Wishful Thinking (20 page)

“Everything is going to be okay,” Hazel said again. Jaime pulled back and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hands. “Maybe he just needs some time. It’s a lot to take in, you know, and maybe he’ll—”

“I don’t think I can do it,” Jaime interrupted. She was looking right at Hazel, her brown eyes darting back and forth over Hazel’s face. As if the answer was there, somewhere. As if all she had to do was look close enough, or long enough, and she’d know what to do.

Hazel could feel all of the muscles in her body go slack. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Of course you can. Maybe it won’t turn out like we’d hoped, maybe Reid won’t be around, but…”

Jaime looked at Hazel like she was foreign, or disabled. A combination of sympathy, frustration, and disdain. “You
don’t understand,” Jaime spoke slowly. “I know that I
could
do it. I just don’t know if I
want
to.”

Hazel reached out and gave Jaime’s shoulder a strong squeeze. “Of course you want to,” Hazel said. “This is your baby.
Your
baby. You’re a family, now. Remember?”

Jaime rocked back and forth against the wall as she spoke, her chin bumping against her knees. She looked determined, or like she was trying to look determined. But Hazel could see something in her eyes and she knew. Jaime had already made her decision.

“I’m giving it up for adoption,” she said, her voice cold and far away. “I have to.”

There was a ringing in Hazel’s ears and she thought for a moment that if she squeezed her head between her hands it might stop.

This is it, she thought. This is how it begins.

She felt her knees buckling and before she knew what was happening she was sliding down the side of the bed to the floor, landing with her legs folded in against her chest.

“Hazel?” Jaime asked. “Are you okay?”

The room spun as Hazel shook her head furiously. This couldn’t be happening. It was all her fault. She had been given a second chance, and she’d lost it. She’d been sent back in the past to make things right, to make Jaime see that she should stay on the island and keep her baby. And it hadn’t worked. Things were just as wrong as they’d been before.

“No,” Hazel heard herself repeating, like a prayer. “No. No. No. No.”

“Hazel!” Jaime was leaning over the bed, her face just inches from Hazel’s. “What is wrong with you?”

It took a few moments for the words to arrange themselves in Hazel’s brain, and when they did, she was able to focus her eyes on Jaime. She spun around and grabbed Jaime by the shoulders.

“You can’t do this,” she whispered, her voice raspy and harsh. “You just can’t.”

Jaime rolled her eyes, wrapping a loose thread from the quilt around the tip of her finger. “What are my options?” she asked. “I can’t raise a baby by myself. It wouldn’t be fair. I don’t even know who I am yet.”

Hazel tossed her hands in the air. “What do you mean you don’t know who you are? Of course you do. You’re Jaime. You’re the strongest person I know,” Hazel assured her. “You can do anything.”

Jaime looked back at Hazel with sad eyes. “That’s just it,” she said softly. “I can do anything, and I’ve hardly been off this island. I’ve never even been on an airplane. I’m not ready, Hazel. You know I’m not ready.”

Jaime’s forehead wrinkled as she wrapped the string tighter and tighter around her finger. It looked like it was starting to hurt. “Reid was right,” she whispered, so softly that if Hazel hadn’t been watching Jaime’s lips she may have missed it altogether. “We’re both too young. I have to think about what’s best for me. For my future.”

Jaime took a deep breath and looked Hazel square in the eyes. “I’m taking the scholarship to Peru,” she said.

Hazel felt her eyebrows lift up high in the middle of her forehead.

“Peru?”
she repeated. Her head was spinning and she felt like maybe she was stuck in somebody else’s bad dream. She
snapped her eyes open and shut just to make sure. “You’re going to give up your baby so you can go to Peru?” she asked, once she’d confirmed that she was, in fact, awake and living this moment. “To dig up some bones, or—or shark’s teeth or something?”

Jaime’s finger was fading from bright red to stark white, and she finally released the thread, staring at the crisscrossed pattern of lines carved just above her knuckle.

“It’s not just Peru,” Jaime said, her voice getting stronger. She looked back at Hazel. “It’s everything. I want my life back. I don’t want this to be the last time I can do what I want to do, and not have to worry about somebody else. I want to explore. I want to be normal. Why is that so hard for you to understand? Why do you care so much what I do? This is
my
life we’re talking about. Not yours!”

Hazel felt like she’d been slapped in the face, and she looked back to the floor. She slowly pulled herself to her feet, the pounding in her ears so loud she was sure Jaime could hear it. She walked slowly toward the door, then turned on her heels and pointed one long finger across the room.

“You have no idea what you’re saying,” she hissed. “I don’t
understand?
I understand perfectly. Do
you
understand what kind of a life your baby will have after you give it up? Do you have any idea what it’s like to grow up without parents? To never know who or where you came from? To be completely on your own?”

Everything around her was pulsing, cold, and strange. The room felt completely different than the one she’d spent the last two months living in. It felt like a cell.

“You’ve always had this island, your grandmother,
Rosanna. You can’t possibly understand what that’s like,” she said. “But I do. I lied before, when I said my parents were traveling. I don’t have any parents. I grew up in foster care. I’ve moved more times than I can remember. Is that what you want for your baby?”

She stared down at Jaime, who was hugging the bony points of her knees and staring at the wall. “Is it?” Hazel demanded. “Is that what you want to happen to the baby you give up? While you’re out
exploring?
While you’re living your life and being
normal?”

Hazel was screaming now but she didn’t care. She waited for Jaime to say something. Anything. To take it all back. To cry. To blink.

But Jaime didn’t move. All of a sudden the walls felt like they were sliding on tracks, moving closer and threatening to sandwich Hazel like a paper doll between them. She scrambled for the doorknob and ran into the hall, her feet tripping over each other as she stumbled down the stairs and out into the night.

T
he ocean was angry and loud, which was exactly what Hazel needed. The sun had already set, and thick clouds of gnats buzzed around her head as she climbed down the wooden ladder to the beach. She stopped halfway and perched at the edge of a flat-faced rock, the slapping sounds of the surf drowning out her choppy sobs.

Part of her wanted to jump in. Let the tide take her away. She wanted to be washed free of the clamoring thoughts in her head. It was all too much. First, she’d messed things up with Luke, and then Jaime had decided not to keep the baby. She’d decided to do the one thing Hazel had been sent back in time to convince her not to do.

Hazel’s stomach turned. If it hadn’t been so empty she knew she would have been sick.

What was the point of any of this? What had she been doing here? What kind of a fairy godmother would send her back in time, just to show her everything she still couldn’t have? Wasn’t it bad enough that her life was such a disappointment
the first time around? Did she really need to watch it unfold from the beginning?

Hazel bit the inside of her lip until she tasted blood. Her eyes burned. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so full of anything. Rage coursed through her veins, her hands clenched, her knuckles white and raw.

She stood at the edge of the cliff and screamed. The wind swallowed her voice, rolling it into echoing cries for the waves to churn against the shore.

She settled back on a rock and buried her head in her hands. What was she supposed to do now? She thought of Posey’s final dress hanging in her closet. She still had one wish left. But the thought of coming up with a new idea for how to use it was exhausting. She was tired of trying to fix things, when nothing she wished for made anything any better at all.

Hazel heard a rustling behind her and turned to see a little boy on the path. He was walking back from the pond, a fishing pole swinging over one shoulder. It was hard to tell how old he was, but from the way he was struggling with the tall rod and a heavy-looking metal box, Hazel guessed around eleven or twelve.

“Are you okay?” the boy asked. His round face was twisted tight with worry. “I thought I heard somebody screaming.”

Hazel forced a smile and wiped quickly at the wet patches on her cheeks. “I’m fine,” she said. “Thanks.”

The boy shrugged, already disinterested, and turned on his heel, continuing down the path to the parking lot.

Hazel watched him go, remembering the one time Roy had taken her fishing. Even though she’d done her best not to show it, she’d been excited about the idea of catching a fish. That is, until she’d actually caught one. She still remembered the way
the tug on the line had pulled her forward, and the startling sound of her own voice as she squealed for Roy to help her.

He’d been standing over her shoulders, and as soon as he’d seen the rod bowing toward the water, he’d reached out and held on to her small wrists, helping her to hold on tight. She remembered the way she’d felt, standing there with Roy’s big arms looping her shoulders. Suddenly, she wasn’t scared. For once, she had backup.

It was the closest the two of them had ever gotten to a hug.

Watching the boy disappear deeper into the woods, Hazel thought of Roy. Where was he now? What was he doing? Was he worried about her? Most likely he was too busy being furious. He probably assumed she’d given up on their arrangement, dropped out of school, and moved back to the city. She hadn’t exactly been quiet about wanting to get out of San Rafael.

She’d never given much thought to what Roy’s life might have been like, if it wasn’t for her. What if Wendy had never adopted her? Maybe she wouldn’t have had to work so much. Maybe she wouldn’t have been at the restaurant the night it burned down.

Maybe Wendy and Roy would have lived happily ever after.

On the other side of the trees, the boy started to whistle, a clear, simple tune that carried in the breeze across the cliffs. Hazel wondered what Roy had been like at that age. What did he imagine his future would be like? Surely he’d hoped for more than he’d ended up with: a lost love, and the unwanted responsibility of a daughter he’d never asked for. No wonder he had such a hard time keeping it all together.

He really had loved Wendy. That much, Hazel knew. Somewhere at the bottom of a buried tangle of memories, Hazel
could recall the muffled crying sounds she used to hear coming from Roy’s room, those first, shaky years after Wendy’s death. She couldn’t imagine having to lose somebody she loved that way.

She couldn’t imagine losing Luke.

Luke loved her. She felt it, as surely as she’d ever felt anything in her life. Maybe she hadn’t just been sent back in time to meet her mother. Maybe she’d been sent back to find Luke, too. She’d never been able to get so close to anyone before. Of course it scared her, but he would understand, eventually. He understood everything else about her. How could she leave him behind?

And what was waiting for her at home, if she did? What was so great about the future that she needed to ever go back? Roy was miserable. She didn’t have any friends. And what good could come out of that other life she’d started? A life of fragmented memories, of being let down. A life of reminding Roy of what he’d lost.

A life of being a burden.

Hazel took a shallow, trembling breath. That wasn’t at all what she wanted. What she wanted was here, all around her. This place, this beautiful place, and all of the people she’d found here. Rosanna, Jaime, Luke.

She’d made a wish to get to know her mother but she’d gotten so much more.

She’d found her family. And she wasn’t ready to leave them behind.

She thought again of her third dress, and suddenly she knew what she had to do. She didn’t know how it would work; she didn’t know what it would mean.

But she knew she’d found home, and she knew she had to find a way to stay.

“C
areful with that,” Rosanna called through the studio door. It was the day of the going-away party, and Hazel was helping Rosanna arrange her paintings on easels outside.

Hazel looked down to see that she had been standing in the studio with a painting balanced precariously against her knees, lost in another daydream.

It wasn’t the first time Rosanna had interrupted her in the middle of a faraway thought. Earlier in the afternoon Hazel had dragged one of the handmade display easels through a puddle, trailing mud across the patio floor. She’d spent an extra twenty minutes scrubbing the dirtied stones, and though Rosanna hadn’t said anything, Hazel could tell she knew that something was wrong.

“I’m sorry,” Hazel said as she picked up the painting and continued carrying it outside. “I guess I’m a little bit distracted.”

Rosanna was surveying the space, inching one easel closer to another and considering the new arrangement. She smiled warmly at Hazel and nodded. “I can see that,” she said. “Is everything all right?”

Hazel quickly lifted the painting in her hand. She propped it against an empty stand and prayed that it hid any telltale changes in her face. How could she explain to Rosanna any of what was going through her mind? That every time she caught a glimpse of the barn roof and thought of Jaime, she felt a twinge of guilt? She knew that Jaime could use help closing up the office and packing up the house, but she couldn’t imagine the two of them spending the whole day together. Not after the way they’d left things the night before.

And there was no way Hazel could tell Rosanna what she’d decided last night as she’d sat by herself on the cliffs. How could she reveal that she was planning on using her final wish to stay in the past? Especially since now, in the clear morning light, she wasn’t even sure it was possible. Whatever Jaime decided to do with the baby, Hazel would have to be born. She couldn’t go on living in the past after it became her actual present, could she?