by Faith Harkey
The bathroom door opened.
“Oh, good. I thought I saw you come in here.”
I looked up. A girl strode in.
“Have you thought about my wish at all?” she demanded. “Because I’m sort of running out of time. If I don’t—”
It took me a second to place her. Ruby Hughes. She’d asked me twice about wishing up some new tack for her horse. Some big hooray of a show coming up.
“Go away,” I said.
“Look, Sweet, I know for a fact you granted Chastity Port’s wish—”
“Go. Away.”
With a goofy sort of roar, she ripped a handful of paper towels from the dispenser and threw them down on the floor. “You’re not the first kid whose granny ever died, you know!”
She waited, as if she actually thought her foul words might have changed my mind! When it became plain they hadn’t, she hissed, “Any fool can wish on a stupid star!” and stormed out.
After a sliver of a pause, I ran after her into the hall. Even though I was six inches shorter than she was and only two-thirds as wide, I grabbed her by the back of the shirt and spun her around.
“How about this, you cheese-eater?” I put my finger in her face. “How about you take your asinine horse show and stick it where the sun don’t shine? Or! Or! Even better! Any fool can wish on a star, you say? How about you wish up your stupid tack for yourself? Oh, wait! You can’t! Because you’re useless, you prima donna, gonna-be-married-and-barefoot-this-time-next-year, and I’ll tell you what, not a single person in this town is gonna give a care for your stupid horse or its tack! Or for you!”
I’m ashamed to admit, for about thirty seconds, I felt much better.
It was the thirty seconds after that that cast me into the breach. But even then, I didn’t cry. It was more like a howl that somebody tore out of me, a sound so full of rage it wasn’t even human. I slammed my open hand on one of the metal lockers and relished the racket as the sound rang through the hallway. I did it once more, bellowed, and took off at a run. I didn’t stop until I was halfway down Main Street, at which point I realized there was nowhere I wanted to go, nothing I wanted to do, and no one I wanted to do it with.
Ham found me sitting on the curb outside his place. When he drug me to a booth in the back of the diner and set a cup of coffee afore me, part of me wondered if he was buttering me up for a wish.
Later, when he was closing shop—and it must’ve been much later, seeing as how it was getting dark out—he pressed a paper bag into my hands. I didn’t thank him then, either, but he seemed to understand, and only patted me on the head and told me to “git on home, now.”
I couldn’t even rally myself to look him in the eye. I just got.
Outside my door, I found a pile of yarn, three casseroles, and a card addressed to The Sweet Family. I tore it open with a bitter chuckle.
The card had a seagull on it, flying over a blue sea at sunset. It read, Deepest condolences in one of those gold, curlicue scripts. Inside, Handyman Joe had written something sincere and sad. I tossed that card onto Pa’s apple crate, which was currently unoccupied.
Just because it seemed like a waste to let food go bad, I walked the casseroles and Ham’s paper bag to the fridge. It was strange to see how much grub had collected there since . . . that night. It wasn’t so long ago that I’d sat looking at that empty refrigerator, my stomach rumbling, wishing for something more than thin broth and beans.
For a glimmer of a moment, I almost, almost felt grateful.
Almost.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the electric bill poking from beneath the living room lamp. I stormed over, hefted the lamp, and snatched up the slip of paper.
Unfortunately, we do not accept payment in the form of goods and/or services. . . . Please note your current bill is three days overdue.
I squeezed my eyelids together and crushed the letter in my hand.
It was time for a reckoning.
20
A Reckoning
THE CLEARING WAS EMPTY AND THE NIGHT WAS quiet. Squirrel Tail Creek carried pebbles and silt to a river that flowed to the Atlantic. Overhead, the stars went on with their beaming as they did night and day, regardless of who laughed or cried, lived or died.
“I want you to know something!” I shouted at the sky. “I remember Gram’s story about the man from Fenn. How he felt all deprived when everyone but him got their wishes filled, and how it turned out badly when he started fetching wishes for himself. People cursing his name and whatnot. I remember every word of it!”
As you might expect, there was no reply.
“Let me tell you a story, stars! Once there was a girl. She was poor, but she was a wish fetcher. And she granted some wishes, and yeah, some people did her a good turn as a result. At least she wasn’t hungry no more. She should have been pleased, right?”
Twinkle. Twinkle.
“But that’s not the whole tale. Because this girl lost her ma, you see. And her pa’s a drunk and a lout. And however much she fetched lost treasures or paired folk up with their soulmates or helped her best friend’s ma get a good job in town, she couldn’t bring her own ma back. Her father was still a stinking boozer. Sounds nice, don’t it?
“But that’s just the icing on the cake, stars! Because the real treat at the heart of all this wishing was that, for some blame-fool reason, the girl started to believe that everything was gonna be all right. All shall be well, you said! All manner of thing shall be well!
“So well that she never did turn up the money to pay the electric bill. So well that she went to Penny Walton’s bedside instead of staying home where she belonged. So well that while she was gone, the electric went out and the snow began to fall and her most perfect gram lay there in the dark, alone, getting colder and colder—until she died!
“What do you think of that story, stars?”
My voice echoed in the empty night.
“So here’s how the story ends. The girl says, No more! I’m not playing by your rules anymore!”
I held up my wish cup and whistled to the stars. “Y’all come, now. Y’all come.”
My voice was bitter, but the stars didn’t seem to mind. At last, and in their own way, they replied.
Even through the haze of my heartsickness, I had to admit it was as beautiful as ever, the quicksilver flow of starlight pouring down from way up on high. As the cup filled, I felt the impossible neither-cold-nor-hotness of it through the plastic against the skin of my hand. It defied every word of description I possessed, and all I could do was gape in wonder.
But if you think I was swayed by that splendor, you’re wrong.
“Thank you kindly,” I said.
I took that cup of starlight and drank it down.
I’ll tell you straight up, there’s no way I can make clear what it felt like, drinking that stuff. My knees nearly buckled; I know that much. A delicious chill rushed through me, from my tailbone up to the very top of my head. Around me, the edges of things—the trunks of the trees, the moonbeams, even the leaves and pine needles on the ground—turned vivid, their colors sharper, even through the dark. I breathed, and the air was me and I was it, and I could feel it fill up every part of me, every last cell.
But perhaps the real wonder was, in the face of all that rapture, I still managed to do the thing I’d come to do: balance the books.
“I wish for money!” I screamed into the night. “Lots of it! And a better house and a sober pa. I wish a ma for every baby and for no one ever to go hungry. And most of all—you hear me, stars!—most of all, I wish for my gram back!”
I knew it the second the last words left my lips. I knew it before I held up the cup and tried to call down some more starlight—though I did do that, out of spite, maybe. I knew it as sure as I knew Pa would be drunk tomorrow and Gram would still be dead. I knew it.
The magic was gone.
Feeling little else but tired, I curled up on Gram’s bed with her Farmer’s Almanac. It talked about
the stars and the seasons and the right days for planting all sorts of crops. Everything had its own special time.
I fell asleep thinking about how folks had been relying on star shine for centuries before Sass’s Genuine Sweet came along.
When I woke up, Pa was snoring drunk—in front of the television, this time—wasting electricity paid for by the Tromps. I switched the thing off and told him, “Go to your own room,” but he was well past hearing.
The miracle flour was still in the kitchen and as quick to replenish as ever. The stars hadn’t taken that away. I made a batch of biscuits—plain, no starlight to them—and left a few on a plate by Pa’s head. The rest I took with me to school. That way, I wouldn’t have to go to the cafeteria for lunch, with its wish-hungry people and food smells and—
Travis, I suddenly recalled. I’d left him the whole night to sleep on the thing he’d thought I’d said. There, at least, was one thing that could be made right.
I took the back road to his house, past the Binset place, by way of Hound Dog Trail. When I got there, Miz Tromp was sitting on her bench swing, using her feet to push herself back and forth, back and forth.
“Howdy,” I said.
She looked a little startled, as if I’d disturbed her from her thoughts. “Oh. Genuine. How are you, honey?”
I didn’t have a civil answer to that, so I said, “I got biscuits. You want one?”
She shook her head forlornly.
“You all right?” I asked.
“I guess,” was all she said for a time. “Travis’s father called.”
Hearing about another person’s shakeup sometimes has a way of sweeping clear your own inner floor. I was instantly worried for Travis. He’d been troubled that Tom would leave Miz Tromp like his pa had. But instead, here was Travis’s actual pa, come to stir things up again. What could it mean but trouble?
“What did he want? Is it bad? Is Travis all right?”
Her reply was too slow in coming. “Travis is all right, I think. His dad wants him to come visit.”
“Oh. Well, that’s not so—”
“And maybe to live with him. In California.”
“California!” I exclaimed. “That’s so far away! Surely Travis doesn’t want to go!” After all, he was still so mad at his father. It was hard to imagine he’d even want to visit, much less stay with the man.
“It’s a powerful thing,” Miz Tromp mused, “to feel wanted. After all these months and years of being so heartbroken that his daddy didn’t want him”—she paused, then repeated—“it’s a powerful thing.”
“So, Travis might r-really do it?” It wasn’t possible! It wasn’t right! We’d only just got to be . . . friends!
“He’s flying out next week. For a visit. ‘To start,’ Travis said. So, yes. It seems he’s thinking about it.” Miz Tromp dropped her chin. “And to make matters more complicated”—she bit her lip—“Tom wants to open an alternative healing retreat. In Sass. And he says he loves me.”
I stopped to replay her words in my head, just to be sure I’d understood her right. “Uh. That was quick.”
“Foolish quick,” she agreed. “Ridiculous quick. But here’s the crazy thing. I like him, too. And I’d probably tell him, Great! Come on!, except that—how can I even think of falling in love, with all this other stuff going on? Travis moving to California? At least I’d have to go and make sure things are okay. I mean, I don’t think Kip would get a wild hair and leave Travis on the roadside or anything, but still. We haven’t seen Kip in years. I’ve at least got to make sure things—make sure Travis is all right!”
She threw up her hands. “Genuine! What if this is my wish coming to pass? What if it got divided up? A man for me: Tom. A daddy for Travis: Kip. What if, somehow, this is the best good?”
My head spun. I was angry and getting angrier. All shall be well! Yeah, this worriment looked mighty well, all right.
“So, I guess what it comes down to is this.” Miz Tromp set her chin in her hands. “Do I owe you your vegetables now? Is Tom the wish you fetched for me? Is Kip the daddy for Travis? If only I knew for sure, things might seem . . . clearer.” She set her eyes on me and waited for an answer.
I didn’t know what to say.
Just then, Travis appeared at the door. He took one look at me, turned around, and walked away.
“Travis!” I was already on his heels when I called out, “Excuse me, Miz Tromp!”
I reached his bedroom door just in time for him to slam it in my face.
“Travis!”
I knocked. I pounded first with my fists and then, gently but sincerely, with my forehead. “Travis. Please open up.”
He didn’t even do me the courtesy of telling me to get gone.
“Travis,” I spoke to the door, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. What you think I said wasn’t what I meant to say.”
Not unlike the stars the night before, his only reply was silence.
“I wasn’t saying I didn’t like you. I was saying I didn’t like either of you.” I heard my words and knew they’d come out all wrong. Again. “Dog my cats, Travis, that’s not what I meant. I meant . . . there you two were standing over me, getting ready to signify all manly, and I just didn’t want any part of either of you, right then. Not because I don’t like you, but just because I was so, oh, I don’t know, far away. You understand that, don’t you? Please understand that.”
I waited to see if he’d say something. Finally, a sound came from his room, sort of a shushing, sliding sound.
A window opening! He was climbing out!
I raced out of the house, called out a quick goodbye to Miz Tromp, and caught Travis just as he was catching his balance against a trellis beside the house.
“Stop!” I shouted.
He stopped, but he turned his face away.
“Don’t you know,” I pleaded, “if you’re moving away, we got to make our peace. I never liked anyone before, the way I like you—”
“What about Sonny?” he grumbled.
“Sonny’s with Jura,” I told him.
“That don’t mean you don’t like him.”
“You’re right,” I conceded. “It doesn’t. But I don’t. Like him, I mean. I like you. I like you.”
He still wouldn’t look at me. “I got to go to school.”
“Me, too. Want to walk together?”
He reached in through the window and pulled out his satchel. “Maybe you’d better take Earl Street.”
In other words, no, he didn’t want to walk together.
“. . . All right, then. Maybe I’ll see you at school,” I said.
He cleared his throat and walked off.
I went back around the house—toward Earl Street—and heard Miz Tromp murmur as I passed by, “I wish there was a good solution to all this. There has to be one.”
Halfway through third period, I got called out of class to talk to Missus Peeps, the school counselor. She was concerned about me, she said, and thought I might want to talk about losing my grandmother. I didn’t, and I said so.
She nodded, all counselor-like. I thought that was the end of it.
I was about to get up to leave, when she said, “You’ve had a lot on your turkey platter lately. Not just your grandma, but the wish power and all the attention it’s brought on you.”
“That’s all done now,” I told her.
“Done, how?” Missus Peeps asked, frowning.
“I can’t fetch wishes anymore.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?” She said it like I’d offended her.
“Can’t,” I said. “Why? Did you want something?”
I’d meant it to be snarky, but her eyes actually lit up.
“Well, since you asked—” she began.
I got up from the chair and walked out.
After school, I headed to the library to delete the Cornucopio profile for good. Genuine Sweet’s Wish to End Hunger was closing its doors.
As I marched down the sidewalk, chin jutting and arms pumping
, it might have seemed like I couldn’t get there fast enough. You might have wondered if I was pulling the plug out of spite. But it wasn’t like I had a choice. I couldn’t fetch wishes anymore. People might be starving, but just as they had with the troubles in my own hungry family, the stars only helped when they saw fit to.
Jura was waiting outside for me, as if she’d known I was coming.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” I set my hands on the city hall/police department/historical society/library/extension office door handle.
She reached in front of me, gently blocking my way. “Are you mad at me?”
It would have been easy to say, No, of course I’m not mad. It’s just my gram dying. Sorry if I seem out of sorts. But I couldn’t forget—even if I wanted to—that we were friends. I owed her—and me—the truth.
“I’m not mad at you,” I said. “Not really.”
“Not really, but sort of?” Jura asked.
I sighed. “I was mad. Still am, but . . .” I tried to think of a way to say it. “It’s no one thing I’m mad at. It’s everything! I fetched a bunch of wishes for a bunch of folks, and my gram still died.”
“I can see that. Being mad,” she agreed.
“So I did the one unforgivable thing.” I turned away from the door and leaned my back against the library wall. “I broke the first rule. I made a wish for myself. Actually, I made a mess of wishes. Big ones. And now . . . I can’t fetch wishes at all.” I looked away from her. I didn’t want to watch her face as she realized I wasn’t good for much of anything anymore.
“Oh, Genuine.”
“What?” I bumped my toes on the sidewalk. The sole of my shoe had started peeling away. Ain’t that fittin’? I thought.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” I snapped. “’Cause I can’t wish you up the perfect wedding dress for when you marry Sonny?”
“No, you clabberhead.” She gave a somber little laugh. “Because that was the last thing your gram gave you, and now it’s gone.”