How to Make a Wish

by Ashley Herring Blake

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Acknowledgments

  Sample Chapter from SUFFER LOVE

  Buy the Book

  Singular Reads

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH on Social Media

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Ashley Herring Blake

  Also by Ashley Herring Blake

  Suffer Love

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  Cover photograph © Arcangel Images Inc.

  Cover design by Lisa Vega

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Blake, Ashley Herring, author.

  Title: How to make a wish / by Ashley Herring Blake. Description: Boston ; New York : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2017] | Summary: “A small town pianist ponders a new life away from her embarassing mother when a beautiful girl shows up and changes everything”— Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2016015270 | ISBN 9780544815193 (hardback) Subjects: | CYAC: Pianists—Fiction. | Friendship— Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Self-actualization (Psychology)—Fiction. Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B58 Ho 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016015270

  eISBN 978-1-328-69895-7

  v1.0417

  For Dahlia, Ami, Tehlor, Sara, Jenn, and Tristina, who helped me see myself a little clearer

  There are two tragedies in life.

  One is to lose your heart’s desire.

  The other is to gain it.

  —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

  Chapter One

  SHE WAITS UNTIL WE’RE DRIVING OVER THE BRIDGE TO TELL ME. This is a strategic move. Wait until your temperamental daughter is suspended over the Atlantic Ocean to drop the bomb, thereby decreasing the chance that she’ll fling open the car door and hurl herself over the edge.

  My mother is many things. Beautiful. Annoyingly affectionate after a few drinks and mean as a starving snake after several. Quick-witted and hilarious when her latest boyfriend isn’t turning her into some sycophantic sorority girl. But a fool?

  No.

  My mother is no fool.

  She swerves to pass a car that’s already going at least ten over the speed limit. The ocean, a dark sapphire blue, swings out of my vision and back in. I grip the handle above the window, shifting my gaze over to Mom to make sure her I forgot this silly thing again seat belt is securely fastened.

  “What did you say?” I ask. Because I must have misheard her. Surely, my subconscious anticipated returning home to some catastrophe after leaving Mom on her own for the past two weeks, and it conjured up something totally absurd to lessen the blow.

  “Grace, don’t make a big deal out of this. It’s just an address,” Mom says, and I bite back a bitter laugh. She loves that word. Just. Everything is just. It’s just one drink, Grace. A birthday is just a day, Grace. It’s just sex, Grace. My entire life is one gigantic just.

  Well, I’m just about to lose my shit if you’re serious, Mom.

  How’s that for a freaking just?

  She steers with her knee for a few terrifying seconds while she digs a cigarette out of her purse and sparks it up. She blows out a silver stream of smoke through the open window, and I watch her fingers. Long and elegant, her short nails perfectly manicured and glossed eggplant purple, like always. She used to press our fingers together, kissing the joined tips and making a silly wish on each one. I would measure my hand against hers, eagerly waiting for the day when mine was the same size. I thought that the older I got, the older she would get and the less I’d have to worry about her.

  “Pete’s place is really nice,” Mom says. “It’s so unique. Wait till you see it.”

  “Pete. Who the hell is Pete?”

  She glances at me and frowns, flicking ash out the window as we exit the bridge and drive onto the road that leads into town. “I started seeing him before you left for Boston. I told you about him, right? I’m sure I . . .” She trails off, like not being able to finish a sentence automatically releases her from any obligations.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” I ask, struggling to keep my voice even.

  She laughs. “Of course, baby. This is a good thing. Our lease was up and that dickhead of a landlord wouldn’t renew it because he claimed I still owed him three months’ rent for that dump he called a beach house. And things with Pete were going so well. He’d just moved and needed a woman’s touch.” She giggles and snicks the cigarette butt out the window. “That’s what he said. A woman’s touch. Such a gentleman.”

  Oh Jesus. I recognize that tone, that girly giggle, that glassy look in her eyes. I can almost mouth the next words along with her, reciting the lines of a painfully familiar play. I’ve been off-book for this shit show for a long time.

  Cue Mom’s dreamy sigh.

  Three . . . two . . . one . . .

  “He might be the one, baby.”

  My fingers curl into fists on my bare legs, leaving red nail marks along my skin. When I left a couple weeks ago, I swear to hell Mom didn’t have a boyfriend. I would’ve remembered. I always remember, because half the time, I’m the one who reminds her of the asshole-of-the-month’s name. Okay, maybe that’s a stretch, but I really thought she’d run out of options.

  Cape Katherine—​Cape Katie to locals—​is a tiny spit of land jutting into the Atlantic with about three thousand residents, a quaint downtown with lots of local shops and restaurants, and an ancient lighthouse on the north end that’s still maintained by a real-life lighthouse keeper. We moved here when I was three, and in the fourteen years since, I’ve lost count of how many guys Mom has “dated.”

  And the whole lot of them has had the honor of being The One for about ten minutes.

  Mom turns onto Cape Katherine Road. The Atlantic rises up on our left, flanked by rocks and gravelly beach. Early-afternoon sun spills coppery sparkles on its surface, and I take a few deep breaths. I’d like nothing better than to jump ship, streak down the beach, and throw myself under its waves, letting it roll over me. Let it have me for a few minutes, curling my body this way and that, transforming me into something free and weightless.

>   But I can’t do that.

  For one, it’s cold as hell this early in the summer.

  And whatever knot my mother’s woven herself into with He-Might-Be-The-One-Pete, I’m the only one here to untangle it.

  “Okay,” I say, pushing my hair out of my face. “Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. In the twelve days since I’ve been in Boston, you moved everything we own into a new house I’ve never seen to live with some guy I’ve never met?”

  “Oh, for god’s sake. You make it sound like I’m dragging you into some disease-ridden jungle. I’m telling you, you will love Pete’s house.”

  I don’t really give two shits about Pete’s house.

  I’m more concerned about Pete.

  Mom flips on the radio while I try to decide if I want to vomit, scream, or cry. I think it’s some awful combination of all three.

  “Mom, can we please talk about—​”

  “Oh, baby, hang on.” She turns up the volume on Cape Katie’s one and only radio show, hosted by Cape Katie’s one and only radio host, Bethany Butler. It’s on every morning and evening, and people call in and tell Bethany sob stories about their missing cat or how their coffee burned their taste buds off or something equally inane and irrelevant. Mom freaking loves it. She’s a total sucker for anything potentially tragic and unrelated to her own life.

  “You heard it here first, Cape Katians, so keep an eye out for Penny. She was last seen on East Beach . . .”

  “Who the hell is Penny?” I ask.

  “The Taylor family’s corgi!” Mom says, a hand pressed to her heart. “She got loose from Tamara while she was walking her on the beach, poor thing.”

  “. . . And remember, Penny is very skittish around men with red hair and—​”

  I flip off the radio. “Seriously, Mom? A corgi?”

  “It’s sad, that’s all I’m saying. They’ve had her for a decade. She’s older than Tamara.”

  “Yeah, cry me an effing river,” I mutter, looking out the window, the familiar sights of my town flashing past me in a blue-and-gray blur. “So do we still live on the cape, or are you just swinging by our old place for one last haul?”

  “Of course we live here, baby. Do you really think I’d take you away from your school and all your friends right before your senior year?”

  I choke down a derisive laugh. I’m not sure which is funnier: her comment about all my friends or the fact that my brain can’t possibly conjure up half the crap in my life that comes from being Maggie Glasser’s daughter. I would never think any of it. But it all seems to happen anyway.

  Chapter Two

  TEN MINUTES LATER, MOM PULLS INTO A FAMILIAR gravel driveway. It’s one I’ve seen a million times before. As kids, my best friend, Luca, and I used to fly over this winding, rocky path on our bikes until the trees split and revealed a little sliver of adventure right there at the edge of the world.

  “Mom, what are we doing here?” But she just grins as she throws the car in park and opens her door. “Mom.”

  “Stop being such a stick-in-the-mud, Gracie. Come on.”

  She climbs out and I follow, craning my neck up, up, up to the top of Cape Katie’s whitewashed lighthouse. A red-roofed bungalow sits below it, tucked into its side like a little secret.

  Mom comes to my side and slides her arm around my shoulder. The wind tangles her dirty-blond hair.

  “This is going to be so great,” she says.

  “What is going to be so great?”

  She giggles and gives my arm one more squeeze before practically skipping up the drive toward the house. I gulp briny air, willing the crashing ocean to swallow me whole.

  I shoulder my duffle and follow her to a small detached garage next to the side entrance of the house. The yawning door reveals stacks of open cardboard boxes, some of the contents draped over the sides. Glass beads, scraps of metal, and a soldering iron from Mom’s handcrafted jewelry business are spread over a large plastic table. I spot a pair of my sleep shorts—​black with neon-pink skulls—​puddled on the dirty cement floor, along with a few piano books.

  “I’ve done a bit, but we still have a lot of unpacking to do, baby,” Mom says, heaving a box overflowing with our decade-old towels into her arms. She chin-nods toward another box, but I fold my arms.

  “Are you for real? Mom, the last I heard, the lighthouse keeper was about a hundred and ten years old. Please tell me you’re not shacking up with Freddie Iker. His best friend is his parakeet.”

  She breaks into laughter, dropping the box in the process. Her tank-top strap slides off her shoulder as she guffaws, really throwing all she’s got into it. My mother’s laugh has always been infectious, clear, and light. I hate to crack even a hint of a smile at the stuff my mother finds funny, but most of the time I can’t help it.

  “Good lord. I’m not that old.” She pulls her hair into a sloppy bun on top of her head and picks up the box again. “Or that desperate.”

  My smile morphs into a massive eye roll. Over the years, Mom’s traipsed guys as young as twenty-one and as old as fifty-four through our many homes, so I’m not sure how to even begin to respond to that one.

  “Freddie retired and Pete took over last week. He’s got an electrical background and has some really innovative ideas for the museum. He even wants to incorporate some of my jewelry in time for next tourist season. Isn’t that something?”

  “It sure is.” I grab my sleep shorts and music books from the floor and tuck them under my arm. Not sure which is better. An old geezer who can’t even get it up or some starry-eyed electrician with ideas. Ideas are dangerous around my mother.

  I shade my eyes from the sun hanging just over the tree line and take in my surroundings. My new home. An SUV with peeling black paint on the hood is parked on the other side of the garage. It looks vaguely familiar, but considering there are dozens of these kinds of cars on the cape, that’s not too surprising.

  “Pete’s at some budget meeting in town, but I think Julian’s home,” Mom says, heading toward the main house. She sticks a key in the side door, and the hinges squeak as she nudges it open with her hip. Cool air rushes out to meet me.

  “Julian?”

  “Pete’s son. He’s a nice boy. I think he’s about your age.”

  And with that, she disappears into the house, leaving me open-mouthed in the doorway. This just keeps getting better and better. What’s next? Sharing a room with Pete’s mother? Maybe a lunatic ex-wife is bunking in the lighthouse tower who screams like a banshee at night and has to be chained to her bed. Hell, at this point, I’m waiting for Mom to tell me Pete’s actually a polygamist and she’s been chosen as a sister wife. I comb through the roster of my high school for a Julian, but I’ve got nothing.

  I follow Mom into a shabby-chic-styled kitchen with chrome-rimmed white appliances, white cabinets, and navy-blue curtains with red lobsters all over them framing the window above the sink. The living room is a mixture of our old leather recliner and scarred coffee table and a bunch of junk that looks like it just got dragged out of a frat house. There’s a plaid couch sporting a busted spring and duct tape, along with a TV the size of a car mounted over the fireplace. The only redeeming thing about the whole weird scene is the wall of windows revealing the sprawling blue ocean sparkling under the sun.

  We head down a narrow hallway. At the end, Mom opens a door next to the bathroom and gestures me inside with a flourish of her hand.

  “This is you. Isn’t it nice? So much natural light.”

  I enter the room, and it’s like walking into one of those dreams where everything seems familiar and foreign all at once. The space is square and small and white. My twin bed is shoved into the far corner under the wide window that’s also facing the ocean. White furniture, mine since I was four, is arranged smartly around the room. Mom has already spread my plum-colored sateen comforter that she found for half-price over the bed and filled my closet with my hanging clothes. The few books I own are stacked neatly on my li
ttle desk, and framed photos are displayed on the dresser. Sheer white curtains sway in the breeze from the open window. My eyes drift to the wall above my bed, taking in the framed print of a beautiful grand piano on the stage at Carnegie Hall, an empty auditorium lit by golden light and waiting to be filled with an audience, a pianist, music. Luca gave it to me for my birthday two years ago. Mom’s actually managed to hang it straight, no cracks in the glass or chips in the black wooden frame or anything.

  Aside from the stray things in the garage, Mom has worked on my room. My eyes burn a little, imagining her organizing my space before she even unpacked her own things.

  “So, Pete’s and my room is at the other end of the house, and Julian’s just across the hall,” she says. She peers anxiously at me, no doubt searching for signs of an impending explosion.

  And, oh, do I feel it brewing. Despite the homey feel, this is still a room I didn’t choose and never planned for. My throat feels tight from holding back all the eff-bombs I want to drop right now. Not that I usually rein them in too much in Mom’s presence, but she looks so damn hopeful. She’s trying really hard to make this a good thing.

  “Okay,” I say, as usual.

  “It’s going to be so lovely, baby,” she says. “I mean, it’s the lighthouse! I know you love this place and have always wanted to live right on the beach.”

  I nod, looking out my window at the rocks dotting the shore, angry waves spitting white foam all over their surfaces. She’s right. I used to love this lighthouse. It always seemed so magical when I was six or seven, but you can only hold your own mother’s hair back while she pukes up vodka so many times before you get a little disenchanted.

  “Oh!” Mom says so loudly, I startle. “With the move, I almost forgot.” She grins at me and digs into her back pocket, retrieving a folded rectangle of paper. She opens it up, her smile growing wider as she holds it out to me. “This is for you.”

  I take the wrinkled paper, almost scared to look at it. Because what now? As usual, when it comes to my mother, curiosity and hope nearly smother me. My eyes devour the writing.