As You Wish Page 10

  “Wakefield, I’ve told you on multiple occasions that I don’t want you bringing that nonsense into the classroom.”

  My hands clench into fists. I can’t believe the mayor is cutting down Mr. Wakefield in front of us. Apparently, Penelope can’t believe it either.

  “Mayor Fontaine, with all due respect, Mr. Wakefield is an excellent teacher and has very adequately prepared us for our wish days.”

  The mayor smiles patronizingly at Penelope. “Yes, dear, I’m sure you’re very fond of Mr. Wakefield. But wish classes serve a specific purpose, and my job as mayor is to see that purpose is achieved.”

  Penelope squirms in her seat. I don’t blame her. Just being in the same room as Mayor Fontaine gives me the creeps.

  He turns back to Mr. Wakefield, still using his I’m-talking-to-an-idiot voice. “Now, you know I’d like to teach these classes myself. But I’m a busy man. I simply don’t have the time to handle every wish class on my own, which is why I’ve placed my trust in you to serve as my ambassador.”

  “I understand,” Mr. Wakefield says quietly.

  “Then see that you do the job properly.”

  With that Mayor Fontaine turns and leaves, slamming the door behind him. I guess he’s never heard that it’s generally polite to say goodbye.

  Mr. Wakefield clears his throat and straightens the collar of his shirt. “Well then.”

  “Don’t let him get to you,” I say. “Penelope’s right. You’re doing a great job.”

  Mr. Wakefield looks surprised and maybe a little cheered up. “I appreciate you saying so, Mr. Wilkes.”

  “Is it true that the first Mayor Fontaine was totally different from the current Mayor Fontaine?” Penelope asks.

  “Ah, yes,” Mr. Wakefield says. “The old mayor was…quite dissimilar to his son.”

  “You mean he had a soul?” I ask.

  “There’s no need to be rude,” Mr. Wakefield says, but I think he has to hide a smile. “It’s actually very interesting the way different personality types manifest within the same family unit—”

  “Aren’t you supposed to stop talking about that crap?” Archie asks.

  I glare at him.

  “Indeed.” Mr. Wakefield hesitates and looks at the clock. “I would love to have infinite hours with you wishers, but alas, we appear to be out of time.”

  As we gather our things and prepare to leave, he adds, “And again, please don’t forget your prewish appointments with Mayor Fontaine.”

  “I can’t wait for that,” I mutter.

  “I know, I know,” Mr. Wakefield says. “I assure you, no one is trying to police you. The mayor just wants to be certain your wish is legitimate so it will come true.”

  Spoken word-for-word from Mayor Fontaine’s instruction manual, I’m sure. He’d be pleased.

  I’m at the door when Mr. Wakefield says, “Mr. Wilkes, perhaps you’ll stay for a moment and update me on your project?”

  Penelope jumps in, “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something too, Eldon.”

  “Sorry, guys. Have to be somewhere.”

  I hurry out of the community center. Being around Mayor Fontaine, and the reminder about my upcoming meeting with him, put me in a foul mood. I need space to chill out.

  • • •

  My dad and I are in the garage. He’s alternating between instructing me on the craft of sink-building and dropping bits of football wisdom.

  “You see,” he says proudly, after successfully cutting the old copper pipes off the sink. “Told you this saw could cut through anything.”

  I nod and resist the urge to roll my eyes. The reciprocating saw is one of Dad’s prized possessions. My mom bought it for him ages ago, back when she still made an effort. Which, if you ask me, makes the saw a depressing reminder of how their marriage has changed.

  “Now all we need is the new fittings…” He trails off, scanning a piece of paper with roughly a million measurements.

  My attention wanders to the TV where a newscaster out of Vegas is talking about Rachel. It throws me. Usually, no one notices this part of the state. I reach over and turn up the volume. Apparently, there’s some kind of UFO festival coming up. It sounds absurd. It also means we’ll have a lot of tourists passing through Madison to get there.

  “Anyway, as I was saying earlier,” my dad says, not the least bit interested in the news report, “when it comes to football, talent will only get you so far. That’s where the hard work comes in. If you have dedication and ambition, then you’re already doing better than most of the guys out there.”

  I nod.

  “You have to shoot for the very top, Eldon. Even if you don’t make it, you’ll be better than if you never tried.”

  “Dad?”

  He looks up from his measurements.

  “What exactly do you think is going to happen next year?”

  I’ve been wondering for months but haven’t had the courage to ask. He’s had enough bad stuff to deal with.

  “What do you mean?”

  I hesitate. “I mean with football. You know I’m not going to go pro.”

  He opens his mouth, like he’s going to say of course I can, I can do anything I want, or some other lie like that. But then he shuts it again.

  “Like, what are you even hoping?”

  If we lived in another town, he’d want me to get on a good college team. I’m not going to college though. Only a handful of people in Madison do. It’s weird to even think about the whole “turn eighteen and go to college” mentality. We turn eighteen and make a wish. It’s all the same in the end. A significant event that determines what direction your future will take. Except in Madison, we skip the long years of toil.

  “What’s more important is what you’re hoping,” my dad says.

  Maybe I was wrong to assume he hadn’t been thinking about my future. He probably hadn’t wanted to bring it up and hurt me, the same way I was trying not to hurt him.

  “What are you boys up to?” my mom asks, coming into the garage and abruptly ending our conversation. She must have just gotten home from Uncle Jasper’s apartment. She’d gone over to have another chat with him about his life choices. I can tell from the dark circles under her eyes and the way her hair is slipping from her bun that it didn’t go well.

  “Getting this hooked up,” my dad says, patting the sink.

  His grin wavers when Ma says, “I don’t see the point of having a sink out here.”

  The point is that he wants a sink. The point is that he likes having projects. That it makes him happy to turn something broken into something useful.

  But I keep my mouth shut.

  “I…” My dad falters, looking lost. “I thought you would like it. You always complain that I track sawdust into the house. I thought if I had a place to clean up…”

  I look at my dad in disbelief.

  Ma loses interest and turns to me. “How was wish class?”

  “Fine.”

  “Learn anything new?”

  The unspoken: What are you going to wish for?

  I want her to leave. The garage is not her space.

  “We talked about this kid who tried to cure AIDS.”

  “I think I remember him,” my dad says cheerfully, apparently not at all upset about getting blown off. “His name was John something.”

  My mom shakes her head. “You’re getting him confused with John Dodge. He went to high school with us and wished to never catch a cold.”

  “Hmm. Maybe.”

  The AIDS kid is probably another one of Madison’s tall tales. But I’m really starting to wonder.

  “Harmon, could you take the day off tomorrow?” my mom asks.

  “I really shouldn’t. The Clash is only a few weeks away, and you know how tough those Tonopah kids are.”

  Ma fr
owns at him.

  “Why?” he asks.

  “I want to drive down to Vegas.”

  She doesn’t say she wants to visit my sister. She speaks Ebba’s name as infrequently as possible. But that’s the only reason she’d be going to Las Vegas.

  “Should either of us really be taking time off work right now?” my dad asks carefully. “With money being so tight…”

  “I don’t care,” Ma says forcefully. She squeezes her eyes shut for a long moment. “Do you know what it’s like to sit at the doctor’s office all day, helping sick people, when my baby is alone in another town and sicker than any of them?”

  Dad takes a step to comfort her but pulls back, like he doesn’t know how.

  “I’ll go with you,” I offer.

  Ma collects herself. Some of the sadness leaves her face, and the frown I’ve gotten so used to reappears. “You have school.”

  “And we need you at practice,” Dad says.

  Only one of those statements is true. “I want to go. I haven’t seen Ebba for a while.”

  My mom shakes her head. “Not on a school day. You can go next time, OK?”

  So it’s OK for you to skip work, but I can’t skip school? How is that fair?

  But I only say, “Fine.”

  It’s not fine though. My mom wants to keep Ebba to herself. She wants to keep her sadness to herself. I overheard her on the phone once, telling the person on the other end, “There’s nothing worse than a mother losing her daughter.”

  Yeah, it’s shitty. I get that. It’s so shitty that you feel like life is pointless, that maybe you want to give up, because being dead would be better than the constant pain you’re in. But just because Ma’s in pain, it doesn’t mean the rest of us aren’t.

  Maybe if we let ourselves hurt together, we’d feel like a family again.

  After my dad agrees to take the day off work, like we all knew he would, Ma leaves the garage.

  Dad goes back to his workbench. I should help him. I can’t quite shake what happened though. I’m feeling tense and edgy, and I want to go after Ma and shout that Ebba belongs to all of us.

  Since I can’t do that, I turn on my dad instead. “Why’d you let Ma make the sink about her? Why can’t anything be yours?”

  I regret it as soon as the words are out of my mouth. Dad looks sad and confused. He has no idea how to respond.

  It’s not his fault, I remind myself. Don’t get mad at him. He didn’t ask for this. Besides, that’s not really why you’re upset. Remember what Mr. Wakefield said about misplaced anger.

  “Forget it,” I say.

  “Eldon—”

  “So what’s the next step?” I interrupt, gesturing to the sink.

  Dad’s face brightens, and he sits down next to me to show me his plans. And we talk about pipe fittings and water lines so we can avoid the conversation neither of us know how to have.

  Chapter 12

  Countdown: 16 Days

  I know it’s going to be a bad day when Penelope accosts me before I’ve even opened my locker.

  “Eldon! Hi!”

  “Hey, Penelope.”

  “Why’d you run off so fast yesterday? Look, I have a question. Well, it’s actually a favor. Teensy-tiny.”

  She’s wearing her cheerleading uniform, emblazoned with our football-playing fruit fly, and has a clipboard tucked under one of her arms. We all know to bolt in the opposite direction when we see her like this.

  I sigh. “What is it?”

  “Clem Johnson was supposed to work our bake sale table after school tomorrow, right? But something came up, and he’s not going to be able to make it, and I can’t find anyone else last minute, because other people have already taken the other shifts. It would be cool if you could fill in.”

  I look down at her uniform. “Is this a cheerleading fund-raiser?”

  “Oh, no, the cheerleaders are collecting money for the new library. The bake sale is for Key Club. Totally different fund-raiser. So what do you say? Yes?”

  “I’m kind of busy tomorrow.”

  “We’re raising awareness about underage sex workers.”

  “Here in Madison?” I ask incredulously.

  “No, silly. It’s a national issue, duh.”

  “Look, Penelope, it’s great what you’re doing, and I’d love to help, but—”

  “We really need you, Eldon. It would make everyone in Key Club so happy.” She pauses and gives me a sly smile. “Juniper too.”

  “That’s not really an argument that works on me anymore.”

  “Do it anyway? Please? Pretty please? Pretty, pretty pl—”

  “Fine.” People are starting to stare.

  Penelope squeals and hugs me. Then she skips down the hall, her eyes fixed on her next victim.

  It isn’t a good start to the day at all.

  • • •

  If it wasn’t for my conversation with Penelope, I wouldn’t have been in the hallway when Mr. Wakefield walked by. And if Mr. Wakefield didn’t ask a million questions about how my wish was coming along, as if something had changed since yesterday, then I could have gotten to first period on time.

  “I’ll walk you there,” says Mr. Wakefield when I tell him I really need to get to class.

  I try to say it doesn’t matter, it’s a pointless art class I’m taking for an elective credit, and Ms. Dove won’t make a hassle about me being late. But Mr. Wakefield insists.

  He keeps talking and talking, and by the time I get to class, everyone is already sitting in pairs.

  “Please excuse Eldon’s tardiness. He was with me,” Mr. Wakefield says. “I’m afraid I talked his ear off!”

  Ms. Dove gives me a sympathetic look, as if she’s been cornered by Mr. Wakefield a few times herself.

  “We’re pairing up for our final project,” she tells me.

  My gaze skips around the room, looking for anyone who doesn’t already have a partner. There’s only one person sitting alone.

  “It looks like you and Fletcher will be working together,” says Ms. Dove.

  Oh, fantastic.

  Fletcher Hale and I eye each other. I consider refusing, but I know the other kids are waiting for my reaction. They want me to make a scene.

  And the thing is, no one would blame me for it. They’d side with me and say I was totally right for snubbing Fletcher. But that doesn’t change the fact that their stares make me feel like an animal in a cage.

  So I cross the room and slide into the seat next to Fletcher.

  “Hey,” he says nervously.

  I’m silent.

  He lowers his voice. “You can ask Ms. Dove to switch partners. She won’t care. Or I can do the work by myself. I’ll put both our names on it.”

  I look down at the desk. My jaw is clenched tight. I know people are still watching. I know Fletcher is watching me too, waiting for a response. I slowly begin counting to ten.

  “OK, well, I’ll start brainstorming ideas, and if you want to jump in, you can.”

  And Fletcher does exactly that.

  I watch him from the corner of my eye. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked closely at Fletcher. Even when I beat him up, I wasn’t really seeing him.

  There are dark circles under his eyes. His hair is neatly combed, but it doesn’t look like he’s washed it for a while. Or washed at all, maybe. I don’t remember him having so much acne before. Maybe it’s his body’s way of punishing him.

  Fletcher glances up and meets my gaze. He can’t hold it though. He ducks his head and speaks with his eyes fixed to the papers in front of him.

  “Look. I never said I was sorry,” he says.

  “I know.”

  “I am. Sorry.”

  “That doesn’t change anything,” I say.

  “I know,” Fletcher agree
s.

  “Let’s just do the work.”

  I look over the papers Ms. Dove handed out, but I can hardly concentrate. The project is something about showing how we’ve changed since starting high school. We can do whatever we want, as long as it’s in one of the artistic mediums we learned in class.

  “I can’t really draw well,” says Fletcher. “What about you? Are you any good?”

  “No.”

  “Sculpting?”

  “No.”

  “Photography?”

  “Any idiot can take a picture,” I say.

  “Um, I don’t know if that’s true.”

  “Fletcher, I really don’t give a fuck what you think.”

  Anyone else would have been deterred by my attitude. But Fletcher barrels on. “OK, right. We can put photos on the maybe list.”

  I sigh deeply. I know I’m being a dick, but I can’t help it. It’s either that or bash his face in.

  “Maybe we can make some kind of collage?” he suggests.

  I’m silent for a long moment. “Maybe we should go back to that idea where you work and I sit here. Because honestly, the more you talk, the more I think about how much I hate you.”

  “OK,” Fletcher says. “OK, we can do that.”

  He goes back to working. I go back to doing nothing. When class ends, I leave without saying goodbye.

  • • •

  It’s too much.

  It’s bad enough I have to pass Fletcher Hale in the hall and sit in the same classroom with him. But now, a project? Actual conversation? Teamwork?

  It’s just too freaking much.

  I feel something stir inside of me. Maybe anger. Maybe hysteria. It feels like my heart is beating poison through my veins.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Merrill asks at lunch.

  I shake my head.

  “You’re freaking me out,” Merrill says.

  I’m freaking myself out. I feel like I’m going to snap.

  “Eldon,” my dad shouts at football practice after I—literally—drop the ball again, “get with the program!”

  I try. I really do.

  We’re running a ladder and catch drill, repeating the same quick movements over and over. Sidestep, catch, sidestep, catch, sidestep, catch. Easy stuff. I shouldn’t even have to think about it. But the tension in my body is making it impossible for muscle memory to take over.