Chapter 1

My name is Jason Summers, and I was an average kid. I grew up and attended school in the suburbs, in a fairly decent neighborhood. It wasn't quite as rural as some places, but it wasn't big city either. Sort of in the middle; average, like me. There was a big mall in the city, and a shopping strip filled with national retailers. These attracted a lot of other businesses, all hoping to cash in on the attraction of the big sellers. One of these was a tiny little antique shop, called the Haller Catch.

That was where I worked.

It was a near minimum wage job that gave me just a little extra spending money. My parents didn't provide me much of an allowance; none, in fact. Believing instead that I would spend my money more wisely if I worked for every penny I had. It really wasn't fair.

The facts are that my family has always been a mess. My mother, Sharon, had been put in a bind when she got pregnant, and had made a couple of bad choices. The biggest was marrying my father. My real father had been a total bastard; and my mom had been pushed into filing for divorce when I was only four.

The whole experience messed her up for a while, and she spent some time in a shelter. When Sharon finally got her life back together she got an apartment, and started working full time while going to college. That was where she met Kenny. He was a real sweet talker; an older man who was rather well off. He had only recently been divorced himself, and his wife had left him with their daughter Karen, who was only slightly older than I was.

Sharon married him only a couple of months later. Ken was good to Sharon, and she loved him, even if he was only tolerant of me. But that was just fine, as long as my mother was taken care of, I didn't mind any lack of love.

My new stepsister Karen, on the other hand, wasn't simply intolerant towards me, she was outright hostile. She hated me, and I had never done anything to her. This resulted in me avoiding her at every opportunity. Which never seemed to do any good.

The problem was that she was a spoiled brat. Whenever she did something wrong, she got away without punishment. Even the most extreme transgression only seemed to earn her a slap on the wrists. And she always got anything she wanted. Ken simply adored his daughter, and his normally unbending rules would break in half if she asked him. That was why it wasn't fair. My whole life hadn't been fair.

At school it was many times worse. I've always been a bit of a nerd, so it was a simple god given universal fact that I would be picked on all the time by the big sports jocks, and I never got near any of the pretty girls. Most people ignored me, which was what I was used to at home, so I didn't really mind. Other people went out of their way to make me miserable; to make me suffer.

And so I found myself working behind the counter when the man entered the Catch.

Haller Catch bought and sold antiques. If someone had some antique to sell, they could bring it in and the Catch would make them an offer on it. It was a large shop with a small store attached to the front, along a strip of stores just outside the mall. The concrete floor was only partially covered with thin industrial carpeting, and the stained wood countertop was in serious need of a new finish. But it was a peaceful place to work, and I enjoyed the solitude it usually brought me.

The bell dinged softly as the door closed, and I looked up. The man who had entered was in my mid twenties, with short black hair and a plain face. He walked to the counter carrying a cardboard box in front of him. It was a small package, but was clearly heavy by the thud it made as the man set it on the counter.

"What would all the power in the universe be worth to you?" The man asked.

"Ten dollars." I offered. I guess I have a rather dry sense of humor. Or else I just don't like dealing with that type of customer. If you've ever worked retail, you know what I mean.

"Best offer I've had all day." He responded. Damn him. He was going to be one of those. Fine, I can play that game as well as any.

"Not surprising. What's the universe worth anyhow?" I looked at him, waiting.

"Everything; Nothing." He responded.

"Exactly! So I say ten dollars is a bargain."

He turned suddenly serious. "Are you sure, boy?" At my puzzled expression, he broke off with a laugh. "Here, I want you to have this." He said, opening the box. I started to shake my head. It was against policy to accept gifts from customers. But he paid me no attention. His eyes were fixed upon the item in his hands. He lifted a cast bronze lamp out of the box.

The bronze was polished and heavily engraved, the inscriptions on the side looked to be early Assyrian, or maybe Sumerian. Surprised that I know this? Well, I am a history nut, and remember, I did work in an antique shop.

The lamp had that long stem and bulbous center characteristic of incense burners. "All the power in the universe..." I muttered under my breath. The damned thing looked like it had come off the set of the Aladin movie. This guy might not have such a bad sense of humor after all. I pulled out ten dollars of currency and set the bills on the counter. The Catch would mark it up three or four times that. The man took the money, but looked as though he had more to say.

He did.

"This is no mere lamp, but a magical lamp." The man said with perfect seriousness. "Inside there is a genie, who has been imprisoned within this lamp for eons uncounted. This lamp has been with me for longer than I care to think about, but it is time that I pass it on." He looked at me, his gaze piercing through me like the point of a spear. I withered underneath it. "It is yours." He turned to leave. "One word of warning: all wishes have consequences. Keep your karma balanced or you will pay the price." And just like that he was gone, with the lamp sitting on the counter.

"So much for ten dollars." I said, picking up the lamp. I thought for a moment I might have felt something, but then the sensation passed and I laughed at myself for being superstitious. There was nothing to it. I set the lamp on the back counter and went back to work. I forgot about it for the rest of the day.

I woke up at quarter to six in the morning and jumped in the shower. School started at quarter after seven and if I wanted to get a shower at all I had to get one before my mother and my stepsister got started. I've tried taking a shower afterwards, but a cold shower is NOT the way to start the day. Sharon drove me and my stepsister to school before she went to work, and picked us up in the afternoon. Driving us was an inconvenience to her. The school levy had recently failed, and all of the buses were cut as a result. Sharon had to leave work almost two hours early every day in order to pick us up, and had been forced to work on the weekends to catch up. All of which conspired to put my mother in a less than pleasant mood. Karen got the front seat, as always.

When we got to school, my day didn't improve much. I saw Peter and his gang of cohorts harassing some freshmen. The two girls were practically surrounded by the five juniors. I figured I had better go and get some help. I returned a minute and a half later with Mr. Henry; the vice principal; and one of the teachers; whom I had never met before. They immediately intervened. Peter gave me a look that promised retribution. I wasn't worried. Nothing they did could be worse than what I was already going through; just more of the same.

I made it to my first period class almost ten minutes before it started. It was an English credit course that looked at writing techniques and summary skills. I had an extra elective and I needed the English credit, so I took it.

It was the both the best and the worst decision I have ever made.

In previous years, the course was taught by an older teacher named Arther. He was one of the greats; possibly the best teacher our school had ever had. I learned more from one year with him than I had from all of my previous years in school combined. For most of summer break I had been looking forward to being in his class. But when school started in the fall, we learned that Arther had chosen to retire, and that his class would be taught by another teacher: the Bitch.

Nobody liked the Bitch. She was a nasty old lady; a hag who lived to torment children. It would be safe to say that she felt much the same way about me. She would regularly call on me to answer in class, and often graded me at a much higher standard than the rest of her students. Everyone knew she picked on me, but no one said or did anything about it. It really pissed me off sometimes.

The one and only time I had ever gotten suspended from school was because of that woman. The bitch started talking about environmentalist policies — blabbering on about how we were destroying the world, how we had to make changes, and how we were now going to write a paper on the subject. She wrote down project subjects on slips of paper, folded them nicely in half, and threw the lot of them in a basket. Then she walked around the room and had everyone pick their project randomly from the basket. Naturally she came to me last. And naturally she ran out of project slips one student before me. She apologized for counting wrong and went back up to the front.

She wrote out a single slip and threw it in the basket. Then she came back across the room and held it out for me to pick. One slip. Not much in the way of choices. I took it and opened it up. Total bullshit. The bitch hadn't counted wrong. She counted out perfectly. It was her intention all along to stick me with it. The worst project topic I could ever have imagined. I lost it right there. I started arguing with her and demanded a different one. Less than five minutes later I was sitting in the office talking with the principal. I hadn't even raised my voice. All I did was argue. She said that I disrupted her class and landed me with five days out. This was the first time I had ever been written up, and I was landed with five days out for arguing. I never did do that project.

But the class wasn't all bad. Out of the nineteen other students, only one of them was a boy. And he almost never arrived until second or third period, so it was almost always just me. Every day I came to school and spent the first hour surrounded by eighteen beautiful girls. I think the other guy must be crazy. I don't think I've ever even been tardy. Four of those eighteen ladies made the list of the five most beautiful girls in school.