Нил Шустерман: The Eyes Of Kid Midas

When Kevin turned, he saw Josh, who looked like a bowling pin with legs as he danced to avoid the stones rolling toward him. When the last of the boulders had passed, Josh breathed a sigh of relief and began screaming at Kevin.

"What's your problem?" yelled Josh. "Why did you just stand there?"

Kevin felt nothing—not fear, not anger. He felt numb—one hundred percent numb.

He spoke very slowly. "There was no avalanche, Josh."

Josh caught his breath and tried to stop shaking. "What do you call this? A hailstorm?"

"Well, yeah, there was an avalanche," said Kevin, "but I mean there wasn't an avalanche when I said there was."

"Yeah?" said Josh. "Well, maybe the rocks just fell out of your pinhead!"

The glasses had fallen during the avalanche, and when Kevin picked them up they were hot, as if they had been in the sun too long.

"It's lucky they weren't smashed," said Kevin.

"It's lucky we weren't smashed," said Josh, looking around him. "Let's get out of here. This spot must get avalanches all the time."

But Kevin knew that wasn't the case.

The moment the avalanche ended, a storm began brewing in Kevin's mind.

While everyone jabbered on about the avalanche, and while the teachers thanked their Maker that no one was hurt by it, Kevin sat alone on one of the fallen boulders and stared with steely concentration at the mountain. It seemed robbed of its color today, remaining chalky white at sunset. The, glasses, however, burned a silvery orange.

The thoughts swimming in Kevin's mind could have been products of his overactive imagination or the result of a lack of sleep and digestible food, but Kevin had a growing sense that something more was at work here. After the events of this afternoon, he was finding it harder and harder to believe that his glasses had been left behind on the mountain by some ultracool hiker who wanted to stake a claim.

"What would you say, Josh, if I told you that these glasses were magic?" Kevin whispered as he and Josh waited in the long dinner line.

"I would say you've been reading too many comic books."

The line crept slowly toward Mr. Kirkpatrick, who was dishing up some slop everyone was calling Hamburger Helpless.

"What if I told you I could prove it?" asked Kevin.

"Then I would say the avalanche knocked some of your screws loose."

Kevin knew that Josh was the kind of kid who wouldn't believe anything until he saw it. So Kevin grabbed his arm and pulled him out of line.

"Hey, what's the idea?" yelled Josh. "I haven't eaten all day. I'm starved!"

"Follow me. It'll only take a second." Kevin led Josh off into the woods until the sounds from the campsite were far away, and he was sure no one could hear them.

"Okay," said Kevin. "Here's the proof: One, I told Bertram to jump in the lake, and he did."

"Big deal."

"Two, I told him to do it again, and he did it again!"

"Big deal."

"Three, the avalanche. I said there was an avalanche, and then, pow, there was one."

Josh leaned against a tree, and a look of began to creep onto his face. "What you're saying is looney-toons, you know that?"

Kevin took off the glasses and looked at them. Now they had faded to the rich purple of the western sky.

"They tingle, Josh."

"What?"

"The glasses. They tingle. First, when I told Bertram to jump, and then when I said, 'Avalanche.' They tingled . . . and it sort of felt . . . good."

Josh reached out his hand. "Let me see."

"No!" Kevin pushed Josh's hand away. Josh frowned but didn't reach for them again.

"What do you want me to do, then?" asked Josh.

Kevin's voice was a whisper. "Ask me to wish for something."

"You're nuts."

"Ask me."

"You're certifiable!"

"What are you afraid of?"

It was a good question, and rather than admit he was afraid, Josh gave Kevin a wish.

"An ice-cream cone," said Josh.

"What flavor?"

"Unmerciful Chocolate Destruction. A double scoop."

"Cake cone or sugar cone?"

"Just get it over with!"

Kevin planted his feet firmly on the ground and stuck out his hand, concentrating with the full force of his mind.

"Okay," said Kevin, "give me one double dip of Unmerciful Chocolate Destruction on a sugar cone to go!"

The glasses went dark, and at first Kevin could see nothing. Then a spot of light appeared before him, which exploded in waves of brilliant color. He could feel the warmth and tingle of the frames as they ever so slightly surged with energy, as if they were pulling it right out of Kevin's head.

"Kevin," said Josh, his voice trembling, "your eyes . . . I think they're glowing!"

In his mind, Kevin imagined the cone dripping with ice cream, and then, when the colors faded from before his eyes, he realized that the picture he had in his mind had entered the real world.

Unmerciful Chocolate Destruction dripped down his fingers, cold and sticky.

Josh was the first to scream, and Kevin joined him. He dropped the cone and they both ran from it, screaming at the top of their lungs, until they got to a clearing far away from the horrific cone. There they stopped to catch their breath.

"This is weird, Kevin!"

"I know!"

"No, I mean this is really weird. Remember when Ralphy Sherman said his father was a werewolf, and then they found him one morning sleeping in a neighbor's doghouse? Well, this is weirder."

Kevin looked at his hand, which still had some melted chocolate ice cream on it. He licked it. It was unmercifully real.

"What are we gonna do?" asked Josh. "What are we gonna do?" And then something struck him. "Hey," asked Josh, "where's my ice-cream cone?"

With Hamburger Helpless on the menu, it quickly became obvious what they were going to do. If reality was flexible enough to allow an ice-cream cone to be born out of thin air, then it was flexible enough for quite a variety of things.

Within ten minutes the little clearing was filled with food. Burgers from every imaginable fast-food chain lay all over the ground, one bite taken from each. The birds were feasting on french fries, and a bivouac of army ants was all but carrying away the discarded burgers.

And, of course, the feast was topped off by a whole gallon barrel of U.C.D. ice cream. They kept shoveling in the ice cream until it could no longer go down and just sort of squirted out of the sides of their mouths when they tried to swallow. Then they rested; two beached whales barely able to move.

The glasses, which had gotten a bit warm when Kevin wished up their gluttonous feast, had cooled off. Now, in the moonlit sky, their tint seemed to have disappeared, leaving the lenses completely clear.

"This is just the beginning." Kevin took off his glasses and polished them against his shirt. "There's no limit to the things we can wish up!"

"Yeah," said Josh. "But what if it's not all free?"

"Like how?"

"What if the glasses are like some . . . I don't know . . . like some intergalactic charge card, or something? And what if someone comes to collect the bill?"

"They don't work like that," said Kevin.

"How do you know?"

"Because I do! When you wear the glasses, you just know things about them."

"Like what?"

Kevin cradled the glasses in his hands, running his fingers tenderly across the black-and-gold rim.

"Like they were meant to be used," he said. "Like they're supposed to make everything a whole lot better. That they're more valuable than anything in the world."

Josh reached out and gently took the glasses from Kevin, staring at them as if he held the world's most precious diamond in his hands. He seemed almost afraid to be touching them.