Wish Girl

by Nikki Loftin

  She looked like an angel, if angels were old and frizzy-haired and fierce as any mountain lion.

  I had no idea how, but crazy Mrs. Empson had managed to get her go-kart down the hill, across the valley, and up the streambed. “Like some help?” Her voice was fast and low.

  “Thank you,” I breathed, feeling my hands start to shake all of a sudden, like I was allowed to get weak now that someone else was there to be strong. I didn’t look down at Annie, couldn’t bear the thought that she might already be dead.

  “Think you can hold her on your lap, keep pressing that shirt on her head?” She waded across the stream to us and lifted Annie up slowly, while I tried to keep my hands on the shirt. I slipped getting her to the go-kart, but the bleeding didn’t start back up.

  I wasn’t sure if that was good or not. Maybe it meant there wasn’t much blood left to come out. I looked down. I was barefoot; I’d taken my boots off after our mud fight. Then I noticed Mrs. Empson was barefoot, too. She saw me looking at her feet. “Didn’t have time to get dressed,” she explained as she lowered Annie onto my lap and strapped us both in. “I was taking a nap, sound asleep when the wind brought your voice up to me, sent it right in my kitchen window.”

  “You could hear me in your house?” I couldn’t believe it. We were miles away. But then I remembered the wind and the strange echoes. The valley had done it.

  She nodded. “I’m pretty sure everybody in Hays County heard you, boy. It sounded like we were all in an oil drum with you. Loudest sound I ever heard.” She started up the engine. “Didn’t know you had it in ya.”

  “Me neither,” I said, feeling how hoarse I was. It was the first time I’d ever felt like I’d been too loud. I stared down at Annie’s head, the bloodstained shirt. I guess I had been just loud enough.

  I put my face by Annie’s. I could feel her breath, just barely. She was still there.

  Thank you, I breathed against her skin. I wasn’t sure who I was thanking, but I needed to say it.

  Mrs. Empson drove us straight across the valley and up a lower hill. On the other side, there was a house I’d never seen before. A tall, gray-haired woman came out, saw us, and yelled, “Edgar! Get the keys. There’s someone hurt out here.”

  In minutes, Annie was traveling to the emergency room with Mrs. Empson and the man in the truck, while the tall woman whisked me to her bathroom to wash up and started making the necessary phone calls. She called the camp first, then talked to Annie’s mom, from the sound of it—I could hear the crying through the receiver and across the living room. Then she asked, “What’s your phone number, Peter? I’ll call your folks to come get you, too.”

  They were there in fifteen minutes, both of them, and for the first time in my life, they were quiet. Neither one spoke to me, not one word, on the drive back to the house. But the silence wasn’t comforting or peaceful.

  It was ominous.

  “We’ll talk tonight,” Mom said. Her voice sounded rough, and I peeked at her face as we got out of the car. It was red, like she’d been scrubbing it. She’d been crying a lot.

  Her hands were shaking as she took her purse out of the front seat, and Dad kept putting his hand on her shoulder, like he was trying to keep her from falling over.

  Dad wouldn’t look at me. Not even a glance. But his jaw worked constantly, like he wanted to speak but couldn’t trust the words that might come out.

  He waited for me to put my bloodstained shirt in the laundry, then pointed me back to my room and said, “Just stay there. Just . . . ” He stopped, clenching his teeth.

  In my room, I lay on the bed, thinking about Annie. Hoping she was going to be all right. Wondering if she would ever forgive me for calling for help. Knowing I never would have forgiven myself if I hadn’t.

  Wishing I had had the courage to go up to the top of the cliff and punch Doug in the face before he had the chance to ever pick up a rock.

  Who was I kidding? That kind of thing took guts. I’d never done anything but run away. I only knew how to hide from problems. Of course, now I was in the middle of one I didn’t know how to get away from.

  I heard a knock. “Come in.” Laura stood there, holding a sandwich wrapped in a napkin. My stomach twisted; I hadn’t eaten very much in two days, and the peanut butter smelled amazing.

  “Thanks,” I said as she tossed it on the bed. I took a quick bite, then asked, “Is Mom okay?”

  Laura’s face was raw and red, too, especially around the eyes. She’d been crying a lot. “Are you okay?” I asked, softer. She let out a sob. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t act like you care,” Laura interrupted, “about anyone but yourself,” and she slammed my door.

  I listened for the usual headache-inducing noise to start up, but for the first time since I could remember, the house was virtually silent. I could hear Carlie crying, and I wanted to come out of my room, but Dad had said to stay. So I stayed.

  By dinnertime my stomach was churning, and I had learned something new. Guilt had a taste. Like bile and sawdust and rancid peanut butter. My mouth was filled with it.

  Everyone else was sitting at the table when Dad came to get me. Carlie was on Mom’s lap, her face turned into Mom’s shoulder like she was afraid.

  I pulled my chair out and sat down. It felt like I was facing a whole group of executioners.

  It felt like I deserved to be shot.

  “Well,” Dad said, after a few minutes. “We’re listening.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know where to start. So I waited a second, trying to come up with words that would make them see why I’d gone away with Annie.

  As usual, I ended up not having to come up with anything at all. I guess my silence was the last straw for Mom.

  She started crying, then, after a while, screaming, and Dad started shouting, his arm around her. I couldn’t even make out any of their words; they were incomprehensible.

  Incomprehensible. It was a word like Annie would have used. Long, complicated, more about the sounds you made than the meaning.

  Like my family.

  I thought about Annie again, about how she was going to face something a thousand times more frightening than a couple of enraged parents. I wished I could be as courageous as I wanted her to be.

  I wished some of Annie had rubbed off. Transformed me. But I was still me. The world’s biggest wimp. And all of a sudden, I had the dark thought that had haunted me all of last year.

  It would be easier if I disappeared. If I gave up.

  If I died.

  No. I felt something jerk inside, in my mind, my heart. I had promised Annie I would never even think that. I wasn’t going to break that promise.

  “No,” I whispered, and it seemed like Annie’s voice was there, too, echoing mine. Maybe I had been transformed.

  My mouth opened on its own, like my body was trying to help me. My feet shifted under the table. Suddenly, I knew what I had to say. I just didn’t know if I had the courage to say it.

  I stood up, slowly, and held up a hand. Like magic, they all got quiet.

  “I can’t tell you what you want to hear,” I said, hoping they would understand that, in my own way, I was answering them. “I can’t. I gave that up a long time ago.” I took a breath, realizing that they were finally listening. “I gave up on me. I gave up a while back. Back when I was writing about . . . dying.”

  “But we took you away from all that, from them,” Mom said after a few seconds, a dozen heartbeats. “Those boys who were hurting you—”

  I held my hand up again. “Yes,” I said slowly. “But they weren’t why I wanted to . . . disappear. Why I was thinking about . . . disappearing.”

  I took another breath, fear filling my chest. “You were.”

  “Why?” Mom said, horrified, and stopped. No one spoke.

  My hand was
shaking so hard I could see it. I folded my trembling fingers and started again. “I thought for months about how to make you see . . . ways to show you. But you’re never quiet long enough for me to tell you what I’m thinking. No one listens to me. And I can’t even think when I’m here.”

  “Here?” Dad said. His voice was shaky, strange. “Home, you mean?”

  I nodded. “Around you. It’s the noise. I can’t even think when it all starts. And pretty soon, disappearing seems like the best—”

  “What are you talking about?” Laura broke in. “What could we have possibly done to make you think about those things, to make you run away? With a stranger!” Her voice was rough, like Mom’s. She was crying again. I thought she was going to start yelling, like usual, but Mom put a hand on her arm and a finger to her lips. “Shh.”

  And Laura stopped. “Okay,” she said and hiccupped, sniffling as she looked down at the table. “I’m listening.”

  “I ran away with Annie because she heard me. She thought I was special. In a good way,” I said, smiling at Laura. She didn’t smile back. “She understood who I was from the first time she met me.”

  “More than your family?” Dad’s words fell heavy into the room, like each one was tied to a rock that landed against my throat. I closed my eyes to answer; I couldn’t look at his face.

  “Camps. Karate. Public speaking. Football. Every time you put me in those things, against my will, you might as well have yelled at me: ‘You’re not enough, Peter.’ It hurt me worse than all the beatings I took. I’ve known all my life I wasn’t who you wanted me to be. I knew I never would be.”

  Dad’s voice sounded like he’d swallowed glass. “Peter, you got it wrong. I never wanted to hurt you. I never knew what to do to help you—” He broke off, swallowing hard. “I love you, son. I only wanted what was best.”

  “What you thought was best.” I stared right at him. He had to understand. “What would have made you feel better about me. Not what I needed.”

  I fought past the bruised feeling in my throat, in my memories. “Annie listened to me, Dad. She didn’t try to change me into who she wanted me to be, like . . . like you do. She thought I was good enough already. Like I am. Who I am. She made me feel like I was worth something. I’d never felt that before.”

  My mom dissolved into quiet tears. It felt like a fist was squeezing my heart. “Mom, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “No,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m listening now. We’re listening. Keep talking.”

  I couldn’t keep talking. Each word was a weight. But I had to try. “The first time I ran away, I found this place where I was happy for the first time in years, more than happy. This valley. It’s . . . ” I stopped. “I can’t explain. When I’m there, I can be myself.”

  Carlie had slipped down from her high chair and toddled over to my leg, but she wasn’t making a single noise. She was holding still. I had an idea.

  “Can I show you, Dad?” I asked. “Who I am?”

  It was what he had said to Mom a few nights before, while they were fighting. He remembered it, I could tell. So did Mom. She was crying harder now and had crumpled, sort of, folded down into herself like a wilted rain lily. Dad murmured her name like a question—“Maxine?”—and she shook her head, not looking up.

  I stared into Dad’s eyes. For the first time I could remember, he was looking at me like he saw something worth noticing. Like he really saw me—not a defective copy of himself.

  “Please. Can I show you—all of you—who I am?”

  I was out of words. I’d spoken more in the last ten minutes than I had in the last ten months. I waited.

  No one spoke at first. But after a few seconds, they all nodded, except Carlie, who held up her arms and whispered, “Peep.”

  I picked her up and took my family to the one place I’d decided I would never let them see. The one place I was sure they’d ruin if I let them anywhere near it.

  When we got there, the wind started up, the steady breeze that always blew from the valley to greet me. This time, it brushed my face like a question.

  I held my breath, hoping my family would listen, would feel it, the way I had. Hoping against hope they would understand what it was I was trying to show them.

  Carlie shifted and leaned into my chest. “Dight,” she said.

  “Soon,” I breathed back. The light was fading already, and I knew the lightning bugs would come out in the next hour. If I could get them to stay with me that long . . .

  “What do we do?” Mom whispered, coming up next to me. She was breathing slowly now, and I realized her steady breath against my hair reminded me of the wind in the valley, the way it would brush against me when Annie and I had been making art.

  “Just listen,” I said. “And be still.”

  “For how long?” Dad murmured, his hand on my shoulder.

  I didn’t answer, just breathed in. Laura sat down near my feet, staring across the valley. The sun was just slipping down across the rim of hills, and the sky was changing from the magentas and oranges of sunset to the dark purple-blues of twilight.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Laura said.

  Carlie put her finger to her lips. “Shh.”

  I would never have believed they could do it, but they did. My whole family held as still as statues—as still as I did, almost. We watched the wind start across the valley, blowing tree branches like blades of grass. It shifted over the edge of the hill at our feet, hesitant.

  But no one moved, no one spoke. Then Carlie pointed one chubby finger up.

  It was like a conductor had lifted a baton. As her arm came down, the chorus frogs started peeping all around us, their trills echoing until it seemed like there were a million of them. A whippoorwill called across the hill and another one answered, back and forth, until they were calling out to each other, a counterpoint to the frogs.

  An owl sang out, and the lap of water on stone inexplicably sailed all the way from Pretty Pool to my ears, calling me.

  I shook my head. My mother had wrapped her hand in mine and was holding on tight, like she was afraid she might be swept away by the breeze. I peeked at her face; it was shining with tears . . . but she was smiling as wide as I’d ever seen.

  And Dad was smiling right next to her. They were holding hands, too. I hadn’t seen them do that in years.

  The night became music, with owls and more nightjars adding their notes to the chorus . . . and then the light show began.

  The valley was showing off. I thought I’d seen a lot of fireflies before, with Annie. But now, the whole valley seemed to come to life, the fireflies blinking and moving like circling constellations below us, echoing the real ones that had begun to appear above.

  “Dight,” Carlie whispered, pointing. “Dight.”

  The fireflies came dancing up from the valley floor in great spirals, in looping ribbons of light. For a moment, I almost thought the ribbon spelled out Annie’s name—but then the fireflies were there, with us, surrounding us. They landed on me—on Carlie, too, and Mom and Dad and Laura—sparkling like lighted jewels until we all four shone and twinkled.

  Like we were stars ourselves, bits of stardust, fallen to earth.

  “It’s magic,” Laura sighed.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “It’s music. The most beautiful . . . is it always like this?” Dad asked, his lips hardly moving. A wreath of fireflies lit up his face.

  “Sometimes,” I said as softly as my breath would allow, remembering the wild boar, the deer, the dandelion fluff in Annie’s hair. “Sometimes it’s even more magical. When you’re really still.”

  I felt Dad’s hand on my shoulder, Laura’s head leaning up against my legs, Mom’s arms across my back, her hand still in mine, and Carlie warm and soft against my chest—and suddenly, for the first time in my life, I knew. I was home.

&
nbsp; Really home.

  I had made so many wishes, mostly to be left alone, to be by myself. But that wasn’t what I’d needed, or at least not all of it. Deep down, I’d also needed my family around me, listening with me. To me.

  Knowing who I was and loving me for it.

  For a moment like this, I’d put up with a thousand hours of drums and guitars.

  I had to tell them. When I did, Dad let out a broken sob. “Oh, Peter. What have I done to you?”

  I’d never heard so much sadness in his voice.

  “I’m sorry,” I breathed. As I did, the fireflies flew up in one great cloud, circling over our heads before they fell down into the valley, a blanket of light that dispersed before it tumbled to the earth below.

  “No,” Mom said, pulling Dad closer and turning me to face them. “We’re sorry. We never knew. Never knew this was even possible. It’s so beautiful.”

  She clutched me to her, squishing Carlie, who mournfully protested, in the middle. “Mo dight?”

  “Yes,” Mom whispered. “We’ll come back tomorrow and do it again. Whenever Peter wants us to come. If that’s all right?”

  “It’s perfect,” I said, grabbing her and feeling Dad wrap his arms around us all. “It’s a wish come true.”

  It was better than anything I’d ever wished for. My life was going to be better than I’d ever dreamed, better than it ever had been—except for those days in the valley with Annie.

  Annie.

  If only Annie were still with me. Still in the valley. Still in the world, even. Still . . . Annie.

  The sky got darker then, like a great lamp had been dimmed, and I knew I would be okay. I wouldn’t run away again, wouldn’t have to. But I would never be as happy as I had been. Even if everything at home changed, got perfect, Annie was gone.

  And no amount of wishing would bring her back.

  Chapter 30

  I spent the rest of the summer making green grape jelly with Mrs. Empson, teaching Carlie how to be still enough that rabbits would come up and eat off her lap, and hugging Mom ten thousand times. She was still worried I would disappear again, I guessed. But I didn’t want to run away anymore, no farther than the valley, in any case. I had everything I wanted. A friend, if I counted crazy Mrs. Empson (which I did), family, and—now that Dad had invested in some soundproofing for his music-room walls—I even had enough peace to think.