The Seventh Wish (5 page)

Chapter 4

The Second Wish

Abby's riding back to college with her friend Kallie, so early Monday morning, she and Dad pile her winter clothes and Christmas gifts into Kallie's mom's minivan. Denver whines the whole time; he hates it when anybody goes anywhere.

“Sorry, buddy. I'll see you for spring break.” Abby rubs noses with Denver and then says good-bye to the rest of us.

“Don't forget to text me this semester,” I tell her. “Even if you're busy. At least send me some cool pictures of college things.”

Abby laughs. “Like what? Stacks of books and bad dining hall food?”

“Anything is more exciting than middle school cafeteria goulash.” I give her a tight hug and breathe in the smell of her apple shampoo. I wish she didn't have to go back.

But break is over. So Abby and Kallie head back across the lake to the University of Vermont for second semester, and I ride to school with Mom and Dad.

The first day back from vacation is always rough. Everybody's spent the break eating pie and watching TV and forgetting how to solve equations. Roberto Sullivan walks past me in the hall with his flour baby tucked under his arm like a football. He's half-asleep and definitely not in love with me. Only Mrs. Racette seems to have held on to her pre-vacation enthusiasm.

“Today's the day you've all been waiting for,” she announces as we settle in for eighth-period life science. This is my only class with Catherine, but she's absent, and there's a weird kid with shaggy red hair sitting next to me in her seat. I think he might have been in my art class last year, but he was quiet. And he's grown since then. He's so tall and skinny he looks like a clay project somebody stretched out too much. He keeps staring at me. I frown at him, and he looks away.

“I'm passing out registration forms for the regional science fair,” Mrs. Racette says.

“
Pssst!”
the weird kid whispers.

He's holding out a folded paper. I take it from him, thinking it's a sign-in sheet for attendance or something, but when I open it, it's full of hearts and dragon drawings. One of the dragons has a fiery speech bubble that says, “Will you go out with me?”

What?!

I'm afraid to look up because I can feel the kid still staring at me, and on top of that, Mrs. Racette probably saw him pass the note, which I took because I couldn't have guessed in a million years it was going to be a dragon asking me out. What if she takes it and reads it to the class? And who
is
that kid? I don't even know him.

“The fair is May second, beginning at nine in the morning,” Mrs. Racette says. Thankfully, she missed the note-pass.

“Psst! I read about your project from last year in the school paper,” the weird kid whispers across the aisle. He smiles the goofiest smile ever, showing off every one of his braces-covered teeth. “I thought it was wonderful.”

Sure he did. He wasn't the one known as Pooper Scooper the rest of the year.

“Thanks,” I whisper. But my face is burning. Where did this kid come from? And what am I supposed to do about this dragon?

“You can choose a research project or technology demonstration,” Mrs. Racette goes on. “I'll give you time to think, and we'll talk more next week.”

I turn away from the dragon boy and pretend to be super-interested in what Liza and Paige are saying about plant-growth experiments. When class is almost over, I whisper to Paige, “Hey . . . do you have any idea who that is in Catherine's seat today?”

She looks up at the dragon kid. “That's Bobby O'Sullivan. He's in coding club with my brother.”

“Do you like to work with computers too?” Bobby has appeared at my side.

“No,” I say. He looks as if this is the worst news he's heard all year.

“I bet you'd love it,” he says. “You should come to a club meeting sometime!”

“I . . . uh . . . I'm pretty busy.”

“Here.” Bobby grabs the dragon note from my desk and scribbles something under the flames. “You can call me if you have any questions about when we meet or anything.”

“Uh. Okay. Thanks.” This is so weird. I look down at the paper, and see that he's written his name and phone number. But he hasn't written Bobby. He's written Robert.

I look up. “Your name is Robert?”

He nods. “You can call me Robert or Bobby. Either one. You can call me whatever you want, really.” He smiles.

Bobby O'Sullivan the dragon boy is
Robert
O'Sullivan.

Robert O'Sullivan, who does not have curly hair or dimples, and who is most definitely
not
Roberto Sullivan. But who seems to like me a whole lot, all of a sudden.

“Want me to carry your books?” he asks hopefully.

“No thank you.” I practically run out the door, and I can't concentrate the rest of the day. The whole time we're talking about causes of the American Revolution in history
and equations in math and self-portrait styles in art, I am thinking about that fish.

I come to two conclusions:

#1: It wasn't just me getting used to the ice. That wish fish was the real thing.

#2: It is important to speak
very
clearly when you're asking a fish for something.

After school, I walk down to the nurse's office so Mom can give me a ride home.

She's typing at her computer. “Give me ten minutes to finish this application, okay?”

I swipe a granola bar from the stash in her Band-Aid cupboard. “Application for what?”

“A full-time position opened at the high school. Mrs. Larkner decided not to come back after she had her baby.”

“So you wouldn't work here anymore? Who's going to be my granola bar supplier?”

Mom laughs. “You'll be okay.” Her fingers fly over the keyboard. “This would really help with the college fund.”

“I know. I was just kidding.” College is super expensive. I heard Mom and Dad talking when Abby's tuition bill came.

“And . . . submit.” Mom takes a deep breath. “Keep your fingers crossed.”

“I will,” I promise. But on the way across the snowy parking lot, I think about a different kind of luck. What if I catch the fish again and wish—very clearly and carefully—for Mom to get the full-time job? Then we'd have more money for college
and
dance dresses.

By the time I finish my homework, Drew and his nana are waiting by the rocks. It snowed a little last night, so there's a sugar-sprinkle of white powder over the frozen lake.

“I was out earlier, and they're biting deep today,” Mrs. McNeill says. “We may need to head out a bit farther.”

I nod and follow her and Drew, walking the sled's track as if it's a balance beam. The ice is talking again . . . burping out gurgles and whooshes as air bubbles escape. I wait for my heart to beat faster. I wait for my throat to tighten with fear. I wait for my stomach to twist and my knees to wobble. But none of that happens. I just walk, one foot in front of the other, until we're almost halfway to the island a mile offshore.

Mrs. McNeill drills the first hole, looks down, and nods. “Gained another inch or two last night. Gonna be a good long season.”

Drew and I use the power auger to drill ourselves holes. Then we drop our lines and wait.

“What would you do if killer bees came after us right now?” Drew asks, bouncing his pole a little.

“I wouldn't have to do anything. It's five below zero out here,” I say. “The bees would freeze.”

“What if it were summer?”

“I'd jump in the lake and hide underwater.”

“Wrong!” Drew shouts.

“Shhh!” Mrs. McNeill whispers. “You'll scare the fish.”

“Sorry,” Drew says, and turns to me. “Killer bees know when you're hiding underwater and will wait for you to surface to breathe. You gotta run instead.”

“You can outrun killer bees?”

Drew nods. “Well, most people can. Probably not me. I'd be stung to death.”

Drew's not exactly athletic. He's one of the tallest kids in our grade, though, so everybody's always asking him why he doesn't play basketball. His dad is actually
making
him try out for the school team this winter. Drew hates the practices and can't wait for the coach to make cuts at the end of the month.

“Maybe that'll be the silver lining of basketball practice,” I say. “Developing speed to outrun the bees.”

Drew shakes his head. “It's hopeless. I can't even—hey! Got a bite!” He tugs on the line, but the fish gets away. Right away, he catches another one, though, and pretty
soon, we're all reeling in perch. But in a few minutes, it's quiet again.

“Well, that didn't last,” Mrs. McNeill says. “Let's give it a bit and see if they start again.”

I sit on my bucket with my bait in the water. Even with the ice making its thundery sounds, it's peaceful here. Somehow, ultra-cold weather makes the sky bluer and the clouds whiter. Being out on the lake today, in the wind-whoosh quiet, feels like visiting a faraway crystal world, even though I can see our neighborhood when I look toward shore.

The ice feels so different now, and this feeling—the
not
being scared—makes me think even more about that little fish with the green eyes. I guess it wasn't a dream or my imagination.

It's
so
weird. But if it wasn't real, that Bobby-Robert-O'Sullivan kid wouldn't have written me the note. If it wasn't real, I couldn't feel this way now, not after being scared of the ice my whole life. And if the fairy-tale fish
was
real, then somewhere under the snow-dusted ice it's still swimming around, waiting to be caught, waiting to grant another wish.

“I'm going to try moving in toward shore,” I say, and start to move my gear.

“Ain't gonna help,” Drew says, in his best cowboy drawl.

“
Isn't
,” Mrs. McNeill says. “But he's probably right.” She looks up at the clouds. “Low pressure system coming in. They're probably done biting for tonight.”

“That's okay,” I say. “I'd still like to try.”

Mrs. McNeill nods. “Just watch that ridge,” she says, pointing to a place where the ice has buckled up a bit. It looks like a plate tectonics picture we saw in science last year. “The ice around it may not be as strong.”

I keep my distance from the ridge, even though it doesn't look like there's anything wrong with the ice around it. When I get to my hole from yesterday, it's iced over a little. I poke through the surface with the end of my pole to open things up. As soon as I drop the line in the water, there's a little tug.

I give the pole a quick pull and start reeling. Whatever is on the hook feels like it can't weigh more than a butterfly, and for a second, I think I imagined that tug. But then I pull it up from the ice hole—the fish with the emerald eyes.

I can hear Drew and his nana laughing, so I look up to see if they've noticed. But they're focused on something in the bait bucket. I turn back to the fish on my line. Slowly, I reach down, wrap my mitten around its flapping body, and take it off the hook.

The fish doesn't say anything. It flicks its tail hard and slips out of my hands onto the ice. It flops around, leaving a frantic trail of fish prints in the new snow. I kneel down and cup my hands around it until I can pick it back up. And when I stand, I hear it.

“Please . . . release me. And I will grant you a wish.”

It is the same raspy voice, all throaty and chilled. This time I know it's not coming from Drew or his nana or my imagination. It's real. And knowing that makes me hesitate in wishing.

This fall in English class, we had a short story unit about wishes. In all those stories—“The Rocking-Horse Winner” and “The Monkey's Paw” and that old Russian folktale about the fisherman and his wife—the people were greedy or stupid or both, and their wishes went horribly wrong. Wishing could seriously wreck your life if you weren't careful.