“Where’d you hear that?” I ask. My voice practically squeaks.
Abby laughs. “The same place you’d hear about UFOs or Bigfoot or crybaby bridges. Nothing to get worked up about.”
I pull the nozzle from the gas tank and replace the cap, taking a moment to compose myself while my back is turned. This is the situation I’ve been hired to handle. I’ve been trained for this. Time to be charming and reassuring. Get them out of town. Make sure they don’t notice my shaking hands or that’s it’s not the heat that’s making me sweat.
When I look back at Abby, I give her a megawatt smile. “Unfortunately, you heard wrong. This is probably the least mysterious place in the world.”
My act must work, because she shrugs and says, “OK then. Just thought I’d ask.”
“Sorry,” I say.
Abby suddenly lunges forward and grabs my arm again. I’m too caught off guard to pull away.
“Look, we’ll be in Rachel for the night.” She produces a pen and scrawls a phone number on my hand. “In case you change your mind.”
A second later, I’m watching them drive away. What was that about? And how am I going to deal with it?
• • •
I guess it’s one of those right place, right time scenarios.
Under different circumstances, I would’ve finished my shift and gone to prom and never thought about the kids in the car again. Probably, I would’ve told Moses Casey about them, and he’d alert the mayor, which is what we’re supposed to do should a situation like this arise.
There’s no prom for me tonight though. There’s only anger and loneliness. There’s my entire world crashing down around me and feeling like I don’t have a place I belong anymore. Feeling like even the parts of my life that made sense have become twisted and strange.
Maybe that’s why I don’t raise the alarm like I’m supposed to.
Instead, I go home and lie in bed, stare at the ceiling, and don’t say a word to anyone. I’m tired from work—worn out from my entire messed-up life, really. I certainly can’t handle talking to Mayor Fontaine tonight, which is exactly what’ll happen if I alert anyone to what happened.
Or maybe that’s an excuse. Maybe the reason I don’t snitch on the wish seekers is because I simply don’t want to.
Because I’d rather mull over the kids in the car than think about my actual life. My two best friends getting ready for prom without me. My parents, who see me as a huge disappointment. My wish, which is mere days away. Contemplating Madison’s leaked secret is a lot more appealing, yeah?
How did they know about wishing? Do other people know? Is our secret less of a secret than anyone realizes?
I get out of bed and pace my room, replay the conversation in my head. Did I imagine her inflection? They did know about wishing, right? I’m not inventing it. Am I?
After a while, I realize I’m not going to be satisfied until I know more. This might be the biggest happening in Madison since…well, since wishing began. And really, I shouldn’t ignore the situation and leave loose ends. I owe it to the town to dig deeper.
That’s what I tell myself anyway.
So while all my friends—or at least the people who called themselves friends—are at prom, I’m asking my parents if I can borrow the minivan. I’m speeding down the highway toward the Little A’Le’Inn.
I roll down the windows and crank up the radio.
“Broadcasting live from the Rachel, Nevada, UFO Festival, this is Basin and Range Radio, and I’m your host, Robert Nash.”
I’m being reckless. One hand on the wheel, the other texting Abby. I have no idea what I’ll say when I get there. I have no plan, and it feels good. It feels like freedom.
I roll into Rachel half an hour later, and I’m quickly reminded why I seldom come here. It’s gracious to even call it a town. It’s nothing but a single restaurant and a handful of trailer homes dotting the desert landscape. There’s a big sign on the way in:
Welcome to Rachel, Nev.
Population: Humans 98
Aliens: ?
They really take the whole alien thing too far. But I guess it makes sense. What else do they have?
A second later, I pull up to the Little A’Le’Inn. The vacant land surrounding the restaurant has morphed into a fairground. There are booths everywhere—more made-in-China alien merchandise than I ever hoped to see. Due to the lack of hotel accommodations, most festival-goers are set up in tents or RVs on the outskirts of the action.
I get out of the car and wander through the crowd, pass a stage where a familiar voice is being projected to an audience.
“…the fact is, ancient astronauts did visit Earth, and they did leave their mark. Can we blame our ancestors for mistaking aliens for divine beings? When we look at petroglyphs depicting star people or the appearance of unidentified flying objects in Renaissance paintings, can we really claim…”
I stop walking and turn to the stage where Robert Nash is doing his live radio broadcast. In all my years listening to him, I’ve never actually seen the guy. From his smooth, deep voice, I’d expected someone scholarly. Someone who demands respect. But he’s got a ridiculous ponytail, his clothes look like he picked them up off the floor, and his glasses are so thick, they rival Merrill’s. Dude looks like every other UFO hunter who spends their life camped out on a ridge, binoculars pointed at Area 51. I feel oddly let down.
I turn away as Robert Nash gears up for a lecture on how aliens built the pyramids.
Personally, I’ve always found that alien pyramid stuff insulting. Like, do people think humans are so incompetent, we can’t erect buildings on our own? We need freaking extraterrestrials to help us? Whatever.
I pull out my phone while I wander through booths where people hawk food and crafts. I almost walk straight into a guy in full alien costume. Another guy passes me, literally wearing a tinfoil hat.
I’m here, I text Abby. I glance up. I’m by the flying saucer ride.
A few moments later, an arm wraps around my shoulder.
“I knew you’d come!” Abby grins wildly. “Come on. We have a table inside.”
She pulls me into the Little A’Le’Inn. The small restaurant usually only has a couple of people in it at a time. Tonight, it’s as packed as a Las Vegas club.
“It’s too crowded. We can’t talk here,” I say over the noise. I eye the menu regretfully. I haven’t eaten all day and could really go for a chili burger.
Abby raises her eyebrows. “You do have something to tell us, don’t you?”
We end up piling into Abby’s car, parked at the edge of the UFO Fest circus. It’s like before, Abby and JP in the front. Only now I’m crammed in the back with Sweet Pete, who’s making his way through a family-size bag of potato chips.
JP lights a joint and passes it to Abby. When she offers it to Pete, he waves it away.
“Gotta stay healthy,” he explains.
I look dubiously at his bag of chips.
“Pete played football,” Abby tells me.
“Will again too, when we get back,” he says.
“If we get back,” Abby says, her eyes sparkling. “Maybe we’ll find a portal to another world and spend the rest of our lives dimension surfing.”
“Maybe.” Pete nods agreeably.
I take the joint when it’s passed to me. “So what’s your deal? Are you, like, conspiracy theorists or whatever?”
“No, no, we’re not truthers,” says JP. He nods at the fairground out the window. “This whole setup is cool but more of a novelty than anything else.”
“We’re legend trippers,” Abby offers.
I certainly agree with the tripping part. “What’s that mean exactly?”
“We find places where weird things happened.”
“There are people who go looking for ghosts,” JP says, twisting in his
seat to see me. “They’re purely interested in hauntings.”
“And there are urban explorers,” Abby adds. “They break into creepy abandoned buildings. Sometimes to take pictures and sometimes to destroy stuff and sometimes simply to soak up the atmosphere.”
Back to JP. “We don’t exactly belong to either of those groups.”
The way they play off each other, I get the feeling this is an act they’ve performed a million times. I’ve never felt like such an outsider.
“We go where there are legends,” Abby says. “Places where there are supposed to be vortexes and portals and poltergeists. You know, anything mysterious.”
Is this what people consider recreation outside of Madison? I know I’m a little clueless about the outside world, but this seems bizarre. Or maybe growing up in the desert has made me immune to the mysterious. “And, uh, what exactly do you do in these places?”
Abby shrugs. “Wait for something to happen.”
“Why?” I pass the joint back to the front of the car. When Pete offers me his bag of chips, I gladly take a few.
If Abby’s insulted that I don’t get it, it doesn’t show. “I dunno. It’s better than college, I guess.”
“It’s a different kind of summer road trip,” JP says. “Some people go see giant balls of yarn. We look for burned-down orphanages and old asylums.”
“And how much have you seen, exactly? Supernatural, I mean?”
Abby and JP look at each other and laugh. Again, completely in synch. “We’re still kind of waiting on that part,” JP says.
The weed is making my head swim. The tension of the past few days is leaving my body. I feel oddly comfortable in the back seat of their car, in the middle of nowhere, alien festivities going on around us.
“So you go all over the country hoping something supernatural will happen?”
“Look,” says Abby. “Everyone has to believe in something.”
Don’t I know it.
I think of Norie. I wonder what she and Merrill are doing right now. I wonder if Juniper and Calvin are hooking up, having a little after-prom party of their own.
“We came out this way to see a famous hotel,” Abby says. “It’s haunted by the ghost of a prostitute who was killed there.”
I know the hotel. It’s in the town next to Tonopah. Thinking of Tonopah makes me think of the Clash. Which isn’t the last thing I want to dwell on, but pretty close.
“That story’s fake,” I say.
Sweet Pete nods. “Most of them are.”
“We didn’t get in anyway,” JP says. “The sheriff caught us trying to jimmy a window. Luckily, we were let off with a warning.”
“We were going to head to California,” Abby chimes in. “But then we heard about the UFO Festival and decided to stop here first.”
JP’s turn. “Imagine our surprise when we stopped in this little bar in some nowhere town—what was it?”
“Alamo,” Sweet Pete says.
“Right, Alamo. And there’s some drunk guy babbling about how aliens are real and they gave Madison a magic wishing well.”
A wishing well. I guess it’s close enough to the truth.
“Clearly, we had to check it out,” Abby finishes.
They have nothing. I know right then that I can make up a story. I can smile and lie, lie, lie. I can say their story is complete crap, and they’ll buy it, because they didn’t really believe it in the first place. This is all fun and games for them, and with a few words, I can send them on their way.
I stare at them.
They look back expectantly.
I need to say something. I need to keep them out of Madison.
Instead, I think of my sister dying in a hospital bed. I think of Fletcher not dying. I think of my parents and how their lives could have been but aren’t. A slideshow of wishes, of wishers, runs through my mind. All the tears and anger and loss.
The rage that’s consumed me lately comes rushing back, but this time, it’s not directed at a single person. It’s not even directed at myself. I’m angry at Madison. I’m angry at wishing.
I hate it. I hate everything about it. I’ve seen firsthand how many lives it can ruin. It’s ruined my own life.
And I’m supposed to protect it? I’m supposed to keep the town’s secret, keep these legend trippers moving, make sure wishing stays hidden for upcoming generations so it can ruin more lives?
Why should I guard wishing?
Why?
What the hell has that ever gotten me?
I don’t do Mr. Wakefield’s count-to-ten thing. Because this anger? It feels good. It feels right.
And that’s why I don’t send the legend trippers packing.
That’s why I say, “I wouldn’t exactly call it a wishing well.”
• • •
Talk can be therapeutic, yeah? It feels good to tell someone the secret I’ve been forced to keep my entire life. No, it feels great. As the story pours out, it’s as if I’m destroying the pain and anger within me.
Abby and JP listen raptly. Even Sweet Pete puts aside his bag of chips. The jokey vibe in the car is gone. They hadn’t expected this. It had been a game to them, and I made it real.
“Are you messing with us?” JP asks.
“No.”
Abby and JP look at each other. There’s a long silence. They don’t believe me. They want to believe me, but they don’t. They think I’m either lying or delusional. Newsflash: I’m neither.
“I can take you there,” I offer.
“Could we go in?” Abby asks.
“We’d have to cut through the bars.”
They still look skeptical.
“It’s been done before,” I say, thinking of Silas Creed, the man found with a bullet in his head. If you believe old stories anyway.
“What would happen if we got caught?” Abby asks.
“I have no freaking clue.”
I don’t. And the truth is, I don’t really care one way or another.
“There are all these conspiracies,” I say. “Some people think the rules are lies. Let’s find out what happens if one of you tries to wish.”
They aren’t from Madison. They aren’t about to celebrate their eighteenth birthdays. According to everything I’ve been raised to believe, it should be impossible for their wishes to come true. But I want to know for sure. I need to know. I need to know just how much I’ve been lied to my entire life.
Abby and JP are still cautious. Who can blame them? Until I described it to outsiders, I hadn’t realized how ridiculous wishing sounded.
“Here’s the deal. If there’s no cave, and I turn out to be some creep, it’s not like you’re in danger. Have the Hulk over here kick my ass, and be on your way,” I say, nodding at Sweet Pete. “On the other hand, maybe you’ll get to make a wish, and all your dreams will come true.”
“When would we do this?” Abby asks. “Tonight?”
“No, tomorrow evening. There’s a big football game. The entire town will be there.”
No one will be paying attention to the wish cave, that’s for sure.
Abby and JP share another long look. I have the feeling they know what the other is thinking. They’re that in tune with each other. It makes me miss Merrill. I wonder what he’d think about all this.
Then I get annoyed at myself for considering it. Who cares what Merrill thinks? I imagine the look on his face when he finds out I broke into the wish cave without him. I hope it will be a punch to the gut. I hope it makes him feel like he’s been left behind.
“So?” I ask.
Abby nods. “OK. I’m in.”
“Same,” says JP.
They both look at Pete, who shrugs his massive shoulders. “Sure. Why not?”
There’s no more smoking after that. We need to be sharp. There are pla
ns to be made. We’re going to make wish history. It’s at that moment that I finally feel like I’m on the right path.
• • •
Abby walks me back to the minivan. We wander through the remnants of the UFO festival, passing alien fanatics who are holding out to the bitter end. I look for Robert Nash, but the stage is empty.
“Why are you doing this?” Abby asks.
“What?”
“Blowing your town’s cover.”
I shrug. “It was going to happen eventually. I might as well get some answers first. My friend Merrill, he thinks wishing is a conspiracy.”
“What kind of name is Merrill?” Abby asks, making a face.
“I’d say JP and Sweet Pete aren’t much better.”
Abby laughs, tilting her face up to the sky. She says, “JP stands for John Paul. He was named after a pope. Hardly anyone knows that about him.”
I don’t know anything about the pope either, so I don’t comment. Instead, I ask, “How long have you guys been dating?”
“Me and JP?” Abby seems surprised. “We’re not dating.”
I raise my eyebrows at her.
“Dating would ruin what we have,” she says. “It makes things messy. Too many rules and feelings. And most likely, it’ll end with a breakup.”
“Friends can break up too.”
My mood turns dark again. Even if Abby and JP aren’t dating, they have a bond. This trip they’re on, it’s all about the two of them. Sweet Pete is simply along for the ride. The dumb football player, stuck in the back of the car. That’s all I’ll ever be to Merrill and Norie. As long as they’re together, I’ll always be the third wheel.
We reach my parents’ minivan and stop.
“Are you really sure you want to go through with this?” Abby asks.
“Positive.”
“OK then.” She smiles. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
It’s not until I’m halfway back to Madison that I’m hit with the enormity of what I’m about to do. I pull over to the side of the road and sit there in the darkness, the empty highway on one side of me and the desert on the other.
I’m going to break into the wish cave. I’m going to blow the lid off wishing. I’m going to do something that no one has ever dared to do before.
As You Wish Page 23