Wish Girl (3 page)

I
ran away again as soon as it got light enough to see. This time, I left a note on my bed just in case Mom or Dad went so far as to open my door to check on me, and I snagged a couple of granola bars and a bottle of water to stuff in my backpack.

“Peep?” Carlie called as I ran though the living room on my way to the door. She was watching TV in her playpen, which meant Mom had already been up and gone back to sleep, I assumed. It was Saturday, after all.

Carlie had taken her diaper off and was tearing it into little bits, so I stopped for a second to gather up the pieces and toss them, then wrap another one around her. “Don't tear this one, Carlie,” I whispered. “That could get messy.” She put her finger up to her lips, made a shushing sound, and nodded. Then she held her arms up again. “Peep?” She wanted to come with me.

“Not today, Carbar,” I answered. I put my hands together and made a hissing sound. “There's snakes out there. Lots and lots of big snakes.” I pretended my hands were snake jaws, and she broke into peals of laughter. I almost stayed there with her, playing, but then I heard a door on the other side of the house squeal open, and knew I'd get stuck with babysitting and cleaning if I hung around. The normal Saturday routine.

“Bye-bye.” I waved and left, my feet quiet on the carpet.

The night before, I'd gone looking for my old boots—the pair Dad had bought for me during my three-week failed Boy Scout experiment a year and a half ago. I'd found them in one of the remaining moving boxes and left them in the front hall, hidden behind Carlie's baby swing. I slipped them on right outside the door. They pinched a little bit, but I didn't care. They'd be fairly snake-proof, I hoped.

I walked faster than the day before, since I knew where I was going. Or at least where I was going to start.

The snake wasn't there this time, even though I looked at what I thought was the same bush it had crawled under. For a second I wondered if I had imagined its appearance.

No. The snake had been real, more real than most of the things in my life—video games and TV shows, comic books and chores.

I walked to the ledge I'd stopped at before and scanned the valley. It didn't feel strange like it had yesterday. I didn't get the sense anything was watching.

But something was calling me. Halfway down the hillside, where another hill pushed up against the one I was on, a line of trees, growing larger further down, gleamed bright green, their leaves waving in the morning air. I pelted down the hill, my boots slipping on limestone rocks that weren't attached to anything, the tufts of thick grasses stopping my fall before I could slip too far.

It was crazy running down the hill. I didn't care. The wind rushed up against my face as I went, promising to catch me if I stepped too far away from the ground.

The cluster of oak trees was farther away than I'd thought, and I got out of breath. I slowed down and started walking more quietly. There might be deer hiding in the trees, I thought. If I was quiet enough, maybe I'd see one.

But by the time I pushed back some smaller bushes and stepped under the oaks, I was the only thing making any sound on the hillside.

I couldn't seem to stop making noise. Every step I took in my clunky boots cracked seedpods and acorns underfoot, popping them like a bunch of Black Cat fireworks in the silence of the grove. Last fall's windblown drifts of leaves crunched and crackled underfoot, and even my breathing seemed loud and out of place.

I'd never see a deer or another snake or anything else if I kept making so much noise. I stopped, looked around, and saw a large rock jutting out from the mounds of dead leaves. No, not just a rock: a pile of them. As I approached, I realized I was following the slope of the hillside right up to the point where it touched the other hill.

When I got there, I looked down the slope. The rocks were old and weathered, covered with dried algae-like stuff and old moss. But there were damp patches underneath. What if I kept going, walked along the stones? Would I find a creek? A lake? Animals hung out near lakes, I knew that.

I slipped off my boots to stay quiet and tucked them in my backpack with my granola bars. Then, slowly, I crept down the rocks, trying to be as silent as possible.

A minute or so later, I stopped. Below me, only a few yards away, was a pool. A deer stood there, its head bowed. A doe, I thought. It didn't have antlers like the males I'd seen at the zoo. Suddenly, it jumped back from the water like something had surprised it, and it stepped nervously away from the edge. I held my breath, wondering if the doe had heard me. Its nostrils flared. Maybe it had smelled me?

Then, stepping as carefully as I had, it lifted one silent foot at a time and tiptoed away from the water's edge, slipping through the trees and back out onto the hillside. I began to move again, curious to see what was in the pool. What had startled the deer?

But when I got to the rock where it had stood drinking, I looked into the water, and nothing was there. The pool itself was beautiful, with rocks overhanging one edge, making a small cave-like hole at that end. The surface wasn't more than ten feet across, although the water looked at least five feet deep in the center. It was clean, and when the sunlight shone through the oak leaves overhead, it sparkled across the top of the pool. I sat there on the rock, staring into the water with my legs crossed and my hands folded, feeling hypnotized. After a while I closed my eyes. I hadn't slept well the night before, dreaming of snakes and valleys that came to life.

I might have dozed; I wasn't sure. But something woke me. A sound? A humming. I held still, feeling what had to be legs on me, tickling the hairs on my arms. Had ants crawled onto me? Bees? I opened my eyes, remembering the snake, making sure to move only my eyelids.

My arms were covered with dragonflies. No, they were smaller than that. But similar. Brightly colored, red and blue and glossy black, with thin graceful wings and long segmented bodies. They must have decided I was a good perch, because there were at least twenty of them on each of my arms.

They liked me. I could feel it in the way they moved, dancing on my skin. Just like the valley liked me—and for the same reason my family didn't.

Because I was still and quiet.

I'd finally found the place where I could be alone. Where I could be me. It was perfect.

I'll always be quiet here
, I thought to the valley
. I promise. I'll never yell, or scream, or ruin you with a bunch of racket.

Something tickled my hair in response, and I knew that the dragonfly things were up there, too. I felt a laugh welling up inside me and tried to keep it from coming out. If I made a noise, or moved, they would all fly off.

But the tickling on top of my ear got to be too much, and I let out a small sound, half a sigh.

They all took flight, skimming over the water. I did laugh then.

And someone muttered, “Dang it.”

I
jumped up, and the baby dragonflies—or whatever they were—spiraled away from the water entirely, deserting me. I whipped my head around, wondering where the voice had come from. Was the person invisible? Enough weirdness had happened in this valley that I wasn't sure anything could surprise me.

But then something moved, and I saw it—her. Sitting on the other side of the pool, half-hidden by a bush, a small face with a knitted brown hat on top, covering her hair. How had I missed her?

I said the words out loud.

“I blend,” the girl said, stepping away from the bushes. She held something in her hand. A sketchpad, it looked like, and a charcoal pencil—an expensive one, I thought. It was the kind my art teacher at school used, the kind she never let the kids touch since we would “just ruin them anyway.”

The girl looked about my age. She was maybe a few inches shorter, even if I wasn't tall for being almost thirteen. Dressed all in green and brown, with her brown skin just lighter than the tree trunks around us, she did sort of blend. Until she moved.

“Who are you?” the girl asked. The insects around us had fallen quiet.

“Peter,” I answered. Without warning, a wave of heat rushed through me. I recognized the feeling: anger. “Peter Stone,” I repeated, trying to keep my voice calm. I never let my feelings show, not if I could help it.

I wanted to spit, though. My tongue tasted bitter all of a sudden. Like the anger was literally filling my mouth.

It figured. I had finally found a place to be alone, to be quiet, and this girl was here. Maybe she even lived nearby. She'd fill the valley with noise and talking. I turned back to the water, wishing her away.

“Apt,” she said, then settled back into a cross-legged position and began to sketch. She didn't say anything else.

Apt? What had she meant by that? Curiosity itched at me worse than the baby dragonflies had. But I wasn't going to speak. If I stayed quiet enough, she'd leave. It had always worked at school, on the playground, even at home. If I stayed still, stayed boring, people left me alone.

Mostly. A shiver went down my back, remembering when that hadn't worked. Remembering what had happened to make my parents move us all so far away from home. What had made my dad look at me every day like he was ashamed.

I shook the dark thoughts away and concentrated on the girl. What was she sketching? And why had she said
apt
? I thought I knew what that meant.

Appropriate.

I couldn't stand it. I had to ask.

“What do you mean?”

She glanced up, brown eyes deeper than the pool between us. She frowned down at her sketchbook, then at me.

“Your name. Peter Stone. Also, a bit repetitive. What were your parents thinking?”

Now this girl was really starting to annoy me. Why did she think my name was apt and repetitive? I stood up.

“Don't,” she called out. “I'm almost done.”

“Don't what?”

“Don't move just yet,” she said, motioning for me to sit back down. “I've almost got you. I wasn't able to get all the damselflies. . . . ” Her voice trailed off, and I stared at her. Damselflies? Oh, that was what the little dragonflies were called. Then I got it. She'd been drawing them—and me. I settled back down, feeling strange. No one had ever drawn me. I wasn't interesting-looking. Plain brown hair, brown eyes, medium-sized. Nothing special. In fact, I was invisible to most everyone.

This girl was the kind people drew, though. She reminded me of the damselflies as she worked: Her arms were thin and . . . elegant. Her eyelashes fluttered like their lacy wings had. She looked a little like a fairy, although the expression on her face was pure human grumpiness.

“What?” I said, wondering if she'd come back with another one-word answer.

“I can't get your face right, not now. Not when you're moving, Stone Boy.”

“Stone Boy?”

“Well, yes,” she said, slapping her sketchpad shut and walking on her toes around the circle of rocks to where I was. She was barefoot like me. “Peter means stone, of course. Or rock. And I thought you were one, for a while. I mean, how do you do that? I've never seen anything like it.”

“Do what?” I had never been so confused by a person in my life. It sounded like she was speaking English, but I wasn't following half of her words.

“Hold still,” she said, reaching out and putting my hand in the air like she was posing me. “See? You don't even tremble. Amazing. You could be a surgeon with hands like that.”

A shadow passed over her face then, and I looked up. Was it getting overcast? I heard the flip of pages and looked back. She was showing me her drawing.

I let out my breath in a great whoosh. It was . . . “Amazing,” I echoed. “You're a real artist.” She was—she'd drawn the rocks and the damselflies and me, all just exactly right. None of the parts looked too big or too small. She'd shaded the edges of things with the charcoal side of the pencil to make the shadows from the oak leaves fall in the right places. Even the fingers on my hand were perfect. Not even the art teacher at my old school could draw fingers.

“Thanks,” she said, examining the picture. “I think I got your face. Faces are hard. But you kept yours so still, like a statue. It was easier than usual. Honestly, the damselflies moved more than you did. There must have been a hundred of them.” She folded the sketchbook under one arm, pulled a pair of tennis shoes out of the bag she'd stashed her pencil in, and stood up to slip them on. “You're phenomenal, you know. I wasn't sure you were real at first. I'd been wishing all morning for a model. I thought maybe I'd wished you here.”

She didn't sound like she was kidding. “Really?” I said after a few seconds of watching her clamber back around the rocks. “You thought you . . . wished me here?”

Maybe she'd felt what I had—that this valley was magical, somehow. Like there were things here that couldn't be explained, that didn't happen in the rest of the world.

“Sure,” she said, right before she disappeared back over the rim of the pool's ledge. “I mean, I am a wish girl, right? I get what I wish for.”

“What?” I called out, trying to follow her, but I stopped to grab my boots, since I knew I'd never be able to chase her barefoot over the hillside. By the time I got my boots on and ran to the spot where she'd vanished between two trees, I couldn't find her. Couldn't see her, which was strange since the hills were practically bare around us, except for the cleft that hid the pool.

I climbed a bit, up to a ledge where I had a view of everything, but I didn't see her again, even though I stayed there for ten minutes, waiting, watching. Maybe she blended in with the valley? Maybe she had hidden somewhere and was waiting for me to leave so she could climb out and go home—wherever home was. One of the two houses on this side of the hill?

Or maybe, I thought . . . maybe she was part of the magic of the valley. She'd said she was a wish girl.

I shook the thought away. I was being stupid. She wasn't anything special, just a girl. Probably she had a bunch of friends she would bring with her the next time, down into this peaceful place. Screaming girls, who'd run around the valley, exploring it, filling it with words.

Ruining it.

She'd wished for me? Huh. Well, I'd been wishing for a long time to be alone, really alone, with no one to bug me, or talk at me, or tell me what a failure I was. I thought I'd found that here.

Maybe she got what she wished for. But as for me?

She wasn't any sort of wish come true.