The Extremely Literal Genie

Dru found the lamp on a Tuesday, which was already a weird day because she'd worn her shirt inside out to school and nobody told her until lunch.

She was walking home through the park, kicking a pinecone along the path, when something glinted in the bushes. It was a teapot — or maybe a lamp — or maybe something in between. It was purple and dusty and had a little handle shaped like a curly mustache.

"Huh," said Dru, and she picked it up and rubbed the dust off with her sleeve.

WHOOOOOOSH!

A great cloud of sparkly smoke burst out of the spout, swirling and twisting until it formed into the shape of a very tall, very purple person floating in the air. He wore a tiny bow tie and had eyebrows so bushy they looked like two caterpillars having a nap on his face.

"GREETINGS!" he boomed. "I am Genie Reginald Barnsworth the Eleventh, and you have THREE WISHES. Choose wisely!"

Dru's mouth hung open. Then she closed it. Then she opened it again.

"You're a genie?"

"Indeed I am! And I will grant you EXACTLY what you wish for. Exactly." He smiled a very wide smile. "Shall we begin?"

Dru's heart was beating so fast it felt like a hummingbird trapped in her chest. Three wishes! She thought about all the things she'd ever wanted. A million dollars? A castle? Her own island?

But then she thought about something that had been bugging her all week. Her older cousin Marcus was coming to visit on Saturday, and Marcus was eleven, and he was so much taller than her. Last time he visited, he called her "Shrimpy" and held her favorite book above his head where she couldn't reach it. He wasn't mean, exactly — he just thought it was hilarious.

"Okay," said Dru, standing up very straight. "I wish I was taller than my cousin Marcus."

Genie Reginald Barnsworth the Eleventh snapped his fingers.

ZING!

Dru blinked. She looked down. The ground was... very far away. The trees were... below her. The HOUSES were below her.

"AAAAAH!" Dru screamed, because she was now taller than her cousin Marcus's entire house. She was taller than the streetlights. She was taller than the old oak tree in the park. Her head was up near the clouds — well, not quite, but it felt like it.

"WHAT DID YOU DO?!" she yelled, and her voice echoed across the whole neighborhood. Dogs started barking. A flock of birds burst out of a tree in a panic.

Genie Reginald floated up to her eye level, looking perfectly calm. "You wished to be taller than your cousin Marcus. Marcus is four feet, eleven inches tall. You are now forty-seven feet tall. You are, without question, taller than your cousin Marcus."

"I didn't mean THIS tall! I meant a LITTLE taller! Like, one inch taller!"

The genie shrugged. "You said taller. You did not say how much taller."

Dru looked down at her enormous shoes, which had crushed a small bush. "Oh no, oh no, oh no. Okay. Okay! I'll just use my second wish to fix this." She took a deep breath — which was strange, because the air felt thinner up here. "I wish I was my normal size again!"

ZING!

Dru squeezed her eyes shut, waiting to shrink. And she did shrink. She shrank and shrank and shrank until—

She opened her eyes.

She was standing in the grass. But the grass was now a forest. Each blade rose above her like a tall green sword. A ladybug the size of a dog wandered past, its spotted shell gleaming.

"Oh no," Dru whispered.

Genie Reginald appeared beside her — tiny now too, but still floating, still wearing his little bow tie, still smiling.

"You wished to be your normal size," he said. "When you were born, you were nineteen and a half inches long. That is the first size you ever were. Your original size. Some might call that your most normal—"

"THAT IS NOT WHAT NORMAL MEANS!" Dru shouted, though her voice was now so small that to anyone walking by, it would have sounded like a cricket sneezing.

The ladybug turned and looked at her with great interest.

"Go away!" Dru told the ladybug. The ladybug did not go away. It took a step closer.

Dru scrambled backward. "Okay. Okay, okay, okay. I have one wish left. ONE. I have to get this right."

She sat down on a pebble — which was now the size of a beanbag chair — and put her chin in her hands. She had to think carefully. Very, very carefully. The genie did exactly what she said. Not what she meant. Not what she was thinking. What she actually, specifically said.

"Can I ask you a question before I wish?" Dru said.

"Of course!" said the genie cheerfully.

"If I wish to be the same height I was before I found your lamp — the EXACT height I was at THAT moment, standing in the park — will you do that? Just that height? Exactly?"

The genie stroked his chin. "That is... very specific."

"Will it work?"

"It would work, yes."

Dru almost said it. The words were right there on the tip of her tongue. But then she stopped.

Because she was thinking about Saturday. About Marcus coming to visit. About him calling her Shrimpy and holding her book up high. And she realized something.

Being taller wouldn't have actually fixed anything. Even at forty-seven feet tall, she'd still been the same Dru — just a bigger, more worried version. The problem was never really about her height.

And right now, the ladybug was staring at her again, and she was nineteen inches tall, and she had exactly one wish left, and she needed to say precisely the right words.

Dru stood up from her pebble. She looked at Genie Reginald Barnsworth the Eleventh. She took a slow, deep breath.

"I wish," she said, "that my body would return to the exact height and exact size I was at the moment right before I rubbed your lamp today, and that nothing else about me or the world would change, and that this would happen right now."

The genie raised his bushy eyebrows. Both caterpillars went up.

"Well," he said. "That is the most carefully worded wish I have heard in four thousand years."

ZING!

The grass shrank. The pebble shrank. The ladybug shrank back to the size of a ladybug. The world rushed back to normal, and Dru was standing in the park, right next to the bush she'd crushed when she was a giant — okay, so the bush was still a little flat — and she was exactly, precisely, wonderfully her regular height.

She let out a breath so big it could have filled a balloon.

"That's it, then!" said the genie, tucking the lamp under his arm. "Three wishes, all granted. Fare thee well, Dru!"

"Wait," said Dru. "Can I ask you one more thing? Not a wish. Just a question."

"Certainly."

"Does everyone mess up their first two wishes?"

The genie's smile turned gentle. His caterpillar eyebrows softened.

"Every single one," he said. "For four thousand years."

And then — poof — he was gone, and the lamp was gone, and it was just Dru, standing in the park, her regular height, on a Tuesday.

When Saturday came, Marcus arrived and called her Shrimpy. And Dru looked right up at him — because yes, she did have to look up — and she said, "You know what, Marcus? I'm going to be taller than you someday. But even if I'm not, I can still beat you to the end of the street."

And she took off running before he could answer.

He chased her, laughing.

She won by three steps.