Fair Coin by E. C. Myers

looking over at them. Ephraim glanced from her to her image on the screen.
    “Nothing!” Ephraim said.
    “We aren't looking at porn,” Nathan said.
    Smooth, Nathan. “Of course not,” Ephraim said.
    “Okay,” Jena said. She moved on, pushing a book cart ahead of her. Nathan pulled out his camera and fumbled with it. He turned it on and zoomed in on her back just as she moved out of view into an aisle.
    “Too late,” Nathan said.
    Ephraim groaned.
    “So when are you going to ask her out?” Nathan said.
    “Why would I do something like that?”
    “Because you like her.”
    Ephraim would be confident enough to ask Jena out if he knew she liked him, but the only way to find out for sure was to ask her.
    Ephraim took out the coin and balanced it on his thumb with his forefinger around it.
    “Why don't you ask out one of the twins? Whichever one you like this week,” Ephraim said.
    “I'm going to wait until you get close to Jena, so you can set me up with Shelley. Or Mary.”
    “Sounds like true love,” Ephraim said, toying with the coin.
    “Hey, I double the probability of scoring with one of them if I go after both, right?” Nathan grinned.
    “You never were very good at math.”
    “Anyway, I suppose you do have all summer to work up the nerve to talk to her. Though you'd think you'd be ready after ten years of pining,” Nathan said.
    “I haven't been ‘pining.’ And I'm not afraid to talk to her, I'm just not very good at it. I wish she liked me, that's all.” The coin warmed up in his hand. “Oh crap. I didn't mean that.”
    “Then what did you mean?” Nathan said. He was paging through other photo collections online, finding more images of girls that verged on porn but didn't quite cross the line. He knew better than anyone how to get the most from a restricted network.
    The coin became hotter, the way it had after Ephraim had made each of his other wishes. If the coin only granted three wishes, he'd just used up his last one. He didn't know how to cancel it, if he could. He had no choice but to flip it.
    When he caught the coin, the air rippled before him, like heat waves on pavement. The huge breakfast he'd eaten roiled in his stomach, and he tasted acidy bacon, but he swallowed and the slight nausea passed quickly. The coin had landed on tails.
    Nathan poked him in the arm. “What's with you? You spaced out.”
    Nothing seemed different yet. The same picture was even up on the screen. “I'm gonna head home, I think,” Ephraim said. “Too much excitement for one morning.”
    “Okay, I'll come with.”
    “Um, I don't know if that's a good idea.” Ephraim rarely asked anyone over to his apartment, Nathan included, because he never knew what state his mother would be in. It was safer to just hang out at Nathan's like usual, especially since he didn't know whether his last wish had changed anything else. “Let's just hang at your place,” Ephraim said.
    “Okay. My dad just brought home Duke Nukem Eternal. He'll be pissed if I beat it before he does.” He smiled. “So I'm going to play it all day.”
    “You mean DN Forever?”
    “No, this is the sequel. It just came out.” Nathan gritted his teeth and murmured through pressed lips. “She's doing it again.” He'd gone through a brief period studying ventriloquism in the fourth grade, but he'd never quite mastered the technique.
    “What?”
    Nathan pointed his left hand toward the circulation desk, hiding it behind the monitor. “She's staring at you.”
    “Mrs. Reynolds?” Ephraim asked.
    “Blech. That would be gross. Not Mrs. Reynolds—Jena Kim.”
    Ephraim turned and saw Jena behind the desk instead of the older librarian. She was looking at him, but she quickly diverted her attention to her book.
    “Don't turn around! What's her problem?” Nathan said. “Doesn't she get that you aren't into her?”
    “Why would she have that impression?”
    “Because you've been mooning over her best friend for