You Wish

by Mandy Hubbard

  I wonder if it’s really possible Ben would try to kiss me. Like, sure, something magical is at work here, but he’s not a gumball. He has a mind of his own. Maybe he won’t really try to kiss me at all. Maybe he’ll just have the thought enter his brain and then he’ll ignore it and kiss Nicole instead, and I’ve been silly to worry about it at all.

  I sigh and kick a rock across the sidewalk. It skitters across the concrete and then bounces into the street.

  Someone honks at me, as if I just tossed a boulder in front of their car and not a tiny pebble, and I just wave them away and hoist my backpack further up my shoulders. It’s too early on a Sunday for people to be honking like that. They’ll wake half the neighborhood.

  The car honks again, and I turn to glare, but then just stumble to a stop instead.

  Um, this has got to be the weirdest thing I’ve seen in Enumclaw in about, well, forever.

  It’s a guy in a bright-yellow convertible, never mind the fact that it’s probably fifty-two degrees out and the dew in the grass hasn’t even evaporated yet. If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you only get to utilize drop-tops for, like, a dozen days out of the year. Yet this guy hasn’t put the top up.

  But just as bizarre as the car is the driver: He’s probably in his late teens, pushing twenty or so—which means his parents must be loaded if he’s got his own sports car—and he has a tan so dark he must go to the tanning beds every day of the week. It’s definitely not natural, not for this area anyway.

  He’s got on a tank top that shows off bulging muscles and a smile so big and sparkly he looks like he’s posing for his actor’s head shots, or maybe just a tooth-whitening commercial. I think I can actually count his teeth from right here on the sidewalk. He has that cheesy sort of look, like he’s selling the Bowflex on a two a.m. infomercial.

  His blue eyes are wide and bright and staring straight at me, framed by curly long lashes, and his gelled-within-an-inch-of-its-life blond hair looks more like a helmet. Even his eyebrows are sculpted.

  And he looks like he oiled himself up, like one of those body-builder competitions where the people look like they’re made of plastic because they’re so freaking’ shiny.

  “Baby, where ya been?”

  I think I throw up in my mouth a little. I glance over my shoulder and realize that yes, he’s talking to me.

  Ew.

  I pick up a brisk walk. Maybe I should have told someone where I was going. He is kind of creepy, the way he’s staring at me with that huge artificial smile.

  I’m glad I don’t have much further to go. The library is maybe a mile from my house, through nice residential neighborhoods, just across Cole Street, the quaint little main drag in town, with its little diners and antique shops. With this guy leering at me it makes me wish I’d driven, but I figured if I walked, it would give me more time away from home and Ann and everything else that’s happening.

  I ignore him as he shifts his car into gear and rolls along, paralleling the sidewalk.

  “Sweetie, baby cakes, where’s your car?”

  “Uh, I don’t have one,” I yell, hoping that will get him off my back. “I think you have me confused with someone else.”

  “Sure you do, babe, it’s a pink convertible. Did you leave it at your beach house?”

  Despite my nerves, I snicker. “Okay, now I know you have me confused. I don’t have a beach house.”

  I’m walking faster and faster, and this weirdo is just keeping pace, gliding along in his yellow convertible. Even idling, the engine is loud, rumbling, vibrating the air around us.

  “Don’t be silly, Barb. You don’t have to walk. Jump in!”

  I stop and spin toward him. “My name is not Barb. Just get lost!”

  He rolls his eyes just a little. “Of course. Sorry, Barbie. I know you hate it when I call you Barb.”

  I open my mouth to fire back at him, but the words die in my throat. I snap it shut and step back, away from the curb. Suddenly the roar of that ugly sports car is deafening, ringing in my ears over and over. My hand feels a little shaky as I cover up my gaping mouth.

  I pull it away so I can ask him a question. “What’s your name?”

  He laughs. “Oh, come on, honey pie, you know my name!” “Tell me your name,” I say, through gritted teeth.

  “Ken.”

  Oh boy, my life just took a serious southward turn.

  Ken. Freaking Ken. As in, Barbie and Ken.

  And he thinks I’m his girlfriend.

  He thinks I’m Barbie.

  WTF, when did I wish for this?

  I TRY really, really hard to get Ken to leave me alone, but he keeps coasting along near the sidewalk, calling me various pet names and trying to convince me that I am, in fact, Barbie.

  Right.

  It must be my cascading blonde hair that has him confused. Or my pink ruffled shorts and tank top . . . or the fact that I’m walking around on my tippy toes. At least I do have these great hooters. I’m like one for five at best.

  I can barely deal with a real-life Raggedy Ann. What am I going to do with Ken? At least he doesn’t think we live together. And he does have a car.

  “Come on, sugar, hop in!”

  I stop and put a hand on my hip and glare at him. “If I let you drive me to the library, will you at least leave me alone to study and go . . . play beach volleyball or whatever it is that you do?”

  His lips curl into an all-encompassing, all-American smile that shows off his dimples and artificially white teeth. Seriously, if we were in a room with a black light, I bet his whole mouth would glow.

  I groan and roll my eyes but decide to give in. If that will get him off my back for the rest of the day, it’ll buy me some time to figure out what to do about all this.

  Ken jumps out of the car and runs around and holds the passenger door open for me. He stands there as I get in and then clicks the door shut as I buckle up.

  So Ken is a gentleman. Go figure. I thought he’d be more of the football-meathead type, the sort who doesn’t notice if he spends a whole afternoon talking about himself and crunching cans against his forehead.

  “Go anywhere cool lately?” Ken asks, leaning on the center console and giving me a cocky eyebrow raise.

  “Uh, no?”

  “You always say that. I think you take your stewardess duties too seriously. You ought to have more fun.”

  Stewardess duties?

  I rack my brains. There must have been a Barbie stewardess. Also, he must not know that stewardess is no longer PC, and you’re supposed to call them flight attendants.

  I turn to watch the trees dance in the autumn breeze, and a smile starts to play at the edges of my lips, until it becomes too much and I grin to myself.

  There’s no way I can miss messing with the Ken.

  “Have you seen my zebra lately?” I ask, turning to Ken in all seriousness. One of my favorite Barbie play sets had been the safari one, where Barbie is wearing khaki shorts and hiking boots and she comes with a slew of animals. I imagined myself going on all kinds of African adventures. “She seems to have wandered off. With my . . . lion cub. And panda bear.” I’m actually not entirely sure Barbie has a panda bear, but the zebra and the lion cub ring a bell. “Those three, I swear . . . ”

  I wag my finger like a stern librarian or something.

  Ken wrinkles his brow. “That’s terrible. Do you know where they went?”

  I shake my head. It’s getting harder and harder not to laugh. “Nope. One minute they were in my dream house, and the next . . . gone. I took out the Jeep to go find them, but no luck. Madge and I looked all day long.”

  Madge. Did I get that right? Or was it Midge? Hmm. My Barbie days were so long ago. For good measure, I blink my eyes, wide and innocent-like, and pout a little bit.

  Ken furrows his brow even more, looking so entirely sympathetic to my plight that I have a hard time not losing it right then.

  I decide to go for the gusto. “And since I decided to be a veteri
narian instead of a pediatrician—you know, after I lost my bid for president and then my NASCAR career fell through—I’ve just really renewed my love of animals. Especially since I opened that pet shop.”

  I grab Ken’s hand and really ham it up. “And poor Skipper, she’s been so upset. She really loved that tiger. Er, lion, I mean.”

  I bat my eyes at him. “And I need to spend all day studying for . . . veterinarian finals. So would you mind looking for them for me?”

  Perfect. Send him on a wild-goose chase and he’ll forget to hang out with me. If only it was this easy to ditch Ann.

  “You got it, babe,” he says as we’re pulling up at the library.

  Before I can duck out of the car, he leans forward and kisses me, his gigantic lips—perfectly soft and moist, which seems gross for some reason—pressing into mine.

  “Thanks!” I shout, even though he’s like an inch from my face, and then I leap from the car. I slam the door to the yellow convertible and am halfway to the sidewalk when I see him.

  Ben is standing on the sidewalk, near the glass doors, seemingly frozen with fascination as Ken backs out of the parking stall and heads out to the street. Presumably to find my lost zebra, panda, and lion cub.

  “Ben,” I say, surprised, as I sling my backpack over my shoulder. “Uh, how are you?”

  Why the heck is he at the library at nine a.m. on a Sunday? He can’t be avoiding the life-sized doll hanging out in his bedroom.

  “Good.” He seems fixated on watching Ken pull out of the lot, the exhaust on his sports car revving up as the tires chirp on the asphalt. “Who’s that?”

  Ben turns to look at me, and I study his eyes, trying to gauge his emotions. Is he jealous?

  I grit my teeth. I’m not supposed to want Ben to be jealous.

  “Um, K—” I stop. I can’t possibly admit that his name is Ken or it’s going to be mega-obvious that the guy has some complex and thinks he’s a doll. “Carson.”

  Carson was his last name, wasn’t it? All the Barbie-details are pretty foggy.

  I move toward the library door, and Ben steps to the side and sweeps his hands to the side, as if he’s personally escorting me inside, even though the doors are automatic.

  “Thanks,” I say, staring at the ground as I rush past him so he won’t see my cheeks warm.

  So I’m a sucker for chivalry. Even with my pessimist nature, I can admit there’s something charming about a simple gesture. Ben follows me as we step inside the library, where I inhale the scent of paper and books. Something about this place makes it feel like the outside world doesn’t exist.

  “Are you guys together?”

  I look up, surprised, both at the question and at the slightly edgy tone in Ben’s voice.

  “Why?” I ask, before I can stop the word from slipping past my lips.

  He follows me past the spinners with the paperback romance novels, past the children’s section, past dozens of tall shelves of reference books to a couch in the back corner of the library, where a big window splashes the place with light. We plunk down on opposite ends of the sofa, a full cushion between us.

  He shrugs. “Look, we’re friends, right? I just thought the guy was a little odd. You can do much better.”

  I scrunch my brows and try to pretend like it takes all of my attention to dig through my backpack.

  “So was he your boyfriend?”

  “Yes, he’s my boyfriend,” I say, my annoyance growing. “He’s totally awesome. Very . . . athletic. Awesome at volleyball. And of course he has his own car and everything, which is awesome . . . ”

  Why, for the love of pizza, do I keep saying “awesome”?

  That’s something California Ken would probably say.

  Even as the awesome words flood out, I want to hit reverse and reel them back in, but I can’t stop it. It’s like I need to convince Ben I have a boyfriend in order to make myself feel better about this whole thing.

  “Sorry, sorry. I know it’s none of my business,” Ben says. “I was just surprised. You never mentioned a boyfriend, that’s all.”

  “Oh.” I deflate a little. “How are you and Nicole doing these days?”

  Ben rubs his hands together and takes in a deep, slow breath. He looks . . . I don’t know how he looks. But something is off.

  “You guys aren’t breaking up, are you?”

  “What? No. Of course not.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “It’s just—”

  I stop fiddling with my backpack. “It’s just what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Are you sure? Because if you want to—”

  “No. Everything’s fine,” he says, with conviction.

  “Okay. Well, anyway, I need to work on my bio homework, so . . . ”

  I pick up my biology book and wave it around, a little too enthusiastically.

  “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

  Ben grabs his own book and yanks it open. A few sheets of paper fly out and flutter to the ground. One of them slides under my foot. I lean down to pick it up—recognizing Nicole’s handwriting by the time my fingers are just gracing the page—but Ben grabs it before I can see what it says.

  “Ow!” The paper slices my pointer finger as it slides out from under my hand, and a bright crimson drop of blood lands on the knee of my jeans.

  “Oh, wow, sorry.” Ben digs a tissue out of his backpack and hands it to me, and I hold it to my fingertip.

  “Thanks.”

  I hold it to my finger as the throbbing eases.

  But even when it stops bleeding, my heart still hurts.

  21

  WHEN NICOLE walks up to me the next day at school, all I can do is stare at her. Even from a few dozen feet away, I can tell she’s wearing darker mascara than usual, and the edges of her eyes have an obvious smudge of eyeliner. Her hair is curled yet again, and today she’s got on a—dare I say it—cute destroyed-denim mini, plus a black V-neck with a lacy blue camisole underneath. She’s got on a pair of boots, too, different ones than she wore last week. They’re black, with adorable little straps that zigzag all over the toe.

  Last year she dressed more like me, in lots of hoodies and jeans, and she almost always wore Converse. I mean, it’s not like I expected her to consult with me before she went back-to-school shopping, but it’s just kind of . . . weird. To see her transform right in front of me and to have her not even say anything or make a big deal of it.

  I’ve been sitting on one of the weird carpeted cube-like benches in the hall, flipping through my bio book. There’s a quiz tomorrow and I can’t seem to absorb anything in this chapter.

  It probably has to do with the fact that I’m trying to hunch over and hide my giant boobs. Crossing my arms is out—it actually makes them look bigger. Smooshes them together. Not a good idea.

  I spent fifteen minutes this morning with Ann, trying out the Ace bandage idea. It didn’t really work. I mean, it basically added a few layers to my already-oversized chest, so it essentially just made them bigger. I gave up and went with the sports bra.

  So now I just keep sitting cross-legged, kind of leaned over my book, hoping no one notices. I see Janae walking down the hall, and I hunch further. I’m hyper-aware of everyone around me, totally convinced every one of them have taken note of my magically enhanced assets.

  “Hey,” Nicole says, plunking down next to me. She has a new purse, too. It’s gigantically oversized, sea-foam-green leather with a bunch of extra buckles. Who is this girl and what did she do with my totally untrendy BFF?

  “Hi,” I say, sighing as I snap the book shut. “I can’t figure this out.”

  “Really? Do you need help?” Nicole is amazingly smart, probably because she spent her formative years indoors reading books thanks to a bevy of acne meds that caused sensitivity to sunlight.

  I widen my eyes and throw myself at her feet. “Si. Si. Si . . . ”

  I stop when I realize I’m answering her in Italian. “I mean, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, a million tim
es yes.”

  Nicole giggles and pulls me back onto the bench next to her. Her eyes dart around for a second.

  Is she embarrassed by me?

  She’s never done that before. She’s never cared about my outrageous antics, never minded my dorkiness. It stings a little, but I push it aside. I’m probably being paranoid.

  “Cool. When do you want to come over?” she says, digging through her bag and producing a pack of gum.

  She hands me a stick and I shove it in my mouth. “Tonight? After school?”

  “Oh, tonight?”

  I nod. “Yes. After school?”

  Nicole cringes, I’m sure of it, but then she resumes smacking her gum. “Ben and I have plans. What about at, like, seven?”

  I shrug and shove my book into my backpack. “Okay. That’s fine.”

  Nicole crosses her legs, her foot shaking like crazy.

  I stare at her toe, thinking about that day she ditched me for my birthday, thinking that she’s got something she’s not telling me. What’s with her and all the secrets lately?

  “So . . . what’s up?” I say, leaning back on my hands. Too late, I realize this position does nothing to hide my big ol’ knockers. I’m wearing pin-striped pants today and a baggy faded vintage tee. A real vintage one, not a trendy American Eagle rip-off. I found it at Goodwill for seventy-five cents. I was hoping the baggy factor would hide the boobs, but that seems to only work if I hunch forward.

  I sit up, trying to reposition my chest.

  “Not a whole lot,” Nicole says. She doesn’t even notice my dilemma. She seems to be enraptured by watching the crowds of students walking by, jostling in the overcrowded hallway. The first bell will be ringing any minute.

  She nods at someone, a bit of a smile on her lips, but I can’t see who it is because Amazonian-sized Janae is blocking my view as she struts down the hall.

  “Who are you—” I’m cut off by the shrill ring of the bell. Argh.