Chasing Wishes

by Simonenko, Nadia

I glare up at Isaac as I ball my hands into fists, clenching so tightly that my knuckles turn white. The anger burns brighter and hotter in me with each passing second. If Isaac says something, I’m going to lose it. I’m going to attack him and get myself thrown out—I just know it.

  Don’t you dare be like them after helping me! I silently scream at him.

  He looks down at me, his smile never wavering for a second, and just when I think he’s going to say something awful and betray me, he instead winks at me.

  "Dude, Jacob... you want to know what I think?" he calls back, pushing me aside and peeping at Jacob through the vent in my locker door with a maniacal grin.

  Isaac waits for just long enough for Jacob to come closer, and then he swings the locker door open as hard as he can. It slams squarely into Jacob’s face, and I cringe as I hear something snap. Jacob slumps to the floor, swearing at the top of his lungs, and Sarah starts screaming.

  "You weren’t here," says Isaac, looking down at me as a crowd of onlookers surrounds my locker. "Jacob and I had a fight and you don’t know a goddamned thing about it. Get to your first class. Now."

  All I can do is stare back at him with my mouth hanging open in shock.

  "Go!" he barks.

  I grab my backpack and bolt down the hallway, stopping just long enough to catch a glimpse of Jacob huddled on the floor against the row of lockers. His face and shirt are covered in blood, and from the way he’s cradling his nose, I think Isaac might have broken it. He’s too busy trying to stop his

  nosebleed to do anything to me right now, and I quickly shove through the gawking crowd of students and escape the scene of the fight.

  Just before I duck into my classroom, I stop and look back over my shoulder. I’m just in time to watch as Isaac drops the doggy bag directly into Sarah’s expensive designer purse, closes my locker, and then wanders off in the other direction whistling a happy tune.

  I shouldn’t be smiling at someone getting hurt like this, but right now, I just can’t help it.

  wi

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  wi

  Chapter XVI<"c020s, bu/h1>

  Irene

  I walk Terrence to his laboratory every morning for the next week, but that’s all I see of him. He and Marcus have been working around the clock and they’ve left me to fend for myself.

  This is the free time Terrence promised me, the time for me not to worry about assisting him—unless he calls me, of course. So far, the intercom and cell phone remain silent apart from bringing Terrence out for meals and guiding him upstairs at night. Even when I do get to see him, he's so busy dialing into telephone conferences with Verta that I can barely get a word in.

  I spend the first and second days in glorious, long-overdue laziness—just lying beneath my bedroom’s tall bay window with a pile of books and watching the quickly changing autumn leaves. Something about the way the breeze rustles the branches makes me want to curl up and sleep here, like an old cat in its favorite square of warm sunlight.

  Day three is wonderful as well, but by day four, my book pile is exhausted and a new feeling has replaced the beautiful serenity I’ve felt all week long.

  Boredom.

  Suddenly, I’m unpacking all my boxes, decorating my tiny room and hanging sunshine-yellow curtains over my adorable bay window. My room bursts into beautiful colors thanks to flowers from the back garden, and I’m surprised that there are any flowers left in the garden once I’ve finished filling every vase in the house.

  I even taught Columbus how to properly heel on a leash after a mere twenty-two walks.

  All that and it’s still only Friday morning of my first week. I sit on my bed, staring out at the leaves as the alarm clock ticks deafeningly on the bedside table. It’s so quiet that I can hear my pulse. God, I’m going to go insane if I don’t find a way to distract myself.

  Cassie’s been busy at work, Terrence in his lab, and with the chef, Antonio, back from vacation this week, I can’t even entertain myself by cooking. He shoos me out of the kitchen every time I try to come in. Whatever he’s making smells delicious, but it’s not doing much to help my boredom.

  I sigh and sit down on the red and black, faux-oriental throw rug in my bedroom next to the dog.

  "So tell me, Columbus," I ask him as he snoozes on the floor with his big, dumb head on my lap, "what would you do if you suddenly had everything you needed? How would you entertain yourself?"

  He of course says nothing, but instead pants happily with his eyes tightly shut as I scratch him behind his left ear. He’s so adorable I could almost puke.

  "Oh who am I kidding," I tell him. "You’d keep right on sleeping just like this, wouldn’t you? You’d keep doing exactly what you’ve always done—exactly what makes you happy."

  "...what makes you happy," I repeat, my voice dropping to barely above a whisper.

  God, I’m such an idiot. Why did I have to talk to the dumbest dog alive to figure out the answer? This is the chance I’ve always wanted—the opportunity to do what makes me happy—and I’m sitting here squandering it on boredom.

  I wriggle out from underneath the dog’s enormous head, leap to my feet, and fling the closet door open. Where is it? Where on earth did I... there it is!

  I yank t"2e dog̵he pile of spare blankets off the only box I haven’t yet opened and rip off the packing tape. My microphone, headset, and filter sit on top, carefully wrapped in all the newspapers I could find at our old apartment, and the rest of the box is crammed full of all the CDs, labels, padded envelopes and various shades and weights of paper required for demo submissions.

  It’s time to set up my recording studio again. I know that I’m good enough to land a voice-acting job, and this time there’s no cafeteria day job to stop me.

  I grab my old, hardcover fairy-tale collection from the bookshelf, and the rest of the afternoon flies in a beautifully satisfying haze. I record first my best "Three Little Pigs" rendition ever, then "Cinderella," and just as I’m about to revisit my old version of "Rapunzel," a loud rap on the door breaks my spell of productivity.

  As I stop the audio recording on my laptop, I’m surprised to feel how tired I am now that I’m free from my artistic trance. I could have read forever, but now that I’ve stopped, it feels as if I’ve drained every last bit of functionality out of my brain for the day. It feels awesome. This is the first time I feel like I’ve truly done a good day’s work in months.

  "Come in!" I call over my shoulder as I spin around in my chair. The door creaks as it slowly swings open, and Marcus peeks in at me.

  "Do you mind terribly if I come in for a moment?" he asks so politely that I almost want to put a top hat on his adorable, balding old head. I wave him in with a smile, and he closes the door behind him.

  "Ah, you’ve been settling in nicely," he says, nodding approvingly at the décor and seeming particularly delighted by my choice of curtains.

  "Thanks. It’s really nice of you to let me stay," I answer awkwardly, my eyes drifting down to my feet. Somehow, complimenting me on the room only reminds me that it isn’t really mine—that I’m just here as long as I work for Terrence.

  Marcus sighs, crosses his arms and rolls his eyes at me.

  "Irene, the room and board is part of your compensation for helping Terrence. It’s part of the deal, and you don’t need to thank us for it," he lectures me, and then adds with a grin, "Besides, it looks damned nice in here now. I may hire you to do my son in law's house next, in fact."

  "I charge mileage for house-calls, but phone consultations are free," I say, grinning right back. I stick out my tongue at him, and he laughs and sits down on the edge of my bed. "So what brings you to my humble abode anyway?"

  "I’m going to be away this weekend. My mother isn’t doing very well, and—"

  "Your mother?" I blurt out in surprise. "Wow, how old is she?"

  My face turns bright red as my brain tries its best to throttle the rest of me for being such an idiot. Can I go even one day without unin
tentionally insulting the poor guy? Jeez!

  "Ninety-nine," answers Marcus, shrugging off my accidental insult. "I want to go visit her, if you don’t mind. Can I leave Terrence in your capable hands this weekend?"

  "Sure! Is there anything I need to know?" I ask. "Does he have any plans? Meetings? Odd habits?"

  Marcus chuckles and shakes his head.

  "No, I think you’ll find his demands perfectly manaperes his argeable," he answers. "The worst he might do is request your assistance in taking you out to dinner."

  "Eh, that sounds easy enough for... wait, what?"

  My brain trips over itself as all the words click into place. Assist him... in taking me... out to dinner? Does that make it a date? No way. He can’t possibly mean that!

  Or does he?

  I can’t even ask Marcus to elaborate without looking like a total creep if I’m wrong. Shit.

  "I’ve been begging him to get out more often—to go out on weekends and, for lack of a better phrase, to ‘act his age’ for two years now," explains Marcus, bouncing gently up and down on my bed as if he’s testing the mattress. "It appears that he’s finally decided to listen to me, and last night, he said he might take you out for the evening."

  He clearly caught my ‘deer caught in the headlights’ impression, because then he adds, "Don’t worry. I don’t think he means as a date or anything—just as a friend."

  "Marcus... you do realize that asking someone out as ‘just friends’ translates to ‘nervous date,’ right? It’s meant that since, like, the dawn of time."

  He smiles and shakes his head.

  "You have no idea how excited I’d be if that’s what he meant," he says, a hint of sadness poking a hole in his voice and making its presence known. "No... I know him well enough to tell you it’s not a date. He should date people, but he won’t."

  "Why not?" I ask, uncertain of whether I should feel relieved or disappointed. The idea of going on a date with my boss seems ill advised at best, but I still felt my heart sink just a teeny bit when Marcus shot the idea down.

  "He hasn’t had the best of luck in dating," answers Marcus, shrugging uncomfortably. "His last girlfriend was over two years ago, and she only made it two months before breaking up with him."

  "Sorry..."

  "It’s for the best, I think. She never cared about him anyway."

  "Oh come on, you can’t say that—"

  "She broke up with a blind man by letter," he sharply interrupts me, his eyes briefly gleaming with cold anger. "I can say it very damned well, Irene."

  I gasp and cover my mouth in empathy and horror. "By letter? You have to be kidding me!"

  "I had to read it to him. I’ve never seen a man so humiliated in all my years," he whispers, shaking his head. "It’s no wonder he doesn’t go out more often, but I still wish he would. Not everyone’s a stone-hearted harpy like Colleen was."

  Marcus climbs down from my bed and wanders over to my desk, raising an eyebrow curiously.

  "What’re you working on?"

  "Oh, this?" I stammer, embarrassed. "It’s... well, it’s nothing, really."

  I’ve been through this conversation a hundred times, and it plays out the same way every time. I tell them that I’m recording a demo tape, they ask to hear it, and then I refuse, feeling too humiliated and self-conscious to let them hear me read. When they ask, I’m suddenly not proud of my voice anymore. I can't help but cringe when I hear recordiI hfeeling tongs of my own voice, no matter how clear and crisp the recording may be.

  Marcus smiles knowingly, and before I can react, his hand darts out and grabs a CD case from the stack.

  "Goldilocks and the Three Bears?" he asks, and then his eyes light up as he puts the pieces together. "You’re recording demo tapes of these stories, aren’t you?"

  "Yes," I squeak. I shouldn’t be so embarrassed, but my face grows hot all the same. Why am I so embarrassed of my lifelong dream? I’ve been trying to land a recording contract since I was sixteen, and I’ve never been able to move past the fear of someone I know hearing me.

  "Any publishers bite yet?" asks Marcus. I shake my head silently, and he pats me comfortingly on the shoulder.

  "They don’t know what they’re missing," he tells me. "Your voice is one in a million, dear."

  "Thanks," I reply, smiling as sincerely as I can. One in a million? That’s thirty rivals in the New York metro area alone. I’ll still need a whole heap of luck if I want t

  o get a contract.

  Marcus turns to leave, steps over the sleeping dog hogging most of the floor, and as he opens the door, he looks back over his shoulder at me.

  "Irene?"

  "Yes?"

  "Terrence mentioned to me about how you told him stories in the limo last night," he says, lowering his voice. "Thank you for taking such good care of him. It means a lot to me."

  He smiles gratefully at me and then, without another word, closes the door behind him.

  wi

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  Chapter XVII

  Isaac and I are sixteen...

  Isaac and I stroll slowly down the hall toward our lockers, and for a moment, I almost feel normal as we walk together side by side. It’s so relaxing not to have to dodge other students all the time. It’s been such a long time since I could let my guard down here, since I could walk to my locker without fear of getting harassed by the other students just because I dared to make eye contact with them. Even when the others didn’t resort to outright harassment, I still hated seeing the looks of disdain and hearing the whispered mockery as I passed.

  One of the guys from my literature class—a real class act who takes every chance he can get to insult me—cuts through the crowd in my direction looking as if he wants to start trouble, but he quickly catches the look on Isaac’s face and backs off.

  Isaac’s my shield now, fending off all the undeserved hatred from my classmates. I wish he didn’t feel like he has to protect me, but I’m grateful for it all the same.

  Jacob and Sarah are walking in the opposite direction down the hall and they look none too pleased to see us. Isaac broke Jacob’s nose after the ‘bag of crap’ incident, and he clearly still harbors a grudge. He hasn’t bothered me since then, at least not so brazenly, but with the fading of his black eye and healing of his nose came the return of his arrogant swagger. He has the stupid, confident air of a guy who’s forgotten just how badly Isaac’s willing to hurt him for messing with me.

  Sarah’s doing her usual thing and stretching the school’s dress code to the breaking point. Her low-cut, navy blue cardigan is unbuttoned, revealing a white blouse so sheer thatI hfe her her red bra shows straight through, and she’s wearing her skirt so low on her hips that the waist of her thong is showing. She shoots me a cold, hateful glare as we approach each other, but rather than say anything, she instead hooks her arm around Jacob’s waist and steers him away from me as if she thinks I’m contagious.

  "Wow, take a look at her," whispers Isaac. "How much do you think she charges?"

  It’s totally a low blow, but Sarah deserves it after all the rumors she's spread about me.

  "And people call me a slut," I whisper back with a giggle.

  Jacob sees us whispering to each other and his face turns bright red with anger. Sarah tries to keep him away, but he’s far too strong for her and easily drags her along behind him until he’s walking directly toward Isaac. He quickens his pace as if daring Isaac not to move aside and make way for him.

  I’m starting to get a little nervous, but Isaac just grins at me and keeps walking straight toward Jacob.

  "Relax," he whispers to me. "Just ignore him and keep walking. He won’t do anything."

  "Ignoring him hasn’t exactly worked for me, in case you haven’t noticed," I hiss back to him, clenching and unclenching my clammy hands and trying to pretend that I’m not tensing up. Even if Isaac’s on my side, I’m sick and tired of fighting all the time and just want people to leave me alone.

&n
bsp; Just as I’m certain that a head-on collision is inevitable, Jacob steps aside so that he only rams shoulders with Isaac. "Stupid spic," Jacob hisses at me as he passes, and Isaac reacts so quickly that I haven’t a chance in hell of stopping him.

  Isaac spins around and slams his fist into the side of Jacob’s head, and before I even realize what’s happening, Jacob grabs Isaac by the shoulders and slams him hard into the wall of lockers with a thunderous clang that reverberates through the hallway. Isaac shoves off the lockers and slugs him squarely in the face, his fist making a dull ‘thud’ against Jacob’s skull.