The Seventh Wish (22 page)

“Okay. Let me get changed.” I start to get up, but she puts up her hand.

“No. You need to stay home this time. It's too . . . it's just too much.” She looks down at her phone. “I'll call Mrs. McNeill and see if she can come over for a while.”

“No.” I reach for the phone—too fast—and knock it out of her hand. It bounces off the table and onto the floor. A part falls off, and the battery skids across the linoleum.

Mom curses—she never curses—and I scramble to pick up the phone pieces. “I'm sorry! I wasn't trying to—I'll go next door and talk to Mrs. McNeill while you get ready. Her car's there, and I'm sure she'll come right over. I'm sorry, Mom!”

Mom's shoulders sink. “No, I'm sorry. And yes, please see if she's around.” She takes the pieces of her phone from me and turns to go upstairs.

I don't bother to put on my coat. I step outside, and the wind off the lake blows right through my sweatshirt. It's howling in big, loud gusts tonight, and the ice is talking again, but I don't stop to listen.

I turn down the sidewalk to the McNeills' house. The garage door is open with the ice fishing sled inside. It's still loaded up, even though we haven't been out in a week.

I turn back to the lake and listen.

The ice groans and creaks and thunders. I know just how it must feel, wanting to hold on. Knowing there's nothing it can do.

But there's one thing left that I can do tonight.

The fish has never been perfect, but it's always kept its promise. My wish for the health insurance people to pay for Abby's treatment worked. It did. It just wasn't enough.

Abby needed bigger magic. And the fish is still out there.

I can catch it one more time, and this time, I'll wish better.

I
have
to wish better. It has to work.

Please, please, please
 . . . I think.

I run to the garage and find a fishing rod with a lure on the end. I pull the rod out and knock a tackle box to the floor. It clatters open on the concrete, and lures spill out. The McNeills' porch light goes on, but I can't stop to pick up the lures, and I can't stop to explain. There's no time.

I run across the yard to the rocks, pumping my arms, sliding on the melting ice and snow. The moon lights up a thin border of water right along the shore, but the ice beyond that is plenty thick and safe. I jump over the sliver of open water. When I land, my feet slide out from under me and I fall on my back, but it's okay. The fishing pole
doesn't break. I crawl out until the ice is a little less slippery. Then I stand and run.

The ice crunches and sloshes under my sneakers. They're soaked through, but I'm halfway there now. I can see the dark spot on the ice, the hole where the fish is—
Please. One more time.

I'm shaking from cold and my fingers are numb and my hands are trembling, but I get the line down into the hole, into the water below.

Come on. Come on!

The wind blows, and there's a sound like the sky is ripping open, far away. The ice here on the bay is fine, but out on the broad lake it's breaking up. Giant slabs crash against one another, scratching and clunking, frigid water sloshing over them.

I bounce my line in the water.

Come on!

Finally, there's a tug.

Yes!

I step back to reel it in. Just as that glimmering green eye appears over the lip of the hole, the ice beneath me makes an awful, cracking splash and falls away.

Slush-cold water swallows me up to my neck. It squeezes my body all around.

I fling out my arms. The pole goes flying. I grab at the edge of the ice, but then the edge is gone, and the water is
cold, so cold I can't breathe, and I can't see the ice or the pole or the fish.

I wish . . .

I can't wish.

I can't breathe.

I need to get out.

I flail at the edge of the ice. I kick forward and try to pull myself out, but it's wet and cold, so cold, and my arms slip back.

“Help!” I cry and gasp for air.

Not loud enough.

Too much wind. Too little breath.

There's no one to hear, and the fish—where is it? I can't catch my breath.

I think I hear my name, but no one is there, no one can help. I try again to pull myself out. I put my hands flat on the edge and push, but the ice breaks like a potato chip. I reach again. I try to hold on, just hold on, but my shoes are pulling and my legs are heavy, and I'm shaking, and then something hard and scratchy slaps my cheek.

“Grab the rope!”

But there is no rope. I don't see rope, and if I let go of the ice, I'll sink and it's cold.

“Grab the rope!”

The rope hits me, loops around me. I push up on my elbows to reach—and the ice breaks again, but this time,
this time, I have the rope in my frozen hands. I can't feel them. I can barely hold on, but I hug the rope as tight as I can and feel a tug.

A tug—yes! Reel it in . . .

I wish . . .

This one is bigger, but I hold on.

I wish . . .

Chapter 22

The Seventh Wish

When I wake up, Mom is there with a nurse.

“It's okay.” Mom puts a hand on my cheek. “You're going to be okay. You fell through the ice, but Mrs. McNeill found you. You're safe now.”

I nod because I remember. The ice was there and I had the fish and then the ice was gone and it was so cold and every time I tried to get out the edges broke off again. Now I'm here, and I never wished. I never let the fish go. It must be frozen solid out on the ice with my lure still in its mouth. I never got to wish, and now the fish is dead and it's too late.

I start to whisper Abby's name, but my lips don't move. And it's warm.

My wet clothes are gone. There are blankets all around me. It's warm here, and I'm so tired.

I close my eyes again.

Later, someone puts a hand over mine, and I open my eyes again. Mom is there with Mrs. McNeill and a nurse. There's an IV in my arm, and the nurse is doing something with a clear bag hanging on a rack.

“What is that?” I whisper. My throat hurts.

“Just fluids,” the nurse says, “to keep you hydrated. Try to rest. You gave your family a scare.”

She leaves, and I look at the line that snakes from the bag to my bed, the needle-thing taped to the crook of my arm. And I remember.

“Mom, where's Abby? Is she still—”

“In the hospital in Albany. Dad's with her. The emergency treatment worked. The doctors say she's going to be all right.”

“Good,” I whisper. But then my eyes fill with tears, and I say, “No . . .” because if Abby were all right, she never would have left me at the feis. That Abby who walked out and took my money was hi-my-name-is-Abby-and-I'm-an-addict and not the old Abby. Not my sister. “She's not all right, Mom.” And there's nothing I can do for her, now that the fish is gone.

“Shh . . .” Mom brushes my hair back on my forehead. “I know that, Charlie. Even before this happened, we knew
that relapse is often part of an addict's recovery.” She takes a deep, shaky breath. “They even warned her that if she injected heroin again, the same amount could kill her because her body wasn't used to it anymore.”

“And she did it anyway.” I shake my head because I can't understand. I can't. “She knew, Mom. How could she do that? How was she not afraid?”

Mom sucks in her breath. “I don't know. I guess addiction is bigger than fear. Bigger than lots of things.” She looks at me. “How were you not afraid of going out on the ice tonight?”

“I don't know.” But that's a lie. I haven't been afraid of the ice since the first wish. And not being scared felt awesome and free. Until it didn't.

Anyone should have known that ice was dangerous tonight. Honeycomb ice, Mrs. McNeill called it. She'd warned me a person could fall right through. I
heard
the ice breaking up in the waves. I
heard
those huge chunks smashing together. And I still wasn't scared. “I should have been afraid. But I wanted to help Abby.”

“What?” Mom looks at me. What I said doesn't make sense to her. How could it? She doesn't know about the fish, and I can't tell her now. She'll think I have brain damage from falling in that icy water.

I start to cry. I can't believe I did this to Mom when she's already such a mess over Abby.

“Shh . . . I'm sorry. Try to rest.” Mom shakes her head. “I know it's hard, but you can't help Abby, Charlie. Neither can I. Abby's the only person who can do that. And now she has another chance. She's lucky.”

I shake my head. Lucky is when you win the lottery or a big stuffed animal at the fair. Abby's on a bed in some hospital far away with another broken promise sitting on her chest. Now she'll have to go through treatment all over again, and maybe it will work and maybe it won't, and maybe she'll stay clean and live and maybe she won't and she'll die next time. Abby's not lucky.

“You're lucky too,” Mrs. McNeill says, stepping up to my bed. I've never seen her cry, but her eyes are teary. “I'd have never taken you out fishing if I thought you'd go running off on your own.”

“I'm sorry,” I whisper. I want to tell her why I did it. I want to tell her about the fish, but I can't. The best I can do is, “Somehow, I got it in my head that the ice was magic . . . and I thought . . . I was going to make a wish. A wish for Abby, that . . .” I stop because it doesn't make any sense at all.

But Mrs. McNeill nods slowly. “You know the thing about magic, Charlie? We can wish on clovers and shooting stars and ice flowers all we want. But in the end, the only real magic is what's inside us and the people we love. Some things are beyond even that magic.” She reaches inside her
collar and pulls out the four-leaf clover charm. “It took me a long time to learn that.”

I nod. Even if she can't know about the fish, somehow Mrs. McNeill understands. Knowing that helps a little, but it also makes me feel worse about what I did. I wonder if she knows about her fishing pole. “Mrs. McNeill, I have to tell you something else. I took your fishing pole from your garage tonight.”

I don't use the word “stole,” even though that's what I did. I stole a fishing pole from Drew's nana, who trusted me and took me out fishing almost every day this winter. What kind of person does that? A desperate one. One who can only think of one thing.

“I'm sorry,” I say again. “It might still be out there.” I don't tell her there might be a dead magic fish on it.

“And there it will stay,” she says. “I'm not worried about the pole. I was worried about you. I'm glad you're all right, but if you ever want to fish with me again, you have to promise you'll never set foot on that ice without a buddy.”

“I promise,” I say. And I mean it. My fear of the ice is back. Maybe it's because the fish died and that reversed the wish. Or maybe it's because I almost died. It doesn't matter. I can't imagine going out there again.

Mrs. McNeill heads home, but a few seconds later there's a knock at the door—it's open—and Leah and her aunt are
standing there. Mom waves them in, and Leah comes up to my bed. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey.” I wait for her to ask what happened, what kind of idiot goes out on the ice on the night it's all breaking up. But she doesn't.

“I'm glad you're okay.” She reaches over to the little table beside my hospital bed and picks up a card. “Did you get this at Forest Hills?” She holds it up. It's the Serenity Prayer.

“Yeah.” I look at Mom. “Did you put that there?”

She shakes her head. “The nurse brought it with some loose change and your phone. They had to cut your wet clothes off when they brought you in. Those things must have been in your pocket.”