Down With the Shine (6 page)

“I think we know where this is going,” Uncle Jet groans. “Damn it, Lennie. Maybe we shoulda given you some sex
education so you’d know it ain’t right to mess with a man’s manhood.”

“No!” Smith lets his hand fall. “That’s not what . . . My hand didn’t want . . .” He clears his throat. “Last night, I made a wish. And now . . .” Smith’s gaze drops to his shoes as he mutters something unintelligible.

“What was that?” Uncle Rod asks.

“He said he needs to hold Lennie’s hand.”

You wouldn’t think it from his own lack of volume control, but Uncle Dune has superhuman hearing. When I was a little kid we used to play a game called Can You Hear This? I’d stand at the opposite end of the room from Uncle Dune and whisper something as softly as possible, then he’d bellow out what I’d just said. He almost always got it right. So instead of questioning Dune, my uncles simply look from Smith to me and then back to Smith again.

“Well, Lennie,” Uncle Jet says at last. “Give the boy your hand.”

I shove both hands up into my armpits. “No.”

“Did that boy make a wish to hold your hand?”

“No. Yes. Sort of. I guess.”

“Which one?”

I glance at Smith, waiting to see if he wants to jump in, but he’s still examining his shoelaces. “I didn’t grant any
wish. This is crazy. It’s insane. Smith’s screwing with me. He probably cooked it up with W2. I keep telling you it’s some weird practical joke.”

Uncle Jet shakes his head. “I’d get the moonshine and have you grant my wish that the truth would penetrate your thick skull, but it wouldn’t work till sunrise tomorrow and I hate to think of what kind of hell you’ll unleash between now and then. So let me explain this to you, one more time.” He shoots an accusing glance toward Uncle Dune with this last bit, who merely shrugs in response.

“We grant wishes. Nobody knows how it started but it’s been going on for generations, at least as far as Pop Pop knew. He always said someone up the family tree must’ve screwed a leprechaun. Whatever it was, we got this thing where we can grant wishes through the moonshine. None of that genie giving you three wishes crap. Everyone gets one wish per wish granter. Even the wish granters themselves only get one. That means I could grant a wish for Rod and Dune and myself. And they could each grant one for themselves, for me, and each other. We’re more like fairy friggin’ godmothers in that way. You got that?”

“You and Uncle Rod and Uncle Dune grant wishes,” I repeat. It sounds just as insane coming out of my mouth.

“Wrong!” Uncle Jet crows. “We used to grant wishes. The power gets passed to the next generation once
someone has granted three wishes. That means you’re it now, Lennie. Us three can’t grant any more wishes.”

“That can’t be real,” I whisper, even though I have a terrible feeling it is.

Uncle Jet’s told me lies before. Whoppers, too, like that a monster would eat me if I got out of bed in the middle of the night. After I spent most of grade school with recurrent bladder infections from being too afraid to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, Uncle Rod took pity on me. In exchange for no longer stealing the poker from the fireplace to keep it at my bedside, he broke down every single one of Jet’s tells that he’d observed after years of playing poker together. The nose scratch with his middle finger. The chin stroke. The fake cough. The throat clearing. The rapid blinks. The loud honking nose blow. Actually I’m pretty sure some of these were Uncle Jet’s allergies acting up, but I watched for them all the same. As a result I don’t trust most things that come out of Uncle Jet’s mouth. Right now, though, he’s as still as a statue.

A hand slips into mine and holds tight. It is amazing how much comfort can be gained from such a simple touch. That is until I look to my left and realize it’s Smith.

“Oh, wow, that feels so good,” he says.

I don’t like it. I don’t like any of this, especially the idea that Smith is only holding my hand because of some wish.

“Let go,” I demand, jerking my hand away. Smith doesn’t come loose.

“I can’t.”

I pull away with my whole body. Smith’s hand doesn’t get any tighter, but it doesn’t relax either. “LET GO!” I screech in a high-pitched voice that immediately sends my uncles into action. They each reach in and begin to pull back Smith’s fingers. One. Two. Three. Four. I finally escape while Smith whimpers like a kicked puppy and sinks to the floor.

Quickly, I stuff my hands into my pockets. Not so that Smith won’t take them, but more so that I won’t be tempted to give them back.

“What wish did you grant that boy?” Uncle Jet demands.

“A curse,” Smith spits out, still curled at our feet.

“Same difference,” my uncles respond as one. They turn to me, waiting.

“He wanted to hold my hand till the end of time,” I lie. I’m not sure why, but I don’t want the uncs to know Smith’s wish. To know how much he hates me. That he wanted to see me suffer.

Smith is a jerk, but not an idiot. He’s seen the size of my uncles and probably overheard how they dealt with W2. He shoots a questioning glance my way, but doesn’t open his mouth to set the record straight.

Meanwhile, the uncs groan and roll their eyes like a bunch of eight-year-olds worried about catching cooties.

Deciding to change the topic, and get some more answers, I step in front of Smith so that all attention is back on me. “If this is real, then show me what you three wished for yourselves.”

“Maybe we never did,” Uncle Jet says.

“Nah,” Uncle Dune says. “We did. Almost soon as we got our powers. Couldn’t resist. I got super ears, super eyes, and super nose. To see and hear trouble coming.”

“I wished for enough stuff and money to keep us comfortable,” Uncle Rod adds.

I look back at Uncle Jet. “And you?”

He stares back at me for several long moments, before giving in. “I made a wish to keep us safe and hidden from anyone wanting to use what we could do the wrong way. And if you’re smart, you’ll make a similar wish. We were lucky, though, there were three of us and we were able to multiply our wishes. You don’t have that luxury.”

“Okay,” I say in a small voice as inside me the truth hardens like cement. I always wondered how my uncles had enough money and got all the stuff that fell off the back of trucks and how everyone knew about the moonshine but never bothered them about it and how Uncle Dune could smell rain in the air when the skies were blue.

“Um, Lennie . . .” Smith says, slowly pulling himself to his feet.

“What?” Uncle Jet demands.

“I think, I’m not sure, but I think Lennie did make a wish. She sorta tacked one on after mine.”

“That is such crap—” I start to deny it, until I realize . . . Oh, hell, he’s right.

I wished for Dylan to be alive again.

Holy shit. Holy holy holiest of shits.

I wished for Dyl to be alive and if everything is fucked up the way my uncles say it is, then that means . . .

As one, Smith and I sprint toward the door.

“Hey,” Uncle Jet hollers behind us. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I turn to see all three of them running down the porch steps, ready to jump in their truck and come racing after us wherever we go.

It’s easier to simply tell them the truth. Or at least part of it.

“He’s right. I made a wish,” I say. “And it was a big one.”

Uncle Jet stops and stumbles and then finally sinks to his knees.

“Breathe,” I yell as I climb into Smith’s Jeep. “Put your head between your knees and breathe!”

Then the engine is revving and dirt is kicked up
everywhere as we fly down the drive and with a screeching turn hit the road.

Taking my own advice, I let my head fall forward and focus on taking steady strong breaths, one after another. As I do this, I try to recall the wording of my wish. Something about Dylan being alive. Or safe. Or maybe both?

I can’t remember exactly what I said, but that doesn’t stop me from hoping that no matter what else I screwed up last night, I might’ve actually gotten this one thing right.

At least that’s what I hope.

But another part of me can’t help but remember the uncs’ grim response to Smith’s accusation that his wish was a curse.

I’ve already used up my wish, but I still try to make another one.

Let them be wrong. Please, please, please let them be wrong.

Let that wish be an answer to a prayer and not just another nightmare.

T
he silence in the car is so full of unsaid words that talking seems redundant. I stare out the window, pretending I don’t notice, like I’m so lost in my own thoughts I’d need a map to find my way out.

The truth is, my thoughts are pretty clear right now.
This is fucked this is fucked this is so fucked
is the nonstop refrain swirling around in the space between my ears.

After ten minutes of this I realize I can’t sit here stewing while we spend the next twenty minutes driving from my neighborhood full of weedy lawns and boarded-up windows to the complete opposite end of town, where Smith’s house is the shining jewel of Dalton Lake Estates.

There are so many things I could use to get the conversational ball rolling. I could ask about Dyl. Or what happened to his face. Or if he thinks this whole wish thing might possibly be for real.

Instead I say, “I think I’m still drunk.”

Smith glances over at me. “Nah. You puked a lot up last night.”

“How do you know?” And then I realize. Of course, while he and his horrible friends were driving me to the bar. “Never mind,” I say when Smith doesn’t answer. “I figured it out.”

Smith sighs. “Lennie, I’m . . .” for a second I think he’s gonna say he’s sorry. But Dyl always said that word wasn’t in their vocabulary, and I guess she was right, ’cause instead he says, “I’m glad you got home okay.”

“No thanks to you,” I snap back.

“I wasn’t gonna leave you there.”

“You should never have brought me in the first place!”

“I know! Okay? I know. I just . . .” Smith takes his right hand off the steering wheel and flexes the fingers open and closed. “I wanted to shake you up. Scare you. I thought you knew something about Dyl, and I wanted you to spill it.”

I don’t answer right away, because he’s right. I didn’t tell the cops everything I knew. I would’ve if it could have saved Dyl, but by the time I realized, she was already dead. Then it seemed pointless. Everyone already blamed me, why make it worse?

There was only one person I would’ve willingly given
all the details to. “You could’ve asked me, Smith. But you didn’t want to. You wouldn’t even let me in the church for her funeral.” I close my eyes as my hangover suddenly catches up with me. Or maybe it’s the memory of standing in the parking lot, watching the church slowly fill up with people who’d barely given Dyl the time of day when she was alive.

Silence stretches between us once more and I’m pretty sure it’s the end of that conversation when Smith says, “You’re right.” It’s as close as he’s gonna get to an apology, I guess.

I could throw it back at him, say something like, “Of course I’m right.” But that’s what you say when you’re angry, not when you feel as if you’ve been chopped into pieces just like your best friend. And I can’t say, “It’s okay,” either, because it definitely is not.

I settle on a shrug. “Whatever, Smith.”

He doesn’t reply, but after another pregnant pause, I feel his fingers brush against mine. I’m not falling for that again. I quickly jerk my hand away.

“Come on, Lennie, please,” Smith says, and I can hear the strain in his voice. “Let me have it for a few seconds. It feels like someone is sticking needles into my fingertips and fire ants are crawling over my knuckles. I need your hand for a tiny bit, just to make the feeling go away.”

I tuck both hands under my butt. “It’s a part of my body, Smith. Not hemorrhoid cream.”

“Yeah, well, I already tried hemorrhoid cream. And a bag of frozen corn. Then I thought maybe I could burn the feeling away.”

“But you didn’t,” I quickly interject.

“No, I didn’t.” Smith glances over at me. “I flipped a coin and it landed heads up, so I turned the gas on the stove off and drove over to your house instead.”

I can’t help it. My mind conjures up a vision of Smith’s hand in the blue flame of the stove, his skin bubbling up beneath it. I wince. “You wouldn’t have done it.”

Smith laughs in response, this hoarse jerky sound. “I’ve been eyeing the cigarette lighter for the last five minutes, and not because I need a smoke.”

“Smith!”

“Yeah, well, I’ll warn you when I’m gonna do it so you can look away. And feel free to roll down the window so you don’t have to smell my burning flesh.”

I’m being manipulated. I know that. But at the same time, I understand that Smith’s desperation is real.

“Okay, fine. This is what we’re gonna do. Put your hand on top of the drink holders.” Smith instantly obeys, placing his hand palm up on the center console. “Good. Now keep your fingers spread out and fully open. A single
twitch and we’re done. Got it?”

Smith nods. “Yeah, okay. Deal. Just do it alreadeeeee-ooooooohhhh.”

The exact instant the tip of my finger connects with the soft center of Smith’s palm he loses it. Fingers curl in as his hand clenches and I immediately pull away.

“No, Lennie, c’mon, don’t stop.”

“You moved your fingers.”

“Gimme one more chance. Come on. Please.”

I try to stay strong, but the “please” unravels me.

“Fine,” I say. But I hesitate, looking down at Smith’s large hand and long, square-tipped fingers. How many times have I dreamed of touching him? And of him reaching back for me?

My hand hovers over Smith’s palm and then I let my thumb fall and slowly brush along his lifeline. Smith exhales sharply, a hard hiss between his teeth, but he keeps all five digits frozen in place.

Feeling a little bolder, I run four fingers from the base of his palm all the way up to his fingertips. Smith’s arm trembles and I can see his biceps bulging beneath his short-sleeved tee, but he still doesn’t move his hand. My mouth goes dry and I realize that I am trembling a little too.

Suddenly, this feels much more intimate than two
hands simply touching.

I should stop, but instead I do the same move again, this time sneaking a look at Smith’s face as my fingertips connect with his. His eyes are clenched shut and his jaw is tight. I have a sudden urge to kiss him, but it is quickly overwhelmed by panic as it sinks in that he is driving with his eyes shut.

I scream his name while at the same time grabbing the steering wheel and moving us back into our own lane. We fly toward the red light at a busy intersection with several cars lined up ahead of us. Smith opens his eyes just in time to slam on the brakes and stop the car inches away from the back bumper of a semi.

“Shit.” Clenching his right hand into a fist, Smith punches the window beside him hard enough to make the glass crack. He must want to put his hand all the way through it, though, ’cause he hits it again and again and—

I grab hold of his arm, wrapping both my hands around his bicep and pulling back with all my weight. “Smith, stop.”

He jerks away from my hold, and lets his hand fall into his lap.

“Next time roll the window down if you need more air.” It’s a lame attempt at humor, but I don’t know what else to say. Smith doesn’t react. It’s like he doesn’t even hear me.

“Hey, you okay?” I reach toward his bloodied hand, which is now resting on his lap.

“Don’t touch me,” he snaps. “It only makes it worse.”

I snatch my hand back, hurt despite myself, but all I say is, “Light’s green.”

As the car rolls forward once more, I cross my arms over my chest and go back to looking out my window.

This is fucked this is fucked this is so fucked
screams the chorus in my head once more.

This time I don’t even try to tune it out.