You Wish Read online

  A couple dozen My Little Ponies land in a heap, their pink, blue, purple, and white manes tangling together. I kick the one nearest me and then reach up for the next box and take a big swipe at it and it falls off the shelf.

  Children’s books. If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. The Little Ballerina. Cinderella. All those stupid books meant to teach kids they can be anything and everything. That life is one big happy cookie.

  They don’t make books called Soon, Your Best Friend Will Abandon You. They don’t make one called Too Bad You’ll Grow Up and Become Such a Loser! And they definitely don’t make one called It Doesn’t Matter if You Speak Italian Because Your Dad Doesn’t Care.

  I rip another box down and a few dozen Barbie dolls fly out, littering the closet floor with their perfect waists and long legs and luxurious blonde hair, hair that looks nothing like mine.

  I don’t feel any better. In fact, I feel more balled up inside, just as angry as ever. I turn around and yank a bunch of pink flirty shirts and dresses off the hangers. This section of the closet is reserved for the clothes my mom buys me, the stuff I’ll never wear, not in a million years. The hangers swing around as the clothes rip and tear off, landing on the floor in a big heap.

  By the time the whirlwind is complete, my closet is trashed, a huge mountain of junk overflowing and spilling into my room.

  I slide to the floor and stare at the pile of junk as my heartbeat slows, as the rage starts to disappear, replaced by sad, bitter dejection.

  It’s going to happen. I’m going to kiss Ben, and I’ll never be friends with Nicole again.

  I pick up an errant Barbie and toss it onto the stack of junk next to me. I let my eyes wander over the stuff I haven’t looked at in years. It seems like it was never even mine, like it belongs to someone else entirely.

  But it is mine. Maybe I’m someone else now, but once, all this stuff was me. I just decided not to be that person anymore.

  And maybe that’s why I’m not handling this well.

  Because for the first time, I’ve finally realized something: I chose this.

  I chose to have a single friend and to block out everyone else.

  I chose to dress like a freak and make fun of everyone else, ensuring my total social-leper status.

  I chose to quit ballet.

  I chose to be more angry with my mom than with my dad, when at least she’s trying.

  I chose to put all this stuff in boxes and pretend I was never anything but what I am right now.

  I chose this.

  I look down at my Converse for a minute and then back into the closet.

  It’s like a big time-warp piled up next to me. A visual representation of who I once was.

  I blink a few times and look closer at the stack.

  Suddenly I have an idea. I jump up and go to my desk, where my 35mm camera is sitting, and pop the lens off.

  I take a series of pictures: a few of the outfits my mom has bought me but I’ve never worn, a couple of my old ballet slippers, a few of my report cards, a couple of the school pennant, and a series of pictures of the birthday gifts that other people bought me.

  I don’t know if anything comes out, if it’s just going to look like one big uninspired mess, but I take enough pictures that I’m hopeful. Maybe tomorrow I can develop something. The project is due soon, so this is my only chance.

  28

  WEDNESDAY turns out to be an unmitigated disaster. Nicole doesn’t even look my way, let alone talk to me. And I don’t even know if I want to talk to her. Do I owe her an apology for our fight? Or does she owe me one?

  My light, goofy friendship with Ben has transformed into an odd, uncomfortable acquaintance. I don’t blame him for not knowing how to act. I’m the one who keeps acting like he’s some highly contagious leper. Every day, if I haven’t received my wish yet, I go out of my way to avoid him. Sometimes he’ll be heading my way down the hall, and I’ll abruptly veer out a side door.

  Maybe it’s stupid and I won’t be able to avoid kissing him, but I keep doing it anyway.

  He’d have to be a complete idiot not to notice. On top of all that, I keep yammering on and on about Ken, hoping somehow that’s going to be enough to keep him at arm’s length. I’m still thinking it’s possible Ben will use his own common sense and choose not to kiss me. So if he remembers I have a boyfriend, well, that’s a good thing.

  My mom is still out of town, and she’ll be away until Friday. We haven’t talked since our blowout.

  My back hurts all of the time because of my huge chest, the gumballs are everywhere, the pony is getting crankier every day, and I’m still talking in Italian.

  I’m absolutely dying for a long, hot shower to relax, but for the last couple days I’ve had to settle for a sponge bath and washing my hair in the sink, because there’s no way I want to find out what happens if I submerge my legs for more than two-point-five seconds.

  By the time I’m walking up the stairs to my room, I’m muttering Italian curses under my breath.

  When I walk into my room, Ann looks suspiciously happy, the polar opposite of my mood. She’s spinning around and around in my rolly computer chair, the very chair I once foisted between us to keep her away from me on the day she appeared.

  Too bad I didn’t succeed.

  I glare at her and throw myself onto my bed, resting my cheek against the cool lime-and-orange-plaid quilt.

  If I can’t be happy, she shouldn’t be either.

  She stops spinning and nearly falls out of the chair. Her eyes look sort of loopy and crossed, so I know she’s dizzy and hasn’t noticed my scowl.

  “What’s got you all hyped up?” I say, not even attempting to cover my hostility.

  “I’m going to a party!” she says, her voice so chipper it’s practically filled with rainbows and ponies. If, you know, that were possible.

  I want to throw things at her. Rocks, maybe.

  I sit up on my elbows and give her a closer look. “Who invited you to a party?”

  “I don’t know! Some girl named Janae. I wrote down the address,” she says, waving it around in the air.

  I leap off the bed like a puma on attack and snatch the paper out of her hand.

  3322 Weatherby Lane.

  Janae’s house.

  Unbelievable.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “From your notebook,” she says, pointing to where she ripped out the sheet of paper.

  “Not the paper! The address!”

  “From Janae. Duh.”

  “Ann!” I screech, totally exasperated. “How do you know Janae?”

  “I don’t.”

  My eyes flare and I want to throttle Ann. Instead I take a deep, calming breath, unclenching my fists.

  “Start at the beginning. How do you know about this party and why did she give you her address?”

  Ann shrugs and gives me a look like, Sheesh, why are you so annoyed? “She called. A half hour ago.”

  Ann points across the room to where my cell phone is still sitting on my nightstand, where I put it last night to charge and forgot it when I went to school.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say, rushing over to my phone. I flip it open and find the call log. Sure enough, Ann answered a call thirty-six minutes ago. I punch the call button and listen as it rings.

  “Hello?”

  I blink and yank the phone away and slap it shut.

  That was definitely Janae.

  “That was rude!” Ann says. “She’s very nice.”

  “Janae is not nice. Far from it.”

  “She said it wouldn’t be a party without me.”

  I’m gripping the phone so tightly in my hand that it makes my fingers hurt. “Did she know it was you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you say, ‘I’m not Kayla,’ or maybe, ‘Hello, this is Ann’?”

  Ann blinks a few times and tips her head to the side as she stares up at the ceiling. “I guess not.”

  “S
o now Janae thinks I’m coming to her party?”

  Ann twists a frizzy strand of hair around her finger. “Yeah. I suppose. But I can still go, right?”

  “No, you cannot go!”

  Ann pouts and crosses her arms. “You sure are grumpy a lot. What’d I ever do to you?”

  I so don’t have time for this.

  “Don’t you get it? These stupid wishes are destroying my life!”

  The playful pout turns into a real one. “Everything is always about you.”

  I fall onto my bed, exasperated. “What do you want me to say, Ann? Everything is a wreck.”

  Ann spins the chair toward the wall. “I heard that lady at the bakery, you know.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not stupid. I have a few days left, tops. So whether you like it or not, I’m going to this party.”

  There’s a strange pressure inside me, like an elephant is perched on my chest. I don’t know if I feel guilty about Ann or panicked about my life, but it’s like the whole world is sitting on me.

  “Why would Janae invite me to a party?” I ask, though I don’t expect Ann to have the answers.

  “I don’t know. Maybe she secretly wishes you two were best friends.”

  I snort and give her a skeptical look, but the look melts away as Ann’s statement rings in my ears. Realization dawns, slow and clear.

  “She didn’t,” I say quietly. “I did.”

  I stare at the ceiling in my bedroom, trying to find shapes in the popcorn texture. It’s so quiet except for the rain pounding outside. “Not to be best friends. But that she’d invite me to her birthdays and pool parties.”

  I sigh, long and drawn out. At least it’s another wish down, right? I pinch the bridge of my nose and close my eyes, trying to figure out what I should do next.

  “If I rent movies and we make sundaes and stuff, will you skip the party and hang with me?”

  “No,” Ann says. “I’m not wasting any more time sitting inside these four walls. I’m going insane.”

  Fair enough, I think, but I don’t say it aloud. I feel myself slowly resigning to the idea of showing up at Janae’s, being completely humiliated, and going home. It’s not like my life can get any worse, and at least Ann has tried to be a good sport.

  Can I really deny her any more? And would it matter if I did? It’s not like I can wrestle her to the ground and tie her up and put her in the closet. She’s probably got the address memorized and she’ll go whether or not I go with her. If I accompany her, at least I can do damage control.

  “Whatever. If we’re back by ten, when Chase gets home, my mom will never know the difference.”

  Ann’s whole face transforms into a glowing smile, and despite the nagging worries in the pit of my stomach, I find myself unable to resist smiling back at her.

  She better be worth it.

  Because if my instincts prove correct, tonight will be an utter disaster.

  29

  “THIS IS CRAZY. Let’s just go home,” I say, grabbing Ann’s hand and trying to pull her off of Janae’s stately front porch. I nearly knock into one of the big white pillars.

  “No way,” Ann says, yanking her hand out of my grasp.

  Before I can stop her, she smacks the doorbell, and I hear elegant chimes ringing down the hall behind the double front doors with their fancy leaded glass and oversized, overly polished doorknobs. My heart leaps into my throat, and briefly, I consider sprinting across her perfectly manicured green lawn and diving into the bushes.

  But before I can get my feet off the porch, the door swings open.

  Janae, wearing red skinny jeans and knee-high black-leather boots, along with a cream-colored turtleneck sweater, smiles at us. “Hey guys! Come on in!”

  It’s a weird smile. Slightly vacant, a little plastic. It hasn’t yet occurred to her that I’m not one of them, that I don’t belong here.

  And that’s not good. Because it throws my theory about Ben just choosing not to kiss me right out the window. If Janae invites me to a party and doesn’t even realize I don’t belong here, Ben is going to kiss me.

  Ben is going to kiss me.

  And there’s nothing I can do about it.

  I don’t even realize I’m just standing here, totally mute, until Ann gives me a little shove toward the door. I glare back at her. It took us the better part of an hour, but we figured out how to use a curling iron to loosen up her kinky curls. She used bobby pins to sweep a few of them away from her face, and the rest of them tumble down her back. She tried out six different eye shadows, finally settling on an icy blue that complements her green eyes and makes her freckles look exotic.

  She’s wearing the blue scoop-neck top I bought her at the mall when we were with Ken and a pair of jeans I didn’t even know I owned. They’re boot cut and fit her like a dream. The shoes don’t really go all that well—just some basic black-clog-type things from junior high, but she slips them off at the door, so it doesn’t matter anyway.

  Ann refused to let me wear my normal clothes. She absolutely insisted that I could not “ruin this for her.”

  Apparently she’s figured out that my style isn’t exactly in, well, style. She’s so eager to have a real teen experience that she turned me into her dress-up doll and forced me to look . . . cute.

  The jeans I can live with, but the crimson V-necked sweater freaks me out. Because I have way too much cleavage to wear a V-neck. Ann swears that I look great, but now that I can’t change, it’s starting to feel like the worst choice in the world.

  I follow Janae toward the back of the house, where the heavy sounds of a base beat steadily intensify and begin to mix with the hum of conversation.

  The hall opens up to an enormous, cavernous space with twenty-foot ceilings and the biggest flat screen I’ve ever seen. The Old Navy dress clique is perched on the couches. Shiny hair, pearly smiles, manicured hands, and gleaming jewelry don’t even begin to describe how perfect they all look.

  Though the music continues to blare, the conversations stop.

  Maybe Janae hasn’t realized it yet, but the rest of these people know I don’t belong.

  “Food and drinks are in there,” Janae says, waving her hand in the vague direction of the kitchen. “And the bathroom is the second door on the right.”

  “Okay.”

  I try to be discreet as I take deep, calming breaths and head to the kitchen to occupy myself as everyone stares. I’m pouring some root beer into a cup, knowing it’s not the same thing the others are probably drinking, when I realize Ann is not beside me.

  She’s standing next to two guys in the living room. One of them is slipping a strap over her wrist so that she can play with the Nintendo Wii. Another one is totally checking out her butt.

  Conversations slowly pick up again, though I still catch people watching me and whispering.

  Janae is queen, and they know it. There’s no way they’ll say anything to her, or me. Will they?

  “Kayla,” Ann calls, waving me over. “We need one more player.”

  “Oh. Uh, no thanks.”

  Ann puts a hand on her hip and cocks an eyebrow. “Not acceptable. Get your booty over here.”

  She did not just say “booty.” I shuffle across the room because with Ann shouting at me and hollering across the room it’s drawing attention, and that’s the last thing I want.

  “He’s your partner,” she says, nodding at a junior I recognize from school. He gives me the faintest of smiles. I wonder if he realizes he just drew the short straw.

  I hold out my hand, and he slips the strap over my wrist, his fingers brushing along my skin. I look at him, unable to resist smiling as our eyes meet.

  Damn. He’s cute. Dark hair, dark eyes.

  Of course, those eyes are totally staring down my cleavage right now.

  I resist the urge to inhale deeply, as it’ll make my chest rise, and turn toward Ann.

  “What are we playing?”

  “Tennis. Doubles, of course,” A
nn’s partner says. His hair is shaggy and blond, and he reminds me of, well, Shaggy. From Scooby-Doo. I think he’s going for the artsy, deep look. And he does have killer hazel eyes, when you can see them past the hair that flops over his forehead. I’m pretty sure he has a name that rhymes with Mill. Phil . . . Bill . . . Will.

  I think I met him in freshman PE.

  Ann customizes her own Mii, one with red, funky hair. I can’t help but laugh at her excitement. I choose one named Tim, which I think is Janae’s brother’s name, instead of making one to look like myself.

  The tennis match starts, and I miss the first serve. I laugh nervously and try again, this time smacking it so fast Ann’s not ready, and she swipes at it but misses.

  “OH!” I holler triumphantly, throwing my hands in the air. My partner high-fives me. I feel like I’m five years old, high fiving, but I’m grinning just the same.

  “Look at the audience,” Will or Brill or Frill says, pointing at the way the cartoon people bob up and down maniacally whenever we get a good play.

  I’m so distracted by them I miss the ball flying toward my character and my partner sort of leaps into the air, his hand and controller flying dangerously close to my face, but he manages to hit it.

  Ann screeches and tries to smack it back, but she wasn’t ready, and the ball sails right past her digital image.

  “Nice save,” I say to my partner. “Uh, my name is Kayla, by the way.”

  “Todd,” he says, with another one of those nods. His dark hair is a little over-gelled. Not Ken-style over-gelled, but like he could have done without that last glob of hair product. “Nice to meet you,” he says, lobbing the on-screen ball back across the net.

  Thrill, Pill, or Grill knocks it back across, straight at my Mii, and I barely manage to return it in time. The cartoon heads bobble excitedly when Ann hits it back and it skims across the net, ultimately landing in bounds, and neither me nor Todd manages to hit it back.

  “We suck at this,” I say, grinning at Todd.

  “I would have to agree,” he says, missing another ball.

  We play for another twenty minutes, and I’m shocked to realize I’m enjoying myself. And even though it’s stupid, I do feel a little flush of excitement whenever Todd checks me out. He’s no Ben, but it’s still flattering.