As You Wish

by Chelsea Sedoti

I don’t respond.

  “Clearly, that’s lost on you.”

  I still have nothing to say.

  “Do you know what I wished for?”

  “You wished to be mayor.”

  “I did. Though I did it very carefully,” he replies.

  I zone out while he tells me how clever he was constructing his wish. I look around for a clock but can’t find one.

  “And do you know why I did it?” he finishes.

  “Because you like to be in charge?”

  His eyes narrow. Again, I wish my mom were here.

  “I did it because I love Madison. And I will do anything I can to protect it. Anything.”

  Yeah, right. He doesn’t love the town. He loves power. He loves wishing, because it gives him more power. I want to know what he’s done to Abby and JP and Pete.

  “Usually when we talk about protecting wishing,” Mayor Fontaine says, “we mean from outsiders. But sometimes, threats can come from within as well.”

  He looks at me pointedly.

  “So what’s my punishment?” I sigh, letting him know how bored I am with the whole conversation.

  I figure I won’t get jail time. Community service is more likely. I’ll probably end up doing volunteer work with Penelope, but there are worse things in life than that.

  “I’ve decided you will forfeit your wish,” Mayor Fontaine says.

  Now he has my attention.

  I try to process his words. “I’m not allowed to wish?”

  “You are not. This is the first time in the history of Madison that a wish has been revoked. I hope it was worth it.”

  I’m stunned. That’s it? I’m not even sure I wanted to wish. I’d more or less known I was giving up my chance when I told outsiders about the cave.

  The mayor clearly expects me to put on a big show. Cry or rant or whatever. But I don’t see the point of pretending.

  “Well, that’s a shame,” I say calmly. “Can I go now?”

  • • •

  I figure there’s going to be a big lecture from my mom. Probably about how she never thought she’d have a kid who let her down this badly.

  Instead, she’s silent, which may be worse.

  When we get home, Dad looks at me and shakes his head.

  “How’d the game go?” I ask.

  “We lost.”

  “Can’t win them all.”

  He and my mom stare at me like I’m a monster. Like the aliens in Rachel have scrambled my brain. But let’s be honest here—they’ve been looking at me that way for months.

  I spend most of the day in bed, tossing and turning, waking up confused and disoriented. When dusk falls, I get up and go to the kitchen for food.

  My mom is at the table, surrounded by coupons for spa days and patio furniture. I’m peering into the refrigerator when she speaks.

  “You killed your sister.”

  Suddenly, I’m not hungry.

  “No, Ma,” I say, turning around. “Ebba died months ago.”

  Tears stream down her face, though she doesn’t make any sound.

  “You could have fixed her. You could have healed her with your wish, and you threw it away.”

  “She’s already gone.” I try to keep my tone even, but my voice starts to rise. “She was gone the day Fletcher hit her. There’s nothing anyone could’ve done. Don’t you get that? It’s just her body lying there at the nursing home. Ebba is gone. She’s dead.”

  With a cry, my mom sweeps her hand across the table. Coupons fly in the air. She stands so forcefully, her chair tips to the floor. She sobs. It’s like all the emotion she’s tried to keep inside since the accident is flooding out at once.

  “Ma, I’m sorry. If there was anything I could have done—”

  “Get out,” she says. “I can’t be around you right now.”

  “Ma.” I take a step closer to her.

  “Go!”

  So I go.

  • • •

  I end up at the skeleton house. I sit in the driveway, my back against the framing for the garage. My head pounds. I feel sick and lost.

  I close my eyes and don’t open them again until I hear footsteps crunching through the rocks and tumbleweeds.

  “Thought I’d find you here,” Merrill says.

  “Here I am.”

  He sits down next to me. For a while, neither of us speak, just stare out at the ghostly neighborhood, one more thing in Madison that never had a chance.

  “Is it true?” he asks at last.

  “Depends on what you heard.”

  “That you and some random out-of-towners broke into the wish cave.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Personally, I think it’s pretty messed up.”

  “Not you too,” I say with a groan.

  “I mean, it’s pretty messed up you decided to have your revolutionary moment when I wasn’t around.”

  I look at Merrill. He grins at me.

  “Yeah, right,” I say. “You would’ve been too much of a wuss to come with me anyway.”

  “Me? I’ll have you know that despite outward appearances, I’m probably the most courageous motherfucker in this town.”

  We both burst out laughing.

  And just like that, one piece of my life is restored.

  “Tell me everything,” Merrill says.

  I do, starting with meeting the legend trippers at the gas station. Merrill shakes his head and laughs all the way through.

  “I can’t believe it,” he says when I finish. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  “I only wish we would have made it to the end of the cave.”

  “You’re a legend either way. The whole town’s gossiping about what you did.”

  “What are they saying?”

  “Honestly, mostly people are talking about what happened to those other kids. They disappeared, dude. People are saying the mayor had them killed.”

  I think of Abby with her wild smile. Sweet Pete, who seems pretty freaking deserving of his nickname. Another trickle of fear runs through me.

  “You don’t think that’s true, do you?”

  “Let me tell you something, Eldo. Norie’s right about wishing being a religion. People here will go to extreme lengths to protect it, and the mayor is the worst of them. Have you heard the story of Silas Creed?”

  I roll my eyes. “Only about a million times, Merrill.”

  “OK, OK. So you know what I’m saying.”

  “Speaking of Norie—”

  “We don’t need to talk about it, Eldo.”

  “I’m happy for you guys. Really.” And I really am. “I just… I don’t want to become irrelevant to you.”

  Merrill looks at me like I’m speaking gibberish. Like breaking into the wish cave made perfect sense, but now he doesn’t understand me.

  “Dude. You’re my best friend. You’ll always be my best friend.”

  “Thanks,” I say softly.

  We lapse into a comfortable silence. There are a million things to say to each other, but it feels like we’re able to say them without speaking. It makes me think of the way Abby and JP were together. And I feel lucky. Some people go their whole lives without finding a friend like this.

  “You really think the mayor killed them?” I try not to ruin the moment with the guilt that’s creeping in.

  “Eldo, I have no idea what he did. That guy is straight-up evil.”

  He is. Mayor Fontaine is awful and terrifying. But like the rest of us, he’s human too.

  Chapter 30

  The Wish History: Clancy Fontaine

  Open the history book to the mideighties, and you’ll find Clancy Fontaine, the boy who’ll grow up to be mayor. The seventeen-year-old who still isn’t over the day the he peed his pants.r />
  No matter that he was five years old when it happened.

  Some events, well, they linger.

  Watch little Clancy in class.

  The other kids are finger-painting, but he’s frowning at the paper and paints in front of him. So very serious. So afraid to get messy. Even in kindergarten.

  He eyes his paint-splattered classmates warily. Then a change comes over his face. Sudden surprise and fear. The realization that he has to pee and he has to do it now.

  Little Clancy leaps to his feet. One hand is clasped to his crotch, the other waves wildly in the air.

  He’s so overwhelmed, so horrified by what’s happening, he can’t form a complete sentence. Instead, he simply shouts, “Pee! Pee!”

  The teacher turns and tells him he may go to the bathroom.

  But it’s too late. A waterfall of urine gushes down his leg.

  The classroom erupts with laughter.

  And for the first time, Clancy Fontaine feels shame.

  Watch Clancy Fontaine grow up. Flip through the pages, and see how he never gets over that moment. How the other kids won’t let him get over it.

  Linger on middle school. Clancy walks down the hall followed by a chorus of “Pee! Peeeeee!” He leaves a trail of wild, mocking pee dances in his wake.

  The kids, they call him Dancy Clancy.

  Clancy Fontaine glares at his classmates. He clenches his fists. He grinds his teeth.

  And at night, Clancy Fontaine goes home and cries.

  Clancy learns to wear two faces.

  At school, he’s haughty. He sneers at his classmates, acting as if he’s better than them in every way.

  At home, Clancy lies in bed and relives every mocking word. His face shows the hurt he feels. The embarrassment.

  Let’s be real for a second. Clancy isn’t the only kid who’s peed his pants in school. It happens, yeah? It’s probably safe to say his classmates aren’t really making fun of Clancy because of his mishap. No, they mock him because they can. Because they see how much it gets to him.

  And because he acts so superior to them. He makes them feel tiny.

  All they have to do to tip the scales is call him Dancy Clancy.

  Skip ahead a few pages. Now it’s Clancy’s freshman year. He scorns high school activities. Ridicules his classmates because they care about dances and sports and dating. Clancy tells himself he’s above those social interactions. That he doesn’t participate because he doesn’t want to. He tells himself this so often, he starts to believe it.

  He walks through the halls of Madison High School, head held high. He ignores the whispers.

  Dancy Clancy. Dancy Clancy.

  Those whispers follow him everywhere.

  Especially from Gabriel Johnson. His whispers are louder and meaner than the rest.

  Gabe Johnson loathes Clancy Fontaine.

  But not as much as Clancy loathes him.

  Clancy watches Gabe. Gabe, who’s so popular, so handsome. So quick to make a joke at another person’s expense.

  Turn page after page after page and see how Clancy’s hatred—and his secret pain—grows. How he lies awake at night thinking of Gabe.

  Thinking of how to shut him up.

  Thinking of how to destroy him.

  Until finally, at the end of their freshman year, Gabe gets caught with a cheat sheet during the biology final. How did Gabe steal the answers? How did the principal know to look in Gabe’s backpack? No one knows.

  Gabe says he didn’t do it. He’s never cheated. Even after he’s expelled, he insists he’s innocent. For the rest of his life, Gabe will tell anyone who listens that someone set him up. When he’s working low-paying jobs, when he’s struggling with alcohol abuse, when he’s hating every second of his miserable life, Gabe insists he was never a cheater.

  Rumors fly around Madison High School. Kids whisper that Gabe really was innocent. They whisper that Clancy Fontaine set him up.

  They don’t realize Clancy started those rumors himself. He had planted the cheat sheet. And he wants everyone to know it. It’s his message to the school, to anyone calling him Dancy Clancy.

  Clancy Fontaine took matters into his own hands, and his revenge was a success. After a long, lonely summer, he returns to high school, and he’s not mocked anymore. No one does a pee dance when they see him. He’s not a source of amusement.

  No, now he’s detested.

  Turn the page.

  See how pleased Clancy is with the turn of events… Or is he?

  He didn’t want to be the butt of jokes, but is being hated any better?

  Clancy tells himself he doesn’t care if the other kids hate him. After all, he lost respect for his peers a long time ago.

  It’s not even right to call them peers, Clancy decides. He tells himself, those kids, they’re no better than animals in a zoo. Pampered and brainless, going about their lives without seeing the cage they’re in.

  Every day, he tells himself his classmates are beneath him.

  Clancy’s armor is superiority.

  And he wears it well.

  That year, Clancy decides there are two types of people. There are leaders, and there’s everyone else.

  Clancy Fontaine knows he was meant to be a leader.

  Just as he knows his father wasn’t.

  Yes, the town loves old Mayor Fontaine. They adore him. But love doesn’t breed respect. Fear does. Kind words don’t keep the world on course. Discipline does.

  Clancy Fontaine has no intention of following in his father’s footsteps.

  And just like that, the animosity Clancy once felt for Gabe Johnson becomes directed at old Mayor Fontaine.

  Clancy watches his dad putter around the house and is hit with waves of revulsion so strong, he might puke. Whenever he thinks about how his father’s weak blood runs through his own veins, Clancy wants to cut himself open and bleed out.

  One night, old Mayor Fontaine looks at his son and says, “I’ve tried so hard to love you. But I look at you and don’t know who you are.”

  Clancy puts on his armor to protect himself from those words. Otherwise, he might revert to old Clancy, the one he despises. The one who lies in bed at night and cries.

  Flip through the pages to Clancy Fontaine’s eighteenth birthday, the day he’ll make his wish.

  There’s no question that Clancy will be mayor when his father retires. He’s understood that for years. But as his wish day approaches, Clancy realizes he may not have to wait.

  Clancy takes notes when his class studies medieval history in school, basking in stories of sons deposing their fathers—and they didn’t even have a wish cave to help them. He pays special attention in government class, does extra research, constructs his wish as if it’s a bill to be passed. The finished product takes up a full sheet of paper, carefully outlining his demands in no uncertain terms. It’ll be the longest wish ever spoken in the wish cave.

  Seventeen-year-old Clancy Fontaine is ready to take over the town. But he doesn’t wish to be mayor. Oh no, that could be overturned easily enough. Instead, boiled down to the simplest terms, Clancy Fontaine wishes to always have the two-thirds majority vote in any election.

  This kid, he’s so proud of his well-researched wish, he laminates the sheet of paper and keeps it in the drawer of his nightstand. He takes it out and reads it when he needs the confidence to help him get through another long, teeth-grinding night.

  Let’s watch how this wish turns out.

  Watch Clancy Fontaine become Madison’s youngest mayor.

  Watch the town grow leery of him as the years pass.

  Watch how, despite how far he’s come, you’ll occasionally hear whispers of Dancy Clancy.

  But never to his face.

  Never ever to his face.

  These days, Old Mayor Fontaine is in a
rest home. He and Clancy don’t speak. Sometimes, Clancy sends him newspaper clippings about his leadership. What his father does with these clippings, Clancy doesn’t know.

  Look at Clancy Fontaine. All these years later and still so sure of himself.

  Most people think he worships wishing, but they’re wrong.

  Clancy worships order.

  Knowing that he, and he alone, has full control over a situation.

  Wishing helps him keep that power, so he’ll do everything he can to protect it.

  And in doing so, he’ll protect the people of Madison. All those poor, lost souls, unable to help themselves. They’d be adrift without his guidance. They would be ruled by their impulses, and the town would revert to its Wild West days. Without him as mayor, it would be like the fall of Rome—Madison would dissolve into chaos.

  Clancy Fontaine won’t let that happen. Not to his town.

  Look at Clancy Fontaine today.

  He’s grown into his armor so well that it’s become a part of him.

  He couldn’t take it off if he wanted to.

  Chapter 31

  Countdown: 1 Day

  At school, the halls are filled with gossip, but from the bits I overhear, it isn’t much about me. Merrill’s right. Everyone’s talking about Mayor Fontaine and how he’d freaked out and killed some kids.

  I guess I should have spoken up to correct the rumor. I got a text early this morning from Abby.

  Hey, kid, we hightailed it to San Fran. Chill people, chill weather. Can’t believe we got off with a warning. Ever want to get out of Strangeville, give me a call.

  I was so relieved, I closed my eyes and thanked Norie’s god. They aren’t dead. The mayor has some shred of humanity. He let them go.

  I’m not ready to let Mayor Fontaine off the hook though. So I let the other kids run wild with their theories.

  I run into Norie on my way to first period.

  “You’re unbelievable,” she says, shaking her head. But she’s smiling. “I want to hear every detail later, OK?”

  “Merrill didn’t tell you about it already?”

  “Jeez, Eldon,” she says, rolling her eyes. “We’re our own people. Is it true though? Did you lose your wish?”

  “It’s true.”