A Drop of Hope

by Keith Calabrese

  Right. Lizzy’s mom had texted her at lunch that she had to cover an extra shift at the hospital. Which meant an afternoon with … them.

  Lizzy took one last look down the hill but couldn’t see Ryan or Ernest anymore.

  “Lizzy! For reals!! Move your butt!”

  She looked back at the SUV and wondered if she wouldn’t rather be fighting Tommy Bricks instead.

  WINSTON PATIL WALKS HOME

  Last week, Winston Patil had an argument with his mother. Well, not an argument, exactly. He’d never argue with his mother, or anyone, for that matter. What Winston really did was persistently ask for something, in a reasoned, measured tone of voice, until his mother finally gave in.

  Winston had wanted to walk home from school on his own, and this worried Mrs. Patil. A lot. That it worried his mom frustrated Winston. A lot. When they lived in Chicago she hadn’t worried this much, and that was a big city. But ever since they’d moved to Cliffs Donnelly, Winston’s mother seemed nervous all the time.

  It was Winston’s father who’d eventually convinced his mother to let him walk home from school. Dr. Patil was an esteemed and successful surgeon who traveled all over the world, who reveled in seeing new places and meeting new people, so perhaps he felt it would be hypocritical not to back his son’s attempts to travel the mere three-quarters of a mile from Rod Serling Middle School to their house.

  Curiously, it had been the globe-trotting Dr. Patil’s idea to leave Chicago and move the family to Cliffs Donnelly, Ohio. Mrs. Patil told her husband he was the smartest fool who ever was. They could have lived anywhere. She begged him not to leave Chicago, or if he wanted to move, to at least choose another major city. But Dr. Patil had always wanted to live in a small town, preferably one surrounded by lots of fields and open spaces. Winston’s father loved America. The people, the land, the very idea of it. Loved it so much he broke with hundreds of years of family tradition and named his eldest son just about the least Indian name imaginable.

  And now here they were. Cliffs Donnelly, Ohio. Winston’s father called it the heartland. His mother called it the middle of nowhere.

  Though grateful to his father for taking his side about walking home from school, Winston agreed with his mother about Cliffs Donnelly. He’d never say so to his father, but this move was a mistake. They didn’t fit in here; they didn’t belong. When they’d first arrived, Winston knew it would be hard to be the new kid, especially in a small town like this where the other kids had all been going to school together for years. But after a few weeks he realized it was something more than that.

  Because deep down, he knew why his mom was nervous. They were different here. Really different. They stood out. In Chicago, Mrs. Patil could wear a sari to the grocery store and it wasn’t a big deal. Chicago had all kinds: Lots of people looked differently, dressed differently, and talked differently.

  Here there was just the one kind, and it sure wasn’t him. The other kids all avoided him at school. They weren’t mean about it, generally—they just gave him space. Lots of space.

  He had his drawing, at least. It was his favorite thing to do, and he was good at it. He used to spend hours sitting on the benches at the Art Institute, copying paintings in his sketchbook. But there wasn’t much to sketch here, unless you really had a thing for flat landscapes and stalks of wheat. Still, it did make being alone easier. He could bury his head in his drawings as he sat by himself during lunch. He was lonely, but at least he was occupied.

  As Winston exited the school, he realized he wasn’t sure where he stood on the concept of irony, much less the whole idea of experiencing new places and people. But the run-in with Tommy Bricks during lunch, coming on the first day he was to walk home on his own, did seem to suggest the universe had a cruel sense of humor.

  SNEAKING AWAY

  “Wait,” Ernest said. “Where are we going?”

  He and Ryan had just cut through the teachers’ parking lot and were making their way down the steeply declining hill behind the school. Ryan still held Ernest by the arm and looked over his shoulder every twenty feet or so.

  “We’re going to cut through the Nature Preserve. I know the trails. It’ll spit us out at North Side Park.” The Nature Preserve was littered with trails—some new, some very old, but all seldom used except by science teachers taking their kids out for a free field trip or teenagers who wanted to smoke cigarettes and complain about how misunderstood they were.

  “But … you mean we’re running away?”

  “No, we’re sneaking away,” Ryan said, looking back toward the school one more time. “Running away is what we’ll be doing if Tommy spots us before we hit the tree line.”

  Ernest had a follow-up question or two about this course of action, but the fact that Ryan was already disappearing inside the preserve sent a pretty clear signal that the matter was not open to debate.

  READING FACES

  On the way home, Winston couldn’t help noticing Tommy Bricks at the vacant lot next to the drugstore, pacing back and forth with clenched fists. Winston meant to look away before Tommy could see him, but it was too late. They locked eyes, and for an instant Winston thought, with a strange matter-of-factness, that he was a dead man.

  Tommy’s eyes narrowed, but then his face did something weird—it kind of winced. And then Tommy, he looked away. Winston couldn’t believe it. He doubted Tommy Bricks had ever looked away first in his life.

  One survival skill you pick up rather quickly when you’re different (and especially when you’re not just different, but conspicuously different, like the only twelve-year-old Indian American for a fifty-mile radius) is a heightened ability to read people. When Tommy first took the drawing tablet at lunch, Winston had thought he saw something in the bully’s eyes that told Winston he didn’t really mean what he was saying about the drawings. The anger was real, Winston didn’t doubt that, but he was pretty sure that anger wasn’t actually about him.

  Winston also wondered if Tommy was pretty good at reading people, too. Because the minute these thoughts crystallized in Winston’s mind, Tommy had shoved him and threatened to do worse.

  And so Winston wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. As soon as Tommy looked way, Winston made sure to be long gone from the vacant lot before the big kid looked back.

  INTO THE WOODS

  Ernest followed Ryan into the Nature Preserve. It was a bright day, but barely twenty feet into the trees the sunlight gave way to the dimness of shade.

  “You know,” Ernest said, trying to sound nonchalant and not doing a bang-up job of it. “They say there are devil worshippers in these woods.”

  “There aren’t any devil worshippers in the woods, Ernest.”

  “How do you know?”

  Ryan shook his head in disbelief. “That’s just a rumor burnouts from the high school started so they won’t be bothered when they come here to smoke cigarettes and drink peppermint schnapps.”

  “Oh,” Ernest said. “Why peppermint schnapps?”

  “I don’t know, Ernest!” Ryan snapped.

  They walked for a while without talking after that.

  “What happens now?” Ernest asked.

  “I told you,” Ryan said. “There’s a trail that will spit us out by North Side Park. You can walk home from there.”

  “Yeah. But what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Well,” Ernest started. “You live on the other side of town. That’s at least a couple of miles from there.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “You could come with me, and my mom could give you a ride home.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Ryan said.

  THE CAVE

  Ryan wished Ernest wouldn’t talk so much. Truth be told, he didn’t know these trails that well and needed to concentrate.

  Plus, he had bigger things on his mind. Because even after he got Ernest safely home, he would still have Tommy Bricks to deal with.

  Ryan figured he’d walk bac
k past the vacant lot to see if Tommy was still there. If not, Ryan guessed Tommy would be waiting to jump him somewhere along the way back to the South Side.

  “Wait.” Ernest stopped on the trail, the metaphor of a light bulb illuminating over his head. “You’re still going to fight him, aren’t you?”

  Ryan turned around, irritated. What was it with this kid? “I don’t know, Ernest.”

  “But that’s why you won’t take a ride home, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “You are. Okay, I’m going back.”

  Ryan looked around, confused suddenly. “No, stop.”

  “Ryan, I mean it. I’m not letting you—”

  “Just shut up a minute,” Ryan said. “I think I’m lost.”

  Up ahead the trail curved and seemed to disappear into the deeper woods.

  Ernest moved ahead of Ryan and started following the curve.

  “Hey, where are you going?”

  “The preserve’s not that big,” Ernest said. “We can’t get that lost.” He was running farther around the bend now. “Whoa, cool,” Ryan heard from up ahead.

  When Ryan caught Ernest, who was now halfway up a hill about twenty yards off the trail, he was standing before a small cave, no more than three feet high. All around the opening, there was thick brush; it would be easy to miss.

  “Let’s go inside,” Ernest said.

  Ryan tried to stop him, but Ernest was already climbing into the opening. Every minute with this kid is like babysitting, Ryan thought.

  Ryan went into the cave after him. For a few yards the tunnel was a tight fit, but then it opened up to walking height. Way ahead, a hundred feet or so, the faint glow of daylight lit a larger cavern.

  “Ryan, c’mon. You’ve got to see this.”

  Ryan found Ernest at the end of the cavern, in a pit about the size of a small room. The walls were covered in thick moss and the ground was wet … and shiny.

  Ernest bent down and picked up something small and metallic. “It’s a coin,” he said, running his fingers across the ground. “They’re all coins.”

  Ryan looked up. The pit narrowed into a shaft that became perfectly cylindrical at the top. Broken, rotted boards covered most of the circular opening, but thin streaks of sunlight snuck through the gaps.

  “We’re in a well,” Ryan said. He heard the faint sounds of kids playing, and then it all came together. “We must be near North Side Park. This is Thompkins Well.”

  AMBER

  Chelsea had a little sister, Amber, who was a year younger than Lizzy. The sisters were a study in opposites. Chelsea was excessive—everything about her demanded attention. She was, simply put, just too much. Like her clothes, which were loud and desperately trendy. And her makeup, which was heavy and smothering. And her hair, which was too glazed and strangely vertical (but on this point Lizzy had to concede that her cousin’s hair would probably be gorgeous if only it were liberated from the merciless deluge of hair care products shellacked upon it).

  Amber, conversely, had perfected the art of making people forget she was even in the room. She had slick straight hair that clung to her scalp and slid tightly down her back in a way that reminded Lizzy of an otter shooting up a river. While Chelsea had never grasped the concept of an “indoor voice,” Amber could speak and still, somehow, seem to avoid making any discernible noise. She even dressed quietly, in largely natural, muted colors, all the easier for blending in with walls or disappearing into crowds. In another life, she had no doubt been an excellent ninja.

  Once they were back at Aunt Patty’s, Chelsea decided to give Lizzy a makeover. Lizzy tried to object, but Chelsea had already dashed up the stairs to the master bathroom and come back with a shopping bag stuffed with cosmetics.

  “Mom won’t let us use her personal stash,” Chelsea said while combing through a bottomless supply of little tubes, jars, and bottles. “But she gets a lot of samples.”

  Lizzy was cornered; Chelsea would throw a fit if she didn’t go along. Adults like to tell kids to just walk away when faced with an unpleasant person or situation. Useless advice, Lizzy thought, if you don’t have somewhere to walk away to.

  THOMPKINS WELL

  Winston was not a superstitious person. Legends, folklore, the mysterious and unexplained, none of that ever really caught his attention that much. So Mr. Earle’s story in Council today about Thompkins Well hadn’t registered as anything more than that. A story.

  But it had been an odd day. Ernest, the one boy in class smaller and frailer than Winston himself, had actually tried to stick up for him. And then Ryan, a kid who was only slightly less surly and disagreeable than Tommy, had come out of nowhere to stick up for Ernest. Not to mention the way Tommy had looked away from Winston at the vacant lot …

  Something strange was in the air.

  Such was Winston’s state of mind as he passed North Side Park on his way home and spotted, at the far edge of the park, just in front of the tree line for the Nature Preserve, Thompkins Well. He reconsidered the story Mr. Earle had told in class, about the old man and his wish.

  And, for once, followed his imagination a little bit.

  Over the decades, the well had fallen into serious disrepair. The stonework was solid but grimy with moss, particularly along the bottom. There was a wooden canopy over the top that was half-rotted from the rain. Across the mouth were some wood planks, presumably to keep kids from falling down the well. But the slats had grown brittle and thin, and two of them, the ones in the middle, were missing altogether.

  Deep down, Winston still knew that what he was about to do was foolish. But he pulled a quarter out of his pocket anyway.

  INSIDE THE WELL

  “Thompkins Well?” Ernest said. “We’re inside Thompkins Well?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” Ryan picked up one of the coins. “Explains all the change. Some of these are pretty old.”

  “Hello?” A voice echoed around them; it seemed to come from the well itself.

  Ryan and Ernest froze.

  “Ryan …” Ernest whispered, his voice quivering urgently. “The well is haunted.”

  “No, it’s not,” Ryan said with less certainty than he’d hoped to muster.

  “Um, this is Winston,” the voice echoed again.

  Ernest whimpered. “Ryan, the ghost is named Winston.”

  “Ernest, shut up,” Ryan snapped.

  The mystery voice kept talking. Apparently it couldn’t hear them.

  “This is silly. I know. But I heard your story in school today, about how you granted a wish to an old man named Thompkins and saved his baby grandson from dying.”

  It was starting to make sense to Ryan now. “That’s Winston Patil,” he whispered.

  “From school?” Ernest looked confused.

  “Oh, sorry,” Winston said from above. “Almost forgot.” A quarter dropped down from above, smacking Ernest on the head. Ernest looked up the shaft, catching on.

  “So, as you probably guessed, I’d like to make a wish, too. It’s not as big as the Ezekiel Thompkins wish. It’s not life-or-death or anything. I’m new here and, well, it’s kind of hard to fit in. I’m not asking to be popular or anything, but maybe … someone my own age to talk to would be nice. I just … I’d like a friend.”

  Ryan felt awkward hearing Winston’s wish. He knew it was an accident, but still, this was something private, and Ryan felt dirty for eavesdropping on it.

  “Anyway, thanks for listening,” Winston said after a long silence.

  “Wow,” Ernest said after Winston had walked away.

  Ryan said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I never realized Winston felt that way,” said Ernest as they inched back through the tunnel.

  “Seriously?” Ryan scoffed. “Kid buries his head in his sketchbook every day at lunch. Never talks to anyone, barely looks up.”

  Ryan started leading them up the trail.

  “I know,” said Ernest. “But at least now we can do som
ething about it.”

  “Do? What are we going to do?”

  “Well, we can … you know. Befriend him.”

  “Befriend him?”

  “Yeah, become his friend.”

  Ryan shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “It could.”

  “Yeah? How? We just go up to him and say, ‘Hi, Winston, let’s be friends’? ”

  Ernest started to answer, but Ryan plowed ahead. “And what’s this ‘we’ you keep talking about? I mean, we aren’t even friends.”

  “I know …”

  “You don’t,” Ryan started, then stopped. How did you even go about explaining the world to someone like Ernest? “What happens if you discover you don’t like him? Or he doesn’t like you?”

  “Doesn’t mean we—I—shouldn’t try.”

  “Like you tried this afternoon with Tommy?”

  Ryan marched ahead up the trail, with Ernest following quietly behind. The path snaked along, switchbacking several times, and Ryan was sure they would wind up completely lost and stuck in the woods for the night.

  This is what you get for trying to help people, he thought.

  Ryan had always pegged Ernest as a sheltered, naive, rich kid. But now he realized it was way worse than that. Ernest Wilmette wasn’t just rich, sheltered, and naive. Ernest was a dreamer.

  And dreamers, Ryan was discovering, are really exhausting people.

  MAKEOVER NIGHTMARE

  Chelsea started with foundation, a lot of foundation, applying it with such a heavy hand that before long, Lizzy looked like one of the Oompa Loompas from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Chelsea followed this with enough blush and blue eye shadow that Lizzy could have been mistaken for a police cruiser if she left the house. And the glare of her unnaturally iridescent hot-pink lip gloss could have guided a wayward plane in for an emergency landing.

  Amber, as usual, said nothing. She just watched with a faint smile that Lizzy suspected tried to hide equal doses of disgust and sympathy.

  Chelsea stepped back to gauge her work. She nodded appraisingly.

  “Not bad. You know, Lizzy,” she said, “you could be halfway decent-looking if you tried.” Chelsea contemplated some more. “Have to do something about those clothes, though.”