The Seventh Wish (16 page)

Chapter 15

The Sixth Wish

“That's my mom,” Leah says, and I don't know what to say back.

I'm-Carolyn-and-I'm-an-addict
is someone's
mother
.

Leah's mother.

“Oh,” I finally manage. It's awful enough having Abby here. Having your mom on drugs must be ten times worse. Moms are supposed to take care of you. They're supposed to—

“Look,” Leah says. “I don't know who you're here to see, but . . . if you want to sit with us at brunch . . .” She trails off.

I find my voice. “Sure. I'll talk to my parents. We're visiting my big sister. She's . . .” I think of Leah, of all those people in the meeting, just putting it out there, saying it out loud because it's the truth. “She's addicted to heroin.”

“I'm sorry,” Leah says. “That's . . . my mom is too. This is the fourth time she's been in here. That's why I live with my aunt now. I used to live in New York.”

“You went to a special school for performing arts, right? Catherine told me.”

She nods and smiles. “It's a magnet school, so if you love the arts—painting, singing, dancing, whatever—you can go there no matter where you live in New York. I miss it so much.” She sighs. “I better go see her.”

Mom and Dad and Abby walk up as Leah goes to hug her mom. “Who's that?” Mom asks.

“Her name's Leah. She dances at Miss Brigid's,” I say. “Her mom is here.”

My mom winces, but then she gets her positive-school-nurse face back. “I'll let her know I can help if Leah ever needs a ride to dance.”

I shake my head. “Leah's aunt takes care of her. Besides, she's in Prizewinner. She's really good.”

Mom nods. “Well, that's great,” she says. But she says it in her chipper school-nurse voice, and I know she doesn't really understand why it matters so much. Mom doesn't
need
that stomping and kicking and forget-everything loudness the way I do, especially now.

I bet Leah needs it even more.

I wasn't looking forward to brunch. I figured it would be rubbery scrambled eggs and cold toast served at cafeteria
tables, but the Forest Hills dining room is actually pretty. Someone hung a crystal in every window so the winter sun shoots splashes of rainbow all over the walls. Leah waves us over to a round table where she's sitting with her mom and aunt.

There's a buffet with fresh fruit, ham, bacon, bagels, and eggs. I fill my plate and sit down at the table, where we talk about March weather and the chickens and Irish dance and everything except why we're here. When I go back for more eggs, Jason the movie-star-goat-wrangler-counselor-addict is pouring orange juice.

“Ah, another Forest Hills guest has fallen under the spell of the girls' eggs,” he says.

“What girls?”

“Gerta, Red, Izzy, and Octavia,” he says, pointing out the window to the hens outside the barn. “Haven't you met them yet?”

“Oh! The chickens!” I feel stupid now. “I mean, obviously I knew the eggs came from chickens. I just didn't realize I knew the chickens personally.”

He laughs, and I can't get over how normal and smart and nice he seems. “Can I ask you a question about that meeting earlier?” I lower my voice in case we're not supposed to talk about that stuff at brunch.

But he says, “That's what family visit days are all about. Fire away.”

I put the egg spoon back in the buffet pan and look up at him. “When you introduced yourself, you said you were an addict once too?”

“I
am
an addict,” he says.

“Still?” My jaw drops. “How can you be a counselor if you're—”

“Here's the thing,” he says, cutting me off. “I've been clean and sober six years, but that doesn't mean I'm not an addict. It's not something you get over, like having a cold. Understanding that—having lived through what your sister's living through—makes me a better counselor. I've been there. So it means everything to me to get people through this to a place where they can live again.”

I think about that and nod. “I guess that makes sense.” There's more I want to ask him—like how people like him and Abby and Leah's mom don't know better than to even try drugs, and why some of the patients are here for the third and fourth time if he's so good at his job—but Mom and Dad are waving me back to the table. “I better go. Thanks,” I say.

“Any time. And hey!” he calls as I'm walking away. He pulls a card from his pocket and hands it to me. “You missed the end of our meeting. This is the most important part.”

I look down. The laminated card has an ocean scene, and a prayer. “I've seen this before.”

“We say it at the end of every meeting, but it's just as important for family members as it is for the addict. It's in the lobby too.”

I nod. It's also in Leah's dance bag. “Thanks.” I slip the card into my back pocket and sit down to finish my eggs.

We make it home in time for dance class, but I have homework left to do, so I don't stay for the Novice class, and I don't see Leah. I hope she got to stomp good and hard and fast tonight.

Dasha sits beside me, and we unlace our soft shoes. “I can't believe the feis is only three weeks away,” she says. “But we are ready, don't you think?”

“Totally. In a way, it's good we missed the other one because we're even more prepared now.” Miss Brigid complimented both of us on our slip jig and reel tonight.

I hold up my hand with my fingers spread out. “Five medals. One in each dance, and Novice, here we come. We got this, Dasha.”

She high-fives me as Catherine sits down beside us. “What are we celebrating?”

“Nothing yet,” Dasha says.

“We're celebrating early, I guess. Feeling good about the Albany feis,” I say.

Catherine starts putting on her hard shoes. “You'll do great. I can't wait for that feis. And I'm psyched about science fair now that we're finally getting started.”

My good mood fades when I remember they met without me. I told everyone I couldn't go because my parents were making me clean my room. It's a dumb excuse, but it was better than saying I had to go eat eggs with drug addicts. Part of me wants to tell the truth about Abby—tell
somebody
besides Mom and Dad, so the secret doesn't feel so heavy inside me. But part of me still feels ashamed. Like Abby using drugs makes me a bad person somehow. Besides, Dasha has enough problems with the wish-mess I got her into. And Catherine has a flour baby to worry about. Apparently that's not going so well, because I don't see it here with her.

“Where's Meredith?” I ask.

“Shoot!” Catherine grabs her phone, pokes at the keys, waits a second, and then says, “Mom? I have an emergency . . . Can you bring Meredith to dance?” She pauses. “I'm not sure. Try the living room.” Another pause. “Maybe the kitchen counter? Or the porch?” She waits again. Then her mom says something, and a look of horror comes over Catherine's face. “Oh no! I can't believe I forgot she was up there. Can you, like, scoop up the flour and put it in a Tupperware or something and babysit until I get home?” She bites her lip. “Okay. Okay. Yeah, I know. Do we have duct
tape? Okay . . . bye.” She puts her phone down and looks at us. “I left Meredith on top of the car, and she fell off when Mom backed out of the driveway.”

“Oh no!” I try not to laugh, even though it's a little funny. It
is
just a bag of flour after all. “Is it . . . is she okay?”

“The bag ripped, but not all the flour came out, so Mom's saving what she can. I'll deal with it when I get home.” She sighs. “I am never having real kids.”

“Real ones are probably easier to remember. They're not as quiet,” I say. “So . . . did you guys get much done for science fair today?”

Catherine shakes her head. “Just some research. We started a chart comparing insects with other kinds of protein like cows and chickens. You can come next week, right?”

“Definitely,” I say, even though Mom and Dad will probably make me go to Forest Hills again. “We can meet at my house after school this week too.”

Catherine shakes her head. “Can't. I have jazz band until four every day. But we should be okay if we keep meeting on Sundays.”

“Sounds good,” I lie. I don't want to think about it anymore so I put on my sneakers. Then Dasha and I head outside and run through the sleet to our parents' cars.

I jump in beside Mom and shake frozen rain from my hair.

“Nice weather, huh?” Mom says as she turns for home.

“I hope it gets cold again tonight. There aren't many fishing days left.”

“You've become quite the fisherman this winter,” she says.

“Fisherwoman.” I wipe fog from my window. “My dress fund is up to almost six hundred dollars.”

“That's great.” She stops at a red light and looks over at me. “I really am sorry we couldn't go to Montreal. I know you were upset.”

“Yeah. Sometimes I feel like . . .” I hesitate. But something about the rainy-night quiet in the car makes it feel okay to tell Mom stuff I might not say at home. “Like sometimes Abby takes up all your attention. Even before this whole mess, she had her soccer games and college visits and everything.”

Mom nods. “Senior year was pretty busy. And now . . .” She sighs. “Well, this is . . .”

“Awful. I know.”

“I'm sorry.” Mom reaches across the dark seat and puts her hand on mine. “I know it's been terrible for you too. And it wasn't fair that you didn't get to go to your feis.”

“It's okay,” I say. “Albany is coming up soon. You can go to that one, right?”

“It's on the calendar,” Mom says as we pull into the
driveway. “And Abby will be home by then too. She'd love to watch you dance.”

I nod, but when I think about Abby now, I see her at the treatment center. It's hard to picture the old Abby, the one I'd want at the feis with me.

I have a quick turkey sandwich for dinner, gather my stuff for school tomorrow, and get into my pajamas. But before I get in bed, I dig my jeans out of the clothes hamper, pull Jason's card from my pocket, and read it again.

Give me serenity to accept what I cannot change.

When Drew's nana said the prayer, I was thinking about it in terms of small stuff, like missing my feis. That didn't seem small at the time, but it's practically nothing compared to what's happened with Abby. Maybe the prayer is even more important with bigger, scarier things.

I think maybe what it's saying is that what's done is done. I can't go back in time and make Abby keep her D.A.R.E. promise.

Hi, my name is Abby, and I'm an addict.

I missed her saying that when I ran out of the meeting, but I heard Mom and Dad talking on the way home, about how accepting the truth was the first of the twelve steps Abby was going to go through with AA. You have to think about the people you hurt along the way too, and try to make amends.