Granting a Thief's Wishes

Just as I whispered to my mom that Nicholas knew, just didn't believe it much (and that his friend might just know what the hell of a fairy I was), Laila came into the room 'carrying' a huge science project.

"I thought I heard Suze," she said, peeking her head to the side of the project to get a better view of me but when she realized there was someone...ah, foreign in the living room, she gave a small yelp of surprise and quickly stepped forward to her science project and hugged it.

"Was it just...flying?"

That was my definition of 'carrying'. That was Laila. Ever since she discovered she can manipulate 'air' itself, she began to be lazy and made everything float around. Tea cups, mugs, books, everything she had to carry basically (and she had loads of fun scaring kids in Halloween).

"N-no!" Laila stuttered. "I didn't...it didn't flew," she laughed hysterically.

"Laila--"

"Suzie, you should really get your friend checked, I think he's getting a little bit..."

"I'm not insane, I saw that!" I hear Nicholas bellowed. He was so confused, running his fingers through his hair as he got up and all. He had his other hand on his waist, his expression looking...well, very much bewildered.

"Laila, he knows. Sort of."

"Well of course he knows! He just saw" she whispered to me angrily, appearing at my side and setting the project on the floor, beside an antique wooden table. Numerous of picture frames and wood crafts scattered on the table, and there was a wilting carnation in a simple vase.

My mom saw where I was looking and with a wave of a hand, the carnation was red and healthy again.

"No, Laila I meant...mom, is that really necessary now? Nicholas is practically having a stroke now, sheesh."

"I'm not," he said but realizing he was sounding like a chipmunk, he cleared his throat and made his voice deeper than normal. "I'm not, I'm fine."

"Need air?" Kylie asked sweetly.

I seriously needed to talk to Kylie about not judging a book by its' cover.

"Where's your bracelet?" Laila asked, and as usual, I answered, "in my pocket."

Shit. I answered that question with that answer so many times it had almost became a freaking reflex.

"How many times have I told you not to put it in your pocket?" Laila said, going into her lecture mode. Oh screw this. Nicholas was looking really sick.

"Laila, he knows knows. I told him."

"What?!" She exclaimed shrilly. "Are you insane? Are you nuts?!"

"Laila..." I trailed off. "Nuts and insane practically have the same meaning in your sentence."

I heard Nicholas muttered, "excuse me," before brushing past me as he made his way to the door. After we heard a 'click', Laila began to panic. "Why did you do that for? We can't tell these ordinary people that we're not like them, Suze!"

"I know but I just..."

I just wanted to tell someone. And it was much easier to tell a stranger than a friend, right? The problem was Nicholas wasn't really a stranger anymore. As far as my mom concerned, he was my boyfriend.

Ugh, I needed to get some fresh air too.

"Mom, just tell Laila," I said curtly as I made my way out the door to the small garden we had.

"This is your definition of air?"

Nicholas just looked up at me and breathed out a puff of cigarette smoke. Despite the fact that I just abhor cigarettes (my dad technically died from all that cigarette, with the lung cancer and all), I sat beside him.

"What can you do?" he finally asked after he took a couple of drags and blowing the smoke out away from me, thankfully. I brought my knees up to my chin and hugged my legs.

"I grant wishes...in one way or another. I don't really know how it works. No one does."

Except maybe his friend, I thought, a spark of renewed hope flared in my heart.

"So this bracelet...?"

"It's kind of a power source. Like Tinkerbell with her ADHD."

"ADHD?"

"You know," I said. "She needs people to believe her existence or some other crap, or she'll die. It's kind of like that. I need that bracelet, or I won't be able to have what's left of the fairy-ness in me. I can't fly, I don't have wings, I'm just basically a failure as a fairy. You could say that."

"Not weird," he muttered. "Just unique."

"Which basically means weird," I said, grinning. He threw the cigarette bud on the ground, near his feet. He placed a foot over it and I glared at him. "You're picking that up, aren't you?"

"Of course."

"So your family..." Nicholas trailed off, looking at me questioningly. I shrugged and leaned on the bark of the tree we were sitting under.

"Mom has a thing with nature," I said, smiling as I looked around the garden. It was magnificent really for a small garden. "Laila can manipulate air and Kylie, water. It's pretty cool actually. Laila kept making jack-o-lanterns fly last Halloween. A kid fainted in the middle of the road when he saw it. Dad though...well, we don't talk about him much so I'm not sure. But I think he had some wizard blood in him--"

"Wizard?"

"And the bracelet was given to me by this witch, who died unfortunately so..."

"Oh god," he groaned, rubbing his temples.

He really looked sick. I thought I could at least bask in my sadistic satisfaction just seeing him like this. But I didn't. In fact, I felt pretty awful for dumping all of that on him. As much as I didn't want to admit it, but there was a side of Nicholas wasn't there? He wasn't just an ordinary thief.

Which reminded me...

"Um...did you steal anything inside there?"

He looked up at me disbelievingly. "Seriously? I'm offended."

I laughed and nudged his side. "I'm just teasing."