You Wish (8 page)

“But it’s not really
my
pony. We could just leave it here.”

Ben gives me a
yeah, right
kind of look. “It probably lives somewhere around your house, and it followed you here. The least you can do is bring it back.” Enumclaw, as a whole, is a pretty rural area, so this is actually quite possible. I wonder which one of my psycho neighbors let loose their dyed pony.

I sigh and rub my hand over my eyes. I’m not sure when I opened my backyard up as a hostel for runaway ponies, but whatever. “Fine.”

If the pony would just gallop off right now, all would be right in the world. But it doesn’t. It waits patiently while Ben backs his truck up to a mound of dirt, and then, damn it all, the stupid thing climbs right in like it’s spent its whole life riding around in jacked-up pickup trucks.

Ben closes the tailgate, and then, to my surprise, he rounds the passenger door and opens it for me. “Your carriage awaits,” he says, a little smile on his perfectly full lips.

Somehow I doubt Cinderella’s carriage included a motocross bike and a fluorescent pony.

I walk to the door and pass less than an inch away from him. I want to lean in, to rest my face against his jersey and just breathe him in.

I wonder how he would react if I did that.

I have to grab the handle on the inside of the door and use the running board in order to climb in, the truck is so high off the ground. Ben closes the door behind me and then rounds the front of the truck and jumps into his seat without using either. When he starts it up, the big diesel engine rumbles to life.

We pull out of the grounds and back onto the road. Thank God it’s less than three miles to my house, because I think I might pass out and I’d hate for him to see me drooling all over myself.

“You looked awesome today,” I say, when I can’t stand staying silent any longer. “You know, before the equine intervention.”

“Thanks,” he says. “Did you see me almost bite it off the big one? I got a little cocky and almost didn’t get my feet back on the pegs.”

He grins and looks over at me, and I find myself grinning right back and looking him in the eyes.

Oh boy. Must not look him in the eyes. I turn toward the window. “They say overinflated ego is now the number-one killer of teenage boys.”

I can feel Ben’s eyes on me. “Oh yeah? And what’s the treatment?”

“I hear electroshock therapy works nicely.”

Ben snorts. “What, no water boarding?”

I shake my head. It’s getting harder to stare out the window when I want to turn and look at Ben. Instead I pretend some black-and-white cows grazing in a nearby field are the most fascinating thing I’ve seen all day. “No, too messy.”

“I tend to think an hour with Mrs. Vickers and about two-dozen trigonometry problems will wound anyone’s ego.”

I forget to stick with the window and turn to look at him. “I know, and it’s still the first month of school. We’re all doomed.”

He smiles, flicking on his turn signal before glancing over at me. His lips look perfect, curled upward like they are. I turn back to the window.

“We should get together sometime and work on review,” he says. The truck lurches for a second as he misses second gear.

I forget to breathe for a second, until my lungs burn and I take in the biggest breath I can without Ben noticing it. “Yeah, maybe. At Nicole’s house. She has the same math class during sixth period.”

“Right,” he says, nodding. “At Nicole’s house.”

By the time we’ve pulled up in front of my house, my death grip on the door handle is making my fingers ache. He pulls the truck up to the curb, and just as he’s reaching for the keys to turn the truck off, I shove the door open.

“Thanks, Ben, see ya tomorrow!”

And then I dash across the lawn. I’m only halfway there when I hear his truck switch off. He rolls down the window and shouts to me. “Uh, Kayla?”

I stop, clenching my teeth for a second, my back still to him, and then I turn around.

“The pony?” He gestures with his thumb to the latest bane of my existence. I seem to have a lot of those lately. Is it possible to have multiple banes of your existence?

“Oh. Right.”

“How do you think we can get it out?”

“Um, there’s a retaining wall on the other side of that fence. Back your truck over there and I’ll go open the gate.”

I resist the urge to smack a hand against my forehead as I hustle into the backyard. Since we have a corner lot, there’s another gate in the back. The yard used to slope a bit, so my mom had the landscapers build this big retaining wall and level it out. It’ll be perfect for unloading the pony.

Ben backs his truck up and then jumps out, walking around the back and dropping the tailgate. It’s nearly perfect—just an inch or two above the top block of the wall. The pony backs up a little bit and then spins around and jumps out. She jogs over to the middle of the yard, then drops to her knees, then her side, and starts rolling around.

Ben laughs, and I realize, abruptly, how close he is. I take a less than subtle step away from him.

He tips his head to the side and regards me with his brows scrunched. “Do I make you uncomfortable?”

“What? No. What?” The saliva in my throat is choking me, I’m sure of it.

Ben sighs and shrugs. “Nothing. Never mind.”

“Okay, well, I’ll get the gate. Thanks for the ride.”

He nods, but he looks at me a second longer than necessary and then turns and heads back to the truck.

He honks his horn once as he pulls out onto the street, and I swing the gate shut so hard and fast it rattles the hinges.

And then I inhale deeply and for the first time in half an hour, I no longer feel short of breath.

10

WHEN I WAKE
up the next morning, I open just one eye, slowly, and look around the room. After that pony . . . and then the gumballs . . . I feel like I’m about to be ambushed.

But the gumballs have not reappeared. Thank the lucky stars for that. I don’t know what he did with them, but my brother followed through on something for once in his life. And a glance out the window reveals that there is no pony eating our perfectly green grass. Life is blissfully normal.

As I head toward my bedroom door, I hear a noise.

Coming from my closet.

Seriously! If my brother has done one more thing . . . one teensy, tiny little thing, I am telling Mom. Life has been insane since he moved back and it’s all his fault.

I march over to my closet and yank the door open.

My heart lurches to a stop as I stare into a pair of wide green eyes framed by long, curly lashes. There is a girl I have never met in my life sitting in my closet. For real. I scream and jump backward, dashing over to my computer chair and shoving it between us, as if it’s going to double as a weapon.

Death by rolling chair.

I realize that the chair is going to do little to protect me, and I frantically reach toward my desk to produce . . .

A ruler. I stand there with it out like a sword, still hiding behind the chair. Maybe if I’m really lucky, I can make some throwing stars out of paper clips.

The strange girl is just chilling on the floor, cross-legged, wearing the most hideous outfit I’ve ever seen: red-and-white-striped tights, a blue cotton dress, and a white apron. Her strawberry hair is curly and loose, tumbling halfway down her back in big frizzy curls, pieces of it sticking out all over. She has a smattering of dark freckles across the bridge of her nose and lips so full they don’t look natural.

She looks to be around my age. Except she doesn’t look the least bit concerned to be caught in my closet.

If this is my brother’s long-distance girlfriend, he has seriously bad taste. Then again, she
is
dating him, so maybe she’s the one who needs help.

“Who the heck are
you
?” I ask, backing toward the door as if she’s a rabid dog. I am filled with an irrational fear that she’s going to spring to her feet and leap onto me, like a jumping spider or something.

“Ann,” she says, her voice tentative, barely above a whisper.

“Okay,
Ann
, what are you doing in my closet?”

“Sitting,” she says, as if it should be obvious. She blinks a few times and stares at me in the oddest way, as if it’s me who shouldn’t be standing in my own bedroom.

“Yes, but
why
are you sitting in my closet?”

“I’m your best friend. I live here!” she says, her voice sort of solidifying, becoming less of a whisper. She has an odd, proper sound to her words. It’s not an accent per se. But it reminds me of the way someone pronounces a word they just learned five minutes ago. The cadence is slightly off.

“No you don’t,” I say, stepping forward. She needs to get out of my closet. Now. What does she think this is, Narnia?

“Yes I do.”

“
No
, you don’t.”

“
Yes
, I do.”

I clench my teeth. She is seriously annoying. “Right. And who are you?!”

“Ann,” she says again.

“Ann who?”

“Just Ann.”

“There is no
just
Ann.”

She stares at me. I blink a few times, hoping she disappears. There’s something oddly familiar about her. I step out from behind the chair to get a better look at her, still holding the ruler out.

If all else fails, I can measure her to death.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” My voice sounds more fearful than I’d like, and I clear my throat.

She laughs just a little bit, and for some reason it annoys me. Who is she to laugh when she’s a trespasser? “Of course, Kayla. We have known each other for over eight years.”

She knows my name. My stomach twists around. I don’t understand this. She’s freaking me out. Should I just run out and go find my brother? Maybe she’s some escaped crazy person. Maybe she watches me through my window.

Note to self: Get new drapes.

“You need to get out of my closet,” I say, my voice still shaky. I am not equipped to deal with trespassers before seven a.m.

“It is not my fault you shoved me in here.”

Huh? “I did
not
put you in there. That’s ludicrous. I’m not running a hostel.”

Maybe a yardstick would suffice, but this ruler is feeling tinier and tinier in my hands.

“I’ve been in that box for five years,” she says, pointing to a white box at the back of the closet. “It is not nearly as comfortable as your bed was.”

Ann crawls forward, out of the closet, and unfolds her legs. As she’s getting to her feet, she sort of trips and tumbles forward, crashing into my rolling chair and sending it slamming into the wall. I take a giant leap back.

The chair leaves a big indent in my perfect plum-colored drywall.

Great. At least my brother works at a hardware store.

She grabs ahold of the edge of my bed and draws herself to her feet, until she’s standing at her full height, which looks to be quite close to my own five-foot five. She doesn’t let go of the pole on my four-poster bed.

Actually, she looks kind of wobbly. Like those horses you see on Animal Planet just moments after they learn to walk.

As she’s standing in front of me, one hand still gripping my bed, I get a good look at her. The whole room takes on a slow, tilted spin. Suddenly
I’m
the one who needs to hold on to a piece of furniture.

I know why she looks familiar.

She’s dressed like my old Raggedy Ann doll. Is that why she was talking about that box? Did she dig through my things and see my old doll?

She looks like one big disaster. An outfit like that looks cute on a doll, but it looks atrocious on a teen girl. And with her hair sticking up all over the place and her pronounced freckles, she’s gotta be the biggest loser I’ve ever seen in real life.

I cross my arms, annoyed. She thinks she can come in here and make fun of me for my onetime obsession with my Raggedy Ann doll? Is that what this is supposed to be? “Nice costume. A little early for Halloween, don’t you think?” I ask.

Ann looks down at her dress, smoothing out the apron as she frowns. “You always liked it.”

“Yeah, when I was seven!”

She shrugs and then finally lets go of my bed so that she can put her hands on her hips. She sways a little bit but stays upright. Jeez, was she pounding beers in my closet too? “I liked you better then.”

Her voice has been morphing throughout our conversation, becoming more normal. The more she talks, the more she sounds like me and the more the worries multiply in my stomach. She must learn freakishly fast. All she had to do was hear me say a few words, and she’s adjusting, changing to mimic me.

Why is she acting like she knows me? I’d remember someone who looked
that
goofy.

“You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here,” I say, moving toward the door.

“I told you. I’m already home.”

“You are not home.
I
am home. This is
my
room.” My voice rises an octave. My brother would hear me if I started screaming, right?

But what if he’s listening to his iPod?

“Our room,” she says. She takes in my stance and then mimics me, crossing her arms and standing with her feet shoulder width apart.

Enough with this. I’m sufficiently creeped out. I take another step back and hold out the ruler again.

“Look, if you don’t leave in the next thirty seconds, I’m calling the police.”

“Why? Do you still have a crush on Officer Barrows?”

My eyes snap wide open. I never told anyone about that. When I was ten, I used to totally crush on the twenty-two-year-old cop who hung out in the crosswalk area at school. I would cross back and forth for no reason, probably driving him crazy.

I never even told Nicole about him; it was that embarrassing.