Last Wishes

by Victoria Schwab

  Mikayla’s heart sank. She wanted to believe that, but she didn’t see how it was true. She nodded at the pen and paper. “What’s that for?”

  Aria brightened. “We’re going to make a list,” she said. “Together. And then, when you’re feeling better, you can do the things on it. So,” she held the pen out between them, as if it were a microphone, “if you had all the time in the world, what would you do?”

  Mikayla opened her mouth to protest, because she’d never have all the time in the world, and even if she did, she probably couldn’t afford to do half the things she wanted. But then she stopped. There was something about Aria’s expression, the simple, unguarded hope, that made her play along.

  “I’d go to the movies,” Mikayla answered. “I’d see everything that’s playing in the theater.”

  Aria scribbled this down.

  “And I’d ride my bike through Prospect Park with Alex.”

  “He says hi, by the way,” cut in Aria. “I met him the other day.” Mikayla’s chest tightened. “Okay, what else?”

  “I’d …” Mikayla bit her lip. “I’d bake cookies. I’d reread all the Harry Potter books. I’d get frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity with Beth and Katie. I’d play tennis with Beth and draw with Katie, and I’d walk along the High Line, and go the Met museum, and sleep in and …” she trailed off, breathless, her head rushing from all these possible activities, and feeling guilty that none of them were dance.

  Aria finished writing and turned the list toward Mikayla with a smile. “I think that’s a good start. So …” She tore the page free of the notepad and held it out to Mikayla. “What should we do first?”

  “Wait!” said Mikayla. “I think you’re supposed to measure the ingredients before you put them in.”

  “It’s more fun when you guess,” said Aria, scooping sugar into the mixing bowl.

  They were standing in the kitchen — well, Aria was standing, Mikayla was sitting on a stool — making cookies, because that was one of the only things on the list that didn’t require the ability to walk. Chow circled their legs, lapping up anything that fell.

  “Girls,” called Mikayla’s mom from the living room. “Try not to make a mess.”

  Aria looked at Mikayla, who was covered in flour, and Mikayla looked at Aria, who was covered in sugar, and the two burst into laughter.

  Aria didn’t realize how old Mikayla had looked before, until she started laughing and looked much younger. Her smoke thinned a little. Aria knew it wasn’t enough, that it was a shallow kind of happy, but it was still nice to see her laugh.

  “So …” said Aria as they put the first batch of sugar cookies in the oven. “Are you guys moving?”

  “What?” asked Mikayla, brushing flour from her T-shirt.

  “The boxes,” said Aria, looking around at the containers gathered in the corners of the room, the yet-to-be-assembled ones slouched in the hall.

  “Oh,” said Mikayla slowly. “I don’t know. I guess it just depends.” She looked down at her hands, and Aria could see the fears swirling in her smoke.

  Aria reached out and touched the girl’s arm, even though it left a sugary handprint there. “On what?”

  Mikayla swallowed. “On whether my dad finds a new job soon. He’s an engineer,” she went on. “He used to work for this big product design firm. But it went under a few months ago, and he’s been looking for a new position ever since. I wish I could do something….”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Aria softly. “And it’s not your job —”

  “I haven’t told anyone about Dad,” Mikayla went on, her cheeks flushing. “Not even Beth or Katie.”

  “Why not?” asked Aria.

  “It’s not like they can say or do anything to help, and …” she trailed off, obviously embarrassed, though Aria didn’t see why she should be. “Beth and Katie are great,” she added. “We’ve been friends forever, but they’ve never had to worry about money. I’m pretty sure they were given credit cards when they started kindergarten. I don’t want them to get weird, to treat me like I don’t belong.”

  “Do you honestly think they would?” asked Aria.

  Mikayla dusted off her hands. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I’m glad you told me,” said Aria, even though she didn’t know how to help. She couldn’t get Mikayla’s dad a new job, couldn’t save their house, any more than she could have cured Gabby’s brother. She could only help Mikayla make the right choices when it came to her own path.

  “I don’t want to move,” said Mikayla, so low Aria almost didn’t hear. “I hate these boxes. I hate everything they mean.”

  “You know,” said Aria after a moment, looking at the boxes again, “a house isn’t really walls and a roof. It’s the people inside, and you get to keep those no matter what. As far as these boxes, I think sometimes it’s good to sort through our things, pack some away, pull others out. It reminds us who we’ve been, and who we are, and sometimes it helps us figure out who we want to be.”

  Just then, the timer dinged, and Aria hopped up to pull the cookies out of the oven. “These smell great!” she said, shuffling them onto a plate. “One item on Mikayla Stevens’s Dance-Free To-Do List, done!”

  Mikayla smiled, and found the flour-dusted list on the counter, and was just crossing off bake cookies when she heard the front door open, and close hard. She dropped the pen as her dad stormed in. He didn’t even seem to see them as he slammed the briefcase down onto the table hard enough to make Chow jump. Then he sank into a chair.

  “Dad?” whispered Mikayla as he put his head in his hands. He didn’t seem to hear her, either.

  Mikayla’s mom appeared, took in the scene, and gave the girls a look that said it was time for Aria to go. Mikayla mouthed I’m sorry and Aria smiled and mouthed don’t be, and then they managed a kind of see you later in a mix of nods and waves.

  Aria slipped into the hall toward the front door. But she didn’t leave. She opened the door, then closed it again, still standing in the foyer. She brought her hand to the wood, watching as a moment later her hand disappeared, along with the rest of her.

  Invisible Aria crept back to the kitchen doorway and saw Mikayla still sitting on the stool, her smoke swirling darker as she watched her mom try to comfort her dad. He loosened the tie at his throat and looked like he might cry. Aria watched Mikayla get down from the stool and use her crutches to hobble off toward her room. Aria didn’t follow, not at first. She hung back, listening to the girl’s parents.

  “They’ve decided not to hire right now,” said her dad, pulling the tie over his head.

  “Don’t give up,” said her mom. “The Stevens aren’t quitters.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I’m running out of options.”

  “It’ll be all right. We’ll make it work….”

  He just kept shaking his head, and Aria wished that he was wreathed in smoke, marked for someone’s help. Then she turned and followed Mikayla, slipping into her bedroom just before she closed the door.

  Mikayla’s room was so organized. No clothes on the floor. The bed was made and the desk was clear. The walls were covered in posters, and every single poster was about dance. Some showed girls leaping, or sitting elegantly on the floor; others were midturn, arms aloft. Aria turned and saw a poster on the back of Mikayla’s door. A pair of dance shoes and a saying that made her frown.

  WINNERS NEVER QUIT. QUITTERS NEVER WIN.

  It seemed so … harsh. As Aria looked around, she realized that most of the posters had similar messages, about discipline, sacrifice, strength.

  VICTORY IS WORTH THE PRICE.

  NO PAIN, NO GAIN.

  These were the words Mikayla read every morning and night? Aria shook her head. None of these sayings were about letting go, having fun, being happy. And dance was about that, too.

  Aria watched, invisible, as Mikayla hit PLAY on her computer. Music filled the room, drowning out her parents’ voices down the hall.

  Aria s
ank onto the edge of the bed and watched as Mikayla tacked their to-do list up above her desk. Mikayla stared for a long time at the paper, and the question in her head and in her smoke was so loud, Aria could almost hear it.

  Who would I be without dance?

  Aria wanted to tell Mikayla there was only one way to find out, and that was to go looking for herself, for the person she’d been before, the one she wanted to be now. And then, as if Mikayla could hear her, her gaze drifted to the empty boxes. She hobbled to the edge of the bed and sat down facing her closet. Then she reached for the nearest box.

  She knew she had to start, sooner or later. She might as well start now. Mikayla didn’t have anything else to do — well, she could start rereading Harry Potter — but her mom had been nagging her for weeks to go through her closet.

  You don’t have to pack everything up, her mom had said. Just go through, and see what you want to keep, and what you want to get rid of.

  Mikayla had been avoiding the chore as long as possible — she didn’t have time, she was tired, she hoped that if she just ignored the boxes, they’d disappear … but they hadn’t. And now, as she sat in front of the closet doors, she thought about what Aria had said. Not just about moving, but about finding who you are, who you want to be, and about the fact that people were made of more than one thing. Mikayla couldn’t remember a life outside of dance, but it had to be there, somewhere, buried.

  She took a breath, leaned forward, and slid the closet doors open.

  She pushed aside her school clothes and dance leotards and found a box of medals — silver and bronze, mostly. But behind that box, she found old dance costumes, as well as an album of pictures from her early days in dance. In these photos, Mikayla was nine, eight, seven, six, and beaming, even though she hadn’t placed in half the competitions. Her costumes were strange and fanciful, the kind of thing Miss Annette would scoff at now. There were frills and gossamer, bright colors and ribbons and wings. Mikayla couldn’t help but grin. They were fun. Whimsical.

  Now Mikayla was taught, and reminded, to be her best self, her gold self. But looking at these things, she remembered a time when dancing had meant transforming, getting to be someone else. It had been an escape.

  Dragging the costumes aside, Mikayla felt her way deeper into the closet, and came out with something else entirely.

  A box of notebooks. The box itself was doodled and drawn on, with a ribbon tied around to hold it closed, as if it were precious.

  Property of Mikayla Stevens, it said in a nine-year-old’s handwriting.

  She’d forgotten all about this. Inside she found a stack of notebooks, covered with drawings. Mikayla used to love drawing as much as dance. They both told stories. That was how she and Katie had first become friends, by bonding over drawing.

  How had she forgotten about that?

  As she flipped through the notebooks, she saw scribbles of story, along with doodles of dragons and fairies, ghosts and angels.

  And the thing was, nine-year-old Mikayla had actually believed in them. Or at least, she’d wanted to. She’d been the kind of kid who wondered if her stuffed animals came to life when she was out of the room. The kind who left windows cracked for sprites and believed that old places were haunted. When her third-grade teacher had taken them to the American Museum of Natural History, and she’d seen the massive skeletons of dinosaurs, they’d made her believe in dragons. Because a world that could make such massive, incredible creatures could surely have made other monsters, too.

  Mikayla had wanted to believe the world was full of things she couldn’t see. Of higher powers, or at least other powers.

  It seemed silly now. Childish. Mikayla Stevens had long since learned that the world wasn’t full of magic and mystery, that there was no such thing as angels or ghosts or fate. You had to take responsibility for your own life, for your successes and your failures. That’s what dance had taught her. What Miss Annette had taught her.

  But sitting on the floor, surrounded by her childhood, Mikayla missed the girl who’d made these drawings, who’d worn these costumes and believed in magic. And she wondered, as she set the box of notebooks aside, if there was a way to get that Mikayla back, or if it was too late.

  “It looks like a storm blew through here,” said Aria the next day.

  She was perched on Mikayla’s bed, and the room was still covered in the contents of her closet. Mikayla had fallen asleep last night reading through one of her old notebooks, her costumes beneath her like a pillow.

  When she’d woken up that Saturday morning, she’d avoided her parents, and it had been a welcome relief when Aria rang the doorbell, bright-eyed and holding fresh muffins from the local bakery.

  “Sorry,” Mikayla said now, massaging her still-sore ankle. “I decided to sort through some things last night.”

  “And what did you find?” asked Aria, biting into her muffin. “Mmm,” she added, momentarily distracted. “This is kind of like a cupcake.”

  “Hang on,” said Mikayla. She swiveled so that she and Aria were sitting side by side on the bed. Together, they flipped through the notebooks, and Mikayla tried to show Aria the person she’d been before dance, or at least before dance became so important, so big that it swallowed everything else.

  Aria picked up a photo album and turned through it, pointing out photos of a goofy kid that Mikayla didn’t even remember being. A kid who was eating a giant ice cream cone, making a mess and laughing. A kid who wore her dark curls in pigtails, big brown eyes shining as she stood outside the Central Park Zoo. If anything, the girl in the photos reminded Mikayla of Aria.

  “When did things change?” asked Aria.

  “I don’t remember,” said Mikayla, which was the truth. She felt like she should be able to pinpoint a day, a dance, a win — some moment when the gravity shifted and being the best became more important than having fun. But it must have happened over time, so slowly she didn’t notice.

  “I want to meet this girl,” said Aria, tapping the album.

  “I’m not her,” said Mikayla. “Not anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I was a kid. Monsters and magic, those are kids’ ideas. I know better now.”

  “I still believe in magic,” said Aria simply.

  Mikayla rolled her eyes, even though Aria sounded completely serious. “Do you believe in monsters, too? Ghosts? Unicorns?” she asked teasingly.

  Aria chewed her lip, as if thinking. “I believe the world is big and strange and full of wonder,” she replied.

  Mikayla was quiet. When Aria put it like that, it didn’t sound quite as silly. Something in Mikayla’s chest fluttered.

  “What is Drexton?” asked Aria lightly, and the question jarred her. It sent a cold spike through her chest. Aria was pointing at the calendar on the wall, where the word was written in bold red letters. “I also heard Miss Annette mention it.”

  “Drexton Academy,” said Mikayla. Aria looked at her blankly, so she explained. “It’s the most prestigious dance school in the city. Probably in the country. They only take in a few new dancers each year — the auditions are invite-only — but if you get accepted, they pay for everything. Lessons. Travel. Costumes. Competitions. Even a stipend for schooling.”

  “Wow.”

  “An audition window is coming up,” continued Mikayla. “And I got an invitation to try out.”

  “That’s amazing,” said Aria.

  “Yeah,” said Mikayla, feeling nauseous.

  “No matter what happens, you should be proud.”

  A heavy silence fell between them. Aria held out a muffin to Mikayla, and after a beat of hesitation, Mikayla accepted it and took a big bite. It had been ages since she’d let herself have something so sweet.

  As she was eating the muffin, Aria glanced behind her, toward the shimmering pile of costumes on the bed. “Ohhh!” she said. “What are these?”

  Mikayla let out a massive breath, relieved by the change of subject. “Old costumes,”
she said, swallowing, as Aria grabbed up a short iridescent dress. It seemed to change colors in her hands.

  “I like this one,” she said.

  “Oh, that goes with these.” Mikayla wiped her hands and reached past her into the closet. She pulled out a pair of iridescent wings. Aria’s mouth fell open. “Here,” said Mikayla. “Try them on.”

  Mikayla helped Aria drag the dress on over her clothes, and then she showed her how to slip her arms into the wings. When she was done, Aria turned to look at herself in the mirror on the wall. Her face broke into a huge grin, and Mikayla couldn’t help but think that the wings suited her somehow.

  Aria must have agreed, because she wore them the rest of the day.

  Saturday went by in a blur of costume wings, old photo albums, and bad TV, books and drawings and laughter. Mikayla invited Aria to spend the night, and she happily stayed, sleeping on an air mattress on Mikayla’s floor. Sunday was rainy, and the girls hid in Mikayla’s room, reading random passages of Harry Potter inside a makeshift pillow fort (Aria was really good at making forts). Mikayla couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun. She almost forgot about her ankle, and Filigree, and the studio downstairs filled with trophies.

  She might have succeeded, if Miss Annette hadn’t called three times in those two days to check on her, and to remind her of the upcoming audition for Drexton.

  Aria left Sunday night. By the time Mikayla got up for school on Monday, her ankle was stiff, the pain a dull ache. But she could walk more easily now, so there was no question it was getting better. Some small, guilty part of her wished that it wasn’t healing so fast, even though the rest of her knew that it had to be better in time for the audition on Saturday. Her parents were still counting on her, and she couldn’t let them down.