The Seventh Wish (2 page)

That makes me want to be careful where I breathe, where I step, so they'll last a little longer.

“You don't see these often around here,” Mrs. McNeill says as she stands up. “They happen more up in the Arctic where—”

“Feels like the Arctic here,” Drew says, wiping his nose on his coat sleeve.

“Gross,” I say.

“It's not gross.” He makes a face at me, then lifts his sleeve to inspect the shiny smear. “Did you know your nose and sinuses make a liter of snot every day?”

“Again. Gross.” I shake my head, but I laugh. Drew is an expert on disgusting things. It was his idea to include scat samples in our animal tracking science fair project last May, which earned us ten points extra credit and me the nickname “Pooper Scooper” for the rest of the year.

“As I was saying,” Mrs. McNeill goes on, and Drew rolls his eyes. She's a retired science teacher who takes care of Drew when his parents are working, which is pretty much always. Drew gets a lot of science lessons. “This pattern of frost formation is an Arctic phenomenon. When the air is very cold and ice forms quickly over warmer water, then . . .”

She keeps going a while, but I tune out. I blow puffs of steam into the frigid air and watch the clouds of breath fade away until Mrs. McNeill nudges me and says, “Think you could pass a test on that now?”

“I wasn't totally listening,” I admit. “I guess I didn't want the science to wreck the magic.”

“Science
is
a kind of magic,” she says.

I nod. But I want beautiful, impossible-to-explain, ice-flower magic like the day we got Denver. Maybe I'll be able to find a perfect solo dress on sale to fit my budget.

“You oughta come fishing with us later,” Drew says.

“Tomorrow,” his nana corrects. “We need one more good cold night before it'll be safe to go out where the fish are. We'd love to have you come along, Charlie. We could use another fishing buddy.” They used to fish with Drew's grandpa before he died three years ago.

“I don't ice fish,” I say. The truth is, I love fishing in summer, but I don't do anything on ice that's covering water more than a couple feet deep. I'm not fearless like Abby. She and Mom and Dad always try to get me to go skating
with them once the ice is thick and safe, but in my opinion, there's no such thing. Some poor dumb person who thinks it's thick enough falls through every year because it isn't. “Thanks, though.”

“Aw, come on,” Drew says. “We're entering the Make-a-Wish Derby. It raises money to send kids with cancer to Disney World and stuff. They got a grand prize of a thousand bucks for the biggest perch.”

“Really?” When I think of wishes, all I can see is a solo dress covered in sparkling crystals.

“Yeah. And if we don't catch the biggest one, we can still sell 'em to Billy's Tavern, right, Nana?”

Mrs. McNeill nods. “Couple dollars a pound is all, but you have a good day and they add up.”

I think about that. Maybe they wouldn't add up to enough for a super-sparkly dress, but even money for a few more crystals would help. “How far do you go out?”

“We stay pretty close these first few days,” Mrs. McNeill says. “The perch like new ice.”

“So do I.” I kneel down to look at another frozen-lace flower.

Drew and his nana head back toward their house, but Mrs. McNeill turns back. “Don't go out any farther, Charlie. Just because that ice is pretty doesn't mean it's making you any promises. It needs another night to freeze. Let winter work its magic.”

“Don't worry.” I stand up and head toward shore too, listening to them argue as they walk.

“Can't we go out this afternoon?” Drew says.

“Tomorrow.”

“What about tonight if it's real cold after supper?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I wish the ice would hurry up.”

“Wish all you want. Wishing doesn't make a thing so.”

Maybe not, I think, but ice flowers do. They made our morning sparkle on the day we got Denver. Now, finally, they're back. And I'm ready for some more magic.

When I get home, I step into the kitchen and kick off my boots. Mom and Dad are arguing with Abby upstairs, but the kitchen is warm and there's cinnamon toast left on a plate. Denver's under the table, waiting for crumbs. I bite into a piece, then poke at the sugar crystals with my finger. I imagine them out on the ice, glimmering in the morning sun, then sparkling on a dress while I dance, arms at my sides, knees high.

Maybe ice fishing is a good idea after all.

Chapter 2

The Littlest Catch

“I'm thinking of a word,” I tell Mom and Dad at breakfast the next morning.

Dad pushes his bagel into the toaster and looks up at the ceiling. “Vendetta?”

“Marigold,” Mom says from the closet, where she's pulling out snowshoes.

“Dad wins. It was telegram.”

“Ha!” Dad high-fives me on his way to get the peanut butter from the cupboard.

“Humph.” Mom sets two pairs of snowshoes on the bench by the door. “How do you figure?”

“Because you could send a telegram about a vendetta, obviously,” Dad says. “Nobody sends telegrams about marigolds.”

“I hate this game,” Mom says, laughing. The game is
totally stupid, but it's a family tradition. When I was five and Abby was eleven, we used to play the guess-what-number-I'm-thinking game. She'd tell me she was thinking of a number between one and a hundred. I'd guess five; she'd tell me if it was higher or lower, and I'd keep guessing until I figured it out. I thought it was the coolest thing ever—everything Abby did was cool—so I started bugging Mom and Dad to guess numbers. One day, I said I was thinking of a word, and everybody should guess what it was. Mom and Dad each guessed a few times before they explained there were too many words to play the game that way. But I loved the word game, so we decided everybody could guess once and whoever was closest to the word would win. After that, the word game just stuck around.

Abby even played with us from college this fall, via group text.

Dad tried to argue—still shouting because he doesn't know how to turn off the caps lock on his phone—that if you wear jeggings, you can eat lots of marshmallows because they're elastic. Mom said that was a stretch, and then she was all proud of her pun. (Get it? Elastic . . . a
stretch
?)

Sometimes, it's easy to decide who wins. Like if the word is dangerous, and Dad guesses dishwasher and Mom guesses mushroom, then she totally wins because of poisonous mushrooms. But it can get tricky. Once Mom and Dad argued for ten minutes over which word was closer to sunflower—flashlight or rebellious. (Flashlight won. Because of yellowy brightness.) Abby's always been the best at making a case for her guesses, but she's sleeping late again, so Dad wins the vendetta-marigold-telegram argument today.

“We're going snowshoeing in the park,” Mom says, pulling snow pants from the shelf. Dad's an English teacher, and she's a part-time school nurse, so they have the whole winter break off too. “Want to come?”

“Actually, Mrs. McNeill invited me ice fishing with her and Drew.”

Dad raises an eyebrow. “Wouldn't that involve going out on the ice? Last year, we couldn't even get you out skating once.”

“I know. But she says we won't need to go out far. I think I'd like to try.”

Mom goes to the window and glances at the thermometer. “Ten below.” She makes a face as if she's calculating
how much ice could have formed over a night that cold. “Okay. We'll see you back here for lunch.”

“Should I ask Abby if she wants to come?”

Mom's eyes dart to the stairs and then to Dad, who grimaces and shakes his head. They've had a lot of serious kitchen-table conversations with Abby since her first semester grades showed up during vacation. I guess the grades weren't very good.

“I don't think Abby's quite ready to face the world this morning,” Mom says. “Don't forget your phone. And dress warmly or you'll freeze to death.”

Two sweaters, one puffy winter coat, two scarves, one pair of snow pants, one hat with ear flaps, and one pair of thick mittens later, I'm waddling across the yard to the McNeills' house. I feel like that snowsuit kid who couldn't move in the movie
A Christmas Story
, but it's too cold to be wearing anything less. The sun's out, though, so hopefully it'll warm up to zero soon.

Mrs. McNeill practically lives with Drew and his parents during fishing season. She and Drew are already out in his yard, getting fishing stuff ready. Drew tears open a package of Pop-Tarts and offers me one.

“What kind is it?” I ask.

“Strawberry. Duh.”

“Thanks.” When you've been friends as long as Drew and I have, you have a lot of conversations about which Pop-Tarts are the best (strawberry with frosting) and which are just gross (pumpkin, which has no business being anything but jack-o'-lanterns or pie).

“Hey, do you know what to do if you ever get buried in an avalanche?” Drew says through a mouth full of Pop-Tart.

“Nope,” I say. Drew's nana gave him
The Worst-Case Scenario Handbook
a couple of years ago, and he's read it cover to cover, fifteen times. Sharing techniques for surviving unlikely catastrophes is his favorite thing in the world besides fishing. “What should I do?”

“Spit in the snow,” Drew says, and spits on the snowy yard.

“How's that going to help?”

“You make a little air pocket and spit, and then gravity will tell you which way is up and which way is down. Then you aim up and dig like crazy.”

“Good to know.” I wonder if I'm in for a whole day of survival training. “Hey, is Rachael coming fishing with us?” Drew's older sister is a senior in high school and the coolest person I know other than Abby. Rachael's the one who got me into Irish dancing, only she's way better at it. She was seventeenth in North America last year.

“Nah,” Drew says through a bite of Pop-Tart. “She's got some dumb
feece
to go to.”

“It's
feis
.” I pronounce it the right way—
fesh
—even though Drew already knows that's what the Irish dance competitions are called. The plural is
feiseanna
(fesh-ee-AH-nuh). Drew always calls them
feces
instead. It drives Rachael nuts. “Where is this one?”

“Rochester, I think.”

Part of me wishes I could be there to watch, but then I remember that ice fishing is going to help me pay for the solo dress for my own feis in Montreal later this month.

“Got decent tread on those boots?” Mrs. McNeill asks me, and I hold up a foot to show her.

“Nope,” she says, and hands me a pair of ice cleats. “Wrap these around the bottom of your boots or you'll be slipping all over the place.”

I do that while she and Drew load poles, augers, and bait buckets onto the sled. Then we head out onto the lake. Right by shore, there's a hole in the ice with a pile of shavings around it. “Were you out already?” I ask.

Mrs. McNeill nods and kicks at the circle of snow. “Drilled a hole to check the thickness. We have a good six inches, so we're all set.” She leads us away from shore onto the clearest black ice.