As You Wish Read online

  “You know,” he goes on, “I was thinking about your dad and the old days last week.”

  “He talks about those days a lot too.”

  “He was the best I ever coached, you know. A hero out on the field.”

  “I know.”

  “Same as you,” Gil says.

  There’s no reason for us to pretend with each other. “Not anymore.”

  Gil sighs. He spits. “That’s what wishing will get you.”

  “You happy with your wish?” I ask, nodding to his truck.

  Gil turns and gazes at the truck for a long time. Tuco’s nose is pressed to the window, a long string of drool hanging from his mouth. “You could say that.”

  “It always seemed weird to me,” I say. “You wishing for a truck when you could have wished for enough money to buy a hundred of them.”

  Gil smiles. “You got a good head on your shoulders.”

  I shrug.

  “Why you so interested in my wish?”

  “Mine’s coming up,” I say, and Gil nods like he understands.

  He thinks for a moment and spits tobacco juice into his can again. He says, “I’ll be at the Last Chance tonight. Why don’t you stop by after you’re done with this?”

  “Sure. I can do that.” I try not to sound as curious as I am.

  Penelope shows up a few minutes later.

  “Did you sell anything?” she asks, surveying the table.

  I can tell she isn’t thinking I let her down but every underage sex worker in the country. In Penelope’s mind, it doesn’t take more than a few cupcakes to save a person.

  • • •

  The Last Chance Saloon has been around since Madison’s mining days. Back then, it was on Main Street. Later, in the forties, when the town got serious about keeping wishing a secret, people wanted to tear down the bar and move it somewhere else. Couldn’t risk a traveler stopping in for a cold one.

  But there were enough Madison residents who cared about history, who couldn’t bear the thought of destroying the old saloon. Instead of moving the bar, they moved the road. These days, people who take the new highway through Madison pass within a few blocks of the Last Chance but never know it’s there.

  I step inside and let my eyes adjust to the dark. Gil Badgley is at the bar, and I make my way over to him. It’s musty inside the building. Smells old and stale, the way everything in the desert does after a while. It’s clean though, all gleaming dark wood.

  In Las Vegas, video poker machines line every bar. Not the case in Madison. Gambling is another one of those diversions that draws people in, invites them to invade our private world. Madison is one of the few towns in Nevada where gambling is outlawed.

  Juniper’s dad is behind the bar, same place he is most days of the week. Back when he was in high school, there’d been renewed talk of tearing down the Last Chance. His wish had been to save it—though from dating Juniper, I know the bar is struggling.

  “Eldon,” Mr. Clarke says. “I may be mistaken, but I don’t remember you being of drinking age.”

  “Come off it, Hollis,” Gil says, waving away Mr. Clarke. “The boy’s with me.”

  “You watch this young man doesn’t get into trouble,” Mr. Clarke says, winking at me. “Though you keep drinking, Gil, and it might be the other way around.”

  Mr. Clarke and I talk for a few minutes, meaningless how-you-doing stuff. I don’t ask about Juniper, though I have a million questions about how she’s been. Finally, Gil puts a stop to our conversation.

  “Two more of these,” he says, nodding to his empty bottle.

  “You know I can’t serve the kid, Gil.”

  Gil grins. “And I’d never ask you to. They’re both for me.”

  Mr. Clarke passes two beers down the bar. Gil picks them up, and I follow him to a booth in the back corner, the quietest and darkest spot in the building. As soon as we sit down, he slides one of the beers to me.

  “Your pa was always my favorite,” he says. “Kid could have done anything he wanted to. Even if it weren’t for that thing with your mama, he could have been great.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “No, you don’t. You only know him after he got hurt, and I’m telling you, he’s a different man.”

  “OK,” I say, but I’d already figured that much on my own. No adult is the same as when they were my age. With the possible exception of my uncle Jasper.

  Gil takes a long swig of beer. “Always felt like I could’ve done something to prevent it. I didn’t do right by your pa back then. All I thought about was winning.”

  “Are you trying to tell me to make my wish about football?” I ask.

  “No. God, no.”

  I’m confused. “What are you saying then?”

  Gil sighs and spits into his tin can. “Maybe I wasn’t there for your pa,” he says. “I pushed him too much. Made him think football was everything.”

  I wait.

  “Look, I heard around town that you’re asking people about their wishes. Wanna find the best wish for yourself. So I thought maybe you’d want to hear mine.”

  “About your truck?” I ask.

  Gil laughs, long and deep. “I can’t believe people still believe that old story.”

  Chapter 14

  The Wish History: Gil Badgley

  You’d think after the free love of the previous decade, 1970s Madison would be a pretty open-minded place, yeah?

  Open up the history book, and find out just how wrong you are.

  Gil Badgley knows what people say about homosexual kids—how they’re always playing with their sister’s dolls or wearing their mama’s dresses.

  And for Gil, well, it’s not like that. He’s as much a boy—a man—as any other in Madison. Hell, he’s more of a man than a good lot of them. He’s never cried after losing a football game like Irvine Griffin. He’s not scared of his own shadow like Barnabas Fairley. No, Gil isn’t a pansy. He’s a freaking cowboy.

  Take a look at him: seventeen years old and already ruggedly handsome. When football practice ends, he changes from his cleats to his cowboy boots. Gil Badgley hasn’t a clue that manliness and sexuality don’t have much to do with each other. That not every cowboy is looking for a cowgirl.

  Gil figures, if he was homosexual, wouldn’t he be sure? Would he have to spend so much time wondering? On the other hand, Gil thinks constantly wondering if you’re homosexual is pretty telling.

  Deep down, Gil knows who he is and can’t remember a time when he didn’t. When you get right down to it, even pansy kids like Irvine Griffin want to fuck girls. And no matter how he comes at it, Gil Badgley just doesn’t.

  Sure, he asks girls on dates. But it never goes further than a quick kiss on the front porch. The bizarre thing is, that makes the girls like him even more. They watch him, waiting for him to choose someone to get serious with. After all, graduation’s right around the corner, and after that, marriage, children.

  A guy like Gil, his whole life was planned out for him from day one. But in a place like Madison, life doesn’t often go the way one anticipates.

  So it’s no big shocker: Gil doesn’t tell anyone he’s gay. While other kids enjoy high school and think about the future, Gil focuses on keeping his secret under wraps.

  He plays football.

  He drinks beer.

  He spends hours in front of the TV, watching his favorite movie over and over again. He pretends he’s the hero of it, the Man with No Name.

  He buys a cowboy hat and takes up chewing tobacco.

  He watches the movie again.

  He learns to be silent, to look instead of speaking.

  He watches the movie again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Look closely at Gil Badgley. Do you think his attempt to blend in is working?
Or can you see the loss in his eyes, the understanding that something is missing from his life? Look at him, watching his friends go on dates, imagining what it’s like for them. What it would be like to fall in love.

  Then Gil watches the movie again and reminds himself the Man with No Name doesn’t need love. He only needs himself, and that’s enough.

  Don’t you wish we could ask seventeen-year-old Gil why he wouldn’t want more out of life? Judging from that look on his face, maybe he’s already asking himself the same question.

  Here’s one thing we can say about Gil: these feelings, they’ve never made him hate himself. He’s got no time for self-loathing. No, his situation makes him hate the world around him. But he can’t change the world.

  Himself though, that’s different.

  In Madison, everyone has one chance to change him or herself.

  Take a look at Gil Badgley planning his wish. People are gonna ask about it, and Gil can’t exactly tell them he wished away his gayness.

  What to do?

  He’ll say he wished for a truck. He’s always wanted a truck. Really, he wants a horse like the Man with No Name, but even in Madison, that’s impractical. So a truck, a big Ford that’ll leave clouds of dust in its wake. Exactly what people would expect from a guy like Gil.

  But he can’t make a truck appear from nowhere.

  So he’ll say he wished for the money to buy the truck. The whole town will act like he’s an idiot for not wishing for unlimited money. But Gil’s never tried to present himself as especially bright, and in this situation, it’ll work in his favor.

  Flip to the next page, and watch Gil save all the money he makes at the gas station. Watch him work all year to make enough for that truck, and see how he acts like he’s blowing his paychecks on beer.

  That’s what people expect anyway.

  Sometimes, people’s shitty expectations can be a blessing.

  Look how pleased Gil is. His plan is going exactly how he wants it to.

  Now turn to the page where Gil makes his wish. He goes into the cave alone—thanks for that, Barnabas. He navigates through the dark, a candle lighting his way. He reaches the end of the cave, and in a spot that’s been carefully described to him, seventeen-year-old Gil Badgley wishes for all his homosexual feelings to go away.

  And they do.

  The end.

  Except you don’t really believe that, do you?

  Skim ahead to when Gil gets paired with Emerson Carby on a science project. These two kids hardly know each other. They don’t have the same social circles. Emerson is a quiet, nerdy kid who keeps to himself. A kid who’s probably written off Gil as a dumb jock.

  The two of them couldn’t be more different from one another. Yet after two weeks of working together, Gil knows with more certainty than he’s ever known anything in his life that Emerson Carby is the person he’s meant to be with.

  Gil never knew it could be so easy to be around another person. For the first time in a long time, Gil doesn’t need to be the Man with No Name. He’s happy being himself. Even if being himself means wanting to be with another man.

  Only, something is wrong.

  Emerson is handsome in a way Gil can recognize but not feel.

  Because the wish.

  The wish.

  Gil knows all about wanting. He spent the first eighteen years of his life wanting the simplicity of wanting girls. But that hadn’t prepared him for Emerson, for knowing he should love Emerson, and that a few months prior, he would have loved him.

  But knowing something and feeling something aren’t the same.

  The wish worked too well.

  Look at overly optimistic Gil Badgley. He tells himself that his wish is only as strong as his determination for it to be true, and now that he sees this chance for happiness, it can be reversed.

  “Gil,” Emerson says when he’s spending the night at Gil’s house. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Sure,” Gil says.

  He sits there in his cowboy boots, looking at Emerson.

  “We’ve been hanging out a lot, and…”

  Gil waits.

  “You know I’m gay, don’t you?”

  Gil doesn’t say a word. Instead, he leans in and kisses Emerson full on the mouth. Emerson kisses him back hungrily. It’s a long, deep kiss. All those front porches, all those girls, and Gil never kissed anyone like this.

  It should have been the most perfect moment of his life.

  Except he feels nothing.

  It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the kiss. It’s enjoyable enough. But it’s empty. There’s no pleasure in it, only a sense that there should have been pleasure.

  The kiss over, Emerson stares at Gil expectantly. Watch how, for the first time since he was a young child, Gil Badgley cries.

  Turn the page, past Gil’s long and teary confession. Stop when Emerson slowly and sadly says, “So you like girls now.”

  “No,” says Gil. “I don’t. I don’t like anyone.”

  That hadn’t been his wish, after all. Despite the preplanning that went into it, Gil never considered that attraction wasn’t an either-or scenario. Wishing to not like boys wouldn’t make him like girls.

  Gil also hadn’t considered that wishing away an essential part of who he was would leave a hole. This lack of desire, it’s not so bad. He doesn’t need sex. But his sexuality belonged to him. These days, he feels like there’s an imposter living in his head, his heart.

  “We could still try,” Gil says to Emerson. He can’t shake his optimism. There must be a loophole; he can love Emerson’s company even if he can’t love him physically. After all, there’s more than one way to love someone.

  But Emerson shakes his head. “I want more than that.”

  If Gil met Emerson sooner, or made his wish later, or wished an entirely different wish, their story could have ended differently. Even if people in Madison never accepted them as a couple, they could have gone to a town where people were different. But it’s too late.

  Gil suddenly understands that the Man with No Name would have never made the same wish. He would have never run from what he was afraid of.

  And Gil realizes he’s a pansy after all.

  Flip forward through the years.

  Gil still sees Emerson Carby around town, and they wave to each other, make a few minutes of small talk. But they never discuss what happened between them that night in Gil’s room. They never discuss the life they could have had.

  Keep skimming.

  See that Gil never marries. He has his truck; he gets a dog he names Tuco. He learns to let that be enough. Gil coaches football and spends his nights drinking in the Last Chance. He stops trying to find interest in either sex.

  That life, those emotions, aren’t for him.

  Gil Badgley isn’t the Man with No Name.

  He’s the Man with No Desire.

  Chapter 15

  Countdown: 13 Days

  Having art class first thing in the morning feels like a curse. I’m forced to start every single day with Fletcher Hale in my face.

  Thankfully, he mostly keeps to himself. I have no idea what he’s working on or if we’ll have a project to hand in at the end, but I can’t make myself care. Occasionally, Ms. Dove wanders over and asks how we’re doing, and I grin and tell her we’re perfect.

  “So I was thinking of taking the pictures this weekend,” Fletcher says hesitantly.

  “What?”

  “For the project. We can tell Ms. Dove you came too.”

  I shrug. “Whatever.”

  Fletcher looks baffled. He’s never blown off a school assignment. “You don’t want to miss graduation because you failed an elective.”

  “No, you don’t,” I say. “I’m not going to Harvard in the fall.”

 
At least he has the decency to look guilty.

  “It must be nice,” I say, keeping my voice low so no one else can hear. “Knowing you get to leave town and forget everything that happened here.”

  “I’m not going to forget,” Fletcher says quietly.

  But he will. He’ll run away and start over and pretend Madison was nothing but a bad dream.

  I say what I’ve been wanting to say for months. “You could have taken it back. If you really wanted to, you could have made it like the accident never happened.”

  Ebba was rushed to Vegas almost immediately. By the time my family showed up, the ambulance had already left for the hospital, and there was only a crowd of onlookers, Fletcher’s car, and Ebba’s mangled bike. And blood. Not a lot of blood, but some scattered drops on the road. Enough to tell us the story of what happened.

  But even though the first responders were fast, even though Ebba was on the road to Vegas when Fletcher made his wish, he had time to fix it. And he didn’t.

  Fletcher looks away from me. His voice cracks when he speaks. “I know. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “You expect me to believe that?” I snap. “All you do is think. You weren’t willing to give up your wish.”

  I’m pushing him, and I know it. Maybe I want to piss him off. Maybe I want a fight.

  When he responds, he doesn’t seem angry. Just sad. “That’s not what happened.”

  “You know what I hope, Fletcher?” I say. “I hope you get to Harvard and enjoy your fancy classes and have everything you ever wanted. Then I hope something happens to take it all away. Because you don’t deserve happiness. You don’t deserve anything. I want you to spend every second of the rest of your life remembering that.”

  A look I can’t interpret crosses Fletcher’s face. For a moment, I wonder if he’s already thinking that. If maybe it’s too late for him to make a run for it. For a second, I feel almost guilty. Almost.

  • • •

  I’m still thinking about Fletcher at lunch. It means I’m not paying attention to Merrill, and that makes him impatient.

  “Do you even care that we’re being lied to by everyone who has power in this town?”