Wish (12 page)

The day we were going to pick her up at the bus station in Asheville, I spent the morning practicing tricks with Wishbone. I wanted Jackie to see how smart he was and how much he loved me. Then I tried to make my room look like a real bedroom and not like a place to store canning jars.

First, I pulled my bedspread way up so it covered my Cinderella pillowcases. Then I tacked a towel over the shelves to hide those jars. I put Wishbone's toys in a shoebox and wrote his name on the side with a marker while he sat there watching me with his head cocked. Every now and then he took out a tennis ball or a dirty rubber bone but I put it back.

“We want everything to look nice for Jackie,” I told him.

Next, I pushed Gus's old jackets and sweaters to the back of the closet and hung up some of my T-shirts so it looked like I had a whole closet of my own. Then I put a towel over Bertha's sewing machine and hung my backpack on the hook on the closet door.

When I was done, I stood in the doorway and glanced around. It looked better, but I knew it wasn't anything like the room Jackie shared with Carol Lee. I bet they had matching floral bedspreads with heart-shaped throw pillows and pictures of rock stars taped on their headboards. I'm sure they had a dresser with a tray of nail polish and a jewelry box full of bracelets. They probably had pink-and-gold diaries with little keys and bags of potato chips under their beds to share at night while they talked about how happy they were. And I was sure they didn't have a single canning jar in their room. Not one.

On the ride to Asheville, Bertha pointed out some of the things she hadn't showed me before when we went to the mall.

“That place there has the best boiled peanuts in North Carolina.”

“The Blue Ridge Parkway is up yonder.”

“That road there goes to Blowing Rock, where the Tweetsie Railroad is.”

I said “Oh” and “Yeah” and “Uh-huh,” but really I was thinking about Jackie. Maybe I shouldn't have fixed up my room so much. Maybe if I'd left it the way it was, she'd feel sorry for me and take me back to Raleigh with her.

“Aw, Charlie,” she'd say. “You can't stay here in this little ole room sleeping on a baby Cinderella pillow.” She'd toss her hair over her shoulder and add, “This house is liable to fall right off the mountain if you sneeze too hard. You'd better come on back home with me.”

While Bertha told me about the Mile High Swinging Bridge on Grandfather Mountain, I thought about me and Wishbone at Carol Lee's house. But then I started to worry. What if Carol Lee's parents didn't like dogs? What if they didn't like
me
?

Before I had time to stack up too many worries, we pulled into the bus station.

When we got out of the car, Bertha gave my shoulder a jiggle and said, “Are you excited?”

“Sort of,” I said, but the truth was my insides were swirling like crazy.

We sat in a row of sticky vinyl seats and waited for Jackie's bus to get there. Bertha chatted with some woman who had a bunch of wild kids running around the bus station. Once, they tipped over the newspaper stand and she didn't even say anything. Gus fell asleep after about a minute, his head nodding until his chin dropped down onto his chest and his cheeks puffing out with every breath. I sure hoped he didn't call me Butterbean in front of Jackie.

Finally the man behind the ticket counter called out, “Bus number 94 arriving from Raleigh!”

And before I knew it, Jackie was swooping toward me, tall and tan and smiling. I could practically see the happiness floating above her like a halo.

The first thing she did was turn her head sideways, point to the bright blue streaks in her dark hair, and say, “Like it?”

“Um, it's okay,” I said.

“Scrappy had a hissy fit.” She grinned. “But you know what I say?” She tossed her head so her blue-streaked hair swished back over her shoulder. “I say, Who cares? 'Cause this is the new me.”

The new me?

What did that mean?

Was that like a new life?

Maybe Jackie had gone and found herself a new life like Mama had tried to do all those years ago. A life that didn't include me.

On the ride back to Colby, Jackie and Bertha jabbered away like they'd been best friends forever. By the time we got home, they had every minute of every day planned out.

Bertha was gonna teach Jackie how to fry chicken and sew a zipper in a skirt.

They were gonna visit the thrift shop over in Fairview to look for a football jersey Jackie needed for a play she was in at Carol Lee's church.

They were gonna pick squash in the garden for Jackie to take back to Raleigh, and Bertha was gonna share her super-secret recipe for squash casserole with cream of mushroom soup.

On and on.

Jabber, jabber.

Hello?
I thought. What about me? Anybody wanna do something with
me
?

Bertha must've read my mind or noticed my slumping shoulders, 'cause when we got out of the car, she said, “And I bet Charlie's dying to show you around Colby. She knows every nook and cranny now.” She winked at me. “Right, Charlie?”

“I guess.”

“And just
wait
until you see Wishbone!” Bertha said.

As soon as we got inside, Wishbone came leaping toward us, ears flapping and tail wagging. I knelt down and let him lick my face.

“Eww,” Jackie said. “Don't let a dog tongue get in your mouth.”

“He's just kissing me.” I pressed my cheek against his nose. “He loves me.”

Jackie made a face.

“And watch this,” I said. I showed her how Wishbone could sit and shake and roll over.

“Wow, Charlie,” Jackie said. “I never knew you were such a good dog trainer.”

“Well, he's pretty easy to train 'cause he's so smart. And by the time we get back to Raleigh, I bet he'll know a whole lot more stuff.”

Jackie lifted her eyebrows and squeezed her lips together, but she didn't say anything. She strolled around the tiny living room, studying photos of old people on the table beside the couch, peeking into Bertha's yarn basket, peering into the kitchen.

“I love your house,” she said to Bertha.

“Gus's grandaddy built it with his own two hands,” Bertha said. “Ain't that right, Gus?”

Gus blushed a little and nodded.

“Check out the back porch,” Bertha said, motioning toward the kitchen.

The next thing I knew, Jackie was out there raving about the view and the mountains and all. I sat on the floor in the living room with Wishbone snuggled in my lap, listening to this new Jackie and wondering what had happened to the old Jackie. The one who went to my dance recital while Mama and Scrappy stayed home and yelled at each other. The one who spent her allowance to buy me one of those friendship bracelets the other girls at school had. The one who made cupcakes for me to take to school on my birthday while Mama watched soap operas in her bathrobe.

That Jackie was gone and in her place was this new Jackie with blue streaks in her hair, out on the porch telling Bertha how much she loved the Blue Ridge Mountains. And then this new Jackie went and said something the old Jackie never would have said:

“Charlie is
so
lucky to be here with y'all.”

Lucky?
She thinks I'm lucky I got yanked out of the only place I'd ever known my whole life and sent off to live with people I'd never laid eyes on before? Lucky my family was all broken up and scattered every which way?

Then Bertha said, “No, me and Gus are the lucky ones, right, Gus?”

“Right,” Gus said.

When they came back in from the porch, Bertha said, “Charlie, why don't you take Jackie back to your room so she can put her things away.”

I led Jackie to that tiny room and waited for her to say what I'd been imagining she'd say, like how awful it was. Even though I'd fixed it up, she'd say it was way too small. She'd peek behind that tacked-up towel and see those canning jars and then she'd say I'd better go back to Raleigh with her.

But no. This new Jackie said, “I
love
this room, Charlie. Can you believe you've got a room all to yourself and don't have to share anymore like we did back home?”

Well, didn't that beat all? “I liked sharing a room back home,” I said, making my voice sound pitiful.

I was going to show her Gus's clothes jammed in my closet, but she flopped onto the bed and said, “Well, yeah, but it's nice to have a room that's just yours. Nobody leaving their dirty socks on the floor or taking up all the space on the dresser.” She kicked her sandals off and leaned against the wall. “Don't get me wrong. I like Carol Lee and all. But sometimes I wish I could be by myself. Not have her snooping through my stuff or using my makeup without even asking.”

She tossed her hair over her shoulder and said, “I just love Gus and Bertha, don't you?”

Now I have to say, that question caught me off guard, and I surprised myself when I didn't hesitate one little bit and said, “I do.”

Did
I love Gus and Bertha? I hadn't ever really thought about it before, but maybe I did. But then, everybody loves Gus and Bertha 'cause that's the kind of people they are.

“And you got yourself a dog, Charlie!” she said, rubbing her bare foot along Wishbone's back. “It seems like everything's turned out so good for you. Your very own room and your very own dog. Living with two nice people who don't cuss and holler at each other every minute of the day.”

Then she jumped up off the bed and said, “Show me the garden.”

*   *   *

That night, Bertha made grilled cheese sandwiches and potato salad for supper, and then we sat out on the porch under the orange sky streaked with gray-blue clouds. The smell of rain mingled with the sweet scent of honeysuckle, and crickets chirped in the huckleberry bushes along the edge of the woods.

Bertha and Jackie talked about boys, and if I didn't know better, it would've been hard to tell which one of them was a teenager and which one was a grown-up woman. Bertha told Jackie about the first time she ever met Gus when he fixed a flat tire on her daddy's car out on Highway 14.

“I'd never laid eyes on such a handsome boy in my life,” she said. “My friend Jayme flirted her head off with him, but I knew I was the one he had eyes for. Right, Gus?” She poked Gus, and he nodded while he chewed on a toothpick.

Later, me and Jackie went back to my room and played Crazy Eights while she told me about some boy she'd been dating named Scooter. He was the paintball champion of Wake County and had a cousin in the Marines he wanted to fix up with Carol Lee.

Jackie had brought nail polish with her, so we painted our fingernails and told the same jokes we'd told about a million times before.

“What do you call a cow that eats your grass?” Jackie said.

“A lawn moo-er,” I said. “What do frogs order in restaurants?”

“French flies.”

We laughed like those were the funniest jokes in the world. For the first time since she'd showed me her blue-streaked hair at the bus station, she seemed like the old Jackie, and I realized how much I'd been missing her.

After we turned out the lights, she fell asleep in no time flat. Her soft snoring drifted through the air, reminding me of all those nights we'd shared in our room back home. I thought about how we laid there in the dark and listened to Mama and Scrappy fussing and fighting. When I was little, sometimes I'd crawl in bed with Jackie and she would sing right in my ear so I couldn't hear the mean words they hurled at each other.

Now here we were sleeping in the same room together again, Jackie in my bed and me in a sleeping bag on the floor with Wishbone. Except this time, the only sounds I heard were Jackie's soft snoring and the bullfrogs down in the woods. And then I thought about Jackie raving about this house and that porch and my very own room. In my head, I could still hear her saying how she just loved Gus and Bertha and telling me how everything's turned out so good for me. But then I thought, what's so good about being tossed out of my own house and riding the bus with those giggling kids and feeling for all the world like a stray dog with no place to call home? I hugged Wishbone closer and kissed his nose, while my thoughts bounced around so much they finally wore me out and I fell asleep.

 

Twenty–One

I spent the next few days watching Jackie flit around Colby like she'd lived there her whole life. She talked about high school football with the mailman and took cold fried chicken to Bertha's knitting club. She set up a vegetable stand at the end of the driveway and chatted with everybody who stopped to buy beans and squash, telling them about Raleigh and her waitress job and her new driver's license. And at the thrift shop in Fairview, as I watched her laughing with the owner about a big ugly hat somebody brought in, I felt like I was seeing her for the first time. Maybe this
was
the new Jackie. How come I had never noticed how much everybody loved her? Even Bertha's cats couldn't get enough of her, rubbing their heads against her legs and purring in her lap.

Every one of the Odom boys was red-faced and tongue-tied around her, falling all over each other to open the car door for her or bring her cold lemonade every time we went over there.

“I can't believe you know how to rebuild an engine,” she said to Burl the first day we visited. And the next thing you know, she's out there in the driveway squinting down at a carburetor or something like it was the most fascinating thing she'd ever seen. Every now and then, she flipped her hair over her shoulder and I thought Burl was going to melt into a puddle right there in the gravel driveway.

Mrs. Odom brought powdered sugar doughnuts out on the porch and we sat around and listened to Jackie tell Waffle House stories.

“And
one
time,” she said, “this old lady came in a limo driven by a chauffeur.” She brushed powdered sugar off her lap. “Can you imagine going to the Waffle House in a chauffeur-driven limo?”