Once Upon a Wish (48 page)

This is something wonderful,
Serena thought, pushing the walker to the back of her mind.

The words, usually coming from speakers, were flowing from the lips of Darren himself, right in front of her. Ten feet away.

Her mouth moved with every word, and she closed her eyes. Fields of yellow flashed in her mind’s darkness. The sound of his
voice brought her back to the highway in Wisconsin, when his music had flushed out the word
cancer
as it floated through her head in the car on the way to her grandfather’s funeral.

Sitting directly in front of her, singing “Truly, Madly, Deeply,” Darren brought Serena back to the hospital, white lights flashing above her, gurney bouncing, his voice filling the lonely operating room. Sitting in the middle of the crowd at Borders, lost in his music, Serena’s mind became the walls of her bedroom during isolation, confined to the echoes of his voice, as he sang the last line of the song, and once again, it was just the two of them.

When Darren finished singing, Serena stood with her mom in the line to meet him. Her arms were weak under the pressure of pushing the dreaded walker, but her anticipation was stronger—the anticipation of the voice she loved becoming a person.

“Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…” Darren sang quietly when he saw her David Bowie T-shirt, a smile on his face.

Serena laughed and thought,
Wow, he’s real. And he’s right in front of me.

Darren reached for her hand.
He’s shaking my hand
, Serena thought in disbelief.

She smiled and explained the walker to Darren. “I just got out of the hospital yesterday,” she said.

Serena wanted to tell him that he, through his music, had been with her every step of the way, through her surgeries, her isolation from the world, her bout with self-pity, and her determination to never visit that dark place again. She wanted him to know that he was the reason she wasn’t lying in bed at home that very moment.

“You’re very strong for coming,” he said with a smile. “And you knew all the words!”

He noticed!

Serena beamed. There was nothing more she needed. Not one more lyric, or smile, or note—until he said the next two words.

“Stay strong.”

She looked straight into his eyes and knew she would. Without realizing it, that was what she needed to hear.

Over the next few weeks, Serena focused on recovering and turning her new Sierra Vista bedroom into a music haven, her walls becoming windows to her past. She hung posters of concerts she had attended, autographs she had received, album covers, vinyl, and CDs.

Forced to drop classes for the semester at Cochise, Serena had time to alphabetically organize her collection of more than four hundred CDs, lie in bed listening to music, and watch endless movies and videos of concert tours with her favorite musicians.

She traveled with Janet Jackson on her Hawaiian tour and the Backstreet Boys through Orlando. She got lost in the stories of Prince’s
Purple Rain
and Pink Floyd’s
The Wall,
felt immersed in the frenzied crowd of a concert scene in Michael Jackson’s
Moonwalker
and, in her mind, stood among hundreds beneath the balcony as Madonna sang “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” in
Evita
.

Time passed slowly, painfully, as Serena’s shoulder, sore from hardening scar tissue surrounding the doctor’s incision that stretched from her ear across the front of her neck, began to heal. Her neck, stiff and tender, softened over time, and she worked daily to improve its rotation.

A week after the surgery, Serena was surfing the net, visiting different artists’ websites and reading the latest music news, when she found an upcoming concert—three weeks away—of Avenged Sevenfold, Seanza’s favorite band. Heavy metal bands Operator and The Confession would perform as well.

“I’m buying the tickets so we can go,” Serena told her sister.

“You just got out of the hospital!” Seanza said. “We’re only going if you’re better. Otherwise, I’m taking a friend.”

Three weeks passed, and every ounce of Serena’s body, every part of her mind, screamed,
Let’s go!

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The drums pounded through her, the electric guitar screeched in her head, and the raw acidity of the music pumped through Serena as Seanza guided her through the crowd, hands tightly held.

“If we get separated, you know where to meet,” Seanza yelled, her breath hot in Serena’s ear. “Stay out of the mosh pit!”

Yeah, right
, Serena thought.

She had become addicted to the rush, the chaotic freedom found in thrashing through a frenzied mob of screaming, flailing fans when she was just twelve years old during her first mosh pit at a Good Charlotte concert in Tucson.

With ripped jeans and hair dyed the color of fire, Serena’s hesitancy to jump into the crowd quickly succumbed to its raw, animal-like energy—the solitary movement of hundreds as one, pushing and shoving.

Embraced by the chaos, Serena and her sister moved with the swaying pile of bodies, arms pounding the drum’s beat into the air. It was a scene, a culture, Serena had become part of and craved, and her need to fulfill that addiction resurfaced at the Avenged Sevenfold concert, where her neck was still tender and healing. Surviving another mosh pit would prove to everyone that nothing could get her down.

“I don’t want to get in trouble if you have to go back to the hospital!” Seanza managed to shout before the crowd swept her away.

I’ll be fine
, Serena thought before plunging in.

Her internal stitches remained intact, her craving satisfied. Serena returned home with a sense of accomplishment, proof to herself that she had healed, beat cancer, and that life would continue as normal.

Still settling into their new Sierra Vista home, Serena enrolled at Cochise Community College and changed her major from graphic design to game design and creation, enjoying classes in art, coding, and artificial intelligence. Inspired by one of the first music-related video games, Michael Jackson’s
Moonwalker
for the Sega Genesis, Serena wanted to join the industry and bring her creative ideas into the gaming world.

Toward the end of her first semester, she came home from school one day and checked the voicemail on her cell phone.

“Hi Serena, this is Linda from the Make-A-Wish Foundation in Phoenix.”

Serena’s heart folded, paused, and then pounded violently.
Is this really happening?
Back in Lincoln, before she graduated from high school, the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Nebraska had contacted Serena, told her to make a wish, and gave her the paperwork to fill out. Those piles of papers, that joyful wish, in Serena’s mind, offered something undeserved.

As a child, she was the first to split her lunch with a classmate who forgot theirs. She was the one to offer half of her ice cream to a friend who ran out of money on a school field trip. She was the person who couldn’t pass a Salvation Army bell ringer at Christmastime without throwing in some spare change. She was a giver, not a taker.

She had traveled the country with her family, been to Disneyland
Resort and SeaWorld, and swam with dolphins in Hawaii. How could she accept a wish that could otherwise be granted to a four-year-old who had been through much more than she had?

She pictured the wide eyes of children watching whales jump at SeaWorld, experiencing the magic of “It’s a Small World” at Disneyland, holding the fin of a dolphin as it slices through ocean water—all common wishes and all experiences she’d already had.

The stack of paperwork remained blank, untouched, for more than a month before Serena convinced herself that if the foundation was contacting her, somebody must think she deserved it. She finally filled in the line that required her to list her wish: “I wish to meet Darren Hayes.”

She was informed that celebrity wishes could take years to grant and in some cases, depending on the celebrity, might never come true.

If Serena ever got to meet Darren, he would be worth the wait.

She turned in the paperwork right before graduation and moved back to Arizona shortly after. She knew that the Phoenix chapter had taken over, so when she heard, “Go check your email” on her voicemail, she ran to her dad’s office, quickly got online, and opened her inbox.

Would like to meet with you …

Darren Hayes would like to meet with you …

Serena screamed into the quiet of the house, her voice jumping from room to room, echoing down the halls, filling the silence. She got up, thought about dancing, thought about spinning, running, something …

I need to call someone.

“Mom!” she shouted into the phone. “We’re going to London!”

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