Be Careful What You Wish For is Goosebumps #12, released in October of '93. It's one I was dimly aware of as a kid but avoided, I think, because it has one of the weaker covers in the series and something about it just put me off. (The reason may be that the art isn't Tim Jacobus but rather Stanislaw Fernandes - a one-off done to cover for Jacobus who was on vacation during production time. No shade to Fernandes, it's fine artwork, it just doesn't look like Goosebumps.)
Which is a real shame, because if I had read this at a certain age, I might have gone utterly feral for it. Then again, I might have found it too painfully frustrating to appreciate. Hard to say for sure.
Let's overthink it.
First, the Plot: Samantha Byrd is the tallest person in her class, which has painted a target on her back because she is also a klutz. She was scouted for the basketball team but lacks athletic talent. She's awkward and clumsy and perpetually being tormented by the other kids, especially arch-nemesis Judith and her henchman Anna.
In one day, Judith trips Sam on purpose, spills pudding all over her new shoes, and "accidentally" knocks her out at basketball practice. She also keeps calling her "Stork" and saying, "Why don't you just fly away, Byrd?" No wonder Sam hates her!
One day, Sam is coming home from school and encounters a strange woman near the woods. The woman, whose name is Clarissa, asks for help finding a particular street, and is so grateful for Sam's assistance that she offers to grant three wishes when they arrive at their destination. Sam laughs it off, insisting it's unnecessary, but Clarissa insists and Sam ultimately blurts out that she wants to be the strongest person on the basketball team.
The wish is granted, but of course not the way she wants. She IS the strongest person...because everyone else is so exhausted they can barely keep their eyes open, much less play. They soundly lose their game and the next day, the rest of the team calls out sick with a mystery flu.
Worrying that they will only get worse and not wanting blood on her hands if they die, Sam tries to check in on Judith. Judith is intensely suspicious and accuses her of being a witch and cursing them. While this isn't wholly inaccurate, it pisses Sam off and, in frustration, she yells that she wishes Judith would just disappear.
Clarissa appears basically out of nowhere and says, very well, I'll undo your last wish and do this wish instead. Predictably, this also goes badly: instead of Judith disappearing, everyone disappears. Sam is the only person left in the whole world.
Clarissa shows back up and says, hey, I figured you might regret that wish, so I'll offer you a do-over. So Sam thinks carefully and wishes for everything to go back exactly how it was. Except she can't resist adding a twist: Judith thinks Sam is the coolest person in the world.
Enter a reality where Sam is as klutzy and unpopular as ever, but Judith hangs on her every word, copies everything she does, and stalks her obsessively to spend time together day and night. We all saw this coming, but Sam goes from amused to irritated to panicky.
She goes to find Clarissa, Judith trailing after her, and manages to find her and chew her out for ruining all her wishes. Clarissa says she's doing her best and has tried to be helpful and reward her for her kindness, and seems pretty offended that Sam is so angry. She only owes her three wishes, but as a kindness she offers one more.
Sam, irritated, decides that the best punishment for Judith would be to curse her with the same life-ruining power as she's been grappling with, so she tells Clarissa: I wish I never met you and Judith met you instead!
Sam sees Judith talk to Clarissa. She hears, "Fly away, Byrd." And then she calmly eats a worm and spreads her wings and flaps away, oblivious to what might be the matter....
Overthinking It: As Sam is narrating about being the tallest person in her class, clumsy, aggressively recruited for sports she has no natural talent for, disliked and mistreated by her classmates, relentlessly bullied by other girls for no apparent reason, with hair she doesn't like and an overall appearance she's self-conscious of, I actually said aloud to my audiobook: is this girl me?
Which makes me deeply sympathetic to Sam's plight, even as I shake my head with the benefit of hindsight. You fool. Happiness will never be found at the point of this vengeful spear.
Judith is clearly focused on Sam, but Sam is obsessed with Judith. She cannot conceive of happiness that does not include punishment for Judith. Given the opportunity -- repeatedly -- to improve her life, she can't think beyond what's right in front of her, and she can't let go of her anger long enough to realize she could have anything she wants. All she can think about is Judith standing in her way. And that is, in the end, her undoing.
What's ironic here is that Sam could have two potential paths to success: she could have taken direct action and simply wished Judith out of existence (much as Judith did), or she could have wished to be improved in her own right ("I wish I were a great basketball player"). But that's not what Sam wants. What Sam really wants is to be herself, but to be accepted and appreciated for who she is, by the one person in the world who is incapable of doing that. (and again, I say....Sam, are you me?)
The trope of the corrupted wish is a very old one. It takes a lot of forms. Often the issue is that the wish has unintended consequences or comes at a higher price than the wisher realized. What's going on with Clarissa is much funnier, though: It seems that these wishes are being poorly implemented, and not even on purpose.
If we are to believe what she says, Clarissa isn't actually trying to teach Sam a lesson about priorities or loving herself -- she actually just kind of sucks at doing magic. Which is hilarious and frankly terrifying in its own way. Whenever we see stories about magical beings and all-powerful deities causing calamity, we always assume malice. Isn't it so much more frightening to live in a world where vastly powerful forces wielding inhuman abilities are simply incompetent?
If You Liked This, THESE Will Really Give You Goosebumps:
Perhaps the OG example of corrupt wishes as a horror trope is the W. W. Jacobs story "The Monkey's Paw", where an artifact is cursed to grant wishes with terrible consequence. The story has been adapted multiple times in different ways, so take your pick.
In a similar vein is Richard Matheson's story "Button, Button" later adapted as "The Box" as a film and a Twilight Zone episode. Like The Monkey's Paw, it tells the story of a wish for financial wealth that comes at the expense of a loved one's life.
For a more direct take on the corrupt wish genre, try the horror franchise Wishmaster, where an evil genie wants to unleash hell on earth. You may also enjoy It's a Wonderful Knife, where a girl wishes she'd never been born and her town falls victim to a serial killer she once saved it from.
Not a horror, precisely, but the film Bedazzled is this, sort of - a man makes a Faustian bargain with the devil and gets wishes in return. There was a 1960s original or 1990s with Brendan Fraser that I quite like.
For a horror movie with similar vibes but a different central mechanic, try Happy Death Day, wherein a girl is trapped in a time loop until she can identify her killer.
