You Wish

by Mandy Hubbard

  “Enough!” I say, covering my ears. No need to relive that memory.

  With each revelation Ann had said, my heartbeat increased, and now it’s galloping around my chest like a crazed animal.

  She knows things I never told anyone, not even Nicole. And I’m not stupid enough to keep a diary or something. So either she’s been living in that closet and eavesdropping on me for the last six years or . . .

  No. That’s completely, totally impossible. There is an explanation for this.

  A logical one.

  “Look, I have to go to school. So you can go back and sit in that closet and I’ll go to class, and we can discuss this later.”

  Maybe if I can get her back into the closet and get the door shut, I can run from my room and get my brother to kick her out. Or maybe I really will call the cops. But I don’t have time to figure out which option is better.

  Ann shrugs, turns around, and heads back into the closet. When the door clicks shut and she’s out of view, I nearly convince myself that I imagined the whole thing. But then I walk to the door and peek inside, and she’s sitting on the floor amid my clothes, braiding her hair. I glance back behind her and see the white box where my doll had been, but it’s empty.

  I swallow and give her a weak smile and then shut the door again.

  If only it were like a bank safe and I could spin it shut and lock her away forever.

  Something tells me she won’t be that easy to get rid of.

  11

  I’M NOT EVEN halfway to school by the time I should be walking up the front steps. I’m not so much walking as shuffling, dazed, deep in thought about the morning’s odd developments.

  Ever since my sweet sixteen, life has been turned upside down. It’s like a clear before and after.

  Before: normal.

  After: insane clown posse.

  I mean, Raggedy Ann? Gumballs? And a hot-pink pony? Maybe when I was little, I would have loved that stuff. I would have jumped for joy over the pony. Heck, if I’d known that ponies came in bright-pink colors, I would have begged for one. She even had the ice-cream cone on her hindquarters, like my very favorite My Little Pony.

  I stop mid-stride then, my jaw so low it’s nearly resting on the toe of my Chuck Taylors. It’s as if all sounds have come to a screeching halt and the entire world has gone silent, except for the ringing in my ears. I can’t see a single thing in front of me because it’s all gone this sort of fuzzy gray.

  I wish my birthday wishes actually came true. Because they never freakin’ do.

  No.

  No, no, no.

  Impossible.

  I stand there, my eyes still out of focus, my breathing so hard that my chest starts heaving, like I just finished running the mile in PE.

  I stare at nothing at all, trying to rewind the last few years and remember exactly what I might have wished for when I was nine years old, back when I was obsessed with that stupid Raggedy Ann doll. It was the year my dad left us. The year my mom was practically lost to the world, my brother was dealing with the divorce by staying out late with friends, and it was the year before Nicole moved to town.

  I had no one.

  I wish you were real, Ann. Then I would have a real friend.

  Suddenly I need to sit, and there are no benches anywhere near me, so I simply plunk down in the middle of the sidewalk, cross my legs, and lean forward so my head is between my hands, my fingers on my temple, my damp, dark hair hanging in front of me. The chill of the dewy cement immediately seeps through my jeans, but I ignore it.

  This is ludicrous. Wishes don’t come true. And dolls don’t come to life.

  Ann had been acting weird, mimicking my posture and my speech. It was like she still didn’t know how to talk or walk and was figuring it out by watching me.

  No, no, no. That’s stupid. She’s a human being, not a doll.

  I blink a few times, though my vision doesn’t come into focus. When I was seven, I was obsessed with blowing bubbles. Would I have wished for a lifetime supply of gum? I rack my brain, trying to remember what we did for my seventh birthday. It would have been the last time my dad and mom were together and we celebrated as a family.

  I probably would have wanted something as trivial as bubble gum.

  The pony. Ohmigod, the pony.

  I definitely wished for that. I would have loved for my My Little Ponies to come to life.

  I close my eyes for a long, silent moment, trying to clear the jumbled thoughts in my head. They’re spinning around so fast I can hardly hear them.

  I wish my birthday wishes actually came true. Because they never freakin’ do.

  This can’t be real.

  My party was three days ago. Every day, a new wish has appeared. First the pony, then the gum, now Raggedy Ann come to life.

  This is not possible. No way.

  I open my eyes and stare down at the wet concrete, taking deep, calming breaths. There is an ant crawling across the slab in front of me, but I’m so dazed I don’t move away from it as it begins to climb over my Converse sneaker—yellow today, with Sharpie marker all over one of the toes from when I was bored in history class.

  There could be a logical explanation to this, right? Like someone overheard what I said at the party and they’re playing a joke. Maybe my brother and his friends all teamed up because they have very little else to do, and this joke is a real doozy.

  But wait . . . did I say my wish out loud?

  No, I only thought my wish.

  Besides, even if I’m wrong and I said it out loud, how would they come up with all of this on such short notice? How could someone find a pony and dye it pink and get it in my backyard in less than twelve hours? Let alone have enough pink dye to change its color . . . So how does my brother, who has a brain the size of a pea, orchestrate something that insane?

  Plus how did Ann know all those things about me?

  And there’s still the fact that Chase hasn’t been hiding in the bushes to watch his tricks unfold. What’s the point of a prank if you don’t even witness the payoff ?

  And why would anyone spend that much money on gum?

  Of course, the real kiss of death in my prank theory is that I’ve never told anyone my wishes. My brother—and anyone else, for that matter—couldn’t possibly know that I wished that Ann could come to life and be my best friend.

  I get up off the sidewalk and head back to my house.

  I need to talk to Ann.

  12

  WHEN I YANK open the closet door, Ann is sitting on the floor, staring at the ceiling, her hair splayed out around her. She has a multi-colored string that has been tied in a loop and she’s playing cat’s cradle, or at least trying to, since it’s meant for two people. Instead it looks more like a jumble of knots tied around her fingers.

  “Oh good!” She sits up and holds out her hands. “I forgot all the good moves. You’ll have to show me.”

  I just stare at her, totally ignoring her outstretched hands. “As if I remember! I haven’t played that since fourth grade.”

  She scrunches her mouth together in a pout. It makes her look about twelve years old.

  “I need to know if you’re lying,” I say, still standing in the doorway. I lean against the doorjamb and give her a good, long, serious look. She really is dressed exactly as I remember her. She’s even missing her ugly white bonnet, the one I ripped off the doll because I hated it. At least she doesn’t have a bald spot underneath, because the doll did.

  “About?” She untangles her fingers from the string and then starts over again, trying to create a never-ending loop of x’s that once kept me entertained for hours.

  “About being Raggedy Ann.”

  “Of course not. Why would I lie?” She looks up at me through her thick lashes, as if I’m the one being ridiculous.

  “I don’t know! A million reasons. Someone is paying you; you’re really homeless; this is some kind of scam. I don’t know. It just seems really, really unbelievable.”
/>   She shrugs. “Perhaps. I’m just happy to be out of that box. It’s super-dark in there, you know. You could have at least left it cracked open.”

  I sigh and sink to the ground beside her, shoving the closet door open all the way. I lie back against the carpet and stare at the popcorn ceiling.

  “Why are you here?”

  Ann turns and lies down beside me, so that her strawberry tresses are nearly touching mine. “I’ve not a clue.”

  That makes two of us.

  I should probably go to school, but I’ve already missed most of first period, and it’s not like I could concentrate on cellular fusion when there’s a life-sized doll hanging out in my closet. I’ll just skip first and make it to second period once I get some of this figured out.

  “I think you’re one of my wishes,” I say, a long moment of silence later. “I wanted you to be real when I was little.”

  “I don’t follow.” She turns her face toward me, and I can actually feel her breath on my cheek. So weird. Dolls are not supposed to breathe.

  “A few days ago I said I wanted all of my birthday wishes to come true. And now they are. One every day.”

  “What were the others?”

  “Gumballs. And a pony.” I jerk upright. “Uh-oh.”

  “What?”

  “That means I have twelve more to go.”

  “Wishes?” Ann asks. She seems a little slow. Or maybe I’m making no sense at all.

  “Yes!”

  I jump up and scurry over to my desk and rip out a sheet of paper from my magenta skull-and-crossbones notebook. I quickly scribble fifteen numbers in the left-hand column. I put a big X next to my first birthday, because I doubt I knew what a wish was then.

  That means there are fourteen birthday wishes total.

  I fill in Raggedy Ann next to my ninth birthday, gumballs next to the seventh, and I take a wild guess that My Little Pony was a sixth-year wish. That seems about right.

  The rest of the list is left pathetically empty. Eleven blank spaces.

  I stare at each number, trying to remember what I would have wanted most that year, but I have a hard time remembering that far back. What would I have cared about when I was four years old? Or ten, for that matter?

  I draw a blank for each year until I get to the number fifteen, last year’s birthday.

  That was the year Nicole and I celebrated at Red Robin, and they brought me a big ice-cream sundae with a sparkler in it.

  And Ben was there, several booths over, eating lunch with his friends. So I closed my eyes, made the wish, and blew out the sparkler.

  I know what I wished for last year.

  I wished Ben would kiss me.

  13

  SINCE GOING to trigonometry means sitting next to Ben, I decide to skip that one too. I’m pretty sure that only one wish comes true every day. But I’m not willing to test that theory. Not yet, anyway.

  During gym, I get hit in the head with a volleyball and the teacher lets me sit out of class. It’s not like I was doing anything other than standing there staring at the net anyway. I prefer to think of it as multi-tasking since I was deep in thought, trying to remember some of my childhood wishes and playing volleyball, even if I wasn’t actually hitting the ball with anything but my head.

  By the time I make it to lunch, I’m dying to talk to Nicole. The whole wish thing seems ridiculously unbelievable, but if there’s anyone who will help me, it’s her. If she doesn’t take me seriously, I’ll bring her over to my house and she can see Ann for herself. Also, we’ve been best friends for years, so she might have some ideas for the last few wishes on the list.

  When I get to the lunchroom, she’s in line for a salad, talking to Breanna Mills, one of the cheerleaders. Huh. I always thought Nicole hated Breanna, but they’re laughing together about something, and she’s clearly nowhere near scratching the girl’s eyes out.

  I guess if I can have a life-sized Raggedy Ann, it means anything can happen.

  She catches me watching her and gives me the “one second!” pantomime, and I just nod and sit down at our usual table. She pays for her lunch, bids Breanna adieu, and heads over to me. She’s a little bouncier than normal, or maybe it’s just her hair. It looks like she curled it today, which I don’t think she’s ever done before. Nicole’s hair is so straight and flat that it doesn’t hold curls well.

  Today, though, her hair looks like it belongs on a curling iron box, demonstrating how fabulous your hair could look if you bought their product. Perfect, spiral curls. Huh.

  “Your hair looks . . . cute,” I say. It does, too. But it’s so different I can’t stop staring at it as if it’s freakish, which probably wasn’t what Nicole is going for.

  “Thanks! I had to get up at, like, five to curl it. I found this great new hair spray.”

  I nod and keep staring at her. It’s not just her hair. Her skin is . . .

  Flawless.

  “Wow. You look . . . ”

  Nicole’s grin widens. “We finally found a medication that totally works. Isn’t it awesome?”

  I nod. She looks radiant, positively glowing with happiness. “Yeah . . . I mean, wow . . . you look amazing.”

  Her grin widens and she gives a little spin, her curls tumbling over her shoulders.

  I sense that something else is up, because Nicole doesn’t sit down after her spin. She just stands there, holding her salad, grinning about her newfound beauty.

  And then she finally drops the bomb. “Breanna says we can eat lunch at her table.”

  My jaw drops and I just stare at her. I can’t believe she actually wants to eat at Breanna Mills’s table. Or that we were actually invited to sit at Breanna’s table.

  I glance over at the alpha table, which is chock-full of jocks and cheerleaders. “There are no empty seats,” I say, stating the obvious. I wouldn’t sit over there even if there were several open seats and they were gold plated and heated and came with a personal assistant who would wipe my lips between bites.

  Nicole’s expression doesn’t change as she glances back and sees that I’m right. She sets her salad down and sits across from me. She pops open the tab on her Diet Coke. “She’s not that bad, you know. She’s actually really funny.”

  I resist the urge to say, “Funny looking,” because even I know that line got old in fourth grade. Instead I say, “Unless you’re on the wrong end of her jokes. And just to remind you, we usually are.”

  Nicole just shrugs, but she obviously sees my point, because she nods too and then glances back over at them. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what they’re talking about. Probably planning their Stalin-like takeover of the cafeteria.

  “I have a really, really crazy story to tell you,” I say, once she’s given up on being besties with the dictator.

  “Yeah?” Nicole is chewing her salad and staring out the window.

  “Yes. I feel like we’ve hardly talked since my birthday, so you have no idea what’s been happening.”

  “Yeah, sorry, I’ve been crazy busy. . . . ” Her voice kind of trails off and she stops chewing as she keeps staring out the window, the one that overlooks the courtyard where the seniors usually eat. “Are you seeing this?”

  She uses her fork to point out to the windows. I follow her gaze, and when I see what she’s pointing at, my mouth goes dry.

  Uh-oh.

  Code red.

  Raggedy Ann has left my closet. Sound the alarm! Abandon ship!

  She’s standing outside playing hopscotch. She’s still decked out in a blue-print dress, white apron, and neon-bright stockings. To make matters worse, she’s added my black combat boots, so now she looks like Raggedy Ann on D-day.

  I watch for a second, stunned, as a few of my classmates stop outside and talk to her. She stops playing hopscotch and puts her hands on her hips and starts a conversation with them.

  Oh God, she’s probably telling them she lives with me! This is the end of life as I know it.

  “Uh, I think
I ate a bad burrito or something,” I say, getting up from the table. “Catch up with you later?”

  Before she can respond, I ditch my hardly eaten lunch and rush outside. Raggedy Ann is so not on my happy list.

  14

  IT TAKES ME the full lunch period to stash Raggedy Ann back at my house, with a stern lecture about staying put. I make it back to class just as the late bell is ringing, my still-empty stomach gurgling in protest. Ann has moved up a notch on the list of people I am not digging right now.

  During photography, Nicole and I make plans to go to a party-supply store in the nearby town of Puyallup, and I force her to stop at Wendy’s along the way for fries and Frosties. Only after devouring both do I feel the world seems back to normal.

  As Nicole parks her Cavalier in an empty space at the mall, my phone rings.

  It’s my mom. Weird. “Hello?” I answer as I climb out of the car. I pull the hood on my zip-up lime-colored hoodie, tucking my scraggly brown hair inside as it begins to sprinkle.

  “Kayla?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did you skip school today?”

  My eyes bug out and I look over at Nicole.

  “What?” she mouths.

  I shake my head, willing her not to talk. “Um, no. I was a little late, but I was there.”

  “I just got a call from your principal, and he begs to differ.”

  “I swear, Mom, I went to school today. I was late because I tripped and fell into a mud puddle right outside school, and then I ran home and changed. I missed a little class, but I went.”

  “I give you free rein because I trust you, Kayla.”

  Damn it, I actually snort, because what she’s said is totally ludicrous. She gives me free rein because she’d rather work than hang out with me or Chase. I realize too late what I’ve done, and I can’t undo it.

  “What’s that for?”

  “What?”

  “Do you have something to say?”

  I roll my eyes. “Nothing, Mom.”