told me, Michaela—” I start to protest, but Uncle Jet cuts me off.
“It’s complicated,” he booms, which, duh. Luckily he elaborates. “Trying to undo a specific wish almost never works. When a wish is granted, the natural order of things is changed permanently. Say you broke a vase into a bunch of tiny pieces and then glued it back together. It wouldn’t be the same as it had been.”
“It would look like shit,” I say.
Uncle Jet frowns. “Okay, forget the vase. What’s one of the wishes you granted last night?”
I exhale in a rush. “You’ve seen most of them.”
“How ’bout his wish?” Uncle Rod chimes in. “That boy holding her hand.”
“All right,” Uncle Jet says. “That’s a good one to start with. So if you wished that he didn’t want to hold your hand, at first it would be fine.”
“At first?” Smith and I ask at the same time.
“Yeah. At first it would seem like the second wish canceled out the first one. But in reality, there would be two wishes battling it out inside of the boy, and he would eventually find himself fighting against two contrary impulses.”
I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to know.
Smith, though, isn’t interested in being kept in the dark. “And then?” he demands.
“Best case scenario . . .” Uncle Jet sighs deeply. “Madness. A complete break from reality, resulting in an inability to function within the world. Worst case—”
Not wanting to hear, I break in, “Losing your mind is the best case scenario? Seriously?” I can’t help but think of the way Smith had fought for control over his own hand. It was easy to see how it tore him apart to give in to the wish. But to give up control over his own mind . . . “Most people would rather be dead.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the worst case scenario.”
Silence descends. I cannot look at Smith. Then again, I don’t really need to. I can feel the despair coming off him in waves.
Uncle Jet clears his throat. Loudly. “There’s one other option,” he says at last. Reluctantly, like he’d rather not mention it.
“What?” Smith and I demand as a tiny spark of hope flashes in an ocean of black ashes.
“Tell ’em, Dune,” Uncle Jet says. “You’re the one that knows the most about it.”
It’s rare for Uncle Jet to cede the floor to anyone, but when he does it’s usually to Uncle Rod. Uncle Dune’s more the silent listening type, but now he steps forward, clears his throat, and proceeds to blow our minds.
“It’s a time machine of sorts,” he says. “Or basically a wish that takes you back to an earlier point in time, before the wishes you wish to un-wish were wished.”
“Okay, Dr. Seuss,” I say, while trying to wrap my mind around this. “Then can we just reset the clock to Friday afternoon?”
Uncle Dune shakes his head. “Too close to the event, it’s unlikely you would be able to perceive what had already occurred in time to choose a different path.”
And I’m lost again. “What now?”
“Wishes cannot be undone. Nothing in life can ever really be undone. Even with this method. There’s a shadow, a feeling that lingers of events that already occurred. The idea is to put you back in time far enough to sense this and change course, but not so far back that you simply shake it off, or worse, settle into the groove of what’s already happened.”
Groaning, I stare up into the sky, as if it might provide some answers. Sadly, it does not, but the movement must at least get the blood in my brain flowing, because an idea occurs to me. “What if I wish to go back and have a note in my pocket saying, ‘Hey moron, ask your uncles about the whole wishing thing.’”
I can tell from Uncle Dune’s expression that he thinks this is the dumbest thing he has ever heard. “Would you take this note seriously? Or would you dismiss it as a weird joke?”
Oh. “I wouldn’t believe it,” I admit with a sigh. “I’d think it was nuts. I had no idea about the wishing. I had no idea about anything.”
“Yep, that’s not good,” Uncle Dune says, which sorta seems like an understatement.
We are all silent for a moment, mulling this all over, when Smith pipes up. “How do you know all this anyway?”
To my surprise, Uncle Dune goes bright red. “Dated a girl a long time ago. She knew things. Things that had happened and could