I Wish...

by Wren Emerson

  I found the living room fairly easily after a wrong turn into the kitchen. There was a girl with silky straight red hair stretched out on the overstuffed sofa. She had ear phones tucked into ears and a thick textbook open in front of her. I assumed that's how she managed to miss the commotion of us rolling up and the subsequent sounds of five pairs of feet going up three flights of wooden stairs.

  She looked older than me. I guessed her age around twenty one or twenty two. She wore a pair of oversized black rimmed glasses. She looked too much like Ramona for there to be any doubt that this must be Darcy. Not being an especially shy person, I took a fortifying breath and approached her.

  To her credit, she didn't seem startled to see a strange girl looming over her in her living room. She sat up in a manner that reminded me of my mother; all coiled grace. She gave me a tiny smile as she said hello.

  "Hi there. I'm This- I mean, Jane." Introducing myself that way would take some getting used to. What a normal name. Boring even.

  "Jane?" Her pretty nose crinkled and the resemblance to a bunny was strong. "As in Jane Madison? Vanna's bastard daughter?"

  "Whoa, manners!" I didn't have an earthly clue how to respond to such a frank statement that defied all rules of tact and social nicety.

  She smirked. I couldn't believe that anyone would act so rude outside of cheesy movies about mean high school girls. I mean, seriously?

  "Surely you didn't think that you were going to be able to show up here and ruin everything and everyone would adore you for it?"

  "I'm a little scared to stick my hand into the crazy, but I'll bite. What exactly am I ruining? You'll have to forgive me for being a little slow to pick up on it because until half an hour ago I didn't even know I had a bitchy cousin."

  Darcy stopped smirking, but I didn't really prefer the death stare that replaced it. She looked like a girl who would cut a bitch. "Quit playing dumb. You know what showing up here right now means to my family."

  "Joke's on you. I'm not playing. I have no friggin' clue what you're going on about."

  She rolled her eyes. "If that's true then I can almost feel bad for you because you won't have a prayer in this town."

  Darcy got up from the couch and I had a chance to admire her long legs in the tiny shorts she was wearing as she dismissively turned her back to me and took her time gathering her things.

  Now I felt like the creeper for even noticing. I decided that I wanted some air and now wouldn't be too soon. I went outside and considered my options. I didn't feel like I would be able to concentrate on reading after that little exchange. As awful as Darcy had been, at least she gave me another valuable clue. Jane Madison. I said the name out loud under my breath a few times.

  I decided on the spur of the moment that I'd like to find out of this town actually did have a soda shop. I had a few bucks in my pocket and an appetite. The town wasn't very big, maybe four miles from one end to the other. Which meant that the town square was probably around two miles from here. I could walk that in no time. I routinely jogged twice that and then some.

  It was a gorgeous autumn day. Although it was a little warmer than this in California, the air only had a hint of chill today. I noticed again how the flowers here were still in bloom. For a minute I just enjoyed the sun on my skin and the beauty that surrounded me. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live here.

  Settling into one place had always been a dream of mine. I loved books and movies about people who became lifelong friends with the people in their neighborhoods. I hadn't discussed it with anyone, but I planned to get a degree in education and become a teacher in a tiny town. I could guess what Ramona would say, but I just wasn't motivated by money and fame the way she was. I hoped that I'd meet a boy in college who wouldn't think my upbringing was too weird and we could get married and have a couple of kids. It was all pretty much the polar opposite of the life I'd lead so far, but I wanted it so bad I could taste it.

  I made it to the shops before I'd even had a chance to speculate on the weirdness back at the house. That was fine with me. The vibes there were confusing and today was just too pretty to waste on negative things I didn't even understand.

  I walked past the shops closest to the house. A florist, a hardware store, and ah there it was, a diner. The booths that lined the windows were full and I felt a lot of eyes on me before I even opened the door. As I entered I saw all the remaining heads swivel my direction.

  A smiling woman behind the counter didn't even spare me a second glance, she just hollered, "Sit anywhere you'd like, Hon."

  I chose a seat at the counter. I know it didn't stop everyone from watching me, but this way I didn't have to see them as long as I avoided looking in the mirrors that lined the wall behind the counter.

  The woman handed me a menu and took my drink order. When she returned with a glass of soda she watched me as I fished all the ice cubes out with a spoon. "If you didn't want ice, why didn't you just ask, dear?"

  "I like the drink to be cold from the ice, but having the actual cubes touch my mouth makes me feel like biting tin foil. I don't know why. I'm weird, I guess."

  She laughed. "I guess we're all a little weird about something. My name is Dina Adams and I run this place. I can't even pretend at nice manners. You're new in town and the curiosity is eating me up. Why don't you go ahead and tell me who you are so I can get about my business."

  I was grinning. I couldn't help it. She was like a movie character come to life or something. With only a little conscious thought beforehand I remembered to introduce myself by my newly discovered real name. "I'm Jane Madison."

  The change that came over Dina's face was remarkable. Her jolly demeanor flipped off like a switch and her expression was now a cool assessment. "Madison, you say? Ramona Madison's granddaughter?"

  I wasn't sure what might have caused such a drastic personality shift, but now I was scared to answer either way for fear of further offending her. "Ummm..."

  It didn't seem to matter what I said now, the damage was already done. She took my order and disappeared to the other end of the counter where she chatted with a couple sitting there while shooting me periodic betrayed glances.

  She brought me my food without saying a word and though I sat there at the counter prodding the chicken I'd ordered with my fork, I wasn't hungry anymore. A couple entered the diner and came over to the counter and sat next to me. They were happily chatting to each other. They were older, maybe in their sixties or early seventies. The man, who was sitting to my right smiled at me.

  "Hello there, dear. New in town?" His wife leaned around him so that she could get a good look at me too.

  This friendly gesture soothed my stomach. I was a little embarrassed by how much I visibly perked up from the welcome attention. "Yes, I am."

  I ate a bite of my fried chicken. It was as good as it looked.

  The woman asked, "What family are you from?"

  I chewed the food in my mouth before I responded politely, "I'm here to visit my great grandmother, Georgina. My name is Jane Madison."

  I took another healthy bite before I realized that the woman wasn't saying anything. Her husband still looked friendly enough, but she was making a face like she'd eaten something sour. She stood up from her stool and started gathering her things. Without looking my direction she called to Dina to let her know she was going to be taking a booth instead. Her husband looked pained. He shrugged slightly and mouthed "I'm sorry" before following his wife to her new seat.

  I was shocked. The chicken in my mouth suddenly seemed harder to chew than jerky. I noticed a woman sitting around the bend in the counter to my left. She'd been there when I came in. Because of the bend, I could see her face clearly. Her short black hair was in a smart bob and she was dressed nicely enough from what I could see, but her face was contorted in a look that wouldn't have been out of place in a lynch mob. She saw that I noticed her, but she didn't even attempt to arrange her face into a more pleasant mask for my benefit. I was sure
she could hear my conversations with both Dina and the couple and it appeared she wasn't very happy to meet me either. I took the hint and left my money on the counter before I slipped out the door.

  After the disaster in the diner I just wanted to go back to the house where at least the unfriendly faces were familiar. The walk back wasn't filled with fantasies about white picket fences and pudgy babies. I kept rehashing the events at the diner trying to make sense of the reactions of the people I met there. For whatever reason the fact that I was a Madison seemed to be a deal breaker. And that woman with the black hair? Creepy beyond imagining.

  As I walked up the street where the house was located, I almost didn't see Darcy. She was sitting on one of the many wicker chairs that dotted the porch. One of her legs was tucked under her, but the other stretched out to the railing that circled the porch. She was still working her way through the textbook from earlier. If there was ever a brochure perfect image of a studious collage girl, this was it. Fortunately, she hadn't noticed me yet so I veered towards the back of the house.

  Yeah, it was a cowardly thing to do, but after the totally unsubtle rejection I'd just suffered through at the diner I just didn't have it in me to deal with someone else who inexplicably hated me. The back yard was massive. There was an in-ground swimming pool with attached spa and a covered deck. The yard wasn't fenced, but the left and right borders were marked with more of the lilac bushes I saw in the front. The back edge of the lawn ran down into the tree line. The trees looked thick and impenetrable and that suited my desire to find a place to hide and lick my wounds so I plunged into the midst of them.

  The trees were mostly all mature with very little under growth. The ground was covered with a thick blanket of leaves. It made the path I found shortly after entering the woods all the more evident. I wasn't any kind of outdoorsman so I couldn't tell if the trail was man made or the path a hungry bear followed to a watering hole or something else entirely, but after the day I'd had, I would happily take my chances with anything I might find out here. At least if I came across a hungry bear, I’d understand why it wanted to eat me.

  The trail, at first, lead me further into the woods, but eventually started to run parallel to town. I had a decent sense of direction so I wasn't worried about getting lost. I just wanted to concentrate on the smells and sounds of the forest until I had some time to process the hurts of the day. I walked for a mile or two when I saw a fainter trail leading off away from town. I decided to follow it and see where it took me.

  It didn't seem to be leading anywhere in particular for the first half mile, but then I passed through a thicker growth of trees and entered a clearing. The ground was grassy and there stream on the far side that fed into a small pond. Also on the far side was an especially large tree. Some of the roots had grown up in a gnarly moss covered tangle. Reclining in the middle of the tangle was a boy.

  He was wearing earphones and alternating between looking at a comic book and writing furiously in a notebook. His light brown hair was short and spiky in the back but longer in the front and on the sides. He kept absently brushing rogue strands out of his eyes. He wore jeans that were a little baggy, but I thought that might be more because he was slender rather than a fashion statement. He was shirtless and I admired the tanned skin and smooth muscles of his chest. He wasn't bulky, but he looked strong.

  I would have come to the conclusion that I was a huge perv on my own, but he saw me first. He looked up at me with large mahogany eyes. An initial brief moment of wariness was soon replaced with mild curiosity. He took out his ear phones.

  "Hello?"

  I walked a little closer. "Hi."

  "I'm pretty sure I know everyone in Desire and you don't look familiar. Who are you?"

  Remembering how little success I had with my birth name I decided to try a different approach this time. "I'm Thistle. My family is just visiting for the afternoon. I thought I'd take a walk while the big kids talk."

  "Thistle, huh? That's different."

  "You don't even want to know my last name then."

  His laugh was contagious. "I'm Ben. Want to join me? It doesn't look like much, I know, but you won't find a more comfortable seat."

  "Well, sure. As far as grassy spots under trees go, this looks like a fine example." I sat down next to him. A protruding root kept me from scooting too far from him and I didn't want to. Sitting so close to him was making me dizzy in the best possible way. I felt really comfortable with him which was strange considering the fact that I didn't know anything about him and usually cute boys made me nervous enough to throw up. His smile was encouraging though. So far so good.

  He leaned against my legs as he reached across me to grab his shirt. Our bare skin touched, his chest against my knee and my nerve endings sang. If it had any effect on him he didn't show it. He just pulled on his faded yellow t shirt that said event staff across the back in worn letters. I realized I was staring at him again and immediately felt awkward. My inexperience with guys always felt like it was nearly a tangible thing, like a scar or a birth mark. I always figured guys probably smelled it on me and lost interest.

  I noticed his notebook closed around his pen sitting beside him. "What are you writing about?"

  Ben looked flustered for a second and I regretted asking him about it. Even a dating noob like me knew that it's probably not a good idea to embarrass a potential date. "It's a little embarrassing actually."

  Oh great. Confirmation.

  "That's ok. Don't worry about it. I shouldn't have asked, I knew it wasn't my business." And queue the pointless babble. I was secretly convinced that I could be locked in a room with fifty guys who were told that their only hope for freedom was asking me on a date and still come out of it without even a phone number.

  "Hey." He gently interrupted my ramble. "I don't mind telling you about it. It just took me by surprise. I've never told anybody about it before. Probably because I only work on it out here where I never see anyone."

  He handed me the comic and I flipped through it as he talked. "This comic is about a super hero called Reality Bender. He can travel through different time streams and realities at will."

  I was interested now. "Realities? So if he wanted to he could go to a nightmare reality?"

  "Ah, no. Not in the sense that it's totally fictional. His power only allows him to go to different versions of Earth." Ben leaned over me so that he could rest his weight on his hand while he pointed to different panels in the comic. He was a lot taller than me. My head barely cleared his shoulder. So much for learning anything from his lesson. Inwardly, I sighed, but it was a happy sigh.

  "There's a theory that every time an action has two or more different outcomes a new reality starts at that point of intersection. I can't really explain it any better than that since I haven't really studied it or anything, but that's what it means in the terms of this comic."

  "So if he didn't like the way a choice he made turned out he could go back to the time he made it and follow the other path instead?"

  "Exactly!" His grin crinkled his eyes in an appealing way.

  "Sounds like an awesome power. Who wouldn’t love to have constant do overs? It’s like he really can't make a mistake."

  "It's actually very sad because only he can do this. He had a wife and son and they died in a car accident. That's how he realized he could bend reality."

  "So he rejoined them in a different reality?"

  "Of course, but then they died in that reality." He pointed out an illustration of a grief stricken man standing over two gravestones.

  "There are always more realities."

  "And sooner or later they die in all of them. The theme is that no matter what you try to do you can't get one over on fate." His eyes were intense.

  "I think another theme might be that love is worth seeking out no matter the personal cost because it's such a precious thing."

  Ben held my gaze for almost a minute and I couldn't look away. Finally he said, "I really hadn
't considered it from that perspective. It makes the whole thing seem a lot less depressing."

  Hoping to lighten the mood, I asked, "So what do you write?"

  He toyed with the spiral binding, "I'm trying to write a story about a guy with powers like Reality Bender. Except I'm trying to give him a reason for having such a weird talent."

  I thought of my own life, a series of random events that didn't seem to follow any kind logical pattern. "Sometimes there isn't a reason."

  "I don't think I can accept that." He paused. "For my hero, I mean. He has this talent that might have the potential to save the world or something if he can figure it out. He can't spend it like Reality Bender and just keep seeking out the people he loves and living a mundane life with them until they die again."