You Wish

by Mandy Hubbard

  “See you tonight!” Nicole jumps off and bounds into the crowd.

  It’s as if she’s forgotten we have first period together, that we normally walk to class side by side. That we’ll see each other at lunch, because we always eat together. That we have photography together this afternoon. Just a see you tonight. What’s with that?

  Once she’s disappeared into the crowds, I open my binder and slide my homework into the back.

  I glance up, just to be sure she’s really gone, and then look at the photo behind my homework.

  The photo of Ben.

  I stare at it for a long moment, the sounds of the students around me dimming.

  He’ll always be perfect.

  And he’ll always be hers.

  BY THE TIME I get home from school, I’m a complete and utter mess. I have no idea what today’s wish is, so I spent the whole time dodging Ben. He most definitely thinks I’m insane. At one point during math, I had unknowingly dropped my pencil, and he leaned over to hand it to me and I leapt up from my seat as if he was about to brand me with a hot iron.

  The best part is that the teacher was up front lecturing and everyone was scribbling notes, so I looked totally bizarre leaping into the air, my book launching so far it hit someone’s foot three rows up.

  At least I’m completely ruining any future with Ben, which makes the whole I’m crushing on you thing a moot point.

  All I want to do is stuff my face full of the ill-fated unwish cake, wash it down with Coke, and watch the most mindless television I can find.

  Ann is sitting on the front porch when I get home.

  “You can’t just sit there,” I say, not even bothering with the hello. “My mom can’t see you.”

  Ann purses her lips and gives me a sideways look of annoyance. “Can’t you just say I’m a friend from school? I’m bored of the shed and your bedroom.”

  I cross my arms, considering this. “Maybe. I guess.”

  “Good.” She gets up and bounds up the steps after me. “Can we make another cake? That was fun.”

  I just sigh and find us a couple of Cokes and take a few slices of cake into the living room.

  Ann lies down on one of the couches, balancing her plate on her stomach. “Whatever happened to that tutu you had?”

  I furrow my brow. “What tutu?”

  “The pink one, with glitter on it. You wore it to school on picture day.”

  I snort, and then it turns into a funny bark of laughter. “Oh God, I forgot about that. It’s probably in a box somewhere. My mom keeps all that stuff.”

  “We should try to find it,” Ann says.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I never got to interact with any of these things you did. I just had to sit still and watch or listen to the stories.”

  “Yeah, but it’s too much work to find it.”

  “Let’s paint your room, then.”

  “I just painted it a year ago.”

  “Yeah, but again, I didn’t get to play a part in that. I think I would enjoy painting.”

  “Then why don’t you paint on a canvas?”

  “Why would I paint canvas?”

  “That’s what artists use.” I wave my hand, like, meh, but it doesn’t deter her.

  “That sounds fun. Do you have canvas?”

  “Oh. Um, no.”

  “Then why did you offer?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Do you have any coloring books?”

  I laugh. “Why would I have coloring books? I’m sixteen!”

  “So! Coloring looks like fun.” She pouts then, crossing her arms.

  “You think?”

  “Sure. I want to try it.”

  I sit up and sigh. “Okay. I think I can find some old books and crayons or maybe just markers. I told you. My mom keeps everything.”

  Ann pops upright, her eyes blazing with excitement. “Really? Yay!”

  I smile, amused. Was I ever that excited about coloring? Must have been, at some point. Seems like a silly thing to get excited about.

  I dig through some of the cabinets where my mom stores board games and various tchotchkes, and I produce a couple of coloring books and a worn box of crayons, the kind with the sharpener in the back. They look like they were purchased in 1993, but they’ll have to do.

  Ann and I sit down on the living room floor, and I hand her a book, one of animals. My own is a Disney book, with various princesses flouncing around on the pages.

  I flip through the book. I can’t remember the last time I saw any of these movies. I forgot Aladdin even existed. “Do you want to watch The Little Mermaid?” I ask, surprising even myself.

  “Yes! I never got to see it; you always blocked my view or knocked me over.”

  I hop up and dig through the old-movie collection. For once, I’m glad my mom never threw out the VCR. I load the tape, and it seems to take forever to fast-forward through the previews. I can’t believe people used to have to wait for tapes to fast-forward or rewind. . . . It seems so archaic.

  Once the movie gets going, I take my place beside Ann at the coffee table and flip open the book again. The pages are half filled, my meticulous coloring splashing across the pages. I loved outlining the images in dark lines, then filling in the images with lighter, pastel-like colors.

  I settle on an image of Beauty with her horse and start on the grass, selecting a pretty green crayon and shading in the blades along the edges.

  Ann is attacking her pages with gusto, scribbling furiously on the body of a puppy dog. It’s blue, but she doesn’t seem to care. “What else do you have?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Does your brother still have Legos?”

  “Hmm. I think so. I think they’re in some big Rubbermaid containers somewhere.” My mom makes us keep all of this stuff “for our children someday,” which is totally annoying. By the time I have any kids, they’ll probably be playing with holographic pets.

  Ann puts down her crayon. “Let’s play with them!”

  I don’t know why, but it actually sounds like fun. I go into the closet in the hallway and dig around, triumphantly producing two large tubs filled with Legos. I bring them into the living room and move the coffee table out of the way and overturn one of the tubs right onto the carpet. The blocks rain out in a torrent of primary colors.

  The racket brings my brother out of his room. “Those are mine,” he says. Like we’re ten or something, and I just stole his prized possession.

  I shrug. “You’re not playing with them.”

  He stands there for a second, wearing just a baggy pair of jeans and no shirt. His eyes settle on Ann. “Who are you?”

  I roll my eyes. He’s totally checking her out. “Ann, this is my brother, Chase. Chase, Ann.”

  “You mean the freak has a new friend?”

  I growl at him. My brother loves calling me the freak. As if he’s normal or something. “Shut up,” I say, not lifting my eyes from the Legos. I’m going to build a spaceship. I have no idea why.

  He stands there for a long moment, not saying anything. “Where’d you get the cake?”

  “There’s this thing in the kitchen. Box shaped. It’s cold inside, like a polar ice cap.”

  My brother grunts and rolls his eyes.

  “Hey, it’s been in there for twenty-four hours. I baked it yesterday.”

  “Can I have a slice?”

  “I guess. But if you’re going to eat it out here, then put a shirt on.”

  He surprises me by not protesting. He just moseys over to his room, throws on the same T-shirt he was wearing yesterday, and comes back. He grabs a slice of cake and soda and then sits down on the floor near us, a gigantic slice of unwish cake on his plate.

  This may have been normal for us once, before he went away to college, but I haven’t spent more than ten minutes in the same room as my brother for oh, ever. “How’s work?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “Same stuff every day. It’s killing me.”
r />   I look up at him through my lashes. “You could go to community college, you know.”

  He shrugs again. “Maybe. But that seems a step backward. I’m supposed to be at WSU.”

  I look at him, one eyebrow raised. “That makes no sense. At least it’s a step forward from retail.”

  He pauses, a big chunk of yellow cake on his fork. He seems to consider this. “I guess. Still sucks, though.”

  “They have campus housing at GRCC now, I heard.”

  He looks up at me. “Really?”

  I nod. “Yeah. Nicole’s sister lives over there and I think it’s pretty cheap.”

  “Oh. Maybe I’ll check it out.”

  I nod, noticing the slight lift in his voice at the prospect. I go back to digging through the Legos. My rocket ship begins to take shape. I can’t tell what Ann is building. It’s either a castle or a dog.

  “Do you ever think about calling Dad?” I ask.

  My brother’s mouth is full of cake, so I have to sit there for a long moment until he swallows.

  “Nope.”

  “Not at all?”

  “Why should I? He knows where we are.”

  “That’s what I say.” I shoot Ann a pointed look.

  “So why are you asking me?”

  “I don’t know. I just . . . I don’t know.” I concentrate on snapping three yellow Legos together.

  “He was supposed to teach me to shoot,” Chase says.

  I look up at him. “Huh?”

  “He promised when I turned thirteen, I could get a BB gun and he was going to teach me how to shoot.”

  Thirteen.

  A month after my dad left, Chase would have turned thirteen.

  “Oh, Chase, I’m—”

  Chase stands up. “Like I said. I’m not calling him.”

  And then he takes his empty plate and puts it in the kitchen sink, downing the last of his soda and tossing it in the trash.

  I guess I’m not the only one who’s still ticked off at my dad.

  I glare at Ann for making me think about him at all and then turn back to the Legos. I wonder if I could build a rocket ship big enough to blast me right out of here.

  22

  I PUT MY PLATE in the sink, on top of Chase’s. The Little Mermaid is still playing on the television. She’s singing about forks.

  “I’ll be right back,” I say to Ann.

  It hasn’t occurred to me until now, but maybe there will be an invoice or a business card or something from that bakery. If my mom’s not around to question, the least I can do is snoop for answers.

  I still haven’t received a wish today. I’m afraid to know what it’s going to be. At any moment, Ben could show up trying to kiss me. Or maybe the president will call and ask me to become his military adviser.

  It has to stop. Nicole doesn’t deserve betrayal, and no matter what I do, kissing Ben is going to be seen as just that. It won’t matter that I’ll do everything I can to stop it. It won’t matter that the only reason he’s doing it is because of some ridiculous wish.

  I take the carpeted stairs two by two and go into her office. It’s pristine: white walls, beige carpet, big blond-maple desk. She has one of those hard plastic mats for her black-leather rolling chair, and little trays and organizers for all of her paperwork are lined up along the matching maple-wood hutch. The only thing next to her flat screen is a telephone and a cup of pencils, all perfectly sharpened to a point.

  The bookshelf is filled with reference material and binders. The binders, I know, she uses for events. Each spine is carefully labeled: SMITH-GREENE WEDDING, HAPPY TIME PICNIC, RAINIER RETREAT. If I were to flip them open, I would see six dividers labeled with different elements: entertainment, catering, venue. . . . Back in the days when my mom was getting the company started, my brother and I would help her make a bunch of empty binders and think about what it would be like when she had so many events they were full of paperwork.

  We would make sundaes with all kinds of candy mixed in and she’d tell us all about her plans while we organized the binders and stuffed brochures into envelopes. It was, quite possibly, the only happy family activity we’ve done since my dad left. If we helped her, she’d let us leave our messy rooms untouched. She’d relent on making the beds, on doing the dishes. She needed us to get things going.

  I don’t help her anymore.

  I sit down on her office chair and stay still for a moment, listening for the sound of her car in case she comes home uncharacteristically early. I haven’t been in this office in months, and I don’t want to have to explain what I’m doing in here.

  I pull open the first drawer I see; it’s full of perfectly organized office supplies, each item with its own location. The next few drawers don’t yield anything better. Files, blank paper, notebooks, a Rolodex.

  I’m still sitting in her chair, tapping my feet against the plastic mat, when the doorbell rings.

  I spring out of the chair and leave the office as if I was caught red handed in the middle of a jewel heist and bound down the stairs.

  Maybe it’s Hansen coming to serenade me or UPS with a special delivery of Everlasting Gobstoppers. This whole curse would be better if I had wished for cool things. A shiny new car, anybody?

  Ann is grabbing the knob just as I arrive in the tiled foyer, and I shove her aside before she can answer it. The last thing I want to do is explain to someone why this virtual stranger is answering our door.

  “Where’s my brother?” I ask Ann.

  Ann points down the hall, to his room.

  I turn to the door, straining to figure out who is on the other side of the stained glass oval.

  I can’t tell who it is, so I just yank the door open. And that’s when I come face-to-pectorals with Ken. I had hoped he didn’t know where I lived. The fact that he does seems kind of creepy. Then again, there are no rules in this magic wishland. If gumballs can rain down and I can speak Italian, it seems nothing is out of the question.

  He’s wearing his standard-issue black tank top, the one that barely contains his bulging arms or his rippling abs. He’s paired it with royal-blue basketball shorts, ones that have three stripes down the sides, and a pair of white sneakers. He basically looks like he just stepped off the NBA court, except he’s not sweaty.

  The movement of air as the door slides open makes his scent waft toward me, and he smells good, a little like pine needles or leather, something natural, outdoorsy. Something decidedly untrendy but still masculine.

  I expected him to smell like plastic.

  I look up and see his blinding white teeth as his thick lips curl into a smile. “Hey, sweet stuff,” he says, leaning down to kiss me. I lean backward and he ends up sort of slathering my jawline with slobber.

  Awesome.

  “Uh, hi,” I say. My eyes dart to Ann. She’s positively beaming with glee, as if this new boyfriend of mine is the best news she’s had since the day she came alive. Actually, she looks the most alive she’s ever been. Her eyes are bright with excitement, and she’s practically quivering as she watches Ken’s arm slither around my waist.

  I glance down the hallway. If my brother comes out and sees Ken, I’ll never hear the end of it.

  I turn back to the dolls in front of me.

  “Um, Ken, meet Ann. My . . . friend.”

  Ann’s beam brightens to a thousand kilowatts when I call her a friend.

  Something weird swirls inside me. Guilt? I push it down.

  “So . . . what’s up?” I ask, unpeeling myself from Ken’s grasp. It’s a hard maneuver to manage while still acting casual because Ken is like a solid slab of muscle, and his arm doesn’t slide off as easily as I’d hoped. I end up kind of wrestling my way out and almost tripping on Ann’s feet.

  Please let him be here for something quick.

  “I’ve searched high and low, sweets, but I couldn’t find them.”

  “And who is them?”

  “The tiger, panda, and zebra.”

  He gives me anothe
r well, duh look.

  Oh, right. “That’s terrible.” I glance over at Ann and she bobs her head up and down eagerly, agreeing with me even though she has no idea what we’re talking about.

  “I think it’s possible someone picked them up. Maybe took them in,” he says, giving me a sympathetic frown. “I’m sure they’re in good hands now.”

  Right, because who do you know who isn’t in the market for a panda, zebra, and lion cub?

  “Well, that is just darn disappointing, don’t you think?” Hmm. I wonder if that’s how Barbie really talks. I feel like I should speak all formal and serious-like when I’m pretending to be her. Because, you know, she’s been president and a pediatrician and probably homecoming queen. Jack-of-all-trades, that girl.

  Ken nods. I walk to the door. “Well, thanks for letting me know!” I say, yanking the door open.

  Ken doesn’t move, just stands there like a perfect man sculpture, staring at me. His back is to Ann, and I catch her looking down, studying his back and then his butt.

  “Ann!” I whisper, and her eyes pop up and widen, then her cheeks turn red.

  OMG, she is totally crushing on Ken. If only there was a way to get them together and send them riding off into the sunset on their trusty My Little Pony, I’d have it made.

  “I thought we could go out tonight,” he says, his eyes flicking over to the open door. He knows I’m giving him the brush-off.

  “Oh, well, you know. . . . ” No, obviously he doesn’t know, because I don’t either. I scramble to come up with some kind of excuse. “I was hoping you’d . . . fix the roof on the beach house,” I say.

  He raises a brow. “I was just there last weekend. The roof is fine.”

  I swallow. Ken is more perceptive than Ann, more . . . human-like. Ann is one crayon short of a full box, but Ken is harder to trick.

  “Oh, you know, I’m just really busy with those, um, nursing-degree finals.”

  “I thought you had decided on being a veterinarian?”

  “Oh! Yeah, that’s what I meant. You know, it’s hard to keep it straight sometimes. So many careers, so little time.” I wave my hand around and try to use my body language to get him to move toward the door.

  “I’ll go!” Ann says, bounding forward. “I have to get out of this house!” She throws her arms wide with a flourish, and her knuckles smack into the door. “Ow!” She shakes her hand and kind of jumps up and down as she howls a little.