decided to ignore her and just keep writing until I’m finally caught up for real. Among other things, it’s a good distraction.
* * *
The night we arrived here it was hard to believe that we were approaching a city at all—the valley was so dim and muted. The first whiffs of whale oil drifted up to us as we came in for a landing at the bottom of a place called Griffith Park, which Dad routed us to after spotting a strange domed building at the top of a big hill.