Genuine Sweet (19 page)

Then Sonny Wentz walked in and hugged Jura like it was
her
gram who had died.

Only after that did he say, “Sorry about your granny.”

He gave Jura a funny look, muttered, “Uh, I'll just sit over here, then,” and reached for his book satchel—which had been leaning against the leg of
my
desk. I realized he was mildly confounded because
I was in his seat.
In the single day I'd been out of school, he'd taken my spot.

“Genuine—” Jura started.

“I—Are you with Sonny now?” I asked.

Jura cast Sonny a quick look.

“I'll just, uh—” he said, and walked off.

On one breath's worth of air, Jura blurted, “I figured it was okay. It
is
okay, isn't it? I mean, you only liked Sonny when you thought he liked you, right? But when you found out it wasn't him who'd asked you bowling, you didn't like him anymore, right?”

I was stunned silent. I don't know why. I
was
sorta with Travis now. I kissed him and liked him and everything.

I had to pry my clenched jaw apart to say, “Oh, sure. No. That's right. No.”

“You look upset,” Jura said.

Me, upset? Surely not! “Just surprised. Glad for you. Surprised and glad.” It wasn't as if Sonny had given me any real sign that he liked me as anything more than a plain old, boring, ugly, ugly, ugly friend. Genuine
Beauty
Sweet. Ha.

“Do you swear this is okay?” she asked. “Do you
swear?
”

I conjured a smile. “Course.”

I started to get up from my desk.

“You don't have to move.” Jura set her hand on my arm. “Please stay.”

“No, really. You two sit together. I'm not feeling much like company anyway.”

Which is why, of course, at that exact moment, as I was moving my things to a desk in the back of the room, Travis appeared in the doorway.

He walked over and gave my wrist a squeeze. “Heard you was coming to school today.”

“Here I am,” I replied.

“I been worried about you, but my ma said I should let you alone for a while.”

“That's fine.”

I didn't know what to say to him. Suddenly, everything seemed so stupid. Could it really be that the world was still spinning? Didn't everyone realize how hollow all their comings and goings were?

“I brought two lunches. I thought you might have forgot yours,” he said.

“I'm on free lunch.”
Yup. I can cure cancer, but I still can't buy my own food.

“Oh, right.”

He stood there, looking at me like he expected something.
Just like
everybody
expects something. For themselves, of course. Not for me.
Why worry about little Genuine? She's got her free lunch, don't she? What more does a poor Sweet need?

“You should go to class now,” I told him.

“Are you really sure you should be here today? I can—” He reached for my books.

“Please go,” I said.

Sonny walked up, his chest all puffed out. “I believe she asked you to leave, Tromp.”

“Sonny—” Jura darted over. Her wide eyes were the color of sweetgum honey. Even riled up, she was beautiful. No wonder Sonny wanted to be with her.

“Just go, Travis,” I said, suddenly feeling so, so tired at the prospect that there might be a fight.

But Travis's attention was all on Sonny.

“Step off, Wentz,” Travis snarled.

“Can't you even just leave her alone this one day? Don't you get it? You're not wanted.” Sonny shoved Travis's shoulder.

“Sonny! Stop!” Jura said, gripping Sonny's sleeve.

“She doesn't even like you,” Sonny continued. “Do you?” This last question was directed at me.

I looked up at Sonny, then at Travis. More than anything, I just wanted them to go away.

I think what I'd intended to say was, “I don't much like either of you right now.”

I only got as far as “I don't—” when Sonny cut me off and said, “See!”

Travis's face went slack. Before I could make sense of the fact that I'd been misunderstood, he fled the room and slammed the door behind him.

The second bell rang. Immediately, the door opened again and Mister Strickland stood in the doorway.

“I'm sorry. I thought that was the bell. Why aren't you in your seats?” he demanded.

We had three hours till lunch.
Three hours
for Travis to steep good and dark, thinking I'd denied him.

I put my head down on my desk. I wanted so desperately to cry—over Gram, over Travis, over everything—but the tears just wouldn't come.

Finally, lunchtime arrived. Though I didn't feel like talking to anyone, I knew I should find Travis in the cafeteria and explain myself. But when I walked in and the smell of food hit me, I was suddenly so pukish I could barely stand.

“Are you okay?” Jura appeared and wrapped an arm around my shoulder.

Her closeness seemed to shut out the fresh air. I breathed those awful deep breaths you take when you're trying not to sick up.

“Can't—” I said, and raced out the door, down the hall, and into the bathroom.

Once I was in there alone, with my forehead on the cool blue tiles of the privy wall, the queasiness started to pass.

The bathroom door opened.

“Oh, good. I thought I saw you come in here.”

I looked up. A girl strode in.

“Have you thought about my wish at all?” she demanded. “Because I'm sort of running out of time. If I don't—”

It took me a second to place her.
Ruby Hughes.
She'd asked me twice about wishing up some new tack for her horse. Some big hooray of a show coming up.

“Go away,” I said.

“Look, Sweet, I know for a fact you granted Chastity Port's wish—”

“Go. Away.”

With a goofy sort of roar, she ripped a handful of paper towels from the dispenser and threw them down on the floor. “You're not the first kid whose granny ever died, you know!”

She waited, as if she actually thought her foul words might have changed my mind! When it became plain they hadn't, she hissed, “Any fool can wish on a stupid star!” and stormed out.

After a sliver of a pause, I ran after her into the hall. Even though I was six inches shorter than she was and only two-thirds as wide, I grabbed her by the back of the shirt and spun her around.

“How about this, you cheese-eater?” I put my finger in her face. “How about you take your asinine horse show and stick it where the sun don't shine? Or! Or! Even better! Any fool can wish on a star, you say? How about you wish up your stupid tack for yourself? Oh, wait! You can't! Because you're useless, you prima donna, gonna-be-married-and-barefoot-this-time-next-year, and I'll tell you what, not a single person in this town is gonna give a care for your stupid horse or its tack! Or for you!”

I'm ashamed to admit, for about thirty seconds, I felt much better.

It was the thirty seconds after that that cast me into the breach. But even then, I didn't cry. It was more like a howl that somebody tore out of me, a sound so full of rage it wasn't even human. I slammed my open hand on one of the metal lockers and relished the racket as the sound rang through the hallway. I did it once more, bellowed, and took off at a run. I didn't stop until I was halfway down Main Street, at which point I realized there was nowhere I wanted to go, nothing I wanted to do, and no one I wanted to do it with.

Ham found me sitting on the curb outside his place. When he drug me to a booth in the back of the diner and set a cup of coffee afore me, part of me wondered if he was buttering me up for a wish.

Later, when he was closing shop—and it must've been much later, seeing as how it was getting dark out—he pressed a paper bag into my hands. I didn't thank him then, either, but he seemed to understand, and only patted me on the head and told me to “git on home, now.”

I couldn't even rally myself to look him in the eye. I just got.

Outside my door, I found a pile of yarn, three casseroles, and a card addressed to
The Sweet Family.
I tore it open with a bitter chuckle.

The card had a seagull on it, flying over a blue sea at sunset. It read,
Deepest condolences
in one of those gold, curlicue scripts. Inside, Handyman Joe had written something sincere and sad. I tossed that card onto Pa's apple crate, which was currently unoccupied.

Just because it seemed like a waste to let food go bad, I walked the casseroles and Ham's paper bag to the fridge. It was strange to see how much grub had collected there since . . . that night. It wasn't so long ago that I'd sat looking at that empty refrigerator, my stomach rumbling, wishing for something more than thin broth and beans.

For a glimmer of a moment, I almost, almost felt grateful.

Almost.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the electric bill poking from beneath the living room lamp. I stormed over, hefted the lamp, and snatched up the slip of paper.

 

Unfortunately, we do not accept payment in the form of goods and/or services. . . . Please note your current bill is three days overdue.

 

I squeezed my eyelids together and crushed the letter in my hand.

It was time for a reckoning.

20

T
HE CLEARING WAS EMPTY AND THE NIGHT WAS
quiet. Squirrel Tail Creek carried pebbles and silt to a river that flowed to the Atlantic. Overhead, the stars went on with their beaming as they did night and day, regardless of who laughed or cried, lived or died.

“I want you to know something!” I shouted at the sky. “I remember Gram's story about the man from Fenn. How he felt all deprived when everyone but him got their wishes filled, and how it turned out badly when he started fetching wishes for himself. People cursing his name and whatnot. I remember every word of it!”

As you might expect, there was no reply.

“Let me tell
you
a story, stars! Once there was a girl. She was poor, but she was a wish fetcher. And she granted some wishes, and yeah, some people did her a good turn as a result. At least she wasn't hungry no more. She should have been pleased, right?”

Twinkle. Twinkle.

“But that's not the whole tale. Because this girl lost her ma, you see. And her pa's a drunk and a lout. And however much she fetched lost treasures or paired folk up with their soulmates or helped her best friend's ma get a good job in town, she couldn't bring her own ma back. Her father was still a stinking boozer. Sounds nice, don't it?

“But that's just the icing on the cake, stars! Because the real treat at the heart of all this wishing was that, for some blame-fool reason, the girl started to believe that everything was gonna be all right.
All shall be well,
you said!
All manner of thing shall be well!

“
So
well that she never did turn up the money to pay the electric bill.
So
well that she went to Penny Walton's bedside instead of staying home where she belonged. So
well
that while she was gone, the electric went out and the snow began to fall and her most perfect gram lay there in the dark, alone, getting colder and colder—until she died!

“What do you think of
that
story, stars?”

My voice echoed in the empty night.

“So here's how the story ends. The girl says,
No more!
I'm not playing by your rules anymore!”

I held up my wish cup and whistled to the stars. “Y'all come, now. Y'all
come.
”

My voice was bitter, but the stars didn't seem to mind. At last, and in their own way, they replied.

Even through the haze of my heartsickness, I had to admit it was as beautiful as ever, the quicksilver flow of starlight pouring down from way up on high. As the cup filled, I felt the impossible neither-cold-nor-hotness of it through the plastic against the skin of my hand. It defied every word of description I possessed, and all I could do was gape in wonder.

But if you think I was swayed by that splendor, you're wrong.

“Thank you kindly,” I said.

I took that cup of starlight and drank it down.

I'll tell you straight up, there's no way I can make clear what it felt like, drinking that stuff. My knees nearly buckled; I know that much. A delicious chill rushed through me, from my tailbone up to the very top of my head. Around me, the edges of things—the trunks of the trees, the moonbeams, even the leaves and pine needles on the ground—turned vivid, their colors sharper, even through the dark. I breathed, and the air was me and I was it, and I could feel it fill up every part of me, every last cell.

But perhaps the real wonder was, in the face of all that rapture, I still managed to do the thing I'd come to do: balance the books.

“I wish for money!” I screamed into the night. “Lots of it! And a better house and a sober pa. I wish a ma for every baby and for no one ever to go hungry. And most of all—you hear me, stars!—most of all, I wish for my gram back!”

I knew it the second the last words left my lips. I knew it before I held up the cup and tried to call down some more starlight—though I did do that, out of spite, maybe. I knew it as sure as I knew Pa would be drunk tomorrow and Gram would still be dead. I knew it.

The magic was gone.

 

Feeling little else but tired, I curled up on Gram's bed with her
Farmer's Almanac.
It talked about the stars and the seasons and the right days for planting all sorts of crops. Everything had its own special time.

I fell asleep thinking about how folks had been relying on star shine for centuries before Sass's Genuine Sweet came along.

When I woke up, Pa was snoring drunk—in front of the television, this time—wasting electricity paid for by the Tromps. I switched the thing off and told him, “Go to your own room,” but he was well past hearing.