Wish (17 page)

I hoped Howard wouldn't say, “I thought you
wanted
to go back to Raleigh.”

He didn't.

He said, “You're not.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

He said that so firm and sure that I felt better right away.

After a while, Mrs. Odom came in and told me Bertha had called and that I should go home. So I tied Wishbone's leash to Lenny's bike and headed off up the road with my stomach starting that familiar swirl again.

What if Bertha hadn't been able to make things right for me, after all?

 

Thirty–One

When I got back, Gus was home from work, sitting in a lawn chair dunking turnip greens in a bucket of water.

“Hey, there, Butterbean,” he called out when he saw me.

Wishbone slurped up some of that sandy turnip green water and me and Gus laughed. Bertha's cat named Lula Mae sauntered over and rubbed her head against Wishbone's leg. He gave me a mournful look, but he let her do it.

Later, while Bertha put turnip greens and cornbread and tuna casserole on the table, she told me we would talk about everything after supper.

I didn't know what “talk about everything” meant, so I just said okay. But inside, I felt scared. I pushed tuna casserole around on my plate and didn't say much while Bertha told us about some friend of hers whose son ran off and joined the army.

“Honest to goodness,” she said. “The way she keeps crying and carrying on, you'd think he jumped off a cliff.”

After supper, I helped her clear the table and then we went out on the porch to eat peaches with vanilla ice cream. I watched the lightning bugs twinkle down below and waited for us to talk about everything.

Finally Bertha started.

“So, Charlie,” she said. “I talked to social services today and told them I didn't think your situation at home has improved, after all. I told them I thought maybe they'd made a mistake.”

“You did?”

“I did.” Then she told me how they agreed to check on things. She repeated some of those social services kind of words like
reevaluate
and
stable environment
.

“They promised they would get back to me in a few days,” Bertha said.

*   *   *

Well, let me tell you, those few days felt like a few years to me. Worry followed me every minute, making my insides flop around and my heart beat like crazy.

Howard kept saying, “Trust me. You're not going back to Raleigh.”

But when I asked him how he knew that, he said, “I can't tell you. Just trust me.”

I wanted to trust him more than anything, but that ball of worry in my stomach just wouldn't go away. And then, of course, laying in bed with Wishbone snoring beside me, I couldn't stop thinking about how wrong I'd been about everything here in Colby. How I hadn't seen all the good things Jackie saw right away. And then I found myself wanting to be more like Jackie again. And Howard, too. Both of them always seeing the good in things.

I put my head on Wishbone's warm side and made a promise to myself right there in that little room of mine. No matter how things turned out, I was going to try to see the good in things, like Jackie and Howard. I knew I'd probably always have to say “Pineapple” once in a while on account of Scrappy's temper that I have. But, who knows, if I tried hard enough, maybe someday somebody might even call me “good-hearted.”

Those few days dragged on and every little thing I looked at nearly turned me into a crying baby, thinking I might be leaving. Bertha stirring grits by the stove with a cat at her feet. Gus out in the garden in his greasy baseball cap, picking nasty green worms off the tomato plants. Even the shed and the porch and the lawn chairs and the canning jars lined up on that shelf in my room made me sad.

I tried to stay busy at Howard's, but then being at the Odoms' like to broke my heart. That ratty old couch on the porch. The yard full of bicycles and balls and dirty sneakers. And, of course, Howard, studying his fort plans like he was building a castle, then heading out to the edge of the yard with that up-down walk of his.

Finally after a few days, the kitchen phone rang while me and Bertha were out on the porch eating egg salad sandwiches for lunch. She answered it and talked for a while, and when she came back out, the look on her face told me something good was about to happen.

“How would you like to stay here with me and Gus, Charlie?” she said.

My heart nearly leaped right out of my chest. “Stay?” I said.

Bertha nodded. “Stay.”

“For how long?”

Then Bertha said almost the exact same words that Jackie had said on her last night in my room. About how Scrappy was going to keep on being Scrappy and Mama was going to keep on being Mama. And then she told me as long as she had a breath in her body, she was going to make things right for me.

I wanted to jump up and down and pump my fist and let out a cheer that would echo across the valley below us. I wanted to spread my arms like wings and fly right off that porch and out over the treetops and up into the clouds. I wanted to dance with Wishbone and then race down to Howard's to tell him this news.

But what I did first was hug Bertha.

“Yes, ma'am,” I said. “I would like to stay with you and Gus.” I hugged her one more time and added, “I would like that a lot.”

Bertha looked at me all teary-eyed and said, “Guess what I'm doing first thing tomorrow?”

“What?”

“I'm getting every single one of those dang canning jars out of your room.”

We laughed and I asked if I could go tell Howard the news.

So me and Wishbone raced down to the Odoms' and up the porch steps. I banged on the screen door hollering, “Guess what, y'all!”

I didn't even wait for anybody to come to the door. I burst right into their living room, which I know was not a very nice thing to do, but I couldn't stop myself.

Howard jumped up from the couch and Mrs. Odom came running in from the kitchen and I said, “I'm staying here! I'm not going back to Raleigh!”

Mrs. Odom hugged me and told me that was the best news ever, but Howard just said, “Told ya.”

Then he gave Wishbone half a vanilla wafer and said, “I
knew
you were staying here.”

“But how'd you know?” I asked.

“'Cause that was the other part of my wish,” he said. “That day at the creek. I wished that you would be my friend and stay here in Colby.”

“You did?”

He nodded. “Yep. And since the part about being my friend came true, I knew the other part would, too. But I couldn't tell you 'cause of that rule. You know, that you can't tell your wish to anybody or it won't come true?”

Well, didn't that just beat all, Howard making a wish like that?

On my way home, I thought about how I'd made my wish so many times and it hadn't come true. And there was Howard, getting his wish on the very first try.

Still, my heart felt light as a feather as I turned up the gravel driveway toward Gus and Bertha's.

That night after supper, we sat out on the porch and ate blackberry cobbler and listened to Bertha's stories.

“And
then
,” she said, “one time we ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere with three cats in the car. Remember that, Gus?”

He nodded and said, “Yep.”

Then Bertha let out a big contented sigh and said, “I never in my wildest dreams would've thought we'd have a family like this, would you, Gus?”

A family like this?

Is that what she'd said?

She
had
said that!

A family.

A
real
family.

A family that cared about me and called me Butterbean and was going to take the canning jars out of my room first thing tomorrow.

A family that wasn't broken.

A family that I'd been wishing for all those times.

I couldn't hardly wait till Sunday, when I could find my flower in the Garden of Blessings and write “My family” on it.

Suddenly Bertha called out, “Star! First star! Everybody make a wish!”

I looked up at that star twinkling over the mountains, but instead of wishing, I just closed my eyes and breathed in the piney air.

My wish had finally come true.

 

Also by
Barbara O'Connor

Beethoven in Paradise

Me and Rupert Goody

Moonpie and Ivy

Fame and Glory in Freedom, Georgia

Taking Care of Moses

How to Steal a Dog

Greetings from Nowhere

The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis

The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester

On the Road to Mr. Mineo's

 

About the Author

Barbara O'Connor
is the author of numerous acclaimed books for children, including
Fame and Glory in Freedom, Georgia, How to Steal a Dog, The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis, and The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester.
She has been awarded the Parents' Choice Gold and Silver Awards, the Massachusetts Book Award, the Kansas William Allen White Award, the South Carolina Children's Book Award, the Indiana Young Hoosier Award, the South Dakota Children's Book Award, and the Dolly Gray Award, among many honors. As a child, she loved dogs, salamanders, tap dancing, school, and even homework. Her favorite days were when the bookmobile came to town. She was born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina, and now lives in Duxbury, Massachusetts, a historic seaside village not far from Plymouth Rock. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

 

Thank you for buying this

Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.

 

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

 

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

 

For email updates on the author, click
here
.

 

Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five