You Wish (5 page)

“Make a wish, honey!” my mom says, completely oblivious to my distress.

I shake my head, not sure if I can manage actual words.

“Don’t be a party pooper!”

Anger surges through me as I turn to look at her wide, happy eyes. She’s hardly talked to me all night, and she hasn’t even noticed I’m hating this. Fury boils up in my veins, welling in my chest until I spit the word out at her. “Fine!”

My mom steps back a bit at the sharp edge in my voice. Her wide smile turns a little plastic, and her eyes dart around to the faces of her potential clients.

I close my eyes to calm the anger boiling in my stomach and also to block out the crowd around me.

I wish my birthday wishes actually came true. Because they never freakin’ do.

And then I blow out the candles in one long, lung-zapping breath. As I do, I feel as though I’m blowing my whole life away—like a pile of dried-up leaves.

5

WHEN MY ALARM
rings out, it’s all I can do not to smash it with a hammer. In fact, if I had an actual hammer handy, I might do it.

I slap it off and then sit up in bed, rubbing my eyes. My blankets are twisted around me because I’ve spent half the night tossing and turning, angry about the disaster of my party.

I’m dreading today. I don’t want to know if Janae told everyone about how my party was like one bad eighties movie or how I was trying to look cute in my ugly sailor dress. Or if my mom is annoyed that I blew out the candles and then promptly left and retired to my room and locked the door, blasting Blink-182 so I didn’t have to listen to the crowd outside.

I yawn as I stand and stretch my arms over my head, grumbling about the start of another day of my less-than-stellar life, when I see something bright flash across the lawn below my window.

Pink.

Are there still workers here, taking down the party decorations?

I wrap my neon-green-and-orange plaid quilt around my body even though I’m wearing a dorky flannel pajama set that covers me from head to toe and lean against the windowsill to get a better look. Below me, the backyard looks exactly as it did forty-eight hours ago: plain old grass. The cedar fence is no longer adorned with flowers, the tent has disappeared, and the punch bowl—er, fountain—has been retired. The aggregate patio below me is once again sporting the black, wrought iron patio set, nothing more.

So what was that flash of pink?

I yank the window open and press my forehead into the screen so that I can look to the right and left of the house. And that’s when I see it again: a burst of pink as it rounds the corner.

Hmm. This reeks of my brother. He probably has a water-balloon ambush planned, and he’s trying to lure me outside. It’s probably fifty-four degrees out. He’d just
love
soaking me.

And there’s no way I’m falling for it. He’s one of those people who will try the same gag over and over, as long as it works. And he did this exact thing a month ago. He set up camp and then threw the balloons at my window. I went out the back door to yell at him, and he totally slammed me with an explosion of water.

Maybe I can go around the front of the house and use the element of surprise to snag his own weaponry and use it against him. Years of playing little sister have shown me that brains are more powerful than brawn, especially if you’re talking about my brains and his brawn.

I throw on a fluffy blue robe with clouds all over it. It was a Christmas present, which is why I didn’t get the black one with a cute lime-green skull-and-crossbones design.

I take the stairs two by two and am at the front door in seconds. I click it open as silently as possible and then walk across the slate-tiled stoop and down the steps. I hoof it across the lawn, the grass cold and dewy on my bare feet. I tiptoe into the backyard. My brother is probably on the other side of the rhododendron bush, staring around the corner of the house, expecting me to exit out of the back door.

As I turn to shut the gate behind me, I feel it: hot breath on my neck, whiskers tickling my ear. Ew, my brother has a serious five o’clock shadow. So gross.

I spin around to face my brother, but I see nothing but dead air. And that’s when I feel it again: hot breath, this time on the bare part of my stomach, between the top and the bottom of my blue flannel pajamas, where the robe has fallen open.

And when I finally look down, I scream and leap back, crashing into the gate and hitting my funny bone. Pain ripples up my arm.

The pony—the
pink
pony—its dark eyes widening, sort of jumps into the air and then plants all four feet, as if
I’ve
startled
it
. Its nostrils flare, and it takes in a big, quivery breath. It’s not very tall—its back probably reaches my waist. Maybe it’s a miniature horse and not a pony. Or are they the same thing? Either way, it’s not supposed to be pink, and it’s
definitely
not supposed to be in my backyard.

We stare at each other, seemingly frozen, until it spins around and trots away, its blue-streaked tail dragging behind. It lets out a long, shrill whinny as it disappears around the corner.

Someone has seriously messed with that pony. I’m guessing it was white at one time, because that’s the only way dye that pink would ever take. And the mane is mostly white too, except those crazy electric-blue streaks.

And I swear to you, it had an ice-cream cone painted on its hindquarters. Three scoops. Sugar cone.

I rub my eyes a few times. This isn’t real, is it? Did the little guy escape from a local farm? Who did this to him?

Or wait. If it’s pink, it’s probably a girl.

I stomp after it, annoyed that I’ve gotten out of bed for something this insanely ridiculous. Who paints a pony pink? Shouldn’t that be animal cruelty or something?

When I round the corner of the house, I get a full view of the backyard and the totally empty expanse of grass. Huh.

I walk around the garden shed and peek inside, but the pony isn’t in there, either. The side gate is open on the other side, so I walk around to the front of the house and stand on the sidewalk. I look both ways, down the street, but I don’t see her.

I close my eyes for a long moment, half expecting to feel warm breath and whiskers again, but there’s nothing. The pony is gone.

It’s official: I’m crazy.

I go back to the house and walk into the entry, where my mom is putting on a pair of sensible black pumps, her hair blow-dried and curled to perfection.

“What are you doing outside?”

I stand there dumbly. “Um, looking for the paper. For a current-events homework assignment.”

“It’s on the counter,” she says, giving me an odd look. It is
always
on the counter.

“Oh.”

She stands to leave.

“Mom?”

“Mm-hmm . . . ”

“Did you rent a pony for my party?”

My mom laughs. “Of course not, honey. You’re too big for a pony.”

And then she walks away, toward the garage door, where her shiny Lexus awaits. I watch her go, wondering if I’m crazy or if the perfect events coordinator doesn’t even know what kind of activities she booked for her daughter’s sweet sixteen.

Shaking my head, I go back to my room. Clearly, my brain doesn’t function properly without twenty minutes of a hot shower.

And I only have nineteen before I’m late.

6

THE SECOND I WALK
through the double doors and into the wide carpeted hallways of EHS, Nicole ambushes me.

“I am so, so,
so
sorry,” she says.

I don’t say anything, I just keep walking, clenching my teeth a little.

She walks backward in front of me, her blonde hair blowing in her face a bit. She sweeps it back with a newly French-manicured hand and looks me in the eyes. She’s wearing a diamond pendant on a fine, delicate silver chain.

I wonder if it was an anniversary gift. I try to remember if she was wearing it last night, but I never got within a hundred feet of her, so I’m not sure.

“I completely, totally lost track of time. I swear I freaked out when I finally looked at my watch. We raced straight to your house, but we got stuck in traffic. There was this semi-truck rolled over, and we had to go around and . . . ”

She seems to realize I’m not really listening.

“What happened is not important. I swear, I will make it up to you somehow.” She stops walking and I’m forced to stop too, to keep from slamming into her.

I stare into her blue eyes for a moment. They are crinkled up in concern, like at any moment I may tell her she’s as good as dead to me. I cross my arms. “I sent you, like, a hundred texts.”

“My phone was dead.”

I twist a strand of my damp brown hair, resisting the urge to just yank it right out. “The whole thing was a disaster, you know. The
whole thing
.”

She purses her pouty, perfectly glossed lips. “I’ll do your bio homework for a week! I’ll loan you anything in my closet. I’ll go to the concert of your choice.”

I raise an eyebrow. “
Any
concert?”

“Any concert where they won’t throw me in a mosh pit or something.”

I screw my lips up to the side and give her a long, hard look. Maybe if I had ninety-nine other friends, I could at least give her the silent treatment for a day or two, but my resolve is already weakening.

I cross my arms. “Swear? You’re not forgiven until you actually do it, you know.”

She lets out a long, slow sigh of relief. “I swear.”

“Fine.” I uncross my arms. It’s sad how fast I just gave in. But obviously, she didn’t mean to be so late. And I’m more mad about the stupid party than I am about her. “How was your anniversary dinner?”

She brightens. “The food was so amazing. I got this risotto thing and OMG, my mouth waters just thinking of it. And the view! It’s right on the Puget Sound, near Point Defiance. They have a deck, but it was closed for the winter. But the windows look right out over the water, and you can see all the ferries and sail-boats and stuff. I could have stared at it all night. And Ben said the funniest thing about the waiter! We kept laughing all during dinner about it and at one point I actually spit out my soup, but Ben was really nice about it and pretended he didn’t notice. It was so cute. We talked about you, too, ya know. Ben thinks you’re a rebel. That’s his word, not mine.”

A rebel? Ben
thinks
about me?

“So,” I say, feeling a new flush of anger that she clearly had so much fun without me. “It was worth missing my party.”

“Yeah—no, no, of course not.”

Argh. “Whatever. I’m over it.” Except I’m not. “But you owe me, like, a hundred of your mint-chip brownies.”

Her smile brightens. “I’ll commence baking tonight.”

We pick up a walk again, heading toward biology. “And also, you might have to do my bio homework for the rest of the
year
. I’m lost already.”

Nicole laughs. “My mom is making us all go visit my grandma tonight, but what if we get together tomorrow? We can go over the cell diagrams.”

I nod, and we step into class, the fight over my party mostly forgotten.

If only the party itself was as easy to forget.

AS I SIT
in photography several hours later, I can’t stop worrying about Nicole and the inevitable moment she realizes she’s totally outgrown me. We may have resolved our dispute, but what if it’s just the first of many?

If she abandons me on my birthday, just about anything could be fair game, right?

I should be working on the assignment that is sure to sink the only A I have, but instead I keep flicking glances over at her.

Right now, she’s standing over a tray of developer, a pair of tongs in her hand as she swishes her paper around in the fluid. Today she’s been developing an entire roll of photos of Ben, stuff they took while at their dinner last night.

I saw a few of them. They went walking on the waterfront afterward. She took pictures of him on a pier, and the sun is just a sliver on the horizon. The water stretches out behind him, beautiful and serene.

She wasn’t kidding when she said they lost track of time. Because when the sun was setting, she should have been standing in my backyard, but she was an hour away, totally oblivious, happily strolling along Ruston Way.

I’m still kinda angry. I’d never do that to her! But I’m also a mixture of other things: worried, annoyed, concerned, sad.

The thing with Nicole is that we’ve both changed a lot in the last few years. We’re either going to grow closer or farther, and I think I know which way things are going.

See, Nicole used to be truly unfortunate looking. I never cared that her face was covered in acne, that she was at least twenty pounds overweight, or that she was unusually short.

But whatever she’s been doing to her face is working, and in the last year or two, she’s sprouted like eight inches, I swear.