The Seventh Wish (4 page)

“You certainly came around,” Mrs. McNeill says. “When we first went out, you were so nervous I thought you'd be hugging the shore all day.”

“Yeah.” I remember that feeling, walking over the ice now. But it's gone. Like magic.

Mrs. McNeill invites me to stay for lunch, so I call Mom to let her know. When we finish our hot chicken soup, we bundle up and walk to Billy's place. He's excited because now he can offer fish fry tonight, and usually it's only on weekends. He puts a crisp five dollar bill in my hand, along with two dollars and a couple of quarters. I shove the money into my snow pants pocket and zip it shut. It's only seven fifty, but it's a start.

“You have good morning fishing?” Mr. Beleko is drying glasses with a towel at the bar. He's my friend Dasha's father. Their family moved here last year from Ukraine. Dasha's mom does something with computers and works at a software company across town, but this was the only job Mr. Beleko could find. Back in Ukraine, he was a lawyer, but I guess certifications and stuff are different here, so he works with Billy for now. He's learning English along with Dasha and her little brother, Alex.

“It was a great morning,” I say. And I mean it. “Is Dasha going to be at dance today?”

He nods. “She been practicing all week. Always stepping and kicking and stomping.” He shakes his head, but I
know he loves that Dasha is taking Irish dance lessons. He always taps his foot to the music when he's waiting to pick her up.

“See you later!” I wave to Billy and Mr. Beleko and do a few jig steps on my way out the door. The fish fry quarters jingle in my pocket all the way home.

When I say good-bye to Drew and his nana and open our kitchen door, it's after three. Abby's at the table eating cereal with a spoon but no milk. She's had stomach problems since she was little, so the list of things-Abby-can't-eat is like ten miles long. “Hey, chick!” She shakes the box at me. “Want some breakfast?”

“Most of the world is done with lunch, Ab. But thanks. Guess what?” I pull the fish money from my pocket and tell her about my plan to earn money for a better solo dress.

“How come they're so expensive?” she asks, tipping her bowl up to get the last of the frosted crumbs.

“Because they have to be really sparkly, with crystals and stuff.”

“Can't you sparkle-dazzle it with sequins from the craft store and call it a day? I'd totally help.”

That makes me laugh because Abby is not the crafting type. She tried to make her own evil queen Halloween
costume a few years ago and ended up looking like she lost a fight with a glue gun. If her costume disaster had happened to me, I would have stayed home, but Abby wore it to the school dance anyway and didn't care what anybody thought.

“We could do it ourselves. It'd be fun!” Abby makes a gun shape with her hands and pretends she's shooting sequins at me. “Pshew! Pshew! You know I'm the fastest sparkle-dazzler east of the Mississippi, right?”

I make a sparkle-dazzle gun with my hands too, and point at her. “There ain't room for two of us in this town, pardner.” I heard something like that on one of Drew's Westerns once.

Abby puts her hands up and laughs. “I surrender to your sparkly talents.” For a minute, I feel like I have my sister back.

I help her clear her lunch/breakfast stuff from the table. “We missed you last night. Where'd you go?”

“Just a party.” She shrugs. “Why? Did Mom and Dad say something?”

“No. I just wondered. Were you with Kira and Jess?”

“Nah. I don't really hang out with people from high school anymore. This was a Tony's thing.” Tony's is the pizza place where Abby waitresses. She looks at her watch. “Speaking of that, I better get ready. I have the dinner shift. And Mom asked if I'd drop you off at dance.”

“I'll get my stuff.” I go to my room, put on leggings and a T-shirt, and grab my dance bag.

When I come downstairs, Abby grabs her purse and keys, and we head out to Scarlett, which is what Abby calls the rusty red Honda she inherited from Dad.

There's a tiny waxed-paper bag on the passenger seat, like the kind they use at Regal Bakery when they give you extra cinnamon sugar to sprinkle on your donuts. It still has a few light-brown powdery crumbs in it. “Hey!” I pick up the bag and hold it as if it's evidence. “Did you get cinnamon donuts without me?”

Abby snatches the bag from me and shoves it into her jacket pocket. “No, that's Seth's.”

“Who's Seth?”

“One of the cooks.” She backs out of the driveway and heads toward downtown. She glances over at me. “You should see how high he can throw the pizza dough and still catch it. And hey . . . we
should
get donuts! We can go later if you want. They have a bakery on campus, but it's not the same.”

“Nothing's as good as Regal. But don't you work until nine? They'll be closed.”

“Yeah . . . well, tomorrow then.”

When we get to Brigid's School of Irish Dance, Abby drops me off. “Dad's picking you up after, right?”

“Yep.” I grab my bag from the backseat, wrap my scarf around my face, and run across the windy parking lot to
catch up with Dasha, who's just heading inside. “Hey! How's your vacation going?”

“Good!”

She opens the door and a rush of warm air greets us. It always smells great at the dance studio—a mix of wood floors and Miss Brigid's tangy perfume, plus old books and pencils, since this building used to be a school.

“What have you been doing all week?” I ask as we head for the benches.

“I make new app. Want to see?” She pulls her phone from her coat pocket, taps a few things, and hands it to me.

There's a super-simple video game on the screen. It's like Pong, the old Atari game Dad likes to talk about, from when he was a kid and video games were a new thing. “Cool! How do I get the paddles to move?”

“Tip it. Game uses phone's . . . how is it called . . . accelerometer?” Dasha's in the coding club at our school. She may still be struggling with some parts of English, but she understands computer stuff better than anybody. I guess coding and math are international languages.

That's actually how Dasha and I got to be friends. On one of her first days at our school last year, my friend Catherine had a trombone lesson during math class, so I didn't have a partner and ended up working with Dasha. She was just starting to learn English, but she was so good at the equations we were doing. Algebra isn't really
my thing, but somehow, even without speaking much English, Dasha helped me understand it better. I invited her to sit with Catherine and me at lunch, and then we started Irish dance class together and have been friends ever since. She's been trying to get me to join the coding club, but that's definitely a language I don't speak yet.

The game she made is cool, though. I play until I tip the phone too much, and Dasha's electronic dot flies past my paddle. “I need more practice.” I give her the phone, and we sit down to put on our hard shoes. They're kind of like tap shoes, with hard fiberglass heels and tips to make noise on the floor. “I hope we can move up to Novice soon.” I tighten my laces and fasten the strap that goes over my ankle. “You're doing the Montreal feis, right?”

Dasha nods. “If my mother does not work.”

“My mom can take us both as long as your mom writes a note so we can cross the border. You have to go so we can move up to Novice together. Then we'll be in class with Catherine.”

Catherine and I have been friends since kindergarten, but we only have one class together at school this year. It'd be great if she and Dasha and I could all dance together. Even if Catherine moves up again soon, at least we'll still be with some other people our age. Most of the kids in Advanced Beginner are younger than Dasha and me, since we've only been dancing a year.

“Come on in, and let's warm up with some trebles,” Miss Brigid calls from the studio door.

Dasha and I file in with the rest of our class. The littler kids are all stomping around as if they're Godzilla. Irish dance shoes make you feel big that way.

“Let's have quiet feet now so we can start!” Miss Brigid calls out. “One, two, ready, go . . . Tre-ble one! Tre-ble two . . .” We kick-click-shuffle-back our feet, inching toward the big mirror up front. “Keep those shoulders back.”

When we finish, Miss Brigid heads for the music player. “Okay, treble jig now!” The song starts—all lively accordion notes until our feet start moving to provide the percussion. We sound like a giant's typewriter—clicks and clacks and stomps bouncing off the cinderblock walls, so loud I feel our footsteps vibrating in my chest.

“Can you see your feet in the mirror?” Miss Brigid shouts over the music. “Turn your heel out and open up those hips. Good, Charlie!”

We run through the dance three more times, getting more confident with our steps until the sound of our shoes stomping in unison shakes the room like thunder. This is what I love most about Irish dance—holding my arms at my sides, kicking and shuffling and hopping until I'm all stomped out.

When class ends, we scatter to the orange chairs that line the walls and take off our shoes. Catherine and the
other Novice kids are coming in now. Dasha and I wave to Catherine. She starts to wave back, but then a toddler runs by—somebody's little sister—and Catherine gets this panicked look on her face and races out of the room.

“I hope she is all right,” Dasha says.

“She's fine.” I laugh because I know exactly what happened. “She forgot her flour baby in the car again.” Catherine has home and career skills class this quarter, which means she has to carry a five-pound bag of flour around for ten weeks, pretending it's a baby. She was really excited for the project. She named her bag of flour Meredith and dressed it in a purple onesie and a bunny rabbit bib, but she's so busy with dance and band and stuff that she keeps leaving her baby places. Last week, she abandoned it in the bathroom overnight, so her little sister kidnapped it and left a ransom note. Catherine had to pay five dollars to get Meredith back.

In a minute, Catherine comes back out of breath, hugging her flour baby to her chest. “Sorry—I forgot she was in the backseat,” she says. “I'm lucky Mom got talking in the parking lot and hadn't left yet.” Catherine hurries to put on her dance shoes, while Dasha and I change back to our sneakers.

I'm tying my laces when Miss Brigid taps me on the shoulder. “Are your parents here? I wanted to talk with them about the possibility of switching classes if things go
well at the Montreal feis. You too, Dasha. I expect to see you both with medals later this month.”

“I hope so!” Dasha and I need a first, second, or third place for every dance at the Advanced Beginner level to move up to Novice.

“I'd also like you to think about the Albany feis coming up in April,” Miss Brigid says, and floats off to talk with one of the Novice parents.

“Woo-hoo!” I raise a hand, and Dasha high-fives me. “When we move into the next class, we'll get to learn clicks—those are so cool—and we'll be in class with Catherine, and you know what? The three of us should dance in the talent show in May!”

Dasha looks down at her shoes. “Talent show people must also introduce at microphone, no? I do not think I will be ready for that.”

“Of course you will! You're doing great.”

Dasha smiles, shrugs, and gets up to go. I can't imagine being plunked into a new place where I couldn't understand half of what people were saying. She's super smart, and she's learned a ton. But I guess it's hard.

I'm thinking about how I could help Dasha—we could practice the kind of introduction you have to do at the talent show—when one of the Novice dancers runs through with her new solo dress to show Miss Brigid. It's white with different-colored crystals all down the front. A green
flash catches my eye, and I remember that little fish from the ice.

It was like something out of a fairy tale. It couldn't have been real.

But somehow, I really did lose my fear of the ice. How did that happen so fast? I spent the whole afternoon out there and didn't worry once about being swallowed up. Maybe it really was a wish fish.

Then I remember I made a two-part wish. And Roberto Sullivan hasn't called or anything.

I watch Miss Brigid gushing over the girl's shiny new dress. The crystals sparkle as if they're magic.

And I can't decide if I believe, or not.