Wish Girl (15 page)

O
f course, the biggest problem I had was just that: No one listened to me.

That night, I got Mom alone in the kitchen—just the two of us, if I didn't count her laptop, which kept pinging Facebook messages and clicking as she typed away.

“Mom?” I said, louder than usual. I needed her to hear me. “Mom? Can I ask you something important?”

“Um, what?” She looked up, then clued in. “Oh, yes, of course. You know you can always come to me with anything. We talked about this last year. What's going on?”

She rearranged her face to look interested, but behind her eyes was a hint of panic. Probably worried about what I'd say. Worried I was depressed again.

If she only knew.

“Well, I know this girl. . . . ” I began. I didn't want Mom freaking out that I'd been hanging out with a girl all week. Too late.

“A girl?” Mom looked like I'd given her an early birthday present. “Is she cute? Where did you meet her—wait. This isn't someone you met on a chat-room online or something? You know those are all forty-year-old men, trolling for—”

“Mom!” I shook my head, wishing I'd never even tried. “She's a real girl. I've met her.”

“Where?” Mom's eyes got sparkly. “When? I want to meet her. Will she go to your school next year?”

“Mom! She's not even from here. She's only here until Friday.” Friday, the day her mom was going to take Annie away to start her treament.

If she could find her.

“Just . . . never mind.”

“No, Peter, I'm listening. What about this girl?” She was chewing on the edge of her lip, like the words were fighting to escape any way they could.

“Never mind. We'll talk about her later.” I had to try another way of finding out. “Mom, there was this friend of mine at my old school,” I lied. “He had cancer.”

“Who? Wait, I want to hear more about this girl you mentioned—”

“Mom, not now. This is about my friend.
With cancer
.”

Mom shook her head slightly. “I never even heard about a boy having cancer last year. Was he in your class?”

“It's not important. What I wanted to ask was, have you ever heard of late effects from cancer treatments?”

“Side effects?”

“Well, sort of. Yes. Have you ever heard of brain damage being one of them? Like, permanent brain damage?”

“Yes,” Mom said, as quiet as I'd ever heard her. “I had a friend whose little boy had leukemia. He was four when they found it. He had some brain damage from the radiation and chemo. But they do therapy, you know, to help them recover.”

“Do they recover?” I asked. “Let's say if someone had a lot of radiation. A lot of chemo. More than usual. If they did all that, if the cancer was serious, would the side effects be so bad she would never recover?”

“She?” Mom said. “So, is this still the girl?”

“Yeah,” I said, my face going hot all of a sudden. “But not that kind of girl. What I wanted to know was—”

Mom's brow furrowed, and she hesitated for a moment, considering. “There's no way of knowing, I don't think. And that's the truth. So much about cancer treatment and recovery is uncertain. A lot of factors come into play.”

I was sort of stunned. She
was
listening. For the first time since I could remember, I had my mom's attention.

“If I had cancer,” I asked, “or if Carlie or Laura or I was really sick, and—”

“God forbid!” Mom stood up and started walking around the kitchen, like she was looking for something to do. “Don't say it. That's the worst thing that could ever happen to a mother. Even talking about it gives me the chills.”

“But if we were really sick, and we had to do something drastic, that might cause permanent damage—and we didn't want it. Would you let us have some say? Would you let us help decide on the treatment?”

Mom stopped and whirled around. “Are you kidding? No! That's a decision an adult has to make. You can't understand when you're a child. There's nothing I wouldn't do to keep my kids alive and healthy—nothing.” Her eyes were shining. “Peter, there's nothing I wouldn't do for
you
. You know that, right?”

“Even if we didn't want it done?”

Mom's mouth opened once, twice, like a fish. She reached out to hold the chair back, like she was losing her balance. “You're not—oh, God, Peter. I thought you were done thinking about that sort of thing. Have you been—”

“No, Mom,” I protested, knowing where she was going. “I'm not thinking about . . . that. I never was. It was just a stupid journal.”

“I know. You said that. But the things you wrote back then. And what you just said. It sounded like you meant . . .” On the desk by the computer, her phone rang. She almost turned it off without looking. Almost.

Then she glanced at the glowing screen. “Oh, crap. My boss. I've got to take this. We'll finish this conversation later, Peter. I think you might need to go back to a counselor, though. I thought it would be better out here, around new kids. Plenty of nature to keep your mind off . . . things. But it's so isolating, I can see how you're feeling. Camp . . . I hope it'll help.”

And with that, she clicked the phone open before it went over to voicemail, and slipped out the door.

“What if one of your kids ran away?” I asked the empty room. “Would that be worse than one of us being sick? If we were just sick on the inside, instead of with cancer or something, then would you listen? Then would you care?”

I waited, wondering if she'd hear me and come back in.

She didn't.

W
ednesday came, and with it the babysitting.

“Mom,” Laura had yelled that morning. “I need you to take me into town. Some of my friends are meeting up at the River Center Mall.”

Mom fussed a little, but I could tell she felt sorry for Laura, being fifteen and alone in the countryside.

Me, she obviously felt nothing for. “Peter, Dad has to go to an audition at one. I'll need you to be in charge of Carlie from eleven or so until I get home.”

No matter what I said—I wasn't old enough, I didn't feel safe out here with no adults—none of my arguments mattered.

I'd have to leave Annie alone again. It burned in my gut, the thought of her making life-or-death—literally life-or-death—decisions with no one to talk to. No one to convince her to change her mind.

Or to at least walk next to her.

Carlie took my mind off things for a while, with her baby talk and laughter filling the empty house. I brought her to my room and let her play with my old Duplo blocks for a while, then fed her a healthy lunch of Cheerios, applesauce, and more Cheerios.

She was almost down for a nap when I heard someone rattling the doorknob. Not knocking, just rattling. Like they were trying to get in.

Annie. It had to be her, no one else would bother—we were too far out in the sticks. For a minute, I was excited. I hadn't ever thought of inviting her to my house. Possibly, I thought, looking around at the mess and seeing the shabby paint job like it was the first time, I should have made her promise never to come out.

Too late, though. I opened the door, slinging Carlie over my hip. “Hey, Annie . . . ”

It wasn't Annie. It was Doug and Jake. I tried to shut the door, but Doug stuck his shoulder out, and it was like the door hit a tree. “What do you guys want?” I asked. “I'm busy.” My heart started racing. This couldn't be good.

“Busy babysitting?” Jake asked. He had a piece of Johnson grass sticking out of the corner of his mouth that he was chewing slowly, carefully. “Nobody else home?”

“Yeah, my dad's home,” I lied.

Doug smiled. “No, we saw him go past. You're a good liar, though. Couldn't tell from looking at your face. I can't never hide it. We thought you'd gone, too.”

Jake pushed Doug out of his way, shoving something—a screwdriver? A hammer? I couldn't tell, he hid it so fast—behind his back. “Nah, we didn't, Doug. Remember? We just came by to visit a bit. Hang out with you. Friend.”

Doug look confused. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “That's right. We came over to hang out.”

I could see what he meant about his face giving it all away. They hadn't come over to hang out. For one thing, they hadn't knocked—they'd tried jimmying the doorknob.

For another, Doug had a big bag in his hand. Had they been coming to steal stuff?

“Can I hold your baby?” Doug asked.

I was shocked. “Um, no. She's scared of strangers.” Carlie was peering at the two guys with wide, serious eyes, but she didn't look afraid, of course. She loved meeting new people. She was probably going to start smiling and babbling any second.

I was afraid, though. I didn't trust these two, especially not with Carlie.

“I won't hurt her, Pete,” Doug said, each word low and sincere. “I never hurt a baby. I like 'em. They're soft.”

I didn't know how to respond—soft? As in, if you squeeze them?—and then I didn't have to say anything. Carlie had taken that exact moment to let loose a whole diaper full of stench.

Perfect timing.

“Whoo-ee!” Doug yelled, flapping an arm in front of his face. “Toxic-waste baby! You gonna have to change that?”

“Yeah,” I said, acting like it bothered me. It didn't. I'd rather change a thousand diapers than hang around with Doug and Jake. “Better go soon, or it'll explode.”

“Explode?” Doug hooted again, but the two of them were moving off the front step and crossing the yard. “Little land-mine baby. I like it.”

“We'll see you soon, Petey,” Jake said, swiveling his head back. “Maybe don't mention this little visit to anyone. Got that? We're sort of . . . grounded. Wouldn't want to have to redo the other day.”

The other day. He meant when they'd beat me up.

It was a screwdriver in his back pocket, I saw, as he jogged off. And even though I could feel warmth on my arm, and Carlie was fussing, I waited there until they disappeared. Then I checked the front door.

Sure enough, there were scrapes and scratches all around the keyhole—the hole was even enlarged a bit, like he'd been jimmying it for a while. The lock wouldn't reengage, no matter how I tried. Why hadn't Dad bought a dead bolt, like we'd had in San Antonio? “We're safe out here,” I remembered him saying. “Nobody would come this far out in the country to steal. Too much work.”

I guessed it wasn't too much work for Jake and Doug. I ended up stacking two chairs behind the door to hold it shut if they decided to come back, double-checked all the other doors and windows, and finally changed Carlie's diaper.

It was toxic, but not as toxic as my mood. How was I supposed to tell Mom and Dad about the doorknob without telling them who had done it?

I couldn't take another beating. And I was too much of a wimp to tell on them and risk it.

I wanted to run away worse than ever.

I found a way to tell what had happened, sort of, but it meant that I'd probably never be left alone again until I was twenty-five.

“I heard somebody at the door,” I told Dad when he got home. He'd noticed the doorknob and the chairs, of course. “It was weird. Whoever it was ran off when I called out. But the doorknob was already shot.”

“Shot,” Dad said, running his hands through what was left of his hair. “Shot. God, just think what could have happened if he'd had a gun. And you didn't get a look at him?”

“No,” I said. “I was too scared to go outside.”

“Good,” Dad said. He looked pale, as shaken as I had felt when I'd opened the door. “You did okay.” He even reached over and gave me a hug, both his arms wrapping around me so hard I couldn't take a breath for a few seconds. “You did fine.”

It was the first time in my life he hadn't criticized me for saying I was scared. I didn't know how to take it.

He spent the next hour on the phone with a freaked-out Mom, trying to calm her down. When that didn't work, he pounded on his drums until Mom got home, hammering away at them like he was going to break all the heads.

“Oh, sweetie,” Mom said when she came in the door. She almost smothered me with her hug. “Where's Carlie?” She was napping, but Mom woke her up to hug her, too.

And then the fighting began.

Two minutes into the screaming, Laura rolled her eyes, said, “I quit this stupid family,” and locked herself in her room. I knew how she felt. I really wished I could quit it, too.

Run away
, a small voice whispered inside.
Run away with Annie.
Mom's voice obliterated any thoughts of escaping.

“Someone has to stay home with the kids until we have enough money for daycare or until school starts. It can't be me, because I'm the only one of us with a JOB!”

Mom fought dirty when she wanted to.

“So that's it? Time to start in on what a loser I am? Why didn't you just divorce me when I was fired? Why prolong the anticipation?”

“It's not too late, Joshua. Don't give me any ideas. And don't change the subject. Whatever we decide, the kids can't stay here alone so much! It's affecting Peter, can't you see it? I thought it would help, having a fresh start. But he's drawing further and further away. And even Laura's getting so lonely. You're gone so much.”

“Job interviews,” Dad ground out.

“Jobs are for money,” Mom said. “These are for bands—free gigs, right?”

“It's temporary. I'm going to get work, so lay off.” His voice had gotten harder, meaner.

“When? Before or after your kids are murdered out here in the middle of nowhere while you're farting around with your drum set in Austin like an overgrown fifteen-year-old?”

“Farting around? Come on, Maxine, say what you really mean. You know, I was a drummer when you met me—why isn't it good enough now? Why do you suddenly have this problem with who I am? Not just what I do, but
who I am?
”

I froze, listening. Dad sounded like he felt the same way I did. Like he wasn't good enough. How could he feel that way, too? I was saved from having to think about it by Mom's answer.

“Who I am?”
Mom repeated, her voice high and mocking. “Because we're older, Joshua. We're adults now—or I am, at least. We have rent, bills,” she shouted. “Not to mention kids, scared kids, who need someone here with them—”

“So now you want me to sit here instead of getting a job? I have to go out to find work. Peter will just have to learn to man up—”

“
Man up?
To armed robbers? Can you even hear yourself? It's not safe! This could happen again tomorrow!”

“What, you think there's a ring of dangerous thieves going house to house in the countryside, stealing ten-year-old televisions and broken appliances?” Dad laughed, a short, ugly bark.

“There could be!”

The fight went on until they both ran out of steam. Dad finally apologized and actually figured out a few things to do to keep Mom from calling the divorce lawyers, but he had to drive into town for supplies and stay up late working with his tools to get her to back down.

The next day, he left me at home, safely locked behind brand-spanking-new dead bolts on the front and back doors and window bars on all the downstairs windows, and went around to ask the neighbors if they'd had any break-ins.

Laura was in charge of Carlie, and Mom was back at work.

I had to get out. I had to see if Annie was there. I'd spent most of the night—well, from two
A.M.
onward, once Laura got off the computer—doing research on late effects from leukemia treatments.

Annie had to be wrong. From what I read, the kind of effects she was talking about almost never happened. I had to figure out some way to make her see, change her . . . My own thoughts stuttered to a halt.

Make
her.
Change
her. That was just the sort of thing Mom and Dad whispered about me, when they thought I couldn't hear. Or yelled, when they didn't care if I was there or not.

They wanted to change my mind, to make me see their way. Make who I was disappear and replace it with who they wanted me to be.

They never wanted to listen.

Maybe I couldn't stand up to them, but I didn't have to
be
them.

I wasn't going to do that to Annie. I was going to listen, and more. And if she didn't want to change her mind, if she was set on running away, I was going to help her do it.