How to Make a Wish

by Ashley Herring Blake

  Luca tries to bring it up every now and then—​like now, when he knows I’m in a situation that’s less appealing to me than a Brazilian wax—​but I always shut him down. I can’t leave her. She’s my mom; I’m her kid. We belong together. I start to tell him this, to tell him about the New York audition trip and how she organized my lighthouse room and managed not to break anything, but even in my head, it sounds like an excuse.

  “Okay, fine,” Luca says. “I’m training the new girl in an hour, but I’m done at six and then I’m coming over, no arguments.”

  “You don’t have to do that—​wait. What? What new girl?”

  “She’s—​”

  “Luca, dammit, I needed that job.” We’d talked about this before I left for Boston. Mom’s online jewelry shop and occasional waitressing jobs are spotty at best. She still gets survivor benefits from the military every month, but it’s not enough. She has a little from my dad’s personal life insurance too, but again it barely covers our food, much less my lessons with Mr. Wheeler, my piano instructor. Consequently, I’ve had some sort of job since my age hit double digits.

  “Claws in, cat,” Luca says. “You know you’ve always got a job here if you want it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. You’re golden. Just hide your tips in a safe place, if you catch my drift.”

  “Do I ever miss your drift?”

  He grunts acknowledgment, knowing he’s got a point. Mom’s been known to . . . borrow from me, rooting through my room in whatever dump we’re living in until she finds a twenty or two. Sometimes it goes toward a phone bill, a meal. Sometimes it doesn’t.

  “Besides,” he says as I pull a loose piece of wicker off my bike’s basket, “it’s Eva.”

  “Who’s Eva?”

  He pauses and takes a deep breath. “Eva Brighton? She’s my mom’s friend’s daughter. Remember?”

  My stomach plummets to my feet. “Oh, crap. I’m sorry, I totally forgot.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. God, I suck, Luca.”

  “Stop. You have a few things on your mind.”

  I nod, even though he can’t see me, but dammit. Hurricane Maggie strikes again, obliterating everything in my life but her. About a month ago, Emmy’s childhood friend Dani Brighton, who lived in Brooklyn with her daughter, died suddenly. She taught ballet at a fancy company in the city, and during a practice, her appendix ruptured. After surgery, everything seemed fine, but then she got some infection they couldn’t get under control. She died a week later. Emmy was devastated. Still is, I would assume. Plus, she not only lost her friend; she gained a daughter. Emmy and Dani only talked sporadically over the past several years, so when a lawyer contacted her and reminded her that she’d agreed to be Eva’s guardian years before, Emmy was thrown for a major loop.

  “Dani never got married,” Luca told me when it first happened. We were at LuMac’s sharing a plate of pizza fries while Luca pretended to roll silverware.

  “Did they contact Eva’s dad, though?” I asked.

  He broke a long string of cheese and wound it into his mouth. “Can’t really contact a guy whose name you don’t know.”

  “Oh.”

  “Actually, I think Eva knows his name, but there’s nothing to legally bind them. The only thing on her birth certificate is ‘father unknown.’”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  Right before I left for Boston, the Michaelsons launched into full panic mode getting ready for Eva to come, transforming what was once Macon’s bedroom-turned-storage room into an inhabitable bedroom. Emmy was a total mess, reading through her old self-help books on grief and mourning and healing. It made Luca nervous as hell. Since their dad left, he and his older brother, Macon, have been super protective of Emmy.

  And, of course, I forgot all about this huge change in my best friend’s life, because I’m me.

  “How’s it going with Eva?” I ask now. “Is she . . . okay?”

  “Hard to tell. She just got here last week, but so far she’s pretty quiet. Stays in her room mostly.”

  “Weird. You, like, have a sister. Sort of.”

  “You’re my sister. And Eva’s kind of hot, which makes drumming up any sisterly feelings really hard.”

  “What the hell? Are you saying I’m not hot, Luca?” I ask, a teasing lilt to my voice.

  “Gross.”

  I smile and walk the bike around the side of the garage before flipping out the kickstand. I look back toward the house, torn between wanting to go back inside and fix this mess with Mom—​if it’s even fixable—​and needing to get as far away as possible.

  “So I can come over when my shift’s done?” Luca asks.

  “You don’t have to. Mom wants a ‘family dinner,’ god help us all.”

  “With Jay Lanier?”

  “Will you stop saying his name?”

  “He’s your roommate.”

  “I swear to god, Luca Michaelson, if you laugh right now, I will shave your head with a cheese grater while you sleep.”

  Luca gasps dramatically, and I can picture him clutching his beloved locks. “Look, Gray, I know this sucks. Just let me come over. Your mom loves me—​”

  “Mom loves anyone with a generous helping of testosterone.”

  “—​and I’ll bring pizza fries and Cherry Coke.”

  I sigh into the phone. Normally, I wouldn’t let even Luca near one of our residences right after Mom and I crash into it, especially with a Pete involved. But this time, there’s a Jay thrown in for good measure, and I’d be lying if I said the thought of him existing a few feet from my bed didn’t make me want to curl into an itty-bitty ball. But really, it’s not only Jay. Jay is a minor annoyance. Jay is the growl of a much larger beast.

  “Okay, but if it gets too weird, you can leave at any time,” I say.

  “Right.”

  “Hey, set me up with pizza fries and a Cherry Coke, and I don’t really care if I ever see you again.”

  He laughs. “You couldn’t live without me, Grace. You know it.”

  I laugh back and hang up, although he’s sort of right on that one. I know a lot of people on this godforsaken waste of space and a lot of people know me.

  But no one really knows me.

  For a while I was pretty much a sugar-and-spice kind of girl. I’ve had a handful of friends here and there, but with the ebb and flow of my existence, it was easier to keep my world as small as possible. Less explaining. Less lying to cover up why I’d moved again. Less worrying about what totally messed-up situation I’d encounter when I brought a friend home. Sure, Mom’s not always a mess. She has her good days. Good months, even. I just never know when a good day is going to turn to total crap.

  Chapter Five

  I SHOULDER MY BAG AND HEAD TOWARD THE SHORT walkway that leads down to the beach. It’s low tide and naked rocks pebble the sand on either side of me, the ocean spitting and spinning just ahead. The water is almost the exact same shade of blue as the sky, the two pressing together like a kiss. I kick off my flip-flops, leaving them near the dunes, and start walking.

  The sand is cool between my toes, and the briny air opens up my lungs a little. The rolling hush-hush of the ocean and the yawning expanse of the sky open up something else in me too. I kick at the ground, sending puffs of off-white into the air. The wind seems just as angry as I am, flinging the sand around, and I kick at the earth again. And again and again until I’m walking through a sandstorm.

  My eyes start to feel gritty and my knees wobbly, so I finally slow and sit down, folding my legs underneath me. I dig through my bag and pull out the wrinkled, torn-in-one-corner picture of my parents I always carry with me. My father is tall and handsome and refined in his uniform. My mother is smiling and bright-eyed, her perfectly purple-painted nails resting gently on her pregnant stomach. Luca’s caught me staring at this photo a few times. Usually he doesn’t say anything, just offers a shoulder squeeze or one of
his annoying-as-hell noogies.

  But I don’t really stare at this picture because of my dead father. He was killed in Afghanistan when I was two, so I never really knew him. No. I pore over this picture because of the woman. Maggie Glasser. Same name as my mother. Same face. Same long fingers. But everything else is different. Her hair isn’t dull and stringy-looking but shines like spun gold. Her eyes aren’t ringed with lack of sleep and sadness and booze; her shirt doesn’t droop on her shoulders as if from a clothes hanger.

  Both people in this picture are total strangers.

  And it pisses me off to no end.

  I stuff the picture back in my bag and tamp down the maddening crawl of tears up my throat. I’m wrenching the zipper closed when I hear something that sounds like a sob. It takes me a few seconds to realize it’s not coming from me.

  About twenty feet away, there’s a girl sitting in the sand. Her back is to me, but I can tell she’s curled into a ball, her knees tucked to her chest as she huddles against the wind. The current laps over the shore, and her slouchy white T-shirt is dotted with salt water. Her hair is a halo of black spirals around her head, her skin a warm brown. From where I am, I can see her shoulders moving up and down—​she’s definitely crying—​and her left arm jerks here and there like she’s fiddling with something in the sand.

  I stand and take a step closer to get a better view of what she’s doing. There’s a jar of peanut butter next to her, silver spoon jutting out from the top. Every now and then, she reaches over and scoops up a bite, sucking on the spoon through her sobs.

  I watch her, totally transfixed by how the wind keeps picking up locks of her hair and tossing them around before setting them back down. She wipes her face before digging into the peanut butter again, her left hand still sweeping over whatever she’s focused on in the sand.

  After a couple minutes, I pick up my bag and start walking toward the lighthouse. Time to check on Mom. Time to deal with Jay. Maybe work in a little daydream about the New York trip in between all the real-life suckage.

  But then I hear that sob again—​deep and almost free sounding, like it’s a relief to let it loose—​and it makes me stop. It makes me turn back around and find the girl in the sand, who’s now standing and facing the ocean with her bare feet in the freezing water, her peanut butter jar and what looks like a large square-shaped book clutched to her chest. I can see her profile now, and tears stream down her face.

  That’s when it hits me.

  This is Eva.

  Luca’s Eva. Emmy’s Eva. Just-lost-her-mom Eva. There’s a picture of Dani Brighton and her daughter on the bookshelf in Emmy’s living room that I’ve seen at least a hundred times. In the photo, Eva’s around thirteen or so, middle school lanky with a mouthful of metal, but it’s definitely the same girl standing on the beach now. Same lean frame and sleek cheekbones and wild, curling hair.

  I should leave. God knows, when I’m upset enough to actually let some tears leak out, I want to be left the hell alone. But something makes me hesitate and take a few steps closer to her. That something might be the fact that my best friend would stare me down with his big disappointed puppy-dog eyes if he knew I left Eva out here, alone and crying, without so much as a howdy-do.

  Or that something might be that I’m curious. That I don’t want to go check on Mom. That I feel miserable right now and misery loves company or whatever the hell. That something might be a lot of different somethings, but either way, my feet carve through the gravelly sand, weaving in between the sharp rocks until I’m just a couple of steps behind her.

  “Hey,” I say, reaching out at the same time to tap her elbow. My voice and my touch are as soft as I can make them, but she still startles, actually coming off the ground a bit as she whirls around. Everything in her arms tumbles onto the wet sand.

  “Crap, sorry,” I say, bending down to pick up her stuff. There’s the open peanut butter jar, a spoon, a pack of colored pencils, and one of those grown-up coloring books titled Lost Ocean, all of which is now partially covered in the real-live ocean.

  “It’s okay,” she says as she kneels to help me. Her voice sounds clogged, and the tears keep coming. She doesn’t even fight them back, just lets them have their way.

  “Were you actually trying to color out here?” I ask, handing her the book. “It’s windy as hell and you were sort of sitting . . .” I gesture to the waves lapping closer as the tide rolls in.

  “Yeah, it’s a policy of mine to only color in really precarious places.”

  “Really?”

  She laughs, a watery chuckle. “No, not really.”

  We both stand, and I see now she’s a little taller than me and slender. Her T-shirt hangs off her shoulders, neon-green bra blazing through the thin cotton, and her skinny jeans are wet to the knees.

  “Well, this is unfortunate,” she says, peering into her jar of peanut butter. Specks of sand dot the gooey surface almost entirely.

  “The hazards of a New England beach,” I say. “The sand and the wind have wills of their own.”

  “I see that.” She scoops up a spoonful and lets it hover near her mouth. “Can’t be much different than the crunchy version, right?”

  “Oh sure, just a little more protein.”

  Her light-brown, amber-flecked eyes rest on mine, grinning through a sheen of leftover tears. She opens her mouth, resting the spoon on her bottom lip. I watch her, sure she’s going to pull away at any moment. There are even a few short strings of seaweed stuck in the peanut butter, for god’s sake.

  When she starts to close her top lip, I can’t take it anymore. I yank the spoon from her mouth, and it plunks into the sand.

  “Hey, now,” she says firmly, but she’s half laughing.

  “I could not in good conscience let you eat that. There is such a thing as marine bacteria, you know.”

  “You could’ve just said Stop. You pretty much hit me.” She rubs at her wrist, but she’s still sort of smiling. There’s a hint of relief underneath, like she’s happy to be joking around and distracted from those tears. Or maybe that’s just me.

  “Desperate times,” I say. “Suck it up.”

  “You’re a little bit prickly, you know that?”

  “Better prickly than infected with a tapeworm.”

  “I see your point. Still, one can’t discount the importance of new experiences.”

  “Oh, god,” I say, picking up the spoon and holding on to it. “You’re not one of those people with carpe diem tattooed on your ass, are you?”

  She lifts her brows. “No, but now I’m feeling inspired.”

  We both laugh while she wipes away the last bit of salt from her cheeks. I watch her put all of her stuff into her messenger bag, sand and all. Her slender arms flex with lean muscle, her collarbone delicate under her skin. Both ears are lined with tiny hoops and studs. Every movement graceful and intentional.

  It’s a good fifteen seconds before I realize she’s done packing up and is watching me, too. We’re pretty much staring at each other like dumbasses. I clear my throat and run both hands over my hair, which the wind has whipped into a fine frenzy. She follows my movements, then reaches out and catches one of my hands. I’m about to yank it back when her thumb smooths over the lacquered polish of my middle finger. Then my forefinger, followed by my ring finger and pinkie and thumb. Each nail is expertly painted a different shade of purple, from eggplant to lavender.

  “Why different colors?” she asks, still gliding her fingers over mine.

  I pull my hand back, swallowing hard. I run my own thumb over a few nails, assigning a wish to each one, before tucking my hands behind me, spoon still in my grip.

  “Ah, a secret,” she says, offering a tiny lopsided smile. “I get it.”

  “It’s not a secret.” I can’t keep the edge from slipping into my voice. “It’s just not your business.”

  She nods, her expression unreadable. “Right. Weirdo stranger coloring intricate ocean scenes on the beach and eating
sandy peanut butter doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Okay, well, I’m Eva. Eva Brighton. Now I’m not a stranger anymore. Weirdo, maybe, but not a stranger.”

  I inhale some briny air. I don’t want to talk about my nails or purple or anything remotely associated with my mother.

  “I know who you are,” I say, tossing the focus back on her. “I’m Grace.”

  Her eyes widen. “Well, isn’t that the icing on the proverbial cake.”

  “Huh?”

  She laughs, but it’s got an exhausted edge to it, and a few more tears trickle out of her eyes. She wipes them away, but not like she’s embarrassed by them. More like they’re simply in her way. “You’re Luca’s best friend. Great first impression, right? Unhinged new girl with her coloring books and sand fetish. Jesus.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  She nods but continues to look everywhere but at me. “You live here?”

  I follow her gaze toward the lighthouse, my breath sticking in my chest. Such a loaded word—​live. It could simply mean existing. Heart pumping blood, lungs taking in air. Or it could mean settling into something. Being a part of what’s around you. Investing.

  “For now,” I say.

  “For now,” she echoes softly. Her gaze shifts toward me, and I find myself staring again. Her face warrants it, familiar and new all at once. Pretty. I force my eyes away.

  “I should go,” I say.

  “Me too.”

  I hitch my bag higher up on my shoulder and start to tell her goodbye when she reaches out and swipes a finger down my cheek. Her touch scrapes my skin, both gentle and rough. I step away from her, ready to unleash a few colorful words about her scratching me, but she holds up her finger, smudged with a tiny dollop of wet sand.

  Then she sticks her finger in her mouth. My eyes widen and laughter bursts out of both of us so hard, I feel the sting of tears under my eyelids.

  “Oh my god,” I say, trying to breathe normally.