“Where ever did you get such ideas?” Allison asked incredulously. At least the attention was off of me.
It turned out that Anna had seen a Cinderella adaptation at a friend’s house. “No more sleepovers at Chantal's,” Allison said determinedly before she started lecturing Anna about feminism and equality.
The shift in topics meant I could pretend to eat macaroni in peace. When I got back to my computer after dinner, I was surprised to see that quite a few people had responded to my post. Normally on the community page, people mainly asked about guitar tutors or set up toddler groups, things like that.
There were plenty of cliché answers. One guy wrote, “15 million dollars.” Another person said, “I'd wish myself on an island, drinking cocktails, sitting on the beach.”
But less selfish and more interesting wishes were also among the responses. I could maybe even do something about some of them.
“I wish my brother would pass his math exam so he finally gets to graduate high school.”
“I wish I would get a new, better job so I could provide for my family better—go on holiday once in a while, buy my kids the toys they have set their hearts on.”
By the time I was ready to turn the computer off that night, my post had sparked interest among not only the Average population but people from elsewhere too. Some had shared the post, and people had replied to each other's comments.
“I wish it would be summer in Maine all the time.”
“– Are you crazy? I love the seasons. Autumn is great, all those colorful leaves…”
“– Sunshine rules.”
“– Move to California then.”
Some people had even done me a solid and already fulfilled each other's wishes.
“I wish I had a mountain bike.”
“– I've got one I was going to get rid of. Do you want it?”
“– Great, when and where can I pick it up?”
There were also some really sad ones among the wishes:
“I wish my grandad was still alive.”
“I wish my husband's arthritis would go away.”
“I wish they would develop better medication for MS sufferers and my mother wouldn't have to go through so much pain”
“– Did you know there was an MS support group? We meet every Thursday eve at the community center.”
“– No. Interested. PM me details.”
That night, I dreamed I was floating through the sky in a white see-through dress. I was radiant and miraculously skinny. My hair sparkled with golden highlights, and my skin was milky white in the moonlight. I carried a magic wand and benevolently touched stars with it while I floated past them. I somehow knew—because a person seemed to automatically know things in dreams—that the stars symbolized the wishes of the people who had commented on the Average community page. It felt really good to make them come true.
The people of Average stood beneath me and waved. Gratitude and adoration shone in their eyes. I was good and important. A blinding light appeared on the horizon and got bigger and bigger. I could make out Zack in all his good-looking glory. I floated toward him, still smiling, when the light surrounding him turned into flames that licked his muscular body. I reached for him, but a loud explosion propelled me backward, and I whirled through space.
Then I woke up. Even after I had shaken off the experience as a nightmare, my head was still spinning. It took me ages to get back to sleep. Suddenly, I remembered that my mom used to make me warm milk with honey when I was little and woke up from a nightmare. I briefly considered going downstairs to fetch a mug of milk, but the memory itself was so soothing that I fell asleep with a smile soon after.
4
Before I went to work the next day, I printed out my post with all the answers and comments. I had decided I wasn't going to do any preselection based on what I thought I could or couldn’t do. Who knew, maybe Zack had some sort of magic wand he could give me or something. I couldn't really see how I was supposed to fulfill any of these wishes without magical help.
I took my time getting dressed and decided to wear an aquamarine wrap dress underneath my diner apron. The color really looked good on me, and wrap dresses suited my figure, even though they made me look older. I hadn’t been able to wear these kinds of dresses at school. The girls at my high school just didn't wear those types of thing. They wore jeans and T-shirts all the way. Jeans did nothing for my figure, especially not the skinny-fit ones that were in style at the moment. I had to buy the boyfriend-cut jeans that were supposed to fit loosely, but they were still pretty snug around my chunky thighs.
But I wasn't at school anymore, and looking older wasn't such a bad thing now. Zack, in human years, would have probably been in his early-twenties. I reminded myself to ask him if angels aged like us. That was just one of the many, many questions I had for him.
I even put on some mascara and lipstick but then wiped the lipstick off again and reprimanded myself. This wasn't some sort of date.
I wanted to look nice, but it didn't need to look as if I’d made a huge effort for him. He would probably laugh at me. After all, it was strictly angel business for him.
Still, I was so nervous at work that I kept dropping things and spilling stuff. Aunt Jeannie kept giving me these worried glances, but her scowl turned into a happy smile when she saw Zack picking me up. She probably thought it was a date.
“Hi,” I said to Zack. He smiled at me. I guess it was superfluous to mention that his smile was heavenly.
“Where do you want to discuss this?” I asked in a manner that I hoped sounded businesslike. At the same time, I half hoped and half feared that he would notice I looked good today.
He just shrugged his shoulders. “Somewhere quiet would be good.”
“The river,” I decided. People walked their dogs along the riverbank, and it was also popular with joggers. But we could sit on a bench there without being disturbed much.
Zack nodded, and we silently walked the ten minutes it took to get from the town center to the river. We strolled silently along the riverbank, past the weeping willows that hung low over the water, and found an old wooden bench separated from the path by high grass and cornflowers. Perfect. It was a private spot, but anyone who passed us would still notice people sitting there, so it wasn't too intimate.
I pulled the printout from my green leather purse and put it down in the grass next to me. “I followed your suggestion and took an intuitive approach, and… um… I came up with this.” I showed him the piece of paper.
“People just wrote to you what they wish for?”
I had to explain to Zack what Facebook was and how it worked. He looked at me with a bemused expression. It probably sounded kind of funny to someone who had no concept of social networking.
My self-confidence waned when I saw his face. “Will my idea work?” I asked dubiously.
“Sure, why not,” he answered. “It doesn't really matter how people express their wishes, as long as they come from the heart. It might actually be a good thing if people can hide behind an avatar, because they’re open and honest.”
His insight surprised me, and it must have shown on my face.
“That was true even before humans had the Internet,” Zack said. “How do you think the concept of confessional boxes came about?”
I had to wonder how old Zack really was, but I didn't dare ask. “So, how do I choose which wish I’m going to… um, fulfill first.” It still sounded extremely abstract to me. I just hoped we would get into the how-tos later.
“I suppose you just pick one,” he said.
“Just like that?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “It doesn't really matter. Like I said, it’s intuitive. If the wish came to you and you pick it, it’s the right wish.”
“But…” I looked down at the printout. “But some of them seem impossible… Well, most of them seem impossible. So if I have to just pick one, doesn't it depend on what I get?”
Zack furrowed his bea
utiful dark brows. “What do you mean ‘get’?”
“What I’ll be… supplied with? What, I don't know, resources will I get? What will I get to help make these wishes come true?” I stuttered, getting more and more red in the face. Why did he have to make me spell it out? I wanted to know what my super power would be.
“Oh, I think you must have misunderstood me,” he said seriously. “You're not getting anything.”
I stared at him, my mouth agape. If I would have given a damn at that moment, I would have noticed that I swallowed at least five of the little mosquitos that swarmed around so close to the slow-moving river.
“I’m supposed to do it just like that? Just me, without any help? But… You can time travel, and who knows what else. I thought I was going to get something like that—some kind of skill or, I don't know, at least some magic object or something. What could Vitrella do? Shouldn't I be able to do what Vitrella did?”
I sounded almost indignant, but this was a bit of a disappointment.
“Sure, Vitrella could do things you can't, but she was an angel.” He explained this as if he was talking to a child. “You are human. Obviously, you can only do things humans can do. I can't just give you skills or teach you to do magic.”
“Unfair,” I murmured, turning my head and blinking into the afternoon sun.
“What's that?”
I faced him again, folded my arms across my chest, and adopted a surly tone. “So how am I supposed to do this? I mean, they’re called unfulfilled wishes for a reason. If they could easily be turned into reality, those people would already have done so.”
I picked up the piece of paper from my lap. “Look. This guy wishes for fifteen million dollars. How am I supposed to get that kind of money? Or here”—I pointed to another post—“I'm not going to cure a disease that experts in the field have spent a lifetime researching and trying to remedy. That's just impossible.”
“Well, with that attitude you’re not. Just pick a different wish,” Zack said, unperturbed.
I sighed. “They’re all damn near impossible. Okay, so maybe I could have tutored this guy if it would have been history or English or whatever—but math? No way.”
“So they aren't all impossible,” Zack said with a bright smile. “Some are just really hard.”
“I guess.”
“You don't have to fulfill the wish by tomorrow. It takes however long it takes you to fulfill it.”
I looked at him suspiciously. “I thought there was some kind of quota I have to achieve. Surely it would be better to fulfill many wishes fast.”
Zack waved his hand. “That's not how it works. It depends on the wish and that you actively try to make it come true. Anyway, time is relative. It has meaning to you down here, but not up there.” When I raised my eyebrows, he said, “Believe me, I would try and explain this to you, but it would just give you a headache.”
I felt a bit affronted, but thinking about physics class and boring Mr. Klein explaining space and stuff to us made me silently agree with Zack. I sighed deeply and looked down at my printout somewhat helplessly. “Well… the math tutoring one is a fairly easy one, I guess, unless his exams are tomorrow or have already happened.” I suddenly got an idea. “Hey, you could take me time traveling, couldn't you? Then some of these wouldn't be so impossible. I could find out next week’s lottery numbers and help this dude here get his fifteen million. I could get a couple of million for myself and buy this other guy his island.”
I started to get more hopeful until I saw Zack shake his head. “No, I can't do that. That was only to convince you. It would be bad for you if I did that to you more often. There's a reason you got sick. Plus, I'm not allowed.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I would like to know who makes up these rules.”
Zack smiled mysteriously. “Wouldn't we all.”
Before I could question him on that, he added, “In any case, it really is quite simple where wish fulfillment is concerned. You somehow make it happen. I don't have to give you any rules or restrictions because you’re just a human and—”
“And thereby limited by my humanness. Yeah, yeah.”
“Limited or empowered, however you want to look at it.”
Whatever that meant. I made a face.
“The math tutoring is out,” he decided. “You deliberated about it too much. Pick a wish and stick with it.”
I looked at the printout and quickly eliminated a couple of others until I got to one that caught my attention. “That one,” I decided, pointing to a post. “I wish my mom would meet a nice older gentleman to keep her company. Ever since my dad died a couple of years ago, she has been awfully lonely.”
I thought it was nice that this woman wished something for her mother and not for herself. Plus, I knew who this was. Mrs. Meyers was the music teacher at my high school. She was nice. So I just assumed her poor old mother was nice too. It shouldn't be too difficult to find out who her mother was. How hard could it be to find a nice boyfriend for her? Average was full of senior citizens. I just had to figure out a way to arrange for them to accidentally meet up. Surely I could come up with something. I should have been able to do this without going up to someone and saying, “I would like to fulfill a wish for you.” And that was something I had been dreading—major embarrassment.
The more I thought about it, the more I got into the whole thing. I was already daydreaming about a great “meet cute” and secretly patting myself on the back for being a fabulous matchmaker, so I wasn’t really listening to Zack speaking.
“…in on you later.”
I returned to the present. “What?”
“I said, it looks like you’re off to a good start. I’ll check in on you later,” he repeated.
“Stop,” I said as he was about to get up. “When? Aren't you going to help me? And what happens after I fulfill the wish?” I really wanted to ingratiate myself with this cute supernatural being, but I needed a little bit more information.
Zack hesitated. “Look, I just can't tell you much, okay?”
Sure, I was intrigued by the whole thing and honestly, I didn't have much else on my plate these days, but I didn't want to follow some random orders from a guy who might or might not have been an angel. After all, I only knew for sure that he could time travel and that a sunlight-bursting thing had hit my mom when she’d had sex with dad. The whole time traveling thing had dazzled me, but all I knew for sure was that he made me see a few things. Who knew if he had actually taken me to the future and the past? Now that a bit of time had passed since that weird experience the day before, the less likely it seemed.
I made a mental note to corroborate some details of my conception story. I would ask Dad. Just how I would go about doing that, I didn't know. I was a bit desperate for a boyfriend, but I didn't want to be taken for a ride by this supposed angel. I crossed my arms and said somewhat petulantly, “I don't have to do this, you know. You can't make me.”
Zack sat back down. “I know,” he said earnestly. “I know I can't make you. But there's nothing else I can do to convince you.” He took my hand in his.
I looked down at his light-brown, slender fingers. My whole body went tingly, and I could feel the heat rising. Embarrassed about the red cheeks that no doubt betrayed me, I looked away. “Maybe you could at least… um… tell me a bit more.”
He nodded. “I will. I will tell you more about Vitrella if you'd like to know.” When I nodded vigorously, he pulled his hand away. “I'll tell you once you fulfill the wish. And you know”—he paused, and his gaze turned toward the river—“after a couple of wish fulfillments, things might become apparent to you, things I can't tell you now.” He made a vague hand gesture. “You’ll know more about… about what this will be about.”
And in the blink of an eye, he disappeared.
What a tease.
5
I sat on the bench by the river for quite a while before I started to make my way home. But no matter how long I thought about everyth
ing Zack had said, what I was supposed to do, and what he'd shown me yesterday, I couldn't make heads or tails of why he would make something like this up. He hadn’t asked me to steal for him or do anything bad. By the time I got home, I had finally decided there was no harm in indulging him a little bit longer. I was far too curious, and Zack was by far the most exciting boy… man I had had a close encounter with. Hell, whatever this turned out to be, it sure was going to be the most exciting thing that had happened in my life so far—even if he turned out to be just a beautiful lunatic.
But still, I wasn't going to just take his word for everything he'd said. Instead of walking through the front door, I went around the house into the garden. The lawn was manicured to our neighborhood’s acceptable standards, but it was pretty dry and almost yellow. It had been a while since it had rained, and even though Allison tended to the small vegetable patch in the back—more useful than flowers, in her opinion—it was Dad's job to mow and water the lawn and trim the hedges. Needless to say, he wasn't really the outdoor or even handy type. He tended to make excuses on the weekends.
Speak of the devil. As I was standing there, looking around at the spot where the tree had been yesterday—I mean eighteen years ago—my dad came onto the back porch, iced tea in hand.
“Oh, hello, pumpkin.” He sat down at the wooden table and did a double take. “Are you inspecting my lawn? You’re not going to get on my case too, are you? I promise I'll set the sprinkler up this weekend, give it a good soak.” He rolled his eyes in an exaggerated manner, which made me laugh.
“No, I…” I came closer. “Dad, did there use to be a tree here?”
He looked surprised. “As a matter of fact, yes. An old oak. I cut it down before you were born, though. How on earth did you know that?”
I quickly came up with a lie and told him that I had heard our neighbors talking about it, then I crossed my fingers he wouldn't ask them. “It's just… you can't see anything. Isn't that weird? Shouldn't there be a stump or something?”
Wish Upon a Fallen Star: Average Angel Page 3