“Want to help me with my homework?” Megan asked as sweetly as she could – mostly because she knew that tone really bothered Jake.
It had been three days since he made himself her boyfriend, and Megan figured that should be plenty of time to lull him into a false sense of security before putting her plan into action. She might not be quite so mad anymore, but that didn’t mean she could let this go. He had to know he couldn’t just waste her wishes. And if he did, he would regret it.
She’d wanted to get started immediately of course, but she didn’t want to give the genie any clues as to what she was doing. Besides, this way she could say she really was trying to be a normal girlfriend if it ever came up; it just turned out that she was incredibly high maintenance.
“Are you wishing for me to do it for you?” he asked, matching her too-sweet tone.
Once he saw that she wasn’t going to actually kill him over that last wish, he’d gotten a lot more bold. Megan wasn’t sure she liked it, but she let him anyway; it would just make him suspect her less when she implemented her plan.
“Nope – no wish. Just thought you’d do it out of the goodness of your heart.”
“Ha!” Jake actually laughed. “And why would I do that?”
“Because you’re my boyfriend now, remember?” she grinned. “And if that were true, you’d want to help me out in any way you could.”
“Maybe I’m just a really bad boyfriend.” he told her casually. But Megan could see a hint of worry flicker across his face.
“But you can’t be a bad boyfriend, because then you’d be a bad wish-giver, right?” Megan asked, studying him closely.
“Maybe I am.” he said grudgingly.
“I thought you were great at this sort of thing. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Maybe I exaggerated my skills a bit.” he shrugged neutrally.
“Are you saying you’re bad at this job?” Megan asked. The genie set his jaw.
“No.” he said through clenched teeth.
“So if you’re so great at it, you must have given me a great boyfriend, right? And that means one who helps me out when I need it.”
Jake’s eyes went wide. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, not able to think of a way around it. Suddenly, Megan didn’t even care if he did do her homework for her – the look on his face was worth it!
“If you’re a bad boyfriend and I end up having to break up with you because of it, I don’t really see how that can count as my second wish.” she told him.
Jake stared at her for a full minute, like he couldn’t believe she’d actually said that. He chewed the inside of his cheek and narrowed his eyes, and Megan could see he was trying to think up something fast. Finally, he spoke.
“You’re conniving.” he told her.
“From the guy who tricked me into making him my boyfriend? I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I’m still glad I did that.” Jake said, fighting down a smirk. “You should have seen your face when we left the cafeteria.”
“As good as yours just now?” she asked sweetly. Jake blinked.
“And here you were almost wishing to be smarter.” he said, half to himself.
Megan grinned – that was probably that closest thing she’d ever get to a compliment from him.
“So where’s your book?” he asked finally.
Megan got it out of her backpack, grinning to herself; she couldn’t believe she actually won one.
“Have you done any of the homework yet?” he asked hopefully.
“Nope – not a thing.” she beamed.
“So basically, I have to do it all again?” he sighed.
“You already did it? When?”
They’d only been home for like half an hour. And there was no way he did it all while she was at track; she’d seen him spending most of that time talking to Greg about something.
“While I was waiting for your brother to drive you over here.”
“That’s like half an hour.”
“Yeah.” Jake nodded.
“And you did it all – for every class?”
“Uh, yeah.” Jake repeated.
“That’s so not fair.” she mumbled.
“Nothing is.” Jake told her. “So what’s first? Math?”
“I hate math.”
“I’ve noticed. You need to slow down more – actually look at what you’re doing.”
“Thanks.” she grumbled.
He acted like she didn’t try, but that was the problem. She really did try. She just had no idea what the questions even meant.
“So, problem one – how do you do it?” Jake asked.
“Who cares? I thought we just agreed that you were going to do them all for me.”
“Really? ’Cause I thought we agreed that I should help you in any way I can. And doing your homework for you isn’t nearly as helpful as letting you do it yourself.” Jake tried to look at her sweetly, but he couldn’t manage to wipe the smirk completely from his face.
“Wait – I’m the conniving one?” she asked indignantly. “Well, fine. But it’s just as much a punishment for you – we’re going to be here all night.”
“I doubt that.” He actually rolled his eyes at her.
“Then you’re in for a treat.”
As they worked through Megan’s homework, Jake found himself basically explaining to her all of chapter six. It took him over forty minutes just to get her caught up to where she needed to be. She was pretty sure he thought she was pretending to be stupid on purpose at first, but eventually even he realized that she really had no idea what Mr. Lowell was talking about.
“What’s your grade in this class?” Jake asked as casually as he could.
“C-.” Megan told him grudgingly. And she knew the only reason it was even that high was because she was slightly too popular for Mr. Lowell to fail.
“At least I’m starting to get it now, though.” she told him. She didn’t know which was worse – having her genie think she was an idiot, or admitting to him that he was actually a pretty good tutor.
It took another half hour, but Megan finally had all of her math homework done. Now all she had left to do was science, history, and Spanish. She looked at the Spanish homework and realized instantly that she had no idea how to do it. But she tried to keep the look of desperation off her face. Jake smoothly took the paper out of her hand and glanced at the instructions.
“You can do this, right?” he asked.
“Nope.” Megan didn’t even know what it was asking for.
“You just have to make sentences with the words they have here. That’s not too bad, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what you say.” Megan grumbled. Jake didn’t seem to hear her.
“So what’s caminar mean?” Jake asked.
“I have no idea.” Megan said flatly.
“You don’t even have a guess?”
“No – I really don’t.” She was starting to get seriously sick of this.
“No offense, but this is sort of basic. You really don’t know it?”
“No. I have no idea.” she snapped. “Obviously I really should have wished to be smarter instead of liked after all, but I didn’t.”
Jake actually snickered.
“So how do you know Spanish anyway?” Megan asked, desperate to think about anything except how bad she was at high school.
“I lived in Spain for a bit.” he told her hesitantly.
“Lucky.” Megan wished she could go live somewhere fun like that. Hey, now that was an idea. Her thoughts were interrupted by Jake’s snort.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing – sorry.”
“No – you can say it.”
“I guess I just don’t think of myself as being all that lucky.” he shrugged.
“Oh.” Megan guessed he did have a point. Still, it couldn’t have been all bad, could it? After all, it was Spain. “Well, I bet it was nice there at least.” she said, trying to look on the bright side.
“Not as nice as you’d expect.” Something in his eyes seemed to change, get colder somehow.
“Sorry.” Megan mumbled.
“Not your fault.” he told her. His tone was almost as flat as that first day she met him. Then, he seemed to make an effort to brighten. “So, about this Spanish homework – all you really have to do is conjugate the verbs and make sure the adjectives match the genders. You can do that, right?”
“Yeah, I think so.” she said glumly.
She wanted to ask him more about Spain, but she could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. Instead, she decided it was best to just shut up and do her homework.
“For science, you just need to make a chart – you know how to do that, right?” Jake asked.
“Yeah, I think I can figure that out.” she said defensively; she wasn’t a complete moron.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” he said, running his thumb and forefinger along the bridge of his nose. “Sorry.”
“…K.” Megan said grudgingly. She couldn’t really blame him – who’d want to be stuck here doing this anyway?
“What about English?”
“Just that reading that’s due next Tuesday.”
“Good. History?”
“I just need to answer the questions.”
“Ok, we need to speed this up a bit.” he told her. Megan almost laughed.
“Told you you’d get sick of it.” she announced as triumphantly as someone who’d just spent four hours doing homework could. “I go through this every day. See why I don’t bother?”
“I’m starting to.” he admitted, even though he looked like he thought it might be better to just keep quiet.
“Especially since your wish-granting was so...broad. What’s the point in worrying about this stuff?”
“I didn’t foresee the homework thing coming up.” he muttered.
“Well, it worked out.” Megan told him happily. “Actually, I think it’s the best part of the wish.”
“Well, don’t get too happy with it.” he told her. And that familiar impish grin was back. “As your wonderful, caring boyfriend, I think I should help you get caught up to where you should be.”
“Uh, I think I’ll go ahead and just see if I can pass without doing homework. I mean, it’s working so far.”
“Yeah, but that won’t really help you in the long run.” he said flippantly. Then turning serious, he added, “Besides, I’ve seen the look you get on your face when the teachers ask you questions and you have no idea what the answer is. Don’t you want to fix that?”
Megan thought about it for a minute. If she could really catch back up, it might actually be worth it.
“Fine.” she said grudgingly. “But not tonight.”
“No, I think we’ve done enough for tonight.” he agreed. “So let’s do this – I’ll do the Spanish and science, you do history, and I’ll make food. Deal?”
“Deal.” Megan grinned.
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