Granting a Thief's Wishes

I stared at him for a few seconds before bursting into peals of laughter. I couldn’t stop laughing, thinking about what he told me over and over again. It was just too ridiculous.

Nicholas Peterson, having a crush on me? I laughed harder, slapping my thighs and wiping off an imaginary tear from the corner of my eye. "Oh, you're too funny," I gasped and struggled to stand up. Gosh, I felt as if my lungs might burst from all that laughing. I needed air.

For a second there, he actually looked pretty hurt.

"Nice one, buddy," I said awkwardly after a while, slapping his shoulder. "But really, let's have breakfast downstairs before you spill more of that cereal of yours on Megan's stuff, shall we?" I said, offering him a hand. He gave me a tiny but oddly strained smile before we walked downstairs for breakfast.

Nothing interesting much happened for the next few days except for Nicholas actually granting my request. I got my bracelet back. I know! It was unbelievable. Nicholas came knocking on our apartment's door one day and just gave it to me. I felt the need to kiss him. I kept having nightmares that a piranha gobbled it up. In one dream, the bracelet got crushed under a tractor that was oddly driven by Nicole.

I stared at my bracelet happily.

Things had been rough without it. Just the other day, my cat's neighbor was playing with a ball of yarn. It rolled and rolled until it reached near the top of the stairs. I remembered hearing my neighbor scream, "no, Mimi! Come here! No, stay!"

Of course Mimi didn't stay, no. The kitty fell from the top of the stairs. And with every distressed meow, I was just that closer to cry hysterically, wailing, "no, no! It's my fault!"

Thankfully, the cat survived.

It had been 3 days since the end of semester break, and autumn was coming. Due to my…err, excessive daydreaming, you could say I was staring at my laptop's screen without remembering what I was supposed to do with Dreamweaver.

I pretended I knew anyway, since the professor was eyeing me suspiciously.

Nicholas, I never saw him again after the day he gave me my bracelet back. I was planning to call him the other day, but I realized we never exchanged our phone numbers. So maybe that was that. I shouldn't miss him. It was bad for my health.

Anyway, that night was Nicole's big debut…well, at least in the campus. She had been so busy that I felt as if I haven't talked to her for ages. And after last term's result came out, I haven't seen much of Maddie either.

When class was over, I walked to our apartment which was a few blocks away from the campus. On the way, I saw him.

Nicholas.

Except, every time I saw him, he looked…in control. Charming and playful. Err, a confidence that any thief should have in order to look innocent. What I saw isn't that confident Nicholas Peterson. He looked awful. As I got closer, I saw that he wasn't alone. There was a black-haired guy standing next to him.

"Nick?" I said.

"Suze, thank god."

I sat across from them, looking at the black-haired guy. "So you're Ryan, the one who keeps disappearing."

"In my defense, I didn't know it would mean this much to Nick here," he said, jabbing his thumb towards Nick, who glared at him.

"Look, you've got to tell her what you told me back at the house."

"I don't know why you're so fascinated by this, Nick. I thought you thought my major was bullshit."

"It is," he said. "But Susannah Bell here is…really, really interested in this stuff ever since she was a kid. And you'll do her a great favor if you told her, what you told me back at the house."

Gosh, he sounded scary.

Ryan rolled his eyes. "The fairy connected to that bracelet you…currently wear…hey, it's yours? D'you mind selling it to me? It's the most awesome replica I've ever saw—"

"Focus," Nick said.

"Right, right. One theory explained that the fairy who needs to wear the bracelet usually can grant wishes. There's…not really much I can say about that fairy herself, because their origins and existence isn't really that crystal clear, ya' know? But as far as I know, the more that the fairy grants wishes, the more life source she channels through the bracelet."

"I don't get it."

"It's like a disease," he said after thinking for a while. "The fairy has something wrong with her, obviously. The powers of that fairy that any other ordinary fairies have are converted into something of a curse. This kind of fairy is a rare creature. They're completely broken, in one sense or another.

So their energy is completely used up for the wishes alone. Elemental magic, wings and the ability to fly even. They're all absorbed by another energy inside this fairy to enable her to grant wishes. As these energies are used up so much, they might dry out. So the fountain of wishes inside the fairy needs another source. This source just might be her life. It kind of drains the shit out of energy anyway. Like a parasite."

"So she'll…die every time she grants a wish?" I said incredulously.

"In theory. That's the only thing I've found about the bracelet anyway. What are you, some kind of a fantasy writer? Hey miss, are you okay?"

"Ryan, can you give us a minute?"

"Yeah, whatever. I have to clean up the dinner table anyway, or else we'll get eaten alive by Megan. I'll meet up with you later?"

"Yes, thank you."

In theory. It didn't mean it was true, right? No one knew. No one...knew what was wrong with me! So it'll be silly of me to trust some stupid textbook. Stupid folklores. Stupid mythologies. Stupid, stupid…

Yeah, but it scares you doesn't it?

Stupid conscience.

"Suze…"

"I'm fine," I said cheerfully. "Shall I get you more coffee?" I offered, getting up and making my way to the kitchen. But halfway, I got stopped by Nicholas.

"You're not okay."

The way he said it, he sounded so sure. And he was right; I wasn't really feeling as if I was on top of the world then.

"Why do you care so much now, huh?" I said, unable to snap my mouth shut. "You're just a thief who unfortunately walked into my life, via…via Starbucks. And like any other thieves, you should've walked back out. And yet here you are."

"And yet here I am," he muttered, staring right into my eyes, as if searching for something. My thoughts, probably. And at that moment, I felt exposed.

"Get out, Nicholas. Walk out of my life, will you?"

"Suze, what'll happen if what Ryan said is all true? You can't control it, Susannah. You know you can't."

"Get out!" I screamed, blinking away the tears.

I didn't need another person, a human no less, to tell me that I was incapable of controlling myself.