The Wish (5 page)

Chapter Ten

B
eeBee got to
me first. “Are you okay?”

I sat up. My face stung. Everyone from Claverford plus Stephanie stood around me. “Am I bleeding?”

Nina crouched in front of me. “Not much. It's a good thing you had the helmet.”

My T-shirt was filthy. I had made an idiot of myself.

I started to undo my skates.

“Don't do that,” Nina said. “You have to skate some more, or you'll never get on a horse again.”

So I stood up, and Nina and BeeBee and everyone else from Claverford made me skate around the rink a few more times till I began to feel sort of comfortable again. I skated solo, but they all came with me, hovering. Everybody, that is, except Stephanie.

When Nina let me stop skating, we went to a café in the indoor part of the pier. Stephanie came too.

We took a booth. I sat on the outside, next to BeeBee. Nina faced me, with Stephanie on the inside.

Nina said, “So—is California worth leaving us for?”

“You know I didn't want to go. At first, I was so homesick, I was constantly in tears. Every night, I'd cry . . .”

How did she talk so fast and still manage to say each word? Why did she avoid looking at me? And then when she did look, why did she stare?

“. . . but now Mom's letting me take this course in psychic healing. I go twice a week after school, and when my friend Keisha sprained . . .”

Then I got it. Her blank stares were exactly the way everybody had looked at me after Ms. Hannah read the dog essay. Stephanie still saw the same Wilma everybody used to see.

But why?

They were all engrossed in Stephanie's tales of the West Coast. I felt left out for the first time since I'd gotten my wish.

So at a pause I jumped in. “How come you talk so fast?” I knew I was attacking her, but I was mad that the spell wasn't working and she didn't like me.

“Yeah,” Nina said. “You haven't slowed down from the speed of light yet.”

“I thought they were so laid back in California,” BeeBee said.

“They must think you're an East Coast freak,” Nina said. “The mile-a-minute mouth.”

Stephanie stared at us. Then she said, “Let me out.” Nina stood, and she slid out. “I'm sorry I ever—” She was fighting to keep from crying. “—I couldn't wait to see—I missed you so mu—” She turned and ran.

I had gotten them to gang up on her. I felt like a total louse.

Nina stood up. “I'll go get her.”

“No, I'll go,” I said. “It's my fault.” I wanted to tell her I was sorry.

“Yeah,” BeeBee said. “You go. You'll make her feel better.”

I ran out of the café. “Stephanie!”

She turned, and turned away again when she saw it was me.

I caught up to her. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”

“You're right, but it doesn't matter.”

“It does matter. It was mean. But I'm really not trying to take BeeBee and Nina away from you.”

“They-already-are-away-I-don't-live-here-anymore.”

“I know, but we can all be friends.”

“No-
we
-can't.” She slowed down her blast of words. “Because . . . I . . . don't . . . live . . . here . . . anymore. Am . . . I . . . speaking . . . slowly . . . enough . . . for . . . you?”

I nodded.

“Maybe you're as incredible as they say, even if you jumped on me for no reason. But why do you care about me? I'm leaving in a couple of days.”

I shrugged. “I don't, I guess.” This was true. I didn't want to be friends with Stephanie the way I wanted to be with Ardis, for example. “It's just that at Claverford they all—”

“I'm not at Claverford.”

Oh.

Aaah. That was it. The old lady made me popular at Claverford. That was why Stephanie didn't like me. What a relief. The spell was still working. I was still popular—at Claverford. And Claverford was all I cared about. “I'm sorry I was mean. Can't you come back? Nina and BeeBee want you to.”

“Well, I don't want to.” She muttered something under her breath that sounded like a fast chant. I caught “forgive” and “love” and “level.” Then she said, “Tell Neen and Beeb I'll call them. Tell them I'm not mad.”

I headed back to the café. I should have realized. I knew I wasn't the most popular kid in the world. Only at Claverford, just like I asked for.

Only at Claverford!
I tripped and almost fell again. If that was it, if that was really why Stephanie didn't like me, then—then—the spell was almost over, because I wasn't going to be at Claverford much longer. In two weeks we went to Grad Night, and the Monday after that we graduated. And next year I'd be at Elliot. I had sixteen more days of popularity. Then the wish would evaporate, and everything would go back to the way it used to be. Forever.

Chapter Eleven

I
gave Nina
and BeeBee Stephanie's message and said I had to go home. At the subway station I took the first train that came, even though it wasn't my train. I walked from car to car, looking for the old lady. I had to find her and fix my awful mistake.

I had been so stupid. She had offered to make me one of the in crowd, which exists at any school. Instead, I got my dream come true—for three weeks!

As soon as we graduated, the kids who liked me now wouldn't anymore. BeeBee and Nina would care that I had been mean to Stephanie, their real friend, and Ardis would remember how I had terrified her with Reggie. I'd go back to being ignored. And the dog jokes would start up again.

The old lady wasn't on the train, and she didn't get on at any of the stops. She didn't seem to, anyway. But she might not always look like an old lady. She might be able to take whatever form she chose. She could be the toddler in the stroller across from me. Or she could be the conductor who was coming into our car right now.

I got off at the last stop and waited for a train going the other way. On the ride back, I calmed down a little. Maybe I'd misinterpreted everything. Maybe there was another reason Stephanie didn't like me. Maybe she was immune to spells. Maybe I wasn't under a spell at all. Maybe the old lady was only a coincidence, and I had just naturally become popular that day. I had waited long enough.

Yeah, right. Outside Claverford that morning I was unpopular. One step inside and I was popular. Very natural.

It was a spell. And it was going to end.

Being left back would solve the problem. If my theory was right, the sixth and seventh graders would go on loving me. I could be popular all my life; I'd just have to stay in middle school. I'd be twenty-five and still going on sleepovers. I'd be married and still in eighth grade. I'd be in the same class with my own children. And then my grandchildren.

 

Sunday. Fifteen more days of popularity.

When I got to the Central Park Zoo, Jared was waiting for me at the ticket kiosk. I had never seen him in anything but the Claverford uniform for boys—blue blazer, gray slacks, white shirt, and maroon-and-blue-striped tie. Today he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Except for his one eyebrow, he looked okay. I was wearing jeans too, and my red zipper-neck T-shirt that I love, except Mom made me put a cardigan over it because it was cool out, and the only one I had that wasn't too heavy was an ugly bright green.

“Hi,” Jared said, smiling at me. “You look good.”

I smiled back, thinking he should never smile. The eyebrow above and the smile below made an almost complete circle.

“I look like a lollipop,” I said.

His smile widened. “They're feeding the sea lions in two minutes,” he said.

I love the sea lions. They have so much fun, you don't feel sad that they're in captivity. But I didn't like the announcer for their performance. After he made the sea lions hold their fish in their teeth till he gave the command to eat them, he told us this was proof they were smarter than dogs. He said you could never get a dog to hold its food like that.

“I could,” I said. “I could train Reggie to hold on to a treat for as long as I told him to.”

“Can he do tricks?”

The show ended while I told Jared about Reggie. We sat on a bench facing the sea lions' pool. I explained all the things Reggie could do, and Jared listened, really seeming interested. Unless the spell made his eyes stay on mine, made him laugh in the right places, made him keep saying, “Go on. What else?”

When I finished telling Reggie stories, he said, “Reggie loves you. He must think you're great.”

“I love him too, and he's great.”

“Right. It's like the seals. Their trainers are kind, so they think humans are terrific. But a baby elephant whose mother was killed by a hunter would think we were terrible.”

I had never thought about it that way.

He added, “Maybe they'd both be right.” He stood and put out his hand to pull me up. I took it, thinking he would let go when I was standing, but he didn't.

There was nothing wrong with his hand. It wasn't clammy or anything, but I imagined what Suzanne would say if she saw us—“Sweater Girl and Eyebrow Boy Hold Hands.” That's what she'd say. I felt more on display than the animals.

Chapter Twelve

“I
hate this
sweater,” I said. “I'm taking it off.” Jared would have to let go of my hand. I could put up with being a little chilly.

“What's wrong with the sweater?” he asked.

“It's too green.”

“Give it to me.”

I handed it over, and he tied it around his shoulders. It looked like he was wearing a cape. It looked dumb.

“It looks as bad on you as it did on me.” I wished he'd take it off. It was embarrassing. “Give it back.”

“No. It matches my toenail polish.”

Automatically I looked at his feet. Which were in sneakers.

“Gotcha.” He was grinning again.

I grinned too. I couldn't help it. He was funny, even if he was crazy.

“Let's watch the penguins eat,” he said, “unless you want to study
Hamlet
.”

“Penguins. I had time to study last night.”

The penguins were behind glass. When they ate, they lifted their heads and opened their mouths wide like baby birds.

I said, “I guess if they don't catch their own food, they never have a chance to grow up.”

“Ancient hunters might feel the same way about us,” Jared said. “We don't hunt for our food, so to them we'd be like children.”

He said the most amazing things.

“What do you want to be someday?” I asked as we left the building. I wondered because of the ideas he came up with.

He blushed. “A writer. What do you want to be?”

Why was he blushing? It wasn't like he wanted to be a terrorist.

“A vet,” I said.

“Are you going to Elliot next year?”

“Yeah. Are you?”

“Yup. We'll be together again.”

Well, that's okay, I thought, surprising myself. He was nicer than I expected.

Now we were by the polar bears. My favorite place. Everybody's favorite place.

Their pool is built into a hill with a glass wall on one side. At ground level, you see the bears plunging through the water, and when you walk up a flight of stairs, you see them coming up for air or lumbering around on the rocks.

“They're so adorable,” I said.

“They have big heads,” Jared said. “I once read that the animals we think are the cutest have the biggest heads. They remind us of human babies.”

How did he know this stuff? “Like pandas?”

“They're the ultimate,” Jared said. He took my hand again.

This time, I let him keep it. It wasn't a lifetime commitment.

“It's funny,” he said. “I don't usually like popular girls. But I guess it makes sense in your case, because I liked you before you became so popular.”

“You did?”

“You know I did. Right after Christmas, your friend Suzanne Russo—”

“She's not my friend.”

“I see you together some—”

“We live in the same building.”

“Oh. Anyway, she wanted to copy from me on a French test. I said yes, if she'd tell you I liked you.”

“She never said anything.”

“She's a creep. In college she's going to major in Creepology.”

I laughed. “She'll get straight As.”

We watched two bears play with a red rubber ball. Had Jared really liked me before the wish? He might lie, the way Suzanne had, thinking I'd like him better for it.

I looked at him, wearing my stupid sweater. Here was someone who wouldn't lie. Here was someone who liked
me
, the real me, the before-the-spell me. And when the spell ended, maybe he'd go right on liking me.

He continued, “So after nothing happened from Suzanne, I was scared to do anything else. But then, last week, when everybody was writing you notes and trying to sit next to you, I thought, if they can do it, so can I. So I wrote the note about the zoo.” He paused. “And a couple more notes.”

“That you didn't sign. Which ones?”

“I'm not telling. This was the important one. So far.”

Did he write one of the anonymous invitations to Grad Night? I hoped not. Even more, I hoped he wouldn't ask me in person. I didn't want to go with him. He was growing on me, and maybe we could be friends. But this was my only chance to go with somebody cute, somebody popular. And I didn't want to make him feel bad by saying “no” to his face.

The bears had stopped playing and were snoozing on the rocks.

“Jared?” He was the one to ask about popularity. He could probably quote some article that would explain everything. “Why do you think some girls are popular and some aren't?”

He was quiet for a minute. “I don't know, but the popular girls are usually locked together in bunches and you can't separate them. Want to go to the bird and monkey house?”

“Sure.”

As we walked over, he added, “I once read that the most
most
popular kid—somebody like Ardis—hardly ever grows up to be anything special. Like she wouldn't invent time travel or paint an important picture.” He blushed again. “I don't mean you. You just became popular. You haven't been that way all along.”

Yeah. It wouldn't apply to someone who was only popular for a month, either.

Jared pushed open the door to the Tropics building. Birds don't interest me much, but the monkey room was fun. We watched two monkeys groom a third.

“That one”—Jared pointed at the one who was being groomed—“looks like he's at the dentist.”

He was right. The monkey looked patient, unhappy, numb. “Yeah, and that one”—I pointed at the one doing the heavy grooming—“is the dentist, and the other one is his helper. They should be wearing white gowns and rubber gloves.”

We watched the whole operation. I had never had such a good time at the zoo before. I fought back a giggle. If I told Jared, he'd say he once read that boys with one eyebrow were the best companions at zoos.

When we were sure the patient was resting comfortably, we left the zoo and walked into the park. The path through Central Park leaving the zoo is lined with benches, and the benches were filled with portrait artists and caricaturists. We watched them work for a while. I wandered around, but Jared stayed near a caricaturist—Antoinette, according to the flamboyant signature on her samples.

“I've always wanted to see what one of them would do to me,” he said.

Antoinette was drawing a man with a long face. Only in the caricature his face was so long and narrow that his eyes and mouth could barely fit inside it.

Jared laughed. “That's so funny. Maybe I should do it.”

How could he? “Why pay somebody to make you look bad?”

“Not bad—funny. Would you mind waiting?”

I didn't want him to do it, but I also wanted to see what Antoinette would come up with. I'd never seen a caricaturist draw someone I knew.

“All right. Go for it.”

Antoinette handed the drawing to her customer, saying, “You're done. I outdid myself.”

“Can you do me now?” Jared asked.

“Pay me first, and remember, you asked for it.” She waited for Jared to hand over his money.

He paid her and sat on the bench, grinning.

She stared at him for a minute, then extended her arm with her charcoal pencil held vertically. She looked at Jared down the length of her arm and turned the pencil horizontally. Then she drew an egg shape, with the wide end on top.

After that, she marked off where his eyes, nose, and mouth would go. The caricature part began when she put in his forehead. She made it look like an overhanging story on a house—it jutted way out in front of the rest of his face. His eyes were lost underneath, just dark holes. Then she worked on his mouth, which she made narrower than it actually was. After his mouth, she added detail to his nose. She got the shape right, but she drew it too small too. Next, his eyebrow.

Jared has thick, curly brown hair, and his eyebrow hair is curly too. She made it bristly, like barbed wire, as if he had coarse, kinky bristles crawling up his forehead.

I was furious with her. If it weren't for his eyebrow, Jared would be cute. His eyes aren't huge, but they're totally alert. His nose is straight, not too small, not too big. His lips are thin, and I like that. All he needed was tweezers.

She drew in his ears. They were okay. But then she made the hair on his head like his eyebrow, only longer. Now he looked like he was being electrocuted.

The crowning touch came when she started shading. She left his forehead pure white and put the rest of his face in shadow. This made his forehead, bordered by writhing antennae, seem to stick so far out that it cast a shadow over the rest of him, possibly down to his shoes, which were off the page.

“You're done.” Antoinette sprayed the drawing with a can labeled “Fixative.” “I outdid myself.”

Jared came around to see. “It's terrific! Look, Wilma. My eyebrows are a riot.”

Antoinette took the caricature away from him and slid it into a big envelope. “How about your girlfriend?” she said. “You want to give her a gift she'll never forget?”

A caricature of me? No way.

His girlfriend? Jared One Eyebrow's girlfriend? Double no way.