The Seventh Wish by Kate Messner

here for a while. Then I’ll come out.”
    Mrs. McNeill fires up the auger, drills through the frozen circle of ice, and leaves me a bucket and a rod with a lure on it because the bait shop was out of minnows. The lure looks more like a silver feather than a fish, so I’m not expecting much when I lower it into the hole.
    But apparently, any magic fish dumb enough to get caught in the same spot three times is also dumb enough to think a piece of shiny metal might be good to eat. The tug comes right away, and I reel in the fish.
    Same sparkling eye.
    Same raspy voice.
    â€œRelease me . . . and I will grant you a wish.”

Chapter 6
    The Third and Fourth Wishes
    â€œPlease let . . .”
    I’m about to wish for Dasha’s English to get better, for her to pass that awful test so she can be in classes with me. But then I realize this is the third time I’ve caught the wish fish. This fish didn’t say anything about a limit, but in stories about genies, the third wish is pretty much the end of the road. (My first two-part wish, about Roberto and my fear of the ice, only counts as one, I think. Especially since the real Roberto Sullivan still doesn’t know I exist.)
    What I really want is to make this one a triple wish.
Please let Dasha learn English faster so she can pass her test, and please let Drew be awesome at his basketball tryouts so he’ll make the team and then his dad will leave him alone, and please let Dasha and me both place in the top three in our feis so we can move up to Novice.
But maybe it was the double wishing that first time that madethe fish mess up with Roberto. So I decide to stick with a single wish.
    â€œPlease let Dasha pass her language test,” I whisper, and I let the fish go. I’m tempted to stick the lure right back into the water to see if I can catch it again and make Drew’s basketball wish, but that seems like it might push a magic fish over the edge.
    I pack up and walk out to where Drew and Mrs. McNeill are sitting. “How’s it going?”
    Drew grunts.
    â€œSlow,” Mrs. McNeill says, bobbing her pole up and down. “But feel free to join us.” She nods toward the auger, and I use it to drill myself a hole. The auger blade spins, and it sinks in, leaving a shiny donut of shaved ice around the hole. It takes a while to hit water; the ice must be at least twelve inches thick by now.
    I sit down on my bucket, drop a line, and pull out my phone to try Abby again.
    Charlie: Is your class over? I need advice.
    Abby doesn’t text back right away, so I put my phone back in my pocket. Pretty soon, we all start getting bites.
    â€œYou must be our good-luck charm, Miss Charlie!” Mrs. McNeill says, using a pair of pliers to twist her lure out of a fish’s mouth.
    â€œWhat about your four-leaf clover charm?” I ask, laughing.
    She shakes her head, dropping her line back in. “I’m wearing it, but it wasn’t doing a thing for me until you showed up.”
    The fish only bite for about half an hour. By the time it slows down, it’s getting dark anyway, so we head in to shore and deliver our fish to Billy.
    Mrs. McNeill says it again. “Charlie’s our lucky charm!”
    â€œThanks.” I smile and accept my twelve dollars for today’s perch, feeling just as lucky as she says I am. In fact, I feel downright sparkly.

    My sparkly luck hangs in there for most of January. The weather’s been great for fishing, with cold nights so the ice gets thicker and sunny days so the fish can see the lures. By the week of the feis, I have more than four hundred fifty dollars for my solo dress.
    â€œDo you think I should go with blue or orange?” I ask Dasha as we’re lacing up our soft shoes at dance on Sunday. “Mom says blue matches my eyes, but I like how bright the orange dresses are.”
    â€œI think both look nice,” Dasha says.
    â€œLet’s