The Wish (7 page)

Chapter Fifteen

A
rdis looked around
. “I like your apartment.”

I was surprised. It wasn't fabulous like BeeBee's. Inside the door, next to where we were standing, was a table where we dumped whatever we had when we came in. Right now it was covered with my backpack, a week's worth of junk mail, and today's
New York Times
. From here you could see into the kitchen and the living room. In the living room, the coffee table was piled high with more newspapers and a few books. A quilt was draped across the couch and trailed onto the floor.

It wasn't dirty, just messy. The rug was vacuumed, for example, and Mom didn't let us leave dirty dishes in the sink.

“In our house,” Ardis said, “we have to take our shoes off before we come in, and I feel guilty about my smelly feet touching the floor.”

We went into the living room. Maud was in our bedroom studying. Mom was at the soup kitchen where she volunteers.

“Show me the caricature.”

“Close your eyes.”

The caricatures were in the coat closet. I pulled out the poster-size one of me. I really wanted Ardis to like it, to see it the way Jared and I did.

I held it up against my chest. “Ready.”

Ardis opened her eyes. Silence.

“It's interesting?” I giggled nervously.

“It's funny,” Ardis finally said. “But you're much prettier.”

I was? Really?

She was quiet again.

“It's funny because it's true. My teeth
are
too big, and my neck
is
too short.”

“Not like that. It's not noticeable, except to a caricaturist—”

“Or to somebody like Suzanne Russo.” And to me.

“Yeah,” Ardis said. “Suzanne probably thinks everybody looks like a caricature. And nobody—especially not Suzanne—will understand why you're letting Jared show a drawing of you that's . . .” She searched for a word. “. . . that's not flattering.”

I was letting him because it seemed like a good joke to share with people. But maybe I should call him tonight and tell him I changed my mind. I could give him a real photo of me to put up in his locker.

Ardis sank into Mom's chair. “Look, Wilma. Remember how we talked about popularity before? Well, none of—”

Reggie started barking. The doorbell rang.

Just when Ardis was saying something important. Who could it be, anyway?

“I'll get it,” I yelled to Maud. If I didn't answer the door, she'd tell Mom how I made her interrupt her studying.

Ardis said, sounding surprised, “Reggie barks at everyone, not only me.”

I dropped the poster on the couch. “Don't forget what you were saying before. I want to hear it.”

I opened the door. Suzanne stood there, holding a shrink-wrapped box that Reggie started sniffing. “I didn't know you had company,” she said before she even looked in the living room.

She knew.

“Hi, Ardis,” she called.

“Suzanne!” Ardis rushed at her. “What are you doing here? Wilma was showing me her videotapes, but before that we were in the kitchen. Let's go back in there. I like it better there.”

She was diverting Suzanne from the poster. She was protecting me. That was so nice that a lump formed in my throat.

Suzanne glanced suspiciously into the living room but followed Ardis. Reggie came after us, still interested in Suzanne's package.

“What's that?” Ardis pointed at the box.

“Gourmet dog treats. I came over to give them to your dog.” She handed them to me.

“What's a gourmet dog treat?” Ardis asked.

“How should I know?” Suzanne said. “But I'm dying to find out. Open it, Wilma.”

I turned the box over and read out loud, “‘These elegant treats come in three delicious flavors: venison, organic filet mignon, and free-range chicken.'” I tore off the plastic wrap and lifted the cover. Inside were nine dog biscuits in three shapes—deer, cow, and chicken. I looked at the plastic wrap again. She had paid seven dollars for an excuse to come over.

I found myself feeling sorry for her. “Thanks. Here, Reggie.” I gave him a deer, and he trotted off with it.

“What's happening?” Suzanne asked.

“Nothing,” Ardis said. “We're just hanging out.”

“That's cool.” She looked around the kitchen for a second.

Then she leaned toward us and her eyes gleamed. “Did you hear that Mr. Pike sent Daphne to the principal because of her b.o.? And Mr. Winby sent her home?”

I stopped feeling sorry. The worst part of Suzanne's gossip was that I sort of enjoyed hearing about other people's problems. I didn't enjoy the enjoyment though. And I hated knowing that I'd never forget the tidbit. I could forget what six times seven equals or the name of Hamlet's girlfriend, but I'd remember Daphne's body odor forever.

“No, I didn't hear—”

“Thanks for sharing,” Ardis said. “But Wilma and I were talking about some personal things, and you won't mind, will you, if we all get together another time?”

“I can't stay anyway. We're having dinner soon.” She left the kitchen, but instead of going to the door, she went into the living room. “I heard your mom say you were getting a new TV. How big is the—”

We raced to get to the couch first.

“What's this?” Suzanne picked up the caricature and unrolled it. First she held it out so she could see it better, and then she brought it near for a closer inspection.

“She's memorizing it,” Ardis whispered to me.

“This is so neat,” Suzanne finally said. “Where did you get it? Who's Antoinette? You're a genius.”

“We got it in Central Park.”

“You and Ardis?”

“Me and Jared.”

“Jared? You mean . . .” She put her finger across the bridge of her nose. “That Jared?”

I nodded.

“You like him?”

I nodded. No hesitation at all.

She nodded with me. “You make a cute couple. He's cute, except . . . He's cute. I could go for him.”

“You like the caricature?” I think Ardis tried to keep the astonishment out of her voice, but I heard it.

“Don't you? I mean, I'm no art critic—”

“I love it,” Ardis said firmly. “I think it's a riot.”

“It's funny? Right. I knew that.” She made herself laugh.

“'Bye, Suzanne,” I said.

“'Bye.” She stopped at our door. “Ardis and I are the first ones to see it?”

“Except Jared.”

“Are you going to show anybody else?”

“You'll see,” I said.

“Well, 'bye,” she said. “I have to go. Dinner.” Now she couldn't wait to leave. If her phone was more than two minutes away, she would have a heart attack before she got there.

I locked the door and came back to the living room. “Tell me what you were going to say before.”

“It doesn't matter anymore.” Ardis shook her head. “I don't believe that. She liked it. I thought she'd start destroying you the second she saw it.”

“You know Suzanne. If she thought she could hurt me, she would.”

“But she can't?”

Oops! I thought fast. “With you here? With you saying you liked it?” Would she believe me?

“I guess.” She grinned. “I like being your fairy godmother.”

 

Jared called that night. The first thing he said was “My brother's going to give me kissing lessons tomorrow. He already told me the Five Rules of Kissing.”

“What are they?”

“You'll see.”

“Come on. Tell.”

“No. I'll tell you after we try them out. Could we do it after school on Wednesday? That'll give me time to practice.”

Try out kissing? That meant kissing. You couldn't try it out without doing it. My heart started pounding, three days ahead of time. “Okay.”

“Good. What did your family think of the caricatures?”

“Maud—she's my older sister—thinks we're crazy. She said I should bury them in Central Park, six feet down and under a boulder.”

“What did your parents think?”

“My mom wants to get a wallet-size one of me to carry around with her.”

“How about your dad?”

“They're divorced. What about your family?”

“Dad says I have good taste in girls.”

“What did your brother say?”

“Which one? My older brother, Brad, said he wished he knew a girl like you. Andy—he's five—started to cry when he saw my picture. But he liked yours. He wanted to know if your teeth are really that big.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said they were bigger, and he can't wait to meet you either.”

I laughed. “The saber-toothed tigress.”

It was fun having a boyfriend.

Chapter Sixteen

M
onday. Two more
weeks of popularity.

Suzanne must have been on the phone all night, because the first kid I saw in the morning knew about the caricatures. I was mobbed on the way to school. Everybody was dying to see them, and they had a million questions about what it was like to have a caricaturist draw you.

Boys told me they liked the drawing, and it was funny. Girls told me they liked the drawing, and I was brave. Almost everybody told me I was much prettier than the caricature. And I kept saying that was lucky, because you couldn't get much uglier. Then lots of them said, No, you really are pretty.

Maybe everybody should have a caricature done. Then we'd all see how everybody else actually looks. But maybe kids only thought I was pretty because of the spell.

The girls wanted to know all about Jared. I had to repeat the events of our afternoon together at least a dozen times. Research in case we broke up, I guess.

Then at lunch, when I thought I'd said everything anybody could possibly want to know, Evadney asked, “But what's Jared really like?”

“What do you mean?”

BeeBee said, “I know what she means. It's like Carlos is a total jock, but every so often I see something else inside him. The little boy, maybe.”

Evadney nodded.

BeeBee had seen the jock, not the jerk, in Carlos. She hadn't seen the inner creep who'd asked me to Grad Night. The Grad Night date bigamist.

“I don't know,” I said. “The real Jared doesn't seem to be hiding. He's out there.”

 

I had computer lab for eighth period, and Ms. Jacobson asked BeeBee to show a computer graphics program to a bunch of us while she helped some other kids. Daphne, Nina, Ardis, Suzanne, and I crowded around BeeBee. I was the last one to get there, but Nina made room for me, and I wound up with the best view of what BeeBee was doing.

She had scanned our class picture into the computer and was fooling around with it. She took Geoff, the shortest boy in eighth grade, and stretched him out, making him so tall that the photo lopped off the top of his forehead. Then she cut out my head and moved it onto the neck of Mr. Winby, our principal.

“Could you do the caricatures?” Ardis asked.

“Sure. Hand them over, Wilma.”

I did, and BeeBee showed us how to use the scanner. Suzanne, who had wormed her way in between me and Ardis, kept complimenting BeeBee on everything she did. Then I realized after the fortieth compliment that Suzanne wasn't only sucking up. She was also pointing out that this was a rare event—BeeBee catching on to something ahead of anyone else.

Poisonous.

I wanted to neutralize Suzanne, but I couldn't think of anything to say.

Luckily, BeeBee didn't seem to care. She brought Jared's drawing up on the screen. “Watch.” She added shading to his forehead, so it didn't seem to stick out, and she made his hair more natural. Then she moved the cursor to his eyebrow.

She was going to separate his one eyebrow into two. “Don't!” I said. He wouldn't be Jared anymore. “I like that eyebrow.”

“It's sexy, isn't it?” Nina laughed.

“It grows on you,” I said, laughing too.

“The longer it is, the better it is,” Daphne added.

And we all started laughing so hard, we couldn't catch our breath. As we wound down, I noticed that Daphne was looking very pleased with herself for making us laugh.

That is, till Suzanne said, “Jared may have only one eyebrow, but at least he
smells
better than some people.” She looked straight at Daphne.

Daphne went on smiling, but all the fun seeped out of it, and a raspberry blush spread across her pale face.

BeeBee said, “Suzanne! That was so mean. That was obno—”

I interrupted. “Does everybody know that Suzanne and I live in the same building?”

“Yeah,” Suzanne agreed. “We've known each other forever.”

“Well,” I said, “last week I was going into the laundry room, and I heard her mother ask a neighbor what to do about Suzanne's bed-wetting.”

“That isn't funny,” Suzanne said. “You shouldn't tell lies like that about people.”

“Points, Wilma,” Nina said. “A thousand points.”

I looked at Daphne, who was grinning. I saw her take a deep breath. “You're all standing near me. Do I stink? Do I?”

“No,” Ardis said. “You don't.”

Well, I had done something. I had struck a blow at Suzanne. Funny how I could do it for Daphne when I had never been able to do it for myself. But maybe I would be able to in the future.

 

When I got home, Maud told me I'd have to walk Reggie after school on Wednesday because she was going to her best friend Portia's house to study for a big exam. Maud didn't have just plain exams, they were always “big.”

“Okay.” I never minded walking Reggie. “No. Wait.” Jared and I were supposed to practice kissing. “I can't.”

“You'll have to. My grades are more important than your social calendar.”

I couldn't win. Mom would agree with Maud, especially if I said I couldn't walk Reggie because it would interfere with kissing Jared. “All right,” I said.

The phone rang. It was Daphne calling to thank me for helping her out.

“Somebody had to do something about Suzanne,” I said, feeling like a hero.

“Uh, how's Reggie?”

“Fine. He's sleeping.” I remembered that Daphne had shown me a picture of her sheepdog. “How's your dog?”

“Samson's good. He's chewing on a rawhide bone.”

So then we talked about dogs. I found out Samson was ten years old, and they'd gotten him from the sheepdog rescue organization when he was two.

I found myself asking her if she wanted to walk our dogs together sometime. She did, and we agreed to meet in the park next Saturday morning.

 

Tuesday. Thirteen more days.

In the morning I left home early so I wouldn't meet anybody on the way to school. The old lady was my best bet for staying popular, much better than the odds of discovering an unmagical way to do it.

The train was almost full, but I found a seat. More people got on at the next stop. The man who stood in front of me seemed healthy. It didn't seem possible that the old lady had taken his form. But maybe she had, and he had stationed himself near me because he wanted to see if I'd recognize him—her.

I caught his eye. “Would you like to sit down?”

He nodded. I stood up, and he slid into my seat.

“How did you know?” he asked.

He was the old lady!

“These shoes are new.” He extended his left foot. “I have a blister already.”

He wasn't the old lady. I smiled weakly at him and turned to face the pole I was hanging on to.

Anybody might be the old lady, and how would I know? I couldn't ask people if I had met them before when they were in the shape of an old lady. They'd call the police, who'd take me to a psychiatric ward for observation.

I must have seemed upset at school, because everybody kept asking me if something was wrong. A sixth grader stopped me in the hall and told me she was there for me. Three girls asked me if I was getting my period. Even Nina got emotional and offered me both her shoulders to cry on.

And I got another poem from Anonymous, the poet who had written to me on the first day.

 

No smiles today.

Today her long teeth

Are shrouded.

And her eyes

Are quenched.

Even the shape

Of her ears

Is sad today.

 

My boat will not

Sail today.

Today my kite

Will not fly.

And I am earth

Bound as a stone.

 

At least I could keep the two poems and show them to my grandchildren as souvenirs of the nanosecond when Granny was popular.