even though I knew it was the worst idea ever, I did it anyway. That’s what friends are for. Right?
Ha.
Despite what my uncles might say (during one of their many lectures on “exercising caution,” Uncle Jed told me that if I can’t tell if I’m being brave or just stupid, I should go ahead and assume it’s the latter), it was a calculated risk. Also. I met Rollo in a brightly lit Denny’s and we hung out for about an hour, during which time I never gave him a chance to slip anything into my drink. Then, having fulfilled my friend obligation, I left thinking I’d never see him again.
And that’s pretty much how it played out.
Except.
He followed me home and grabbed me the next morning while I was walking to school.
Who saw that one coming, huh?
Turns out, though, that Rollo isn’t superinterested in me—I’m simply a way to get to my notorious father.
Despite being kidnapped and hidden away in a dark room that smells like cat pee, I was still sorta thinking he was a mostly harmless lunatic . . . until he chopped off two of my fingers.
At least Rollo was kind enough to give me a few fortifying swigs of my uncles’ moonshine afterward.
Good of him, right? I took the opportunity to propose a little toast, wishing him to hell. “To Rollo in hell. May all my wishes come true, or at least just this one.”
He didn’t like that. Not one little bit. He’d like it even less if he knew the wishes I grant have a way of coming true.
It’s sort of a family secret. My uncles broke the news to me a few years ago. After the first wave of disbelief passed, it made a whole lot of sense. Then I was all, “Holy shit, this is gonna be awesome! Oh, the wishes I will make.” My uncles let me dance around for maybe ten minutes before bursting that bubble and giving me the “With great power comes many possibilities for royally fucking up” speech. I guess I didn’t look crushed enough, though, ’cause then they were like, “BOOM. History.”
And they told me all this stuff about my dad and mom and, well, I won’t go into details, but the whole thing’s seriously messed up. I was pretty bummed out after that, so they let me grant one wish, just to get a taste for it. Uncle Dune did the wishing—it was sorta repayment for being the one who drew the short straw and did all the actual explaining. I was excited to grant my first wish, but also a little freaked out. Still, I had to know how this whole thing worked. Would it tingle? Would it hurt? Would I like it?
Dune wished that my father could never hurt anyone again. I could see he got a little choked up too. Him and my mom were the two youngest kids, and I guess had been pretty close before Cash showed up and ruined everything and turned my mom into a chain-smoking half person.
Anyway, that brings me back to good old Rollo. He got over me wishing him to hell and we kept drinking and then got to talking, and the tension between us eased a bit as the moonshine loosened our tongues.
Now Rollo tells me how he’d bought the moonshine from my uncles a few weeks back and we discuss how weird my uncles’ little toast is. After some nudging, he admits how he’d wished for courage to do the things he’d only dreamed of. Turns out his mom had been killed during one of Cash’s robberies years back and it messed him up a bit. Seems that without that motherly influence, he became the sort of person who dreamed of kidnapping girls and chopping their fingers off. And once my uncles granted his wish, well, suddenly he was no longer afraid of making those dreams come true.
Funny the way we all connect, huh?
More time passes after that revelation and we get pretty chummy by this point, and also blind drunk. Rollo’s also feeling pretty bad about cutting my fingers off and I feel sorta bad for wishing him to hell.
So as we come down to the last swig in the jar, I tell him to make a wish.
Okay, I probably shouldn’t have, but at this point I felt like he’d had one too many bad breaks. Also, I’d already wished him to hell and there’s no undoing a wish. My uncles say that