Wishful Thinking by Amanda Ashby

without a backward glance, she hurried out of the closet and back down the corridor toward the cafeteria.
    â€œWhere have you been?” Kara demanded the moment Sophie sat down. “It’s been a nightmare holding this chair for you. These kids are piranhas. And why do you look like that?”
    â€œOkay, so don’t freak out, but you know that thing we weren’t going to talk about anymore?”
    â€œWhat thing?” Harvey looked up from the piece of pizza before he suddenly started to choke. “Oh, no, you don’t mean the dj—”
    â€œShhhhh.” Sophie held her finger up to her lip to silence him as she cautiously glanced around. Thankfully, everyone seemed to have better things to do than listen in on their conversation, and so she reluctantly nodded her head. “But yes, that thing.”
    â€œWhat about it?” Kara said in alarm as she stopped working on the sketch of Harvey that she’d been doing. “It hasn’t done something, has it?”
    â€œYes, it’s done something,” Sophie yelped in annoyance. “Can you believe it turned up here? At school.”
    â€œWhat?” Harvey automatically put his hands into a Kung Fu pose and looked around. “Where is it?”
    â€œIt’s not here now,” Sophie informed him as she reached out and lowered his hands back to the table. “I got rid of it.”
    â€œYou did?” Harvey widened his eyes from underneath his long bangs. “How?”
    â€œWith the power of my mind. Seriously, you should never underestimate the value of positive thinking. I just said I wished it would go away, and it did.”
    â€œBut what was it doing here in the first place?” Harvey looked confused. “I thought you made some sort of weird deal with it.”
    â€œExactly.” Sophie nodded her head. “We
did
make a deal, and I kept my end of the bargain but he didn’t keep his. And I tell you what, he’d better not turn up again, or else he really will feel the full force of my mental powers.”
    â€œYes, but I still don’t understand
why
he came back.” Kara frowned as she unthinkingly drew a tiny portrait of the djinn on the sketchbook in front of her. Then, once she realized what she’d done, she immediately scribbled over it.
    â€œOh, well would you believe he was trying to tell me that by wearing his ring, I am now a djinn.” Sophie rolled her eyes. “Oh, and get this. He even said that I was lucky because sometimes the power of the ring kills people. I mean, seriously.”
    â€œWhat?” Harvey and Kara both yelled as one, causing several heads to turn and look at them with interest.
    â€œGuys, shhhhh.” Sophie glared at them. “This is our first day of sixth grade; we don’t want to stand out too much. Anyway, he was lying, of course. Perhaps it’s some weird djinn joke they do? Like
America’s Funniest Home Videos
but for orange people? By the way, can you guys hear that weird buzzing noise?” Sophie paused and rubbed her ear to get rid of the strange static noise that had been bugging her all morning.
    â€œI can’t hear anything.” Harvey chewed his lip and looked concerned.
    â€œMe either.” Kara shook her long hair. “And how do you know the djinn was lying?”
    â€œActually, that would be quite easy to tell,” Harvey cut in. “Since his nonverbal signs would clearly give him away. Did he flare his nostrils at all or avoid eye contact? Those are always good indicators.”
    â€œStrangely enough, I was too busy freaking out to notice what his nostrils were doing or where he was looking,” Sophie retorted, while deciding to ignore the weird buzzing noise in her ear. Meanwhile, her friends were both looking worried.
    â€œSo how do you know he wasn’t telling the truth then?” Kara persisted.
    â€œWell, Exhibit A is the fact that I’m not a djinn,”