Three Wishes (2 page)

“I want adventure,” I said, giving in to her little dream-session at last. “To experience more than this little town. To see the world and learn more about the people in it.”

Her gray eyebrows shot up as she considered me. She’d spent her whole life here, never left the county. Then she nodded once. “That’s good, yes. It is common for the young to hunger for such things.
Pero Grillita, a veces la aventura se puede hallar exactamente en el lugar donde te encuentres.” But Cricket, sometimes adventure can be found right where you are.

“Right,” I said, squinting at her. This was a different sort of conversation than our usual chatter. She didn’t understand. I wanted adventure-adventure. To be the Next Big Thing on the Weather Channel. Chasing tornadoes, on a raft in a flood zone, picking up a handful of dust in a drought-ridden field, riding in a helicopter over houses leveled by a tsunami, looking for survivors to save…

“How ‘bout we play cards for a while? Gin rummy?” I asked her, trying to bring my head back to the present.

“No.” She snapped her fingers in front of my face, nodding her gray head.
“¿Qué más?”

“What else do I want?”

“Sí, sí,” she said, waving at me in irritation for not continuing.

“Okay, uh… Love, I guess,” I said. “You know. I’m not really after a handsome
prince
. He doesn’t even have to be handsome, although if he was, that’d be cool. I just want to know what it is to really fall in love. And for a guy to fall in love with me. Real love, you know? Not the teenage stuff.”

“It’s as good as done,” she said with her gap-toothed smile. “We simply have to wait for the one worthy of my girl.”

I smiled with her and shook my head. My grandmother had always thought I should be the target of every man’s affections. Whether the dude was eighteen or eighty-three, she’d routinely ask, “Isn’t my granddaughter beautiful? And she’s
smart
, too.”

So crazy-embarrassing…

“What else?” she asked, sitting back and closing her eyes.

It was then that I noticed the color of her skin, oddly gray. And she was way more tired than she usually was after closing. “Abuela, are you okay?”

“Sí, sí,” she said, waving away my concern, still with her eyes closed. “What else, Grillita? What is your third wish?”

I hesitated. The thought was clear in my head, but I didn’t want to bring her pain in voicing it.

She peered at me through one squinted eye. “Zara? Tell me,” she said softly.

“Family.” I shrugged and rubbed a bit harder. “I mean, family like you and I both wanted, forever. Like the Medinas and the Garcias. Good families. Loving families. Families all up in each other’s business. And yet willing to do anything for each other. You know,” I said.

“
Yo lo sé
,” she agreed softly, reaching out to touch my cheek.

“I don’t mean to make you feel bad, Abuela,” I said, guilt flooding through me.

“You don’t make me feel bad,” she said, patting my cheek and leaning back. “I wanted it once too. And someday, Grillita, you shall have it for both of us.”

I smiled. “There you go again, promising me the moon, Abuela.”

“You will have the moon, Zara,” she said, head against the back of her rocking chair, eyes closed, even as she lifted her index finger. “Trust your abuela. When you get to a certain age, you know such things.”

“Does my abuela know she must get to bed?” I asked.

“Sí, sí, she knows it.”

I helped her stand and walk to her room, wincing with her as her legs, stiff after sitting, objected to the exertion. She’d been so tired, she insisted in getting into bed without undressing. Without brushing her teeth or her hair, something I’d never seen her do before. “Just leave me, Zara,” she said, pulling up the blanket to her wrinkled cheek. “I only need to rest.”

Should I have done something then? I’d known something was wrong. I felt it. But I was so tired myself, so bone weary, I could barely cover her and make it to my own room. So I bent and kissed her forehead, whispered good night. Perhaps she whispered the same, but to my shame, I couldn’t remember.

And when I awoke, she was dead.

The EMT said she passed peacefully, never waking. It looked like she had. Like she’d just been dreaming about heaven and walked right on up there. It made me a little angry, actually. That she hadn’t tried to fight it. To call out to me. Given me a chance to call 911 before it was too late. Tried to stay with me. Sure, I was almost eighteen. But eighteen really wasn’t that old. I was old enough to strike out on my own. Go to college. Find a job. But not really old enough to be without anyone at all who loved me, truly loved me.

I reached the dark lava rocks, pockmarked by the sea’s constant rub and wash, and made out the dim silhouette of a fisherman about twenty yards away, casting his line off a long rod. Beside him was the five-gallon painter’s bucket the locals favored, probably full of surf perch or croakers by now. He looked about fifty years old, short and spry. Asian.

I’d never seen him here before, and I thought I knew all the locals. Maybe he usually was done fishing before I got to the rocks during my morning walks. After all, I’d never been here this early.

He glanced in my direction, and I lifted a hand in greeting. Then I crouched to peer into the first tide pool. Three massive starfish, two purple and one orange, clung to the edge, half in the water. I smiled and moved on to the next. There I found four orangies and two purplies. I gasped and looked up at the fisherman as he moved past, hauling his heavy bucket. I’d never seen six in one pool before. Abuela would have loved it…

“You like sta’fish?” he asked in a heavy Asian accent.

“I do. They…they remind me of someone I loved very much. There are six here!”

“Hmm,” he said, studying me with a stroke of his beardless chin. He moved away, suddenly, when a wave crashed toward us. The wash narrowly missed him. I watched it recede, and then felt the older man’s gaze still on me. A shiver ran down my back, and I slowly rose. What was his deal? What did he want?

“You like sta’fish, go to pool over there,” he said, nodding to one closer to the water. “Befo’ tide comes in.”

I smiled, relaxing as he moved on, wondering why I’d suspected the gentle old dude was up to anything bad at all. Another wave washed over the rocks. With a glance out toward the water, I thought I might have just enough time to check out the pool the fisherman had gestured toward before the next big wave came through. I picked my way forward, jumping from high point to high point among the rocks. When I arrived, I looked down and let out a small cry.

He’d been right. The pool was teeming with starfish, several layers thick. Orange and purple, and a couple that were red and gold. Even a few brittle stars, with their long arms. I’d never seen anything so amazing in all my life. It was so beautiful, so cool, that I ignored the wave that came in then, striking the boulders in front of me. I barely felt the spray across my face and hair. A wash of water covered the pool and went up to my knees. When the bubbling foam receded, I laughed at the massive starfish, all moving at once at surprising speed.

But then I frowned as two edged in opposite directions.
Was that
…
?

Another wave crashed against the boulders, the tide clearly intent on retaking the rocks. Again I ignored it, intent on the pool before me, waiting for the white froth to recede and clear water to show me I’d been wrong…seeing things. I squeezed my fingers impatiently, waiting, waiting.

But when the water was once again clear to the bottom, I saw that the starfish had moved away from the center, all clinging to the edges now. It made no sense. Starfish were too slow, edging quietly over a rock in the course of an hour, not minutes. I looked to the center of the pool and frowned. There, nestled among the rocks and sand was the glint of gold.

Not starfish gold. Gold-gold.

I didn’t hesitate. I stepped down and into the pool, my skirt rising around me, and leaned down and grabbed the edge of the object. It lifted easily, as if it’d been placed there just for me, and I looked around for the fisherman, now gone, even as another wave crashed against the rocks and thoroughly soaked me.

I clambered out of the pool and waited for the wave to recede back to the sea, leaving my path exposed. Then I hopped from rock to rock again, until I was at last climbing on soft sand between the big boulders that rose on this side of the beach. Safe from view of any early-morning runners, I sat down heavily, pushed aside my dripping curls, and studied the golden object. It looked like a small oil lamp, encrusted by a bunch of tiny white sea creatures of some sort on one side. It was clearly old, really old. I looked out to the Pacific, wondering if it was a remnant of some ancient galleon that had run aground, crashing on the reef that bordered the coast or even in our small cove. In all my years of walking this beach, I’d never found such an object—or heard of anyone else finding one like it either.

I used my nails to try and pry off some of the ocean muck that clung to it, then ran my fingertips over the soft, golden lip and then across the worn, foreign lettering that wound around the width of it. The lid was missing, and there had clearly been a spout at one time, giving it almost a genie-lamp feel, making me think of my abuela and her questions.
What do you want most, Grillita?

I cradled the lamp to my chest, memories of her so vivid, her voice in my head so loud, it was like I was with her again.

What had I said? What had she said?

Adventure
…
to know true love
…
to discover what it meant to have a real family.

A blinding flash of light made me blink, and the ground seemed to shift. I reached for the nearest boulder, wondering if we were having an earthquake. My stomach twisted, and I felt a wave of nausea. Then my ears popped, and popped again, like when we were driving up and down from the mountains. But as I waited, there was nothing more.

Well, that was weird. Seriously weird.

I winced, holding my stomach as it settled, wondering what exactly was going on with my body. But then the heavy object in my hands distracted me again. What would a treasure like this be worth? Could it pay for my college? Maybe the guy at the pawn shop could tell me something…

I rose and walked around the boulder, looking down to the main part of the beach, wondering when Glen, the old leather-skinned lifeguard, would show up for duty. He’d think this thing was cool.

I sucked in a quick breath, blinking rapidly.

There was no lifeguard tower.

No runners on the beach, like there usually were by this time.

The million-dollar houses that had lined the cliffs above the beach when I got here were gone—only waving grass greeted my eyes on the bluff above. I glanced out to sea, wondering if somehow, I had walked up the wrong beach, distracted by the golden object in my hands.

I turned in a slow circle, eying the cliffs and the water. It was my beach for sure. It had to be. Except it didn’t look like my beach. The tide pools were gone. The beach was wider and strewn with washed-up logs. And halfway across the broad expanse was the broken, skeletal frame of a shipwreck.

A shipwreck.

I frowned, shook my head and turned around in another slow three-sixty. “Wh-what’s going on?” I muttered, now thinking I was hallucinating or something. Maybe I was just so tired…maybe this was some weird response to grief over my abuela…

I studied the bluff and the rocks beside me. It
was
the same cove, the same beach. My cove.
My cove.
It had to be.

But it wasn’t. It was different. Radically different. Raw and undeveloped and—

A gunshot startled me—
a gunshot?
I flinched and peeked around the big volcanic boulder, down toward the long stretch of beach the surfers favored. Now what? Some sort of gang—

My eyes widened in shock. In the distance, there was a man on horseback, charging in my direction, four men on horseback behind him—in pursuit?—galloping at the same pace, hooves tossing up clods of sand behind them. Another gunshot cracked through the air, the only other sound besides the wash of the waves.

I could feel the rumble of the horses’ hooves beneath my own bare feet and saw the men approaching at a frightening pace.

Everything was wrong. Terribly wrong.

I sank back between the big rocks, desperately seeking some sort of shelter. I glanced up the dunes to the bluff above and knew there was no way I’d make it up there in time. And even if I did, there wasn’t a house to run to, a door to knock on…

I peeked around the edge of the big boulder again, watching as the first guy galloped ever nearer. I took in his tailored, tightly buttoned jacket and his dark good looks before pulling back around the rock, attempting to hide. I crouched down, eyes wide, waiting for him to pass.

The mare kicked up clods of sand that pelted the rock beside and above me. I thought the rider glanced under his arm at me, our eyes meeting for a second, but he never paused. He definitely wanted to get away from those who pursued him, which made my heart pound.
What is happening?
His saddle was clearly an antique, all gorgeous tooled leather, inlaid with gold and red in an old-Mexico feel.
Everything
about him and his horse said Old Mexico, when I thought about it.

Maybe they’re shooting a movie. Maybe this isn’t my beach. Maybe I passed out, the waves moved my unconscious body to another beach
…
one I haven’t ever been to.

But I’d been on every beach within twenty miles. I looked up the bluff again. This was my cove. Tainter Cove. It had to be. It had to be, but…

I sank back an inch further, wishing I could become one with the rock as the others finally passed by me, in pursuit of the first man. There were four of them, and as they passed, they were shouting in Spanish.
“¡Cerrémosle el paso! ¡Separémonos! Debemos matarlo antes que llegue al límite del rancho.”