Wish Girl

by Nikki Loftin

  Had I hurt her that bad?

  But when she saw it was me, she mustered a smile. “Hey, Peter,” she said. “Come to say good-bye?”

  She was leaving. “No, I came to—” I stopped. To help you run away, I wanted to say. But now . . . it was too late. “To apologize,” I finished. “I didn’t know you were going back today.”

  “Yeah, well, the doctors finally convinced Mom it couldn’t wait. I go in two days early. Hooray.”

  She was trying to joke at a time like this? I didn’t bother smiling.

  “Did you tell her how you felt?” I swallowed. “Your mom. That you would rather not do the treatment?”

  A short laugh. “She said I was being overly dramatic. She said it was a good thing it wasn’t my decision. That I was too young and immature to be brought into those sorts of discussions.”

  Immature? Annie? Annie was one of the most mature people I’d ever met.

  “I’m . . . I’m going to miss you, Peter.” Annie’s voice hitched, and I felt my own eyes fill with hot tears. “I’m going to miss making art with you. Maybe . . . maybe you’ll make some on your own and send me pictures.”

  “Of course I will,” I choked out. “But you’ll come back. You’ll make it with me—”

  “No,” she said. “I told you, I used up all my wishes.”

  “You don’t know that. All your wishes in the valley came true, didn’t they?”

  She smiled, a quick turn of the lips that slipped away like a bead of water. “Well, I’m not a wish girl outside of there. I promise, I’ve wished a thousand times for this not to happen.” She waved a hand at the suitcases.

  “Where is she now?”

  “Who?” Annie sat down on one of her cases.

  “Your mom.” I looked around. There was no sign of her mom, of any adults.

  “I asked her to let me have the rest of the day to say good-bye to my friends.” On the word friends, she made air quotes and tilted her head toward the barn. “I’m glad you came over. I only really wanted to tell you good-bye. And thanks. I’ve had a lot of fun with you. It was a good way . . . to end things.”

  No. A voice inside me roared silently. No. Not this way. This wasn’t right.

  I couldn’t let her go this way.

  “Tell me good-bye?” I said, when I was sure I could speak again. “Why would you want to tell me good-bye?” I felt a fierce smile stretch across my face and the pit of my belly start to lighten for the first time in days. “I mean, we are running away together, aren’t we?”

  Chapter 26

  “We’re running away?” Annie’s voice squeaked. “But it’s too late!”

  “Why?” I felt my smile grow wider, watching the emotions cross her face—confusion, fear, amazement, hope. For the first time since Monday, I had a feeling I was doing exactly what I was supposed to. “You don’t want to go now?”

  “No,” she said. “I mean, yes. But we have to pack our stuff—I took everything out of my backpack already. And you don’t have anything with you—you’d have to go back home first. There’s no time. My mom will be here in a couple of hours.”

  “There’s plenty of time,” I said, remembering what Mrs. Empson had told me. “If we’re going, we should travel light. Grab a couple of water bottles, maybe a jacket. That’s all.”

  “But food?” Annie stared at me like she thought I’d lost my mind. “Blankets?”

  “The valley will take care of it,” I said.

  “You’re nuts.”

  “Did you just now notice?” I answered, my grin stretching so far it almost hurt. “Let’s go.”

  She pulled a jacket and her Doublecreek-camper water bottle out of the cabin, shoved in a couple of bags of Cheetos, and took my hand. “All right.”

  We sneaked around the back of her cabin, then broke into a dead run. We’d need to haul tail the whole way. A couple of hours wasn’t much time. It took almost an hour to get to the rain lily meadow, and we were going much farther today.

  Running across the same fields I’d cut through on my first trip to the camp, I felt thorns and stickers tear at my ankles. “Ouch!” Annie stepped on a sharp rock.

  “When we reach the valley,” I panted, “we won’t have to worry about getting hurt.”

  The sun was halfway down the sky by the time we arrived at the valley’s edge. It had to be four o’clock. I was hot and thirsty, but I had a feeling Annie felt worse than I did, so I let her drink all the water in her bottle. We’d stop at Pretty Pool and refill.

  When we got to the lip of the valley, the wind rose up around us. “Here we are,” I said. Annie grabbed my hand again, and it felt like we were about to jump off the edge together.

  And somehow, I knew we wouldn’t fall. The valley would catch us.

  We pelted down the hill toward Pretty Pool, scaring up thrushes and grasshoppers and even a couple of rabbits. Stopping only for a few seconds to splash our faces and fill the water bottle, we raced the sun to the valley floor. Deer burst out of the brush to follow alongside us, making our feet fly to match theirs. They were close enough to touch, and I saw Annie reach out one hand to brush the dappled coat of a galloping fawn. It let her stroke it as we ran, magic on the fly.

  I took it as a very good sign.

  At the bottom of the valley, dusk was setting in, and we sped up, knowing we wouldn’t be able to keep going once it got dark.

  “Tired?” I panted to Annie when we stopped to take a quick water break. We’d refilled at the stream again, Annie joking that she’d probably die of bacterial poisoning from untreated water before the cancer got her.

  I didn’t laugh; it wasn’t funny. But I shook my head. “The water’s safe. Mrs. Empson said so.”

  “Did you tell Mrs. Empson where we were going, Peter Stone?”

  “No. She sort of gave me the idea, though.” I repeated what the old woman had said about the valley feeding me, us. Annie shook her head. “Putting your trust in a crazy person, Peter.”

  “I’ve been doing it for almost two weeks,” I joked, raising my eyebrows at her.

  She laughed. “How is it that no one sees how funny you are?”

  “Only you think I’m funny or artistic or anything,” I said, and I crossed my eyes to make her giggle one more time. “I wish I’d known you before. Being your friend would have saved me a world of trouble. And about forty sessions with the world’s most boring therapist.”

  Annie stopped, her hand pulling me back. “The therapist again?”

  “Forget it,” I said. But she just stood there, not budging. “What, you think you’re the only one with problems?” I smiled so she would know I was joking. She didn’t say anything, just waited. Waited until I was ready to tell my story.

  I guess she’d learned that from me.

  “Fine, you walk and I’ll talk,” I said. She started up alongside me, and I explained. “Last year, I was getting beat up by these guys in San Antonio. Like a lot, every day. At first no one believed me. These guys were the ‘nice kids.’ They’d even sort of been my friends when we were little. But they thought I was a wimp.”

  I helped Annie over a fallen log, worrying at how fast the sky was getting dark. And how hungry I was starting to feel. “Wait!” she called out. There, at the base of the log, was a huge bramble of late-ripening dewberries. “Dinner!” she said, plucking the berries as fast as she could. I helped out, amazed that the thorns seemed to bend away from my fingers as I worked. “Thanks,” I murmured to the valley.

  “And?” Annie prompted. “Keep talking.”

  “And when I told my dad, he thought I needed to work it out on my own.”

  “What?” Could her eyes get any bigger? Annie shook her head. “How could he?”

  “To be fair, he didn’t get how bad it had gotten. I begged him not to make a big deal about it. But he wanted to help somehow. So h
e signed me up for karate.” I didn’t have to tell her the karate story, I figured. This was already embarrassing enough.

  “Anyway, after a few more months of getting tortured all the time—” I took a deep breath, remembering the fear, the time I tried to fight back, the broken ribs for daring to think it . . . and exhaled, letting it go. It was over. I was safe here, safe in the valley, from the pain and the memories.

  “I started doing what the therapist Mom sent me to—to learn how to be more assertive, ha!—told me to do. I started journaling.” I stuffed the last of a handful of berries in my mouth. “Come on, let’s get a little farther in before the light’s gone.”

  “You said you stopped writing,” Annie said into the gathering dusk. “You meant the journal? What happened?”

  “Mom read my journal and freaked out.” I let it go at that. Maybe Annie would, too.

  Of course, she didn’t. “Why?” The word hung there in the air between us for at least five minutes as we jogged across meadows and around scrubby bushes and trees.

  Finally, I answered her, hoping she would let the whole topic rest. “I was writing about . . . not having to deal with it anymore. Any of it.” I shook my head. “I guess you could say I’d started making plans to give up . . . permanently. On life.”

  “Peter,” Annie said, stopping stock-still. I glanced at her face. Her eyes were shadowed and glistening. Her whole face was wet. She must have been crying the entire time I told her my story.

  Crying for me. I reached up and wiped her face with my hand. No one had ever cried for me, I didn’t think. Cried about me, sure, cried that I was such a loser son, such a failure.

  But never for me.

  “Peter, you were thinking about killing yourself?”

  I shrugged. “Just thinking about it. I wasn’t actually, you know, going to do something insane. Like run away from my life-saving cancer treatment.”

  Annie hiccupped a laugh and shook her head. “You jerk.”

  It was dark enough that I couldn’t see her that well, but I felt her warm and soft as she leaned against me, into me, hugging my waist. “Peter, you should know better. You have to promise me to never think about that again. Never.”

  “It’s not that big a deal,” I said, wondering why her soft voice made my heart feel . . . whole, for the first time.

  “No,” she whispered. “You don’t understand. Without you? I just can’t imagine . . . ”

  She hugged me tight, and I hugged her back, wondering that anyone at all could feel that way about me. Stupid, quiet, cowardly, shy Pete Stone. The kid who had been beaten up every day for months and taken it, hidden the broken rib and the bloody noses, because fighting back—and even speaking up—hurt more.

  “It’s not that big a deal,” I repeated, meaning that I hadn’t come so close, hadn’t decided anything. But she answered, “Peter, it is. Even the thought of you not being here.” She sighed. “The world—the whole world—it would be so much darker without you in it. You’re like . . . a light to me.”

  I . . . was a light?

  And then, like the valley was agreeing with her, the whole world exploded into light.

  At first, I was almost blinded. Dazzled. And then the light began to pulse, flash, thrum. It was—“Fireflies!” Annie murmured. “So many!”

  “Where did they come from?” I asked. I almost couldn’t believe it. There weren’t hundreds, there were thousands. Tens of thousands. Flashing so quickly, it felt like staring at a strobe light. They lit up the ground, the area around us.

  I held out one arm, and they began to land on me, covering my skin with their dark, striped bodies, their flashing luminous abdomens. I peeked at Annie; she was covered, too, giggling softly as the insects crawled over her face and hair, flying from shoulder to nose and back again. They were playing with her.

  And then I heard something. “Shh . . . ” I lifted a finger to my lips. Annie saw, of course—the light was that bright. But when I made the sound, all the fireflies went out.

  “Annie!” I heard. “Peter!”

  It was far away, very far, though the breeze that brushed our ears carried the sound clearly enough to make out our names.

  These voices were somewhere near the valley, maybe not in it, but calling for us. We weren’t nearly far enough away.

  “Think we can keep going?” I breathed.

  “Too bad we didn’t bring a flashlight,” Annie whispered back. And at that, the fireflies began to light up again, but this time near the ground . . . in a path. A clear, lit path looping through the brush crossing the floor of the valley. We ran for what felt like hours, following the insects’ marked-out trail until we got too tired to continue—and the fireflies’ lights were growing dimmer. “Sleep?” I mumbled. And then, like a wish answered, a bed of soft grass appeared, lit by the last remaining bright insects, and Annie and I both collapsed into it.

  “They’re looking for us,” I whispered.

  “Yes.” Annie’s voice sounded thick with tears. “Peter?” I heard in the deepening purple-black of the night. “Promise me you won’t make me go back. I can’t go back. I might not even remember the fireflies. The valley. You.”

  “Oh, Annie,” I said. “I still hope . . . who knows? Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as you think. Maybe you wouldn’t be lost, gone forever. Maybe you’d be . . . transformed.”

  “Like art?” Annie sobbed. “Oh, Peter, I wish.”

  I wished, too. My heart felt as heavy as my eyelids. We both knew, deep down, there wasn’t any hope. They’d find us soon. In a day or two, at most. Even the valley couldn’t hide us forever.

  But I knew what she meant, what she needed. Someone on her side. I nodded, even though she couldn’t see. “I won’t make you go back. I promise.”

  I felt her fingers curl around my shoulder, felt her back press against my side in the soft grass. We were asleep almost before our heads touched the ground.

  It was the best sleep I’d ever had. But it was followed by the worst day of my life.

  Chapter 27

  “I hear something,” Annie said the next morning. We’d gotten up right before the sunrise, used the surrounding bushes to pee—every bit as awkward as I’d anticipated—then followed our ears to the stream. It was almost more than a stream here, practically a shallow river in places, with fish as long as my forearm swimming in some of the deeper pools. We’d eaten a nutritious breakfast of Cheetos and stream water and had a short, ridiculous conversation about the possibility of catching a fish to add to the meal. Since neither one of us liked sushi or knew how to fish without hooks, we moved on. But we still followed the stream.

  “Do you think it’s them?” Annie said. She’d stopped and brushed away the sparrow that had been sitting on her shoulder all morning, chirping encouragingly. It flew into a tree, and she put a hand by her ear.

  “What do you hear?”

  “Our parents, I think,” she said. “My mom.” We both held still but didn’t hear anything else.

  I wasn’t sure about Annie, but I was starting to feel guilty. My mom was probably freaking out, having a heart attack. I hadn’t even left a note. That gave me a thought. Mom didn’t know about Annie, not really. The only way she’d find out was if they went to talk to Mrs. Empson.

  And I wasn’t sure Mrs. Empson would tell where we’d gone. She hated people in her valley. Most people. Noisy people like my family.

  “Did you leave a note, Annie?”

  “Um, no,” she said. “There wasn’t time.”

  “So maybe they don’t even know we ran away together. Maybe they just think we’re lost?”

  “I’m pretty sure my mom will figure it out,” Annie said. “And she won’t be worried. She’ll be mad. That’s how she deals. Trust me, she’s probably working up her lecture right now, not finding the perfect picture for a milk carton.”

  Ouc
h. Annie sounded bitter. I tried not to think about my mom, about the tears on her face when she had thought I was getting depressed again.

  Well, I guess I really had been getting depressed, until I met Annie. Until I met the valley. Maybe Mom had reason to be upset.

  But now I was farther from depressed than I’d ever been before. It was incredible. I could almost feel the blood running in my veins, transforming the cool morning air of the valley to energy as we walked. The breeze was full of bees and the smell of honeysuckle, and the running stream sounded like music, quiet, natural music. And my footsteps were part of the song, a perfect accompaniment. Not a triangle or cowbell in sight. I had a stray thought: I wished Dad could hear this music. I shook it away.

  It was just like I’d thought the first day I saw it: The valley was paradise. A Garden of Eden, but real. And private.

  Annie was feeling it, too. I was so glad—if she was going to have to go back—I mean, we knew they’d find us someday, and we couldn’t live on berries and water forever—I was glad she had this day, this freedom, before she had to go through all that pain.

  I was glad I had it, too, before I was sent off to military school or camp or whatever.

  Annie ran too close to the stream, chasing a giant swallowtail butterfly, and slipped, flopping like a fish down the muddy bank and into the water. “Mud bath, Annie?” I asked. “Do we really have time for that?”

  She wouldn’t look at me, her shoulders shaking, and I stepped closer, carefully. Was she hurt? Crying?

  No, she was tricking me. As soon as my ankle got near enough to her hand, she yanked me down into the mud with her.

  There was nothing like a mud fight, it turned out, to make you forget impending hospitalization and eternal grounding.

  The mud fight turned into a swim fast enough, and Annie was good at swimming, just like everything else. Me? Not so much, and when she found out I wasn’t a great swimmer, she teased me about it, throwing mud then swimming off as fast as she could.

  At first, it was fun. After a while, I started to feel . . . prickly, in between my shoulder blades. Something about the way the insects were humming, or the way the birds were flying fast across the sky, like they were fleeing. The wind picked up, pulling at my clothes, like it wanted me to run with it—away, farther into the valley.