Authors: Mandy Hubbard

You Wish (25 page)

BOOK: You Wish

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“Okay. This is the front brake, and that goes to the back one. This is the clutch, and that’s the gas. It works just like the transmission in your truck. Let slowly off the clutch and ease on the gas. Not too abrupt on either.”

I nod, the too-big helmet sort of bobbing into my eyes. I don’t tell Ben that my brother’s truck
isn’t
a stick, it’s an automatic.

I concentrate on Ben’s instructions, hoping not to make a fool of myself.

And then everything goes horribly wrong. The clutch pops free of my fingertips and the bike jerks forward, and I lose my grip on the right handlebar while the bike revs, and suddenly the world is streaming by so fast the colors bleed together and I can’t see anything.

I feel arms around my waist, and the bike disappears from under me and I’m crashing to the ground.

No, not the ground.

I’m falling onto Ben.

We tumble into the dirt, and I feel the way he’s bracing himself, absorbing the impact with his shoulders and arms, making it so that it’s almost like I’m falling into a pillow. If, that is, pillows were wrapped in pounds of perfectly sculpted muscle.

Vaguely, I hear the bike crashing in the background. I take in a few deep breaths to calm my racing heart. It’s revving higher than the bike was just seconds ago.

Our legs are sort of tangled, one of mine settled between his, and I can feel the buckle on his boot digging into my calf. My hips must be just an inch below his, pressing into him. One of his arms is slung around me, so that I can feel the weight of his hand on my lower back.

I shove at the helmet, trying it get it out of my eyes. The goggles have a thin, sheer layer of dust on it, making everything look a little hazy.

Yet even through the tint of the dirt, I see Ben’s eyes, crystal blue, staring straight into mine.

Neither of us says anything, we just keep blinking and staring.

And all I can think is,
I wonder if he’d kiss me if I wasn’t wearing this stupid helmet.

I hate myself for cursing the helmet, with its giant plastic visor and big plastic thing that sticks out in front of my jaw, keeping Ben at a distance. It would be impossible to kiss wearing it.

I should be thanking the stars I’m wearing it, because it’s the only thing stopping me from bridging the gap and forever ending my friendship with Nicole.

“Are you . . . okay?” he finally says, after we’ve stared at each other too long. I’m surprised I can even hear him over the pounding of my heart.

I nod, and the helmet bobs loosely on my head.

His beautiful, full, completely kissable lips curl into a smile. “Didn’t I tell you not to pop the clutch?”

“I don’t even know what that means,” I say, my voice husky and hoarse. I clear my throat.

I know I should get up, put some distance, some air between us, but I can’t get myself to move.

I’ll never be this close to him again and I don’t want it to end.

He shifts underneath me, and I realize I need to get up. As I peel myself away from him, I feel like I’m losing something, giving up something I will never have again even though I’ve only just discovered what it could be.

I’m glad Ben can’t see my face when I turn a little, using the helmet to obscure my expression. I don’t even know what my expression
is
, because there are too many emotions raging inside me: longing, hurt, confusion, fear, and utter, complete infatuation.

He climbs to his feet and brushes the dirt off his riding pants. His shoulders and chest seem to be rising more rapidly than normal. Is he breathing as hard as I am? Is his heart racing like mine?

I unbuckle the strap and then slip the goggles and helmet over my head, hoping as I run my fingers through my hair that I don’t look like a total wreck. “Maybe I’ll save the motocross lessons for another day,” I say, grinning at him, trying to obscure the feelings raging inside me.

“And maybe next time I’ll wear full body padding.”

I laugh and try not to wonder if Ben is really edging closer to me or if I’m imagining it. I step back. My bike is about twenty-five feet away, on its side. Even knowing it’s going to vanish in a few days doesn’t stop me from cringing at the sight of it in a heap.

“Why’d you and Nicole break up?” I ask abruptly, staring at the bike instead of Ben.

Ben blows out a long breath and runs his fingers through his hair. “Honestly? It wasn’t any one thing. I mean, we did everything we were supposed to do. We went to dinners and movies, and we celebrated our anniversary, and we introduced each other to our parents. But it just wasn’t there.”

“So you dumped her?”

The bark of laughter is enough to make me turn and look at him. He looks beautiful and irresistible in the shadows of the stadium-style lighting “No.
She
dumped
me
. I mean, it caught me off guard, but she was right. There was nothing real between us.”

“Oh,” I say, wondering if there would be something real between
us
. Does he ever feel what I feel? Does he count the times we touch?

“I should go,” I say, walking over to my bike. “I’m grounded and my mom will kill me if she calls the house and realizes I’m not home.”

I walk over to the bike, but before I can pick it up, Ben is jogging up to me. He grabs my arm. “What’s up with you these days? You’re all over the place.”

I keep staring at the place where his fingers touch the crimson sweater. He notices and slowly releases my arm.

Even though I lost count, I’m positive we’ve never touched this much. I’ll never forget this night. I’ll be playing it over and over again in my mind tonight.

“I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel bad,” I say, still not looking at him. “But you’re Nicole’s boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, or whatever, and that’s that.”

Ben doesn’t say anything and somehow I doubt what I just said made any sense to him.

“I don’t understand you,” he says.

“And you won’t. I have a boyfriend. An awesome boyfriend,” I say. I’m grasping at straws now. I walk away from him and pick up the bike. “I have to go.”

I feel lower than low right now as I push the bike off the track, Ben trailing me. One second I’m laughing and staring at him like I want to kiss him and the next I’m shoving him away and running.

I have to sort things out with Nicole before I can talk to Ben about anything. And the wishes need to get out of the way.

Everything is much too complicated to throw this . . .
thing
with Ben into the middle of it all.

Ben loads the bike for me, and I stand aside as he ties it down, quickly and easily, his skilled hands working much quicker than mine had when I loaded it up.

When he shuts the tailgate, silence settles around us like a veil.

“Thanks for the lesson,” I say, stepping backward, away from him.

“Sure.” He takes a few strides toward the track, then stops and looks up at me. “Are things ever going to be normal with us again?”

“I don’t know what normal is,” I say, yanking the truck door open. “I really don’t.”

And then before I can say anything else, I climb in, fire it up, and drive out of the fields, blinking hard against the tears that seem to come from nowhere.

THROUGHOUT
the next day at school, Nicole still doesn’t speak to me. I spend my lunch in the darkroom, trying to develop photos for the project, but I’m too distracted to come up with anything good. When the bell rings, I head to the big bathroom down the hall, my backpack haphazardly crammed full of my stuff and slung over my shoulder.

I shove the door open, hard, and when it bounces off the wall, the girl near the sink jumps up into the air and turns to glare at me.

I stop.

It’s Janae.

But it’s . . . not.

Her face is . . . completely broken out. Like, totally covered in acne. Pimples litter her forehead, go down her nose, sprinkle her chin and cheeks. What did she do—cover her face in chocolate and then sleep in it?

She sees me staring and her eyes narrow into angry little slits, but the effect is ruined because there are tears streaming down her face, so I know her wrath is tempered.

It’s so weird to see her . . . well . . . ugly. I’ve never seen so much as one pimple on her face,
ever
. I mean, Nicole has battled acne for years, but Janae?

O. M. G.

I freeze halfway to the bathroom stall and give her another long look.

This is a wish! Finally, a cool freakin’ wish.

I take in the array of pimples covering her face, obscuring her perfect beauty, and one half of me wants to jump for joy as the other half feels torn and sad, which I don’t understand. Because Janae is mean, deserves everything she has coming to her.

I remember wishing for this now. When we were twelve, Nicole’s acne really kicked into gear. Guess if she got boobs early, she got the acne to go with it. Janae was perfecting her mean-girl tactics by then, and for the next few years, she’d make Nicole burst into tears a time or seven.

And Janae had really dished it out on one of my birthdays, because by the time Nicole made it to my house to have cake and go out with my family, her eyes were red and swollen. Janae had ripped into Nicole so hard that Nicole spent the first hour of my birthday celebration sniffling.

So I’d wished that Janae would know what it was like to be suffering from something she couldn’t control, to have everyone see it and judge her and laugh at her.

“Oh,” I say. The word seems too big, echoing on the bathroom walls. “Um, sorry.”

She can’t know what I’m sorry for, why I’m apologizing, but I can’t stop the word from escaping anyway. Because some part of me really is sorry. The pain in her eyes is just as real as the pain in Nicole’s had been.
Has
been, for years.

“Yeah, right,” Janae says as she turns back to her reflection.

“No, seriously, I mean, that
really
sucks.”

Okay
, foot, meet mouth.

Janae blinks a few times to clear the tears from her eyes. “Thanks, freak. It’s this awful new lotion, I think.” She sniffles and stands up straighter, as if to pull herself together. She runs a finger under her tear-streaked eyes, but it smears the mascara even worse, leaving black winged smudges around the edges of her eyes.

“Whatever. Your melodramatic hysterics are a bit over the top,” I say.

She turns to look at me, really look. I want to shrink away, because even a tear-streaked, snot-filled, acne-covered mess, she’s still the same person. “You’re just saying that because if
you
looked like this, you’d probably get out a Magic Marker and connect the dots and tell everyone they’re constellations.”

Is that a compliment or an insult?

I shrug. “Your face will be back to normal by Monday. Chill.” I
know
it will be back to normal by Monday because the wishes end then.

Janae turns toward me and crosses her arms. “Don’t you have a lamb to sacrifice or something? Another body part to enhance, perhaps?”

Oh. Okay, well, that answers that. She was definitely trying to insult me.

I guess some people just never change, even with wish intervention.

I head to the bathroom stall and listen as Janae turns the sink off and leaves, the door swinging back and forth a few times. Before it stills, however, a new group of girls enter.

“I didn’t know steroids did that, though. Are you sure?” The voice is nasally, annoying. I don’t recognize it.

“I don’t know, but Miranda saw her changing in PE and said her boobs were really that big, that it didn’t look like she was stuffing. How else do you get that big overnight? That is totally
not
normal.”

“As if that girl has ever been normal.”

I freeze. I suddenly want to pick my feet up off the ground so they won’t see me, but I am afraid to move, afraid to alert them to my presence.

“Actually, she was totally different in junior high. She was in my computer science class.”

“Really? ’Cuz these days she’s totally weird. I heard she has a purple goat at home.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, she probably milks it and makes goat cheese.”

The girls’ laughter rings out, filling the room. I fume. I want to leave the stall, but every moment I wait makes it seem harder to reveal myself.

There are about a thousand things I could say to them right now. I could offer them some goat cheese, wiggle my boobs, say something snide.

But instead I just sit quietly and listen until they’ve left the room, and then I get up and go wash my hands.

I make my way to my locker to ditch a few of my books. I’m just swinging the door shut when someone taps me on the shoulder, and I jump.

Uh-oh.

It’s Ken.

“Hey, sweetie,” he says. “I want to apologize for last night. I didn’t realize it was a school kind of thing.”

I glance around. So far no one has noticed him.

“Um, yeah, this is too. A school thing. This
is
school, actually.”

“I know, but Ann said she’s been here before, so I thought maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal if I just dropped by.”

“Oh?” I’m going to kill her. Was I not clear enough about the visitor policy here?

My heart stops altogether when he plants one hand on either side of my shoulders, so I’m trapped between him and the locker.

PDA alert! PDA alert!

I try to turn away, but it doesn’t work, because Ken just leans a little bit to the right, and before I can take another breath, his lips press into mine. My fingers tighten around the straps of my backpack.

Ken pulls away, enough so that I can speak.

“I think we should see other people,” I blurt out.

He doesn’t move. He’s leaning in close, like he could kiss me again at any moment.

“What?” I can feel his breath on my cheek, warm. It smells like cinnamon or Red Hots or something.

BOOK: You Wish

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