Wishful Thinking (12 page)

But now that it was just the two of them, she didn’t know where to start. What did
being herself
even mean? Maybe she should just keep pretending they were cousins. It had definitely been easier to talk to him when she thought they were related.

An exposed branch snaked across the road and Hazel’s toe stuck beneath it. She tripped forward, taking a few halting steps before regaining her balance and scrambling to keep the paintings from crashing to the ground.

“Easy,” Luke laughed. “It’s not a race.”

His voice was light but Hazel wanted to disappear. Her blood burned in her veins and she wanted so badly to say something normal. But the only thoughts racing through her mind were of the decidedly not-normal variety:

Sorry about running out on you before; I thought we were cousins.

Or:

I haven’t been born yet.

Or:

Guess what? Jaime’s my mom!

Her head was spinning and she felt the beginnings of frustrated tears springing to her eyes. Luke stopped and leaned his load of paintings against the base of a knotted tree.

“Hold up for a minute,” he said, reaching out for her canvases and adding them to the pile. “I want to show you something.”

Luke ducked between a pair of spindly evergreens, holding back the lower branches so Hazel could step safely through. They followed a footpath out to a clearing at the very edge of a cliff. Not far in the distance, Hazel saw the lights on at Rosanna’s house, the shadow of the barn, and even the porch light of the guesthouse twinkling against the blue-black night sky. Above them, a tapestry of stars sparkled in space. And ahead, the endless ocean, stretching back and disappearing into the curtain of darkness hovering at the horizon. It felt like the end of the earth.

“Isn’t it incredible?” Luke asked, sitting dangerously close to the cliff’s edge. An oddly shaped rock dislodged at Hazel’s feet and fell heavily toward the ocean. It slipped into the water and was quietly swallowed by a set of hungry waves.

“It always reminds me of being out on the boat,” Luke mused. “It feels kind of like flying, too.”

“Yeah,” Hazel breathed timidly. She’d never been a fan of heights. Roy even teased her about closing her eyes whenever they drove over the Golden Gate Bridge. Slowly, cautiously, she lowered herself to the cliff beside Luke.

“It’s okay,” Luke joked, grabbing her knee in the firm grip of his hand. “I’ve got you.”

Hazel smiled and felt herself slowly relaxing. Somehow, it was true. She did feel safe around him.

“Listen,” he said after a moment of quiet. “I know why things have been kind of weird. So don’t worry about it. Okay?”

Hazel’s stomach wrenched and she dug her fingernails into the damp cracks between the rocks. “You do?” she asked, her voice shaky and small. Had he seen her in the dress by the pond? Had he found Posey’s letter? Did he think she had escaped from a mental institution?

Luke took a deep breath and clasped his hands together in his lap. “Jaime told me,” he said finally. “I know that she’s pregnant. And I know you’ve been helping her out.”

Hazel stared at a shimmering swath of moonlight reflected on the ocean’s glassy surface. She felt immediately relieved that she wouldn’t have to try (and, no doubt, fail) to explain herself. But she was also shocked that Jaime had confided in Luke about the baby.

“She told you?” Hazel asked. “When? I didn’t think she wanted anyone to know.”

Luke shrugged. “I’ve known Jaime since we were two years old. We took baths together,” he said simply. “Believe me, I know more about that girl than any guy should.”

“Oh,” Hazel said quietly. “I didn’t know.” She was glad that she wouldn’t have to keep the big secret alone. And she felt warmer toward Jaime all of a sudden. If Luke had been friends with her for so long, how bad could she be?

Luke kicked his feet gently against the rocks and looked
down at his hands in his lap. “She also told me that she thought it was pretty decent of you to go with her to the clinic today, but that’s just Jaime for you,” he said, glancing sideways at Hazel. “It wasn’t just
decent.
It was really, really great.”

Hazel’s face flushed and she quickly looked away.

“And I just wanted you to know, I totally get it if you just want to be friends,” he said gently. “Either way, I’m really glad you’re here.”

Hazel smiled. She felt her heartbeat rocking in her ribs. She turned to Luke and saw that he was looking straight at her.

“For Jaime,” he stammered suddenly. “I mean, I’m glad you’re here—”

Before Hazel had time to talk herself out of it, she was leaning toward Luke and brushing his lips with her own. She stayed pressed against him for a moment, tasting the salty warmth of his skin, before she pulled herself away.

Luke’s face was frozen in a stunned half-smile, the sea breeze rustling his light brown hair.

“For Jaime,” she finished for him.

Luke laughed, his strong hand finding her own in the dark.

Beneath them, the waves rolled in and pulled back out, a steady crash followed by the rhythmic drag of pebbles against the shore. Hazel looked up at the diamond-studded sky. She’d never imagined that her first
real
kiss would be under a blanket of stars, against the sound track of the open ocean, legs swinging at the end of the earth. In fact, she’d never really imagined it at all. But that was probably okay.

There was no imagining in the world that would have felt half as good as the real thing.

H
azel stood outside the ice-cream shop, an unsettled feeling in the pit of her stomach. Rosanna had sent her into town to run a few errands, and on her way home she’d decided to visit Jaime at work. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now she was having second thoughts.

She and Jaime hadn’t had a chance to talk since the opening the night before—it was late when Luke walked her back to the guesthouse and Jaime was already sleeping. Hazel had tossed and turned, every so often catching a glimpse of Jaime, wrapped like a mummy in her patchwork quilt, the rhythm of her soft, steady breathing the only sound in the room. Sometime during the night, in the dreamy, muddled space between awake and asleep, everything began to look different. Everything
was
different. Jaime wasn’t the stubborn roommate Hazel had to endure. Jaime was her mother. And all of a sudden, Hazel didn’t feel angry. She didn’t feel upset. She felt lucky. She’d been given the one thing she’d always wanted.

She’d been given a chance to get to know her mother.

Not that she thought it was going to be easy. It was a new day, and the trip to the clinic already seemed like a scene from some faraway past. And now, here she was, stopping by unannounced to remind Jaime that it wasn’t. What made Hazel think that Jaime would be happy to see her? Just because Hazel suddenly had a reason to want to know Jaime, didn’t mean that Jaime had any interest in letting herself be known.

Hazel shut her eyes and leaned against the glass. She was working through a few deep breaths when Jaime appeared and plopped down on the curb at her feet.

“I can’t do it anymore,” Jaime grunted. “It’s like the DMV in there. You’d think people would be in better moods. It’s an ice-cream cone, not a parking ticket.”

Hazel smiled. It was a surprising relief to hear Jaime sounding like herself.

“What are you doing here?” Jaime asked.

“I was in town for Rosanna anyway,” Hazel said. “Just thought I’d say hi.”

“Hi,” Jaime grunted, picking at a sticky trail of drying ice cream near her elbow.

“Do you have time for lunch?” Hazel tried. She hadn’t fully thought this plan through, and she knew she’d have to think fast. Maybe food would help.

Hazel craned her neck sideways and spotted a pizza place on the corner, a long line already snaking out into the street. “You should probably eat something, you know.”

She started off down the sidewalk, stepping out of the way of a group of college-aged kids all wearing slightly different versions of the same maroon-and-gray UMASS T-shirt.

“Hold up,” she heard Jaime call from behind her. “No way. No. No. No. Absolutely not.”

“Absolutely not what?” Hazel asked, stopping to turn around.

“You will absolutely not mother me through this,” Jaime said, emphatically crossing her arms at her chest. “If I wanted a cheerleader, I would’ve told Rosanna.”

“What do you mean?” Hazel asked. “I was just asking if you wanted to eat.”

“I will eat, when I’m hungry,” Jaime retorted. “Just because I have a… thing growing inside me doesn’t mean I will suddenly forget how to be a human being.”

Hazel didn’t know what to say.
A thing?
A baby wasn’t a thing.
She
wasn’t a thing. And she was only trying to help.

“Fine,” Hazel sighed heavily. She realized that any time she spent with Jaime was going to have to be on Jaime’s terms. But Jaime’s terms were better than no terms at all. “What do you want to do?”

“For starters,” Jaime said, pushing herself off the curb and striking out in the opposite direction. “I want to get as far away from this place as possible.”

Hazel hurried to keep up, following Jaime to the dock and along the harbor, lined with outdoor cafés and noisy moped rental shops. Mostly they walked in silence, but every so often Jaime pointed out the best place to get fried clams, the greasiest pizza, and the tourist traps with the ugliest T-shirts and most outrageously overpriced souvenirs. Eventually, they landed back at the main intersection, just outside the carousel that Hazel had stumbled upon during her first wayward walk through town.

“The Flying Horses,” Jaime said proudly. “It’s the oldest carousel in the country.”

Jaime took the wide front steps three at a time and Hazel followed, the dense, buttery smell of popcorn greeting them at the open doors. Inside, the carousel was a whir of colors and noise, circus music and children’s squeals spinning out in waves from the rotating platform.

“The idea is to get the brass ring,” Jaime explained, gesturing to a long, metal arm reaching out of one shingled wall. As the carousel spun, riders on the outer ring of horses reached out toward it, grasping for rings and dropping them onto a small silver pole spiking out of the horse’s long mane. Some people would just grab one ring, while others would attack the opening with hungry, agile fingers, hooking three or four in one go.

“I think my record was seven at a time,” Jaime said, beaming. “I haven’t been on it in forever.”

“Let’s go,” Hazel suggested, surprising herself. She’d never been on a merry-go-round. The only other time she’d had the option was on a trip to the county fair, organized by the group home she’d lived in for a year outside of Santa Rosa. The other kids had gone crazy over the carousel, but Hazel couldn’t see the point. It went around and around and around, in the middle of a dusty, abandoned soccer field, as whiny country music played out of a boom box on a folding chair nearby.

For some reason, she knew right away that this would be different.

They waited in a winding line and soon were mounting their horses. Jaime was in front, on a tan-and-brown horse with polka-dot markings. Hazel’s was a swirl of purples and pinks, its mane full and blond.

The carousel lurched forward and Hazel lunged for tight fistfuls of her horse’s coarse yellow mane. Slowly, it gained speed, until it was the world around them that blurred in Hazel’s vision. She watched the figure of Jaime up ahead, catching brief flashes of her face when the horses turned just so. Her dark curls flew behind her and her eyes were wide and glowing. She looked exactly like she did in the photograph on Rosanna’s wall. Like there was nowhere else on earth she’d rather be.

Hazel tried to copy Jaime’s movements, but she was too prepared, overthinking her alignment and missing the dispenser completely.

Finally, she figured out a way to wait until just the last minute and use her first three fingers to sift through one ring at a time. By the time the redheaded kid standing at the ticket counter announced that the brass ring had been released into the dispenser, Hazel was up to four rings every turn.

The riders became more serious as the carousel swung through its last few turns, their faces strong and determined as they reached for the rings with everything they had.

And then it was over. The ticket taker loped over to the feeder arm and swung it back against the wall as the carousel cranked to a slow stop.

Jaime threw one leg over her horse and steadily zigzagged back to where Hazel was trying to dismount without falling off the platform. Jaime held the bottom of her black-and-white Cups ‘N’ Cones T-shirt out like a basket, handfuls of rings bulging out of the sides. “Not bad, right?” she asked, before pointing to Hazel’s overflowing piles of rings. “You have to throw these back.”

She tossed her head in the direction of a giant cloth bin,
where a crowd of people had gathered to toss their rings inside, with echoes of tinny clatter. Jaime looked back at Hazel’s horse. “Hazel?” Jaime spoke slowly, shaking her head. “See that ring at the top of your pile? The one that’s darker than the others?”

Hazel looked back up at the top of her stack and nodded.

“That’s the brass ring, you moron,” Jaime laughed. “You won!”