What would happen if one tiny wish made an entire busy life wobble like jelly?

Julia thinks she knows the answer: disaster.

Every morning in her city apartment feels like a race with too many elbows. Her dad hunts for his keys. Her baby brother throws cereal like confetti. Her mom answers work calls while buttering toast. Julia stuffs homework into her backpack, grabs her sneakers, and dashes for the elevator.

The elevator, unfortunately, has a personality. On Monday, it burps.

Not a polite hiccup, but a loud, metallic *blorp!* that shakes the pipes.

"Your elevator needs manners," Mr. Chen from 4B mutters. Julia laughs, even though she’s late.

By afternoon, her head is packed with spelling words, screeching bus brakes, and honking horns. That evening, her family gets trapped in traffic for forty-seven minutes just to buy a birthday gift and a bag of lettuce. Julia presses her forehead to the car window and whispers, "I wish everything would just slow down."

She doesn’t mean it as magic.

But the next morning, the power is out on their entire block.

No elevator. No buzzing lights. No coffee machine. The apartment is quiet enough to hear rain tapping the fire escape and her brother humming to his spoon.

"Great," Dad grumbles, glaring at the dead coffee maker as if it has personally betrayed him.

"We’ll have to walk," Mom sighs.

Walk? With groceries and a stroller? Julia expects a miserable trek, but outside, the air smells clean and the sidewalks shine silver. They pass a bakery they usually zoom past in the car. The baker hands Julia a warm heel of bread. Cutting through a small park, her brother points at an earthworm with such wonder you’d think he’d discovered a sea monster.

At school, the outage is the only topic.