Free Autumn Falls by Bella Thorne Page B

a problem with that?”
    I’m so giddy I almost laugh out loud. “Are you kidding? You’ve made my wish come true.” I scooch my tray to the drinks station and gaze down at the miraculous plate of food. “I made you,” I whisper to it. “You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me.”
    “What is wrong with you?” Sofia asks.
    “Huh? Oh, nothing,” I say, blushing as red as my hair.
    “Oh, there’s something,” she says, and adds as she brushes past me, “Freak.”
    Okay, that sucked, but still, I have wished pizza into life. I’m a culinary Dr. Frankenstein. The world is my oyster-morphed-into-crab-cakes.
    Unless it’s just coincidence. Given the quality of Aventura High’s tamales, it’s not hard to imagine them showing up rotten.
    Maybe the journal only works for things that were going to happen anyway … which means it doesn’t “work” at all. Or only for things that
could
happen, which is a better explanation for Reenzie’s dung-dive.
    “If you could wish for anything and have it happen,” I ask J.J., Jack, and Amalita when we’re all settled and eating—moment to bask in the triumph—pizza, “what would it be?”
    “I’d have Reenzie Tresca drop Taylor Danport flat on her ass, leaving her alone, friendless, and weeping into theHello Kitty pillow she secretly sleeps with every night,” Amalita says, glaring across the lawn.
    I follow her gaze and see Taylor laughing with Reenzie, Sean, Zach, and a bunch of other people I don’t know. Taylor leans against Zach, and he has a beefy arm slung around her. I guess they’re together now.
    “Would you really?” I ask. “Like, for real. If you had the power and could make anything happen by wishing it, would you wish for her to get hurt?”
    “Absolutamente!”
she says. Then she thinks about it a second. “I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe I’d just have her old nose grow back for a day and watch her freak.”
    “What about you, Jack?” I ask. “What would you wish for?”
    “A night with Rogue and Wonder Woman?” Jack suggests.
    “Promise me you’ll never write fan fiction,” I say. “J.J.?”
    He kind of hangs his head. “I dunno,” he says, looking suddenly uncomfortable.
    “Oh, come on,” I say, trying to catch his eye. “I want to know.”
    “Yeah, you do,” Jack agrees.
    “Dude, seriously?” J.J. says. Then he turns to me. “I don’t have a wish. I’ve got everything I want.”
    “Except a certain lady love on your arm for the Winter Formal,” Jack says.
    The Winter Formal’s at the end of the month. Signs just started appearing in the halls this week. I honestlyhaven’t thought about it until this second. I’m surprised it’s on J.J.’s radar. I wouldn’t have thought it was his deal.
    “Really?” I ask. “Who?”
    “Doesn’t matter,” J.J. says. “But yeah, okay. If I could wish for anything and make it come true, I wouldn’t go revenge or comic-book fantasy. I’d go hopeless romantic.”
    It’s funny—I don’t generally think of J.J. as a romantic, but when he says that, I do. I notice the way his pale skin makes his dark eyes stand out and seem deeper and richer, like they could be full of secrets. I bet when he turns them on someone he really likes, it’s intense. Makes me wonder what he was like with his ex-girlfriend Carrie Amernick.
    It also makes me think about what I should do next with the journal. I don’t have the chance to write in it again until I’m back on the sidelines, watching Sean’s track practice.
    Dear Dad, I write,
    I’m going to take J.J.’s advice for my next wish. I wish Sean would ask me to the Winter Formal.

“So tell me, Dan Marino,” I say, “when you say football’s your thing, do you mean it’s your Thing?”
    “First of all,
not
Dan Marino, Peyton Manning. Second of all, I have no idea what you’re asking me.”
    Sean and I have been together for a couple of hours already, which sounds obscenely long, but we spent most of that time doing