As You Wish Read online

  “I believe she prefers to be called Norie,” I say.

  “I also prefer not to be talked about like I’m not here,” Norie adds.

  “And I prefer you guys not change the subject.” Merrill looks from me to Norie then back to me. “What’s the deal with Juniper?”

  He’s going to harass me until I spill. I sigh. “I made a fool out of myself in front of her.”

  “Again?”

  I don’t respond.

  “Eldo, we discussed this. If you keep following Juniper around, you’re gonna look like a creep.”

  “Too late,” I say, trying to match Merrill’s joking tone but failing miserably.

  The sun beats down, and I’m aching from the hits I took at practice. I don’t mind Merrill making jokes at my expense, but Norie hardly knows me. She definitely doesn’t know anything about me and Juniper. I want to be left alone.

  “I’m not wishing for Juniper to love me, OK? Can we drop the subject?”

  “What are you wishing for?” Norie asks.

  I sigh. For the millionth time, I wish our gas pump didn’t take a lifetime to fill a tank.

  “That’s Eldon’s least favorite question these days,” Merrill says. “Meaning he has no clue.”

  Norie tilts her head and looks at me as if I’m a scientific anomaly. “Really?”

  “I’m not one of those people who’s had it planned since I was a kid,” I say.

  I’d thought about it, obviously. How could I not? When I was five, I told people I was going to wish for my action figures to come to life. When I was eight, I was going to wish for a bike for my sister. She was stuck with my hand-me-down, and I knew she wanted a pink bike with streamers and a basket. When I was thirteen, most of my wish daydreams revolved around sex. A year ago, I assumed I’d wish for money and didn’t give it much thought beyond that.

  But contemplating wishes is a lot different from planning one wish. It’s different from having a wish you’re sure is the wish. I grew up changing my mind about wishes as often as I changed my socks.

  “Maybe it’s good you’re not sure yet,” Norie says. “This way, you’ll know you’re making the right choice, not wishing for the first thing that popped into your head.”

  This is not the response I expected. “Thank you, Norie.” I give Merrill a pointed look.

  “So, Miss Careful Thought and Planning,” Merrill says, ignoring me completely. “What did you wish for?”

  Norie hesitates. She looks down at her hand, twirls the ring on her finger. “I’d rather not say.”

  Another unexpected response. Most people are eager to talk about their wishes.

  “That’s highly unusual,” Merrill says.

  “Everything about wishing is highly unusual,” Norie replies. The gas pump finishes, and Norie removes the nozzle from her car. “See you guys later. Good luck finding a wish, Eldon.”

  “She’s an odd one,” Merrill says when Norie’s gone. “You know, the other day, I overheard her talking to Otto Alvarez.”

  “So?”

  “She was telling him about Jesus.”

  That gets my attention. “What was she saying?”

  “I wasn’t exactly going to stop and join the conversation, Eldo.”

  I’d heard rumors about Norie and religion, but I figured it was gossip. As far as I know, no one in Madison has ever been religious.

  “Weird, right?” Merrill asks.

  I pop the remainder of my fortune cookie into my mouth and chew before answering. “Yeah, weird. But also intriguing.”

  Merrill takes off his glasses and looks at me dramatically. “Can it be? Has Eleanor Havermayer taken your mind off Juniper?”

  “The Jesus thing is intriguing, not her.”

  Merrill shrugs and puts his glasses back on.

  “I wonder what she wished for,” I ponder. “Certainly not looks.”

  “You’re an asshole,” Merrill says, but he laughs a little anyway.

  To be fair, Norie’s not unattractive. In any other town, she might even be considered pretty. But in Madison, with tons of girls wishing to look like supermodels, Norie doesn’t have a chance. She’s never going to be beautiful like Juniper.

  “How many other people you think keep quiet about their wishes?” Merrill asks.

  I’m wondering the same thing. The residents of Madison are so focused on keeping secrets from outsiders, I never stopped to consider what we’ve been keeping from each other.

  Chapter 7

  Countdown: 20 Days

  In English lit, Mrs. Franklin drones on and on. This is my least favorite class, not because of the subject but because Mrs. Franklin makes me extremely uncomfortable.

  There’s no question what she wished for when she turned eighteen. It’s right there on display. Or maybe I should say they are. Mrs. Franklin has the biggest tits I’ve ever seen in my life. You can’t take your eyes off them, and I don’t mean that in a good way.

  People say Mrs. Franklin was flat as a board before her wish. She definitely went too far in the opposite direction. Like, even when she was young, her boobs were probably more creepy than hot, and now Mrs. Franklin is ancient. There’s a steady stream of jokes about her around Madison High School. I don’t know what the hell she’s thinking, working around teenagers.

  Mrs. Franklin is talking about the significance of the last line in The Great Gatsby while I, and every other kid in class, look out the window or at the ceiling or at our books. Anywhere but at her. You can’t even talk to her without your eyes straying to her chest, and then you feel like an asshole.

  When the PA system squawks, everyone sits up a little. The voice of the school secretary, Miss Treadway, comes through the speakers.

  “Eldon Wilkes, please report to the principal’s office.”

  I groan loudly, make a big production out of it. Everyone laughs, because they feel my pain. Getting sent to Mr. Wakefield’s office rarely means you’re in trouble. More likely, he’s decided it’s time for a mental health checkup. Hearing your name called over the PA means an impromptu therapy session is in your immediate future.

  I leave English and slowly make my way through the empty halls. Maybe I should make a break for it. Walk out of school. Right out of Madison, even. I could be like the travelers who tear out of town, speeding toward the horizon. And after that, after Madison, what then? Anything.

  Instead, I continue to Mr. Wakefield’s office.

  When I pass the trophy case, my eyes linger on the beat-up gold football inside. Last year’s victory in the Clash was one of my best nights on the field. Afterward, Juniper wrapped her arms around me and whispered, “You’re amazing.” I didn’t even say thank you, because, you know, I agreed with her. My family wanted me to have a celebratory dinner with them. Ebba bounced up and down, talked about getting ice cream. I ditched them for a party at the hot springs instead. Got so drunk, I puked in Juniper’s car when she drove me home. She had to wake up my dad to help get me to bed.

  The memory makes me cringe. I can be a hero and a villain all in one night.

  I hurry the rest of the way to Mr. Wakefield’s office and knock on his closed door.

  “Enter!”

  He’s standing in front of the window, poised, one finger pressed against his lips like he’s in great contemplation. An actor, frozen before the curtain rises. Also like an actor, I’m sure he’s rehearsed this moment and is waiting for his cue.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  “Young Mr. Wilkes. Come here.”

  I sigh and make my way to the window.

  “What do you see when you look out there?” Mr. Wakefield asks, still in his deep thinker pose.

  “The parking lot?”

  “And?”

  “And…the outside. Cars and buildings and stuff.”

  Cars that don’t r
ust—they can’t in such dry air. Worn-down buildings the desert has sanded smooth, stucco siding cracked from blistering heat. And there’s the earth itself, of course. The dirt, the cacti. I know there are places with green trees and blue water and yellow sunshine peeking through clouds. But I’ve never seen anywhere like that.

  “What you see,” says Mr. Wakefield, “is a world of endless possibility.”

  “Oh.”

  Mr. Wakefield finally turns from the window and motions to a chair. “Let’s chat.”

  I sit and say goodbye to my hope that it’ll be a quick meeting.

  “Mr. Wilkes, I feel that you are in crisis.”

  I laugh.

  He doesn’t.

  “Because of my wish, you mean?” I ask, struggling to keep a neutral face.

  “Yes. What else is there?”

  A world of endless possibility, I think.

  “Your lack of enthusiasm distresses me. I wonder if there isn’t something deeper going on.” He strokes his beard while he talks. It’s one of those too-perfect beards. You can tell he spends hours trimming it into the right shape.

  “Um, I don’t think so,” I say.

  “Have you thought of a wish yet?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Perhaps you’re unconsciously limiting yourself.”

  I don’t say anything. My gaze lands on the framed portrait of Sigmund Freud that sits on Mr. Wakefield’s desk, in the spot where other people would have a picture of their family. Dude is so freaking weird.

  “It makes sense,” he continues. “You’re young. You’ve only touched the surface of knowing. How can you possibly tap into the infinite?”

  “I sort of think it’s the other way around,” I say. “It’s the infinite that’s the problem.”

  Mr. Wakefield frowns. “Go on.”

  I think for a moment. “Well, say you only have two choices. You can like red or you can like blue. It’s easy to look at those two colors and decide that, between them, you like red. But when you consider all the colors in the world, then what? You could narrow it down to liking red, but what shade of red? Some of them are practically the same. And some are way different. But they’re all red, so you like them all, because who ever said a person can like just one color and that’s it? But you’re asking me to pick one color and like it for the rest of my life.”

  My voice gets louder as I talk. It makes me feel like Merrill with his rants. Even more so when I see the look of surprise and concern on Mr. Wakefield’s face.

  “And,” I go on, “every time you talk to someone who’s already picked their color, some adult who’s had their whole life to think about their decision, you know what they say? They regret what they chose. So now they’re stuck their whole life with orange, but they’ve realized orange was a shit color to start with.”

  “Well, that’s very…” Mr. Wakefield trails off.

  I wait.

  “You’ve been having a tough year, haven’t you, Eldon?”

  Oh, spectacular. He’s ready to psychoanalyze me.

  “I guess?”

  “It’s no secret that wishing has caused you some problems. It makes sense that you’d resent it.”

  “What, because of football? Because I’m not as popular now? I don’t care about that.”

  “Of course you care. Your entire identity is wrapped up in your social standing. You must feel very lost. But that wasn’t what I was referring to. I was talking about your sister.”

  I look away from him.

  “You can share your feelings with me. Nothing you say here will leave this room.”

  “I’m fine,” I say through clenched teeth.

  “All right. Just remember, you’re not alone. We’ve all lost loved ones.”

  I want to scream at him, flip his desk over, punch him in his bearded face. I’m sick of people saying I lost Ebba. I didn’t lose her. I know exactly where she is. I know where she is, and I can’t fix what happened, and that almost feels worse than losing her outright.

  My mind flashes to my sister in the nursing home in Las Vegas. After the accident, the doctors put Ebba’s body back together, and we thought that meant she was going to be OK. We had all the hope in the world. Until a doctor sat my family down and had a chat about brain injuries. Told us how our brain sends signals to our legs to walk, our mouths to chew, our lungs to pull in air. And Ebba’s brain, well, it forgot how to do those things. It forgot, and it will never, ever remember.

  It turns out, there’s more than one way to be dead.

  I take a deep breath. Count to ten. This counting-to-ten strategy was recommended a few months ago while my dad and I sat in this very office. It was after Fletcher fucking Hale, the fight, and my suspension.

  “Eldon…” Mr. Wakefield says cautiously. “Perhaps you’d like to hear about my wish? Get a different perspective?”

  No, I don’t want to hear about his wish. I want him to shut up and leave me alone. But I shrug.

  “When I was a young man,” he says, gearing up, “I dreamed of being traveled. Educated. I had this idealistic existence in my head, a sort of East Coast prep school life. Which was why I wished to travel to Europe.”

  I’m not sure what Europe has to do with the East Coast, but I’m not going to argue. I take a deep breath and keep counting silently.

  “I ended up in Vienna. Which is in Austria, you know.”

  Said like he’s sure I don’t know.

  Which I didn’t.

  “I wanted to go to the zoo there. I’d read a novel about it, a very idealistic novel…but anyway, that’s not the point. I had some time to kill one afternoon, and I chanced upon a tour of Sigmund Freud’s neighborhood.”

  Jesus. It’s like his superhero origin story.

  Mr. Wakefield goes on and on about the tour and everything he learned about Freud’s life and work and how it changed his life. An epiphany. I wait until he’s done to ask the obvious question.

  “If you loved Vienna so much, why’d you come back to Madison?”

  Of all places.

  “This is my home, Mr. Wilkes. This is where I knew I could do the most good.”

  “Then why didn’t you get a psychology degree and become a therapist?”

  Mr. Wakefield falters. “The point is, my wish changed my life for the better.”

  Yeah, or gave him a glimpse of a world, a life, that’ll never be his, and left him in a constant state of wanting.

  “OK, cool,” I say abruptly. “Thanks for the perspective.”

  “You’re welcome.” He looks satisfied. He probably waits for the chance to tell that story.

  I glance at the clock near the door. English is over, and I’m supposed to be in government.

  “I should get to class.”

  “Yes, I suppose. But think about what I said. Wishing is an amazing opportunity.”

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  “Maybe you could talk to other wishers?” Mr. Wakefield suggests, guiding me to the door. He’s hesitant at first, feeling out the idea as he speaks. But as he continues, his voice gains confidence. “Yes, that’s it! It will be your project. The Wish Project. You can interview people and ask them about their wishes, learn about the full spectrum of experiences before deciding on your own. Make a truly informed decision.”

  I’m skeptical. I already know most people’s wishes.

  Don’t I?

  I know the wishes of the people I’m close to. I know the most famous wishes. Beyond that, I’m not so sure. It’s a small town, but there are still a lot of people in Madison—relatively speaking—and every one older than eighteen has made a wish.

  Mr. Wakefield is ridiculous, but this idea is kinda interesting.

  “I’ll think about it,” I say. That’s the best Mr. Wakefield is going to get. He seems to know that and beams
at me.

  “Wonderful!”

  He’s so thrilled that it makes me wonder if anyone has taken his suggestions seriously before. Of course, his usual recommendations involve dream analysis, and no one wants to tell the principal their dreams.

  “This could really benefit you, Mr. Wilkes. I can give you some resources to guide you along the way. You might want to start at the museum. In fact, I’ll call and tell them about your project. They might be interested in getting a copy of your final—”

  “Thanks for your help, Mr. Wakefield,” I say, moving toward the door.

  “Don’t you want to discuss your approach?”

  “I’ll let you know how it turns out.”

  I leave the office and hurry toward government class before Mr. Wakefield decides we should partner up on this wish project. No one in town would have a heart-to-heart about their wish with him hovering nearby.

  How has Mr. Wakefield not realized that most people don’t want to be analyzed? Most people want the secret part of themselves to stay secret. After all, what’s the point of analyzing a part of yourself that can’t be changed?

  Chapter 8

  Countdown: 19 Days

  It’s a regular Friday night. Merrill and I are chilling at one of the skeleton houses in our neighborhood before going to the hot springs.

  There’s a house we like best, the last one in the row. We’ve been coming here for an eternity. Despite the age of the half-built house, the wood frame is still sturdy enough to support us. We climb to the top, underneath what would have been the pitched roof. The Mustang is parked in the driveway, as if this is a real home, as if we live here.

  “Seems like this wish project will be a lot of work,” Merrill says.

  “It’s just talking to people.”

  “Exactly. That’s a lot of work.”

  I shrug. My feet swing back and forth in the air over a living room where no one will do any living.

  “Look, Eldo. Be straight with me. Why are you having so much trouble with this?”

  I hesitate before replying. I’m not entirely sure of the answer myself. “It’s a big deal. I don’t want to get it wrong.”

  “Since when do you care about that?”