How to Make a Wish

by Ashley Herring Blake

  Jay’s words filter through the snarls in my head. You never asked. And I didn’t. Not once. I didn’t bat a single eyelash when I dumped him. Guys before him? Ones I mess around with or went on one date with before blowing them off? They meant nothing to me.

  “No,” Eva says, her curls falling into her face as she shakes her head. “You’re you because of you.”

  “Eva. Our life is chaos. Please, just trust me on this.”

  “I’m not denying that. And it’s not like I couldn’t tell Maggie wasn’t your average mom, but . . .” She tosses her spoon into the jar and rubs her eyes with both hands. “I wish you would’ve told me.”

  “I didn’t want you to see me as some screwed-up girl. I didn’t want . . . I didn’t want to admit it all. It’s hard enough letting Luca into all of this, and I just wanted to be me when I was with you. Just Grace.”

  “I get that, but—​”

  “And you needed it. I know I should’ve told you, but Maggie really seemed to help you. I didn’t want to take that from you.”

  She doesn’t answer but takes my hand in hers, playing with my nails. I notice that hers are painted freshly purple. Maybe she did them herself, but I really doubt it. The color is Mom’s favorite—​that same sparkly aubergine from the first time I saw Maggie and Eva together at my own kitchen table.

  “Do you know the story of Swan Lake?” Eva asks quietly, her eyes on the ocean.

  “The ballet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Only what I know from playing Tchaikovsky and watching Black Swan.”

  She smiles, but it’s tight. “Well, this will seem totally normal to you, then.”

  I don’t say anything, and she takes a deep breath. “We danced Swan Lake for our spring show last year. I was Odette. Pissed off all the white girls, but I danced the hell out of that role. Wanted it so bad, wished for it every night, just to prove to them all that I could do it. Mom wasn’t even in on the casting. She said it wouldn’t be fair, but the other instructors picked me anyway. In the ballet, Odette is a princess and a sorcerer curses her so that during the day, she has to fly around as a swan, and only at night can she be herself. That’s how I feel now. Like there are these two sides of me—​the normal me, the before-Mom-died me, and then this sad little cursed thing. I wanted to be Odette more than anything, and I got my wish.”

  Tears form in her eyes, and they roll down her face undeterred. I sort of love this about her, how she simply lets them happen, lets the sadness have her for a few minutes. I always fight it, always feel like I’m breaking apart when the first tears bloom in my eyes.

  “Eva.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Okay. No, I’m not, but I want you to understand what’s been going on in my head about Maggie. She’s not fine either. We’re both cursed with this . . . this death hanging over everything we do. You know sometimes I go hours without thinking about it? About my mom? Hours. It doesn’t seem like that should be allowed. And then I remember and I feel so guilty. Because when I forgot, I felt happy.”

  “Your mom would want you to be happy.”

  “No, I know. I just . . . it happened so fast. I woke up one morning, thinking my mom would be in the hospital for a day or two and then things would go back to normal. By that night she was in the critical care unit, machines beeping and breathing for her. I’ll never forget how they sounded. How everything smelled. And then she was gone, and suddenly I was that sad little swan. The other me? Gone, too, just like that.” She snaps her fingers once. “And it’s like, around Maggie, I can be that sad little swan, and it feels . . . almost normal.”

  I inhale deeply through my nose and keep hold of her hand. Her words make sense—​at least, a sort of sense, but they also scare me. Because the way my mother has handled her grief is anything but healthy. Part of me wonders if Mom’s problems go beyond grief, beyond too much vodka and skeezy men, like Emmy said to Luca earlier. Maybe it’s some chemical thing in her brain, maybe not. I don’t know.

  “I get that,” I say. “But . . . can you see why it bothered me? Why Luca’s worried? Why I’m worried?”

  She nods, squeezing my hand tighter. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  “Well, I am. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I know.”

  We sit there for a while, the open air and this new clean space between us lacing us even tighter together.

  “So who are you when you’re with me?” I ask after a while. “When we’re together at night, are you the real you? The princess?”

  She smiles, bringing my hand to her lips, her breath playing over my knuckles as she speaks. “At first, yeah. But now . . . I don’t know. It feels like I can be both with you. Everything. You’re stable for me, Grace. You calm down my thoughts more than any coloring book.”

  I smile, relief that she thinks I’m good for her a palpable beat in my chest.

  “I’ve never felt like I fit anywhere,” she goes on. “With Mom, yeah, but that was it. I never felt at home in my ballet classes, even when my mom was the teacher. I loved dancing, but when someone thinks ballerina, they don’t picture me. They sure as hell don’t picture gay. They think white girl, plain and simple. Blue eyes, blond hair, stick-straight legs, with her arm looped around some lean-muscled guy’s bicep. My mom always told me it would be hard to make it as a dancer. I mean, it’s hard for anyone, but for a black girl?” She shakes her head. “But she never said impossible. Because she did it. She wasn’t famous, but she was happy. She accomplished what she wanted. She made me believe I could do it too. I fit inside her belief, you know what I mean? And after she died, I felt like a ghost, drifting through the air, trying to land so I could dance. So I could do anything. But now . . . I don’t know. These past couple of weeks have felt different. I do fit somewhere. Maybe I fit right here.”

  “Maybe you should move to the lighthouse.” I lean back and touch the whitewashed wall. “There’s room for at least one sleeping bag.”

  “Not here, the lighthouse, you silly doof.” She smiles and presses a single kiss to my palm. “Here, you.”

  “Oh.” I sound all breathy, like Eva’s words stole every sip of air from my lungs. “Wow, you know how to turn a girl’s head.”

  She laughs, but then she turns serious again. “And maybe I fit with Emmy and Luca, too. I know she cares about me.”

  “She really does, Eva.”

  “Yeah. I just . . . I know she didn’t mean to, but she’s my guardian now, so it’s like she’s automatically supposed to be this replacement for my mom. And I didn’t want that. I’ll never want that. Emmy can’t save me and I don’t want her to.”

  “Of course not.”

  “But . . . I told her I’d think about dancing.”

  I squeeze her hand. “Yeah?

  She nods, her eyes round with what can only be called fear. “I have an audition. For a dance education program.”

  I feel my own eyes widen. “What? Why didn’t you tell me? Where? When?”

  “NYU. It’s not until October. It was scheduled before everything happened with my mom and I . . . I don’t know.”

  “You’re thinking of not going?”

  She shrugs. “I want to. And I don’t.”

  “Eva. You have to do it.”

  “Like you have to do yours?”

  I blink at her. I never told her how conflicted I feel about my own audition, my own future. I guess I didn’t have to.

  Scooting closer, I lace our fingers together. “We shouldn’t have to feel guilty about being happy. Should we?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Do you feel guilty when you’re with me?”

  She rests her head on my shoulder, and her voice goes soft around the edges. “Sometimes, yeah. But not because of you. It’s just weird feeling happy about anything. But my mom would’ve loved you. Or maybe she does love you.”

  “Do you believe
in heaven? Or . . . I don’t know. Life after death?”

  She lifts her head, gaze fixed on the ocean. “It’s a nice thought. But, honestly? Not really. Still, I think I believe in something, because it doesn’t feel like Mom’s just . . . nothing, you know? It feels like she’s still here. Or maybe it’s just here.” She taps on her chest a few times. Even when her hand stills, she keeps it settled over her heart, her eyes on the black ocean pressed against the black sky.

  The briny wind clings to us, tossing our hair together, our scents, our breaths. I take the hand she has against her chest and link it with mine, transferring it to just above my own heart. I squeeze and she squeezes back. As it turns out, I’m starting to suspect that I can commit to someone, I can fall in love. At least I think I can, because I don’t believe someone incapable of love could feel as terrified and relieved and excited as I feel right now just sitting here, holding Eva’s hand.

  “I want you to know something,” I say to her as I pick up my own spoon and take a bite of peanut butter.

  “What?”

  A million butterflies zing through my stomach, but I need her to know because Jay never knew anything.

  “You’re . . . you’re really important to me,” I say, forcing my eyes on hers. “More important than any guy I’ve ever been with.”

  She tilts her head at me, a smile flashing across her mouth, there and then gone. “Because I’m a girl?”

  I shake my head. I know that’s not it. I mean, I love that she’s a girl. I love her smooth skin and the soft curves under my fingertips when we kiss, the way my mouth can slide from her lips to her neck with nothing to slow me down, but that’s only her body. I liked Jay’s body too, how his arms seemed to swallow me, the way he smelled, the flat plane of his chest where I would lay my head, that little V where his hips met his pelvis. I like it all in different ways and for different reasons. But those are just details for my hands and eyes. This—​this pull toward Eva—has nothing to do with what I can see or smell or touch. It’s something more, almost animal and instinctual, buried so deep inside my chest, I feel it like blood flowing through my veins.

  I’m not sure how to say all this. It’s all so overwhelming. Suddenly I feel shy, unsure, a fourteen-year-old me wondering if I can really take another girl’s hand.

  “Hey.” Eva squeezes my fingers and a small smile curls over my mouth—​I already am holding her hand.

  So I tell her the truth. “You’re important to me because you’re Eva.”

  Her smile widens. She grabs the neckline of my T-shirt and pulls me closer and closer until our mouths collide.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THE NEXT MORNING, I’M JOLTED AWAKE AT GOD KNOWS what time. I don’t have to work today, which means I can avoid Luca, and I sure as hell don’t want to wade through Chopin after staying up with Eva until nearly three a.m. the night before. I’d planned to sleep and sleep and then sleep some more.

  Hurricane Maggie has other plans.

  She blasts into my room, mascara streaks running down her cheeks, but her eyes are still rimmed in black, which makes me think she hasn’t washed her face in a couple days. I rub my own eyes, wondering if sleep is just clouding my vision. Nope. Her face is a mess, her hair stringy and greasy-looking, and her white tank top has a smear of something that looks like raspberry jam. She looks like absolute crap.

  “Get up,” she says, throwing my covers back.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We have to go.” She opens my closet and digs around, emerging with the empty boxes she unpacked only a couple weeks ago.

  “What? Why?” I slide off the bed, but I feel paralyzed as I watch her open my drawers and start throwing clothes in the boxes. This is all too familiar. The last time we lived with one of her boyfriends, she lasted three weeks and we hightailed it out of there in the middle of the night. I thought she’d last at least a month this time, especially since it’s pretty clear Pete isn’t a bad guy. Poor judgment, maybe, but not a bad guy.

  “We just do,” she says, pulling the sheets off my bed. “I’m not going to stay here another minute with someone who doesn’t trust me.”

  “Just hang on a second.” I grab her hand to stop her. “What happened?”

  “Pete’s a misogynistic ass, that’s what happened, and I—​”

  “Maggie.” Pete’s form fills my doorway, but he backs up a little when he sees me in nothing but a camisole and sleep shorts. “Sorry, Grace.”

  I wave him off, more concerned about what the eff is going on than what I’m wearing.

  “I didn’t say you had to leave,” Pete says from halfway in the hall.

  “Yes, you did,” Mom says. She keeps tossing my stuff into boxes.

  “No. I said things between us won’t work if you keep taking my money.”

  My heart plummets. “What? Mom, why—​”

  “I’m not having this discussion in front of my daughter,” Mom says, glaring daggers at Pete.

  “I think she needs to know why you’re dragging her away from yet another home.”

  “This isn’t a home,” Mom spits out. “This is a prison.”

  Pete’s face grows increasingly red, a sure sign he’s getting more and more pissed. “You took a grand from the safe in my closet, Maggie. A grand. I gave you that combination to store your own valuables, not steal mine. Did you expect me not to notice? Or to say it was fine? Whatever you need for your little project or birthday party or whatever that is you were up all night decorating for?” He throws a hand toward the living room.

  “What?” I say. “A thousand dollars? Jesus Christ, Mom. For a party?”

  She finally stops whirring around. “It’s important.”

  “It always is,” I say, a bite to my tone that makes her flinch. I push past her, and Pete moves out of my way as I all but stomp into the hall.

  And come to a very abrupt halt.

  The living room is decked out in all different shades of purple. A cluster of lavender and periwinkle and violet balloons surrounds the light fixture over the table. Little poms made out of tissue paper cover the floor and counter. Purple napkins fan out over the table, and a centerpiece of gorgeous roses blooms majestically from the center.

  Purple roses.

  A tray of amethyst-colored macarons sits near the stove. Mom’s apple muffins, dyed purple. Purple, purple, everywhere. On the kitchen counter, there’s a roll of foiled wrapping paper the color of grape jelly, a small white box next to it. I walk over, approaching even though there’s a loud voice in my head screaming at me to stop. But it’s like a car accident on the side of the road, I can’t stop rubbernecking. I flip the top off the box. Inside, it’s exactly what I expected. The necklace. My necklace. No, Eva’s necklace. Three triangular pieces of that beautiful aqua sea glass wrapped up in copper.

  I turn my back on the necklace and blink a few times, hoping the scene is different every time I open my eyes, but it never is. On my last attempt, I catch a swath of lilac stretching from one side of the living room windows to the other.

  Happy birthday, Eva. We love you.

  “Happy birthday, Eva. We love you,” I whisper, staring at the banner.

  “Gracie.” Mom comes up behind me and puts her hand on my back. I barely feel it.

  “Happy birthday, Eva. We love you?”

  “It was going to be a surprise,” Mom says.

  “Well, I’m definitely surprised. I didn’t even know it was . . .” I whirl to face her. Because maybe that’s it. Maybe she screwed up Eva’s birthday too, and that’s why I didn’t even know about this. She’s throwing this whole shindig for Eva, and it’s the wrong day. It has to be. The thought settles in, filling me with this sort of sweet, cool relief, but then it turns acidic. Because how effed up is that? Hoping my mother once again can’t keep dates straight in her head. Hoping she’s wrong, messed up, flighty, and flaky, because if she isn’t, what does that mean? That she remembers for Eva, but not for me? That my girlfriend didn’t tel
l me about her own birthday?

  And all this—​all this purple—​was bought with Pete’s money. Was stolen.

  “Is her birthday today?” I ask.

  Mom nods. “And I know you two are close. I wanted to talk to you about helping me get her here. Maybe Luca and Emmy too. It was going to be a quiet thing. You know, after your dad died, I didn’t celebrate my birthday for years. Just pretended it was any other day . . .”

  Her voice drifts off as she runs her eyes over the beautiful world she’s made. It does look lovely. All the shades of color. My mother is creative and organized and driven when she decides to be.

  “But,” she says, sighing, “it won’t happen now because Pete has his panties in a wad.”

  “Come on, Maggie,” Pete says from the hallway. “That’s not fair. You can’t tell me this is how normal relationships are supposed to go. You don’t steal.”

  “For the millionth time, I wasn’t stealing—​”

  “Call it whatever you want, sugar. You took my money without asking.” He glances at me, his expression softening. “I’m sorry, Grace. Y’all can stay here until you find a place. Long as it takes. But me and your mother . . . it’s not going to work.”

  I nod, grateful for the stay of execution, but Mom’s having none of it.

  “Oh, no,” she says, waving her arms around before snatching up the box with the necklace in it and stuffing it into her pocket. “We’re leaving today. This minute, in fact. Grace, go finish packing.”

  “What? Where the hell are we going to go?”

  “Just do it, baby.”

  Pete runs a hand over the back of his neck. “This is ridiculous. Grace, you can stay here if you need to, all right?”