The Seventh Wish (20 page)

We pass booths full of feis vendors' stuff. There's a table full of sparkly socks and another one with ribbons and crowns. The wig lady is set up in a corner, helping a tiny girl pull on a curly red wig twice the size of her head.

“Oh! There's Catherine!” I jump up and down and wave until she sees me from the booth where she's shopping. She waves back and turns to pay for her sequined socks.

Abby squints at Catherine. “What's she got in that weird pouch?”

I laugh. Catherine has the Snugli carrier strapped over her solo dress. “That's Meredith. Her flour baby.”

“Ohh . . .” Abby nods. “I remember that project. I hope it doesn't leak on her dress.”

Abby and I choose a strategic camping spot, not too close to the bathrooms and within sight of the main stage and results wall. When you dance at a feis, you don't find out how you did right away. After the judges send in their papers, the results get posted on the wall, so it's good to have a camp site where you can see when things are happening over there.

“Ready to go shopping?” Abby bounces on her sneakers. She might mock my sock glue, but she loves looking at solo dresses. Some of them are so fancy, full of sequins and crystals and everything. I can't believe I'm finally getting one.

“The dress room is over there by where we came in.” I take my wallet from my dance bag—it's all fat and heavy with fishing money—and we head that way.

“Do you know what you want to get?” Abby asks.

“Maybe something blue. Mom says that would look good with my eyes. But I need to see what they have. Definitely used. New ones cost too much. There's a designer named Gavin Doherty whose dresses are supposed to be the best. They're like two or three thousand dollars.”

“Dude, that's more than my car!”

“I know, right? And they're so famous that people just use the designer's first name to describe the dress. They'll say, ‘Oh, is that a Gavin you're wearing?' And then I always picture the person dancing with a little Irish guy draped over her shoulders.”

Abby laughs and then draws in her breath as we step into the dress room. Everything is so bright and sparkly it's like walking into a Rainbow Fish book. The dresses are all displayed on racks. Kids and moms are pawing through them, holding them up. There's lots of “How about this one?” and big eyes and head shakes and “No, too much. But maybe this?”

Abby picks up a black dress with pink swirls and crystals. “Do you like this one?”

“Not really. Too much pink.” I'm not big on pink. “Plus, look at the tag.”

Abby takes a look at the fifteen-hundred-dollar price tag and pretends to have a coughing fit. She puts the dress back and picks up a white one with twisty red designs. “This looks like the structure of DNA.” For a second, she looks sad that she's not back in Vermont learning about it. But then she grabs another dress—an orange one with lots of silver sequins.

“Oh, that one's nice!” I duck into the makeshift dressing room and try it on over my shorts and tank top. “Nope. Too small.”

By the time I'm out of the dress, Abby has three more for me to try. Only one fits, and it's six hundred fifty dollars. “Over my budget.” I pass it back to Abby to hang up.

Then a girl comes out of the dressing room next to me with a white dress that's the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen. It has ribbons of yellow and purple and green down the front, all woven with silver sequins and tiny crystals. It's perfect. The girl holds the dress out to her mom, and I hold my breath.

“What did you think?” the mom says.

“It was too tight on top,” the girl answers, and starts to put it back. I make big eyes at Abby and point wildly, and Abby has that dress in her hand before the hanger touches the rack. She helps me put it on. I want to see it so badly I can hardly hold still while she zips the back.

“Does it feel okay on top?” Abby asks.

I raise my arms and wiggle around a little. “It's fine.” I step in front of the mirror and suck in my breath. It's so pretty it doesn't even look like me.

“That's gorgeous,” Abby says. “You have to get it.”

I hold my breath and reach for the tag. I didn't want to look before I knew if this was the dress or not. Now that it is, now that I want it so much, I'm wishing I had that fish back in my hand so I could wish for this tag to say the right thing.

I flip it over. “Yes!” I wave the tag at Abby. “It's only five hundred!”

Abby motions me to turn. “Let's get you unzipped. If you want to go get ready, I'll stay and pay for this while you use the bathroom and stuff.”

I look at the clock and realize I'm dancing in half an hour. “Oh, wow—thanks!” I hand Abby my wallet and give her a super-quick hug. Then I take one last look at my beautiful, amazing dress and run to get ready.

Dasha's in the ladies' room when I get there. Her mom's braiding her hair in the mirror, so I give her a quick hug from the side and start brushing mine at the next sink over.

“Did you find a dress?” she asks.

“I did. It's white with colors kind of winding through it. My sister's paying for it now, so I'll show you when we line up to dance.”

“I can't wait!” Dasha says. She's in her school uniform—a white blouse and blue jumper with green embroidery—but the shiny green ribbons Dasha's mom has braided into her hair makes it look fancier than usual. She grins at me in the mirror. “Five dances, five medals today, right?”

“Right!” I finish in the bathroom and hurry back to our campsite. Abby has my dress laid out over my dance bag. She holds up my wallet. “Where do you want this? You've got like ninety dollars left in here.”

“In my bag is fine,” I say. “The stage is right there, so we'll never be out of sight of it.”

Abby helps me put my new dress on over my shorts and tank top, and then I put on my soft shoes.

“What's first?” Abby asks.

“Slip jig, and the reel is pretty soon after that. I'll be fine with those, but I'm a little worried about my treble jig because—”

“Hey!” Abby's face lights up. She looks past me, waving. When I turn, there's a girl about Abby's age walking toward the stage with a smaller girl in a solo dress.

“Will you be around a while?” the girl calls.

Abby nods and turns back to me. “Sorry, that's my friend Olivia. I had no idea she was going to be here.”

“Is that her little sister?” I ask.

“Must be.” Abby shrugs. “Sorry . . . tell me about your dance.”

“I should actually go get ready.” Dancers are lining up near our stage, so I hurry over and squeeze in next to Dasha. Irish dancers usually go two at a time during competitions, but we won't be at the same time. You never really get to dance with someone from your own school. “Good luck,” I whisper.

“You too.”

Chapter 20

Waiting and Wondering

Once the judges have their pens and clipboards ready, a feis volunteer nods, and two girls in super-fancy solo dresses step up to go first. The accordion player beside the stage starts to play, and the girls bounce into motion. They're okay but not great. Miss Brigid would be all over them for not keeping their toes out.

Dasha and a shorter girl in a blue solo dress go next. Dasha's great. She has this tight discipline about her dancing that nobody else in our class can really match. Her moves look so perfect and exact. She looks twice as good next to the other girl, who isn't even pointing her toes at the right times.

I give Dasha an excited smile when she comes off the stage. Two more girls dance, and then it's my turn. I try not to pay any attention to the other girl on stage with me, but
I can't miss seeing the zillion crystals on her dress. Then I look down at my own dress—my amazing, color-braided, sparkling dress that I worked for myself—and I just want to dance.

So I do. My slip jig isn't perfect, but it's pretty close, and when it's all over, I rush up to Dasha and hug her and squeal. “We did it! Don't you think? You were so good! We have to be top three.”

She smiles. “We won't know for a little while, I guess.” She looks over at her mom, who's tapping her watch. “We have the reel in fifteen minutes. Do you want to come with my mom and me to get some water?”

“Sure, let me see if my sister wants to come.”

I find Abby near the judges' table, talking with her friend Olivia. “I'm going to get something to drink with Dasha,” I say. “Want to come?”

“No, I'm okay.” Abby turns to her friend. “Liv, this is my sister, Charlie.”

“Nice to meet you.” I shake her hand and hope mine aren't too sweaty.

“Abby says you know that dancing lake monster guy from YouTube. That's so cool!”

“You saw that?”

“Everybody's seen it at school. Our sorority had a lake monster dance party with green cupcakes and stuff, and we had it up on a big screen. That kid's awesome.”

“He's pretty cool,” I say. Then I turn to Abby. “Sure you don't want anything?”

“No thanks. Do you need money?” Abby asks.

“I have some. Thanks!” I grab my wallet and cell phone from my bag and find Dasha and her mom at the snack bar. We get bottled water and split a bag of corn chips. I lean way, way forward so no crumbs get on my new dress.

Just as we're finishing, my phone dings with a text.

Hi, Charlie! Bobby here! (But I bet you knew that—LOL.) Good luck at your feis today! <3 <3 <3

I look at Dasha. “How'd Bobby know about the feis?”

She laughs. “I might have mentioned it at coding club this week. He texted me too. I thought it was nice.”

She shows me her text from Bobby, which is the same except it has a smiley face instead of less-than-three hearts. “He even spelled feis correctly,” she says.

I have to admit, that's impressive. But I still hope this wish wears off.

Dasha looks at the clock on the snack bar wall. “We'd better go get ready.”

Dasha goes to find her mom, and I head for our home base to put my wallet and phone away. Abby and her friend are camped out on the blanket laughing and talking when I get back. It's good to see her happy again.

“Time for the next one?” Abby stands and stretches her legs while I put my wallet away in my dance bag.

“Yep. The reel and the light jig. Then we change into hard shoes for the rest of the day.”

“Lead the way.”

The reel and light jig go even better for both Dasha and me, and by the time we're done, my eyes are glued to the results wall. “I wish they'd hurry up. I mean—ohmygosh look!”

One of the feis volunteer moms is walking to the wall with her hands full of papers and tape. We race over, wait for her to finish taping, and find our levels and age groups. Dasha and I scream at the same time. She got first place in the slip jig, and I got second. We hang around the wall until the reel and light jig results come in, and then we scream and hug all over again. In both of those, I'm one, and she's two.

I look for Abby to tell her. She's over watching Olivia's little sister on the Beginner stage. I can't wait for the music to end, so I hurry up behind her and tug on her curly ponytail. “Dasha and I got first and second,” I whisper, and Abby gives me a huge hug.

We have pizza for lunch—very careful pizza so I don't end up with sauce splotches on my amazing best-dress-ever—and then Dasha and I change into hard shoes and line up for our treble jig. Our last two dances are back to back, so there's no time to check results in between.

“You got this, Charlie,” Abby tells me right before I start my treble jig. When I finish and look up, she's the first person I see, standing behind the judges' table, clapping like crazy.

“How long before the next one?” she asks after I get off the stage.

“Fifteen minutes.” I'm still catching my breath from the jig.

“I'll be right back, okay? I'm going to run out and get something to eat with Liv.”

“I think the café's still open. The pizza's not bad.”

“Yeah . . . I think we're going to get wings,” she says, and glances toward the door to the parking lot. “There's a place down the street. I'll be back for your dance.”

“Okay.” I leave to find Dasha, and we watch dancing on the other stages until it's time to line up for the hornpipe, our last dance of the day. I don't see Abby yet, but I'm not near the beginning of this lineup, and I know she'll be back soon.

Dasha goes first. She's incredible, like always. She doesn't even look tired, which is great because one of the things we get judged on is endurance.

I'm in the last group. I step onto the stage and hear my hard shoes click across the wood as I take my spot. I look out over the huge room of dresses and crazy wigs and swirling accordion notes, and even though my legs are tired and I'm sweating in my new dress, I feel so full of music that I can't wait to start.