How to Make a Wish

by Ashley Herring Blake

“Thank you,” Emmy says before resting her hand on Eva’s shoulder. “Everything okay today?”

  Eva immediately stiffens. It’s subtle, but I definitely notice her rolling that shoulder back a little, dislodging Emmy’s hand. “Yeah, fine.”

  “Good.” Emmy’s hand drops, her mouth smashing into a straight line. She watches Eva stack up her receipts for a few seconds before shifting her gaze to me. “Grace, before you learn the POS, can you come to the kitchen and get this tray of muffins for me?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I throw Luca a glance as he rounds the counter to attend to a new three-top. He just tousles my hair as he passes me.

  I follow Emmy into the kitchen, where a couple of gleaming silver trays full of fresh raspberry muffins sit on the prep counter, waiting to be piled into the pastry case near the register. Malcolm and Kaye, Emmy’s cooks, are busy at the stoves grilling sausages and prepping fries for lunch.

  “These smell amazing,” I say as I take a tray from Emmy.

  “Thank you. You’re welcome to one on your break.”

  I nod and head for the dining room, the tray heavy on my forearms.

  “How does Eva seem to you?” Emmy asks before I reach the swinging doors. I freeze, then turn around slowly, meeting her worried gaze. Heaving a deep breath, I walk back over to her and set down the tray. Before I respond, I try to gather my thoughts, wondering if Emmy’s hunting for evidence of Eva’s midnight escapades.

  I finally settle for “She seems okay. I mean, I know she’s sad, but she’s . . . I don’t know. Coping, I guess? I just met her, but yeah. She seems okay.”

  Emmy’s shoulders descend a little. “Good. That’s good. Luca told me you two spent some time together at the bonfire. She barely speaks to me. At least, nothing more than a curt sentence or two, so I’m glad to hear she’s talking to you. I arranged for her to join a dance company in Sugar Lake, take a few lessons. It’s not New York, but it’s something. But she refuses to go.”

  “Well, from what she told me . . .”

  Emmy tilts her head when I hesitate. “What did she say?”

  “She just doesn’t seem like she wants to do ballet right now.”

  Emmy presses her mouth flat. “I know she doesn’t, honey, but ballet was her life. Like you and piano. Can you imagine giving it up? And at a time like this, when she needs as much normal as possible?”

  I’m not sure what to say because, no, I can’t imagine ever giving up piano. It keeps my feet on the ground, my heart in my chest. But I can imagine giving up a dream, settling for some other form of piano because there’s no other choice. Like Eva said, sometimes it’s not a matter of want.

  “I just want to take care of her,” Emmy says, looking down, her hands worrying at her apron strings.

  I reach out and squeeze her arm. Emmy’s the sweetest woman on the planet. Hands down. She’s saved my ass multiple times, slipping a twenty into my jacket pocket every now and then when I’ve been hanging out at their house. I never find it until I get home—​she knows I’d never accept it if she just handed it to me—​but she always seems to know exactly when I need it.

  “And how are you, sweetheart?” she asks before I can say anything else about Eva. “The lighthouse working out okay?”

  That question has way too many possible answers so I stick to my usual. “Everything’s fine.”

  Emmy narrows her eyes at me. She’s nearly impossible to bullshit, but she lets me off the hook and offers a tiny smile. “Well. Strawberry-rhubarb pie won’t bake itself. Let’s get back to work, shall we?”

  I nod and watch her pull cartons of strawberries and long stalks of rhubarb from the refrigerator. I grab the muffins and join Eva at the register. While I unload them into the pastry case, she starts her spiel about the POS and I half listen, wondering about Emmy’s eager concern and the obvious tension between the two of them. Wondering about that aqua sea-glass necklace forming under my mother’s hands at home.

  But underneath all of that, there’s something else. This pull to Eva. Loneliness to loneliness. Like to like. Missing mother to missing mother. Wish to wish.

  For the rest of our shift, she keeps catching my eye. I keep catching hers. And every time she smiles that little smile—​a little hint of the girl on top of that lighthouse—​it makes me smile back.

  Chapter Fourteen

  AFTER A FEW GRUELING HOURS WITH FRéDéRIC CHOPIN at the Book Nook’s piano, I walk into the house to the sound of voices.

  Soft female voices.

  And something that smells like puke. At first, I wonder if it’s me because I went straight from LuMac’s to the bookstore. But no, I smell like onion rings, which is decidedly different from puke.

  I follow the voices through the kitchen, half expecting to find a pool of vomit somewhere that I’m going to have to clean up. But then there’s Mom, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, seated at the dining table, a dish of something drenched in cheese and slightly green-colored steaming in front of her. Hence the puke smell.

  And Eva is sitting right next to her.

  Hence the female voices.

  “. . . You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Mom is saying, her voice a little teary-sounding. “Everything is different now.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to do ballet,” Eva says, flicking the tab on a can of Diet Dr. Pepper. “I miss it a lot. I just . . . feel like I physically can’t do it.”

  Mom nods. “Emmy’s never lost anyone the way we have, baby. If giving up ballet gets you through the day, then give up ballet.”

  Her words fit all wrong on my ears. I’m about to take a step back into the kitchen when Mom glances up.

  “Hi, baby.” She says it happily, but she wipes under eyes like she’s also been crying at some point. Eva smiles, her eyes a little watery-looking too. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Piano.”

  “Oh good, you found one!”

  “I did. What’s going on?”

  “We’re just waiting for Pete and Julian to get home. I ran into Eva at the Trading Post when I was picking up some groceries and invited her for dinner. We’ve just been having a little girl time.” Mom winks at Eva. “Haven’t we, hon?”

  Eva nods. She wraps her hand around her soda can and crinkles the aluminum. “Much needed. Join us, Grace.”

  I can’t answer her because my eyes are glued to her nails, which are painted a fresh eggplant purple. They’re glittery and super shiny, glossed in my mother’s favorite hue, the bottle she only takes out for special occasions, like first dates or that one time she actually made it to one of my piano recitals before it was halfway over.

  “Girl time,” I deadpan. Approaching the table, my fingers dig into the strap of my bag, and I let my gaze pass right over what I see now is my brand-new bottle of top coat, to stare at Eva. She looks peaceful and relaxed, if a little tired, nothing like she did when she shook off Emmy’s touch earlier.

  Eva tilts her head at me, her smile faltering. I try to cover up whatever expression is on my face right now, but I can’t muster up the barest hint of a smile. Instead, I look away from her and peer down at the green concoction in a casserole dish.

  “You cooked?” I ask Mom. “What is that?”

  She beams. “It’s lasagna verde.”

  “I don’t think that’s a thing.”

  Eva laughs. “Oh, come on, you’re going to love it. It smells great, Mags.”

  Mags?

  “It smells like vomit,” I say.

  Mom flinches and her smile flips upside down, but I don’t say anything. I can’t. Because if I open my mouth right now, I’ll scream like a banshee and scare our nearest neighbor a half mile down the beach. Without a word, I turn around and walk out the door.

  When I was a kid, my mom and I used to take these midnight walks. She had nightmares a lot, so she’d wake me up—​school the next day be damned—​and take my hand, and we’d walk on the beach or the bike path, circling the cape until I could barely keep my eye
s open and she’d have to carry me home. She’d smoke cigarettes, and I’d always wait for her to start talking about my dad. His favorite color. How they met. What kind of music he liked.

  Anything.

  But she’d never say a word.

  We’d just walk, hand in hand.

  Now I walk too. I’m not sure for how long. A couple hours at least because the sun starts to set when I’m on the beach and the day gets swallowed up by an inky black when I’m on the bike path. It takes me that long to suss out why I’m so mad, who I’m mad at, if I’m mad at all or just tired.

  My feet pound the pavement as I spill off the path and onto the sidewalk of a residential neighborhood about a mile from LuMac’s. I’m stomping and my skin feels buzzy, a familiar sensation that catapulted me off of Colin McCormick’s balcony. I stop, my hands on my hips as I try to figure out what I want to do. What I need to do. Not a year from now, not at my Manhattan audition, not next week. Now. Because right now, I can feel myself coming out of my skin, sloughing off Grace the girl to make more room for Grace the caretaker, the worrier, the fixer. The hopeless nitwit who thinks some new girl showing up in her life means possibility, when really all it means is more damn worrying.

  A flash to my left draws my attention. I turn my head just in time to catch the flicker of the outside light blinking off on Mrs. Latham’s porch. Her tiny gray house is impeccably maintained, her prized beach gnomes spread across her pristine yard in various states of leisure and, if you ask me, ridiculousness. They’re each about the size of a cat, and Mrs. Latham loves those damn things. Mrs. Latham has also despised Luca and me ever since we were twelve and used to share a paper route. Luca hurled a rolled-up Cape Katherine Chronicle onto her porch with a little more vigor than necessary, and it tipped over a potted begonia or azalea or who-the-hell-cares-what, which knocked over one of her gnomes and busted his bulbous nose. She got so mad and yelled so loudly, Luca actually cried. Since then every time she ventures into public, she glares daggers at us, and we vow afresh to one day rearrange those gnomes into compromising positions.

  But we’ve never done it, because it’s completely immature and stupid.

  I laugh softly, taking out my phone and tapping on Luca’s name. He answers almost immediately, and my lungs open up, that pent-up, antsy feeling slowing down into a steady heartbeat.

  I could use a little immature and stupid right now.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE NIGHT AIR IS COOL AND CRISP, THE USUAL HINT OF sea salt in every curl of wind. I wait under LuMac’s aqua-blue-and-white awning for Luca, my adrenaline kicking up a notch with every second that passes, but this is the good kind of anticipation, one full of excitement rather than dread.

  “Gray.”

  I turn toward Luca’s voice, the grin on my face fading when I see he’s not alone. Kimber smiles at me, her long hair tied into a low ponytail.

  And Eva is right behind them.

  “Hi, Grace,” Kimber says, her yoga pants clinging perfectly to her thighs.

  “Uh, hi.”

  Luca bumps my shoulder. “I can’t believe we’re actually doing this.”

  I grunt acknowledgment, but my attention is on Eva. She’s staring right back at me, a million questions in her eyes.

  “What exactly are we doing again?” Kimber asks as Luca slips his hand into hers. She leans against him. Definitely a familiar, we’ve-made-out kind of lean, which means Luca must really like this girl. He talks a big game, but he’s a total sap when it comes to girls and he’s never hooked up with someone for only a night. Aside from a round or two of spin the bottle, Luca’s only ever kissed girls he’s actually dating. Now, he may only date her for a week, but, dammit, he makes sure she knows his noble intentions before he plants one on her.

  “We’re going to make it look like beach gnomes are doing the nasty,” Luca says casually, like we’re talking about watching a movie or something.

  “Why?” Kimber tilts her head at me, her gaze curious.

  “Why not?” I say.

  “That’s not really a reason.”

  “Do you need a reason for everything?”

  “Usually, yeah. Especially if it involves handling someone else’s property without their permission.”

  I feel my eyes narrow into slits. “You don’t have to do it, Kimber. I called Luca. Not—​”

  “All righty, then,” Luca says, slinging an arm around Kimber’s shoulders. “It’s just something Grace and I have joked about doing for the past few years.” He proceeds to tell her about our paper route and Mrs. Latham’s subsequent eye daggers. I watch Kimber as Luca talks. She watches me back. We’ve always gotten along in the past, working together last summer and sharing some classes. Back in ninth grade, she even lent me a pair of sneakers for gym for about a month when my own got so ratty that the soles nearly disintegrated during a rousing game of four square. I wouldn’t call us friends. I wouldn’t call us not friends, either. But now she’s looking at me like she’s not quite sure who the hell I am or why her brand-new boyfriend is friends with me.

  “Sounds like Mrs. Latham has one too many well-behaved beach gnomes,” Eva says. “I say let’s do this.” She meets my gaze for a split second before I flick mine away.

  “Fine,” Kimber says. “But if we get arrested, I’m claiming hypnosis.”

  “Because that’s believable,” I mutter. Luca elbows me in the ribs, and not very gently, either.

  We make our way down the sidewalk toward Mrs. Latham’s neighborhood. Luca and Kimber walk in front, hands linked and whispering.

  “Why did you leave like that?” Eva asks. We walk side by side, but I keep my eyes on Kimber’s ass. That is, until I realize I’m accidentally staring at Kimber’s ass, then I shift my gaze to Luca’s curly head.

  “Leave like what?”

  “You pretty much bit your mom’s head off for making lasagna, and then you stormed out.”

  I keep walking, keep staring at Luca’s hair, which now has Kimber’s hand twined into it. I have no idea how to answer Eva. To answer her is to explain. And to explain is to become a kind of sad story you see on Lifetime movies.

  “What were you doing there?” I ask instead.

  “I ran into your mom at the store, like she said. And then . . .” Her voice fades and I dare a glance. She blinks into the night air and stuffs her hands into her pocket. “I was having a shitty day, okay? And we started talking, and your mom . . . I don’t know. She seemed like—​”

  “Like she’d do anything to make you feel better?”

  Eva swings her eyes to mine. “Yeah.”

  I nod. I get that. I live that every single day. New York City itineraries to soothe the sting of a new move and an asshole ex-boyfriend, promises of beautiful necklaces, early-morning cuddles that make me forget she ever disappeared on me for those few days back when I was thirteen.

  “And I was sort of hoping to see you,” Eva says, her voice as quiet and full as the night around us.

  All thoughts of Eva and Mom fizzle from my thoughts. Now there’s only Eva. Maybe even Eva and Grace.

  “Okay, what’s our plan of attack?” Luca asks, yanking my attention toward him. Mrs. Latham’s house comes up on our right, all the windows dark and shuttered. I breathe deeply and look around, gauging the rest of the neighborhood, but all is quiet and sleepy.

  “I say we partner off,” Eva says, her voice now steady and sure. “And then, you know, just position them and go. I mean, right? No other way to do it, really.”

  “Sounds good,” Luca says, taking Kimber’s hand and crossing the street, his shoulders all hunched over like he’s in some spy movie.

  “Guess that leaves you and me,” Eva says.

  “I guess it does.” I hear the flirting lilt to my voice and, honestly, I sort of love it.

  “Meet back at LuMac’s?” Luca asks when I join him and Kimber behind a juniper bush at the edge of the sidewalk.

  I nod as Eva comes up behind me. “Wow,” she whispers, pee
king around the bush at Mrs. Latham’s yard. “Looks like a bunch of Lord of the Rings characters got together for a luau.”

  Luca snorts a laugh. Then he squares his shoulders, his eyes meeting mine for a splinter of a second before they dart away. “This luau’s about to get kinky. Ready?”

  Kimber starts giggling, and he presses their joined hands to her mouth playfully, which only makes her giggle harder.

  “Set?” he goes on, biting back his own laugh.

  Eva slips her hand into mine. I don’t hold hands a lot, not even with people I’m dating. I hated that twining, enclosed feel, like Jay or whoever was trying to wrangle me into submission. So when Eva’s fingers glide in between mine, I mean to pull back. Really, I do, but there’s this little zing that slides up my arm and then down into my stomach. It’d be rude to just wrench my hand away. Not only rude, but also directly in contrast to what I actually want.

  Kimber’s eyes flick down to our joined hands, her brow furrowed, before she links her arm with Luca’s and looks back toward the lawn. I feel myself flush hot. Instinct kicks in and this time I do try to pull away, but Eva’s hand tightens on mine. I heave a deep breath, almost glad she’s making me stay put.

  “Go!” Luca whisper-yells before I can think any more about the fingers linked with mine or what Kimber thinks about it or what it means.

  The four of us bolt into the yard. I run straight for three gnomes under a ceramic palm tree that seem like easy targets. Eva’s hand is still in mine, her long legs slowing to keep pace with my five-foot-four frame. When we hit the gnomes’ pine straw bed, we separate, and she aims for some limboing gnomes nearby. The house is still dark, the only light a faint, orangey glow from the streetlights. My heart pounds as I take one gnome who is for real bending over with a pink shovel in his hands like he’s digging in the sand, and position him in front of another gnome who appears to be snuggling with a pineapple. I snort a half-terrified, half-hysterical laugh under my breath.

  Suddenly, a loud, splintering sound echoes through the silence, as though two gnomes collided and the outcome was gory. Luca curses and the house lights up like a million suns. Floodlights pour gold through every part of the yard. I’m so surprised—​not to mention temporarily blinded—​that I lurch backwards, tripping over my own feet and sprawling on the dewy grass.