The Wish Page 6

  “Could we?”

  I should give it to him, since he liked it. But now I didn’t want to part with it. I was getting to enjoy it too.

  “Let me see yours again,” I said.

  He showed me. This time I liked his. It was just a joke. It wasn’t mean. Jared’s face was good-natured under the attic of his forehead.

  “Do you think we could find a copy place open on a Sunday?” I asked. “Then we can have one of each of us.”

  “Let’s look.”

  We had to walk at least a mile, but we found one. Although I was nervous about showing my caricature to the clerk, I was brave and handed it over first.

  “Cool,” he said. “You want poster size?”

  I nodded, and he took the drawing to the back of the store. A minute later, my face with the clerk’s legs sticking out from under it advanced toward us. Being enormous intensified the drawing. It came at you. My teeth gobbled you up. I laughed.

  “We should get as many copies as we can afford,” Jared said. He giggled. “For posterity.”

  We emptied our wallets. Between us, we had enough for subway fare plus two poster-size copies, two regular-size ones, and one half-size reduction for each of us.

  Jared gave me his original drawing plus one poster and his half-size copy. I did the same, and the clerk rolled them into cardboard tubes. Then we headed for the subway. I’d get on the uptown train, and he’d ride downtown to Brooklyn. We walked, holding hands and clutching our tubes.

  I shouldn’t have made him promise not to tell anybody about the caricature. It was too good to keep secret.

  “I don’t care if you tell people about the caricature of me,” I said. “I changed my mind.”

  “You can hang mine from a blimp. You can hang it on a banner outside Claverford.” He paused. “You could hang the small one in your locker at school. I could do the same thing with yours. Um, can I?”

  That would mean he was my boyfriend. People would see the drawings, and that’s what it would mean. In three weeks the spell was going to end and I’d have Jared Fein for a boyfriend, which wouldn’t help me at all.

  And I’d never even had a crush on him. I had a crush on Carlos, and before him, I had a crush on Terence. I liked Jared, but did I like him?

  I thought about the time I was stuck in the elevator with Carlos. He’d been rude, refusing to talk to me. But then, the instant I became popular, he wrote me a note asking me to Grad Night, even though he had a girlfriend.

  It would be fun to be stuck in an elevator with Jared. He’d tell me how people stuck in elevators behaved, or how fast they were rescued, or something else I’d never thought of.

  The subway was a block away.

  “Hey, Wilma,” Jared said. “I asked you something. Did you hear me?”

  I nodded and then I said, “Do you want to go to Grad Night with me?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  He grinned hugely. “Is that instead of putting my picture in your locker or in addition to?”

  I grinned back. “In addition.” In for a penny, in for a pound, as Mom would say. “I’ll tape it up under Reggie’s.”

  We went down the subway stairs and through the turnstile. Then we stood there. A homeless woman was sleeping on a piece of cardboard a few yards away. On the uptown local platform someone was playing a steel drum and singing.

  He was my boyfriend. I had a boyfriend.

  “I have to go,” he said. “I was supposed to be home fifteen minutes ago.” But he didn’t move. “I had a girlfriend in the fifth grade. We used to play knock hockey for hours at her house. She’d get mad if I won, and I’d get mad if she won.” He laughed. “Do you play knock hockey?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then we’ll have to think of something else.” He put the caricature tube on the floor between his legs. “Come here.” He held out his hands.

  He was going to kiss me in the middle of the Thirty-fourth Street station. All my big moments were happening underground. I put my tube down too, took a step toward him, and gave him my hands.

  We were the same height. He extended his head, like a turtle poking out of its shell. His head came toward me, chin first. Our teeth clanked from my beaver teeth sticking out. Our lips met for a second. Wetly. He pulled back. His face was bright red.

  “I’ll practice,” he said. “My brother can . . . Then we’ll practice. I have to go.” He picked up his tube, smiled at me, and ran away.

  As soon as I got on my train, I wondered what I was doing. I should have been figuring out how to stay popular, but instead, I’d chosen one of the least popular kids for my boyfriend.

  And what was so stupid about that? I liked him. The spell would end and I’d have a boyfriend I liked who didn’t care that it ended.

  But everybody else would care, and I cared about everybody else. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did. I remembered the line in Hamlet that Jared had quoted, “To thine own self be true.” But who was mine own self? That’s what I wanted to know.

  I got home at four. As soon as I walked in, Ardis called, wanting to hear about my afternoon with Jared. When I told her about the caricature, she wanted a preview before I took it to school tomorrow. I asked her if she could come over.

  “We could walk Reggie together,” I said, “and you could get to know him better.” And she could get to know me better.

  I heard her take a deep breath. “Wilma, I am a little bit afraid of dogs. Reggie seems great, but—”

  “Reggie wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “It might. Animals hate me.”

  “Reggie doesn’t hate anybody, but never mind. You’ll see the caricatures tomorrow.”

  “Look, I’ll come. But if I’m too scared, I’m going home. And if it eats me, my dad is a lawyer and he’ll—”

  “He won’t eat you.”

  I hung up. What a day! I hadn’t had a friend over in months. And I’d never had a boyfriend.

  Reggie started barking and then the doorbell rang. I made him sit and stay, which stopped his barking.

  “Where did it go?” Ardis said as I opened the door. “Oh. I forgot how big it is. I have to go now.”

  “Come on in. Reggie, stay.”

  “You’re sure it’s safe?” She inched into our apartment.

  “Uh-huh. Do you want to pet him?”

  “No thanks.”

  “He’s wagging his tail at you,” I said.

  “That’s because it can’t wait to eat me.” She laughed nervously. “Can I pet it later?”

  “Sure.”

  “Maybe a year from now?”

  “Whenever.” Whether or not we’re friends then. I reached for his leash. As soon as he realized he was getting an extra walk, he was all over me, jumping, licking, wagging.

  Ardis stood back. “Aren’t you scared it will knock you over?”

  Outside, I let him pull me to the nearest lamppost, but then I made him behave.

  “Animals don’t like me,” Ardis said.

  “Reggie likes you.”

  “I went to horseback-riding camp the summer after sixth grade. The horses hated me.”

  “They couldn’t have.”

  “They did. On one ride, my horse kept putting its head down to eat grass, and everybody in our bunk got ahead of me, and the counselors didn’t notice. I was alone with the horse, and I kept thinking it was going to throw me off and then trample me. That was one horse. Another one walked so near the trees that branches kept hitting me.”

  I said, “I don’t know about horses, but dogs will listen if you’re consistent and if you . . .”

  Ardis had the same expression people have when they watch a TV program somebody else picked. Polite, and annoyed. But what did she want me to say? Didn’t she want to learn about animals? I tried to figure it out. What would I want to hear if I was talking about being scared of something?

  At BeeBee’s sleepover, when I was uncomfortable about the chopsticks, I wouldn’t have wanted anybody to tell me how much fun it
was to eat with them, or how easy they were to handle. That would have made me feel stupid, which was what I was making Ardis feel.

  “Maybe I like animals too much,” I said finally. “I only lasted two nights in sleep-away camp.”

  Her tuned-out look vanished. “Why?”

  “Because I missed our dog, Curly. We had her before Reggie.”

  “What happened to Curly?”

  “She got old.” I still wanted to cry when I thought about Curly. “We got Reggie a week after she died. I couldn’t stand not having a dog.”

  Ardis laughed. “I couldn’t stand having one.” Then she said, “My grandmother got sick a year ago. She’s better now, but I was scared. I’d miss her . . . a lot.”

  She kept doing that—putting herself in the other person’s shoes. She might not understand animals, but she understood how people felt. If we couldn’t be friends when the spell ended—if it ended—I was really going to miss her.

  We reached the entrance to the park, and Reggie started pulling.

  “We always run in,” I called over my shoulder.

  She caught up, and we ran to Sheep Meadow. And there was Celeste, the dalmatian I had sniffed in my essay. I waved to Burton, Celeste’s owner, and let go of Reggie’s leash. He bounded to her.

  “Does that dog bite?” Ardis asked.

  “Celeste is doggie sugar, just like Reggie.”

  While we stood there, she asked me a million questions about Reggie and dogs in general. Did Curly ever bite anyone? How much did Reggie weigh? Why did we get such a big dog? Was I scared of pit bulls? Did anybody ever bother me when I was out with Reggie, and did it protect me?

  “He’s a he,” I said. “He’s not an ‘it.’” I hated when people did that.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Did he ever protect you?”

  “He never needed to. He likes people so much, I don’t know if he’d realize somebody was trying to hurt me. He might think we were just playing.”

  On the way home, Ardis said, “Can I hold his leash?”

  I gave it to her. It was safe. He doesn’t pull on the way back from a walk.

  She took it for a second while Reggie sniffed a lamppost, and then she got scared again. But after she gave it back to me, she said, “Did I do it right? Do you think anybody might have thought I was his owner?”

  “They might have.”

  “You must think I’m a wimp.”

  “You’re not a wimp. I’m scared of lots of things.” I took a deep breath. “I’m scared people won’t like me.”

  “That’s crazy. Nina would take points off. Everybody thinks you’re great.” She paused. “I think you are.”

  “Thanks.” I wished the spell could drop away, just for a minute or two, so I could see if I was getting anywhere, if she honestly thought I was even a tiny bit great.

  “Ardis . . . what makes somebody popular, do you think?”

  She thought for a minute. “I wouldn’t tell this to anybody but you, and you have to swear to keep it a secret.”

  I nodded. “I swear. I won’t tell.”

  She didn’t look at me while she spoke. “Well, you know I went to elementary school in Chicago, where we lived before.”

  I hadn’t known. I didn’t know her till we started at Claverford.

  “I was the least popular kid in my class. Nobody liked me. I was taller than anybody else, and they called me The Mountain.”

  She knew what it was like. It was hard to believe.

  “Then, before I started at Claverford, my dad said I could make it different here. So the first day, when we were all new, I figured it was my chance. I was friendly to everybody.”

  “Hold on.” Reggie had stopped to pee, and Ardis had gotten ahead of me.

  We started walking again, and she went on. “I smiled at everyone. I felt like a fake, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I said ‘hi.’ I said I was nervous about the first day of school, and isn’t this cafeteria food crummy, and who are your teachers? And then, that first day, I’ll never forget it, I was trying to figure out the combination on my locker, and I heard BeeBee whisper to Stephanie to look at me, I was beautiful. I couldn’t believe it. I was extra friendly to BeeBee after that. I would have given her a million dollars if I had it.” She giggled. “If she needed it.”

  “It’s that simple?” I said. I could do it, be extra friendly at Elliot next year, except that most of the kids came from Claverford, so they’d already know me.

  Ardis nodded and laughed. “Yeah.” She shrugged. “Although that was the hardest day of my life. And now sometimes I’m nice to people I don’t like or when I really feel like screaming. But it’s better than being The Mountain. And . . .” She shrugged again. “Anyway, my parents raised me to be polite.”

  Reggie began to drag on the leash. We were almost home, and he didn’t want the walk to end. “Come on, boy. Why do you think Nina and BeeBee are popular, then?”

  “Why are you worried, Wilma? There isn’t a single person at Claverford who doesn’t think you’re . . . I can’t think of a word that’s good enough. Extremely . . . uh . . . ultra ultra . . . Super likable.”

  “What do they like so much about me?”

  “I don’t know. For me it’s nothing specific. It’s just that it’s more fun to be with you, doing anything, than to be with anyone else. Like at BeeBee’s sleepover. Like now.”

  So it didn’t matter what I said or did. If the old lady was going to end the spell, couldn’t she have helped me some more? Couldn’t she have made them all fall in love with my real good points?

  “Forget about me. What do you think makes Nina and BeeBee popular?”

  “You’re completely nuts. Reggie, you should straighten out your friend here. Okay. BeeBee doesn’t care about being popular. She ignores it, and that works. And Nina’s popular because kids are afraid not to like her—they’re scared she’ll turn her point system against them, even though she wouldn’t.”

  We turned into my building. I rang for the elevator.

  “Do you think I’ll get over being scared of Reggie eventually?”

  “Sure. Once you got used to him. He’d train you.”

  “I’ll visit you regularly for the next decade.”

  I wish.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ardis looked around. “I like your apartment.”

  I was surprised. It wasn’t fabulous like BeeBee’s. Inside the door, next to where we were standing, was a table where we dumped whatever we had when we came in. Right now it was covered with my backpack, a week’s worth of junk mail, and today’s New York Times. From here you could see into the kitchen and the living room. In the living room, the coffee table was piled high with more newspapers and a few books. A quilt was draped across the couch and trailed onto the floor.

  It wasn’t dirty, just messy. The rug was vacuumed, for example, and Mom didn’t let us leave dirty dishes in the sink.

  “In our house,” Ardis said, “we have to take our shoes off before we come in, and I feel guilty about my smelly feet touching the floor.”

  We went into the living room. Maud was in our bedroom studying. Mom was at the soup kitchen where she volunteers.

  “Show me the caricature.”

  “Close your eyes.”

  The caricatures were in the coat closet. I pulled out the poster-size one of me. I really wanted Ardis to like it, to see it the way Jared and I did.

  I held it up against my chest. “Ready.”

  Ardis opened her eyes. Silence.

  “It’s interesting?” I giggled nervously.

  “It’s funny,” Ardis finally said. “But you’re much prettier.”

  I was? Really?

  She was quiet again.

  “It’s funny because it’s true. My teeth are too big, and my neck is too short.”

  “Not like that. It’s not noticeable, except to a caricaturist—”

  “Or to somebody like Suzanne Russo.” And to me.

  “Yeah,” Ardis sa
id. “Suzanne probably thinks everybody looks like a caricature. And nobody—especially not Suzanne—will understand why you’re letting Jared show a drawing of you that’s . . .” She searched for a word. “. . . that’s not flattering.”

  I was letting him because it seemed like a good joke to share with people. But maybe I should call him tonight and tell him I changed my mind. I could give him a real photo of me to put up in his locker.

  Ardis sank into Mom’s chair. “Look, Wilma. Remember how we talked about popularity before? Well, none of—”

  Reggie started barking. The doorbell rang.

  Just when Ardis was saying something important. Who could it be, anyway?

  “I’ll get it,” I yelled to Maud. If I didn’t answer the door, she’d tell Mom how I made her interrupt her studying.

  Ardis said, sounding surprised, “Reggie barks at everyone, not only me.”

  I dropped the poster on the couch. “Don’t forget what you were saying before. I want to hear it.”

  I opened the door. Suzanne stood there, holding a shrink-wrapped box that Reggie started sniffing. “I didn’t know you had company,” she said before she even looked in the living room.

  She knew.

  “Hi, Ardis,” she called.

  “Suzanne!” Ardis rushed at her. “What are you doing here? Wilma was showing me her videotapes, but before that we were in the kitchen. Let’s go back in there. I like it better there.”

  She was diverting Suzanne from the poster. She was protecting me. That was so nice that a lump formed in my throat.

  Suzanne glanced suspiciously into the living room but followed Ardis. Reggie came after us, still interested in Suzanne’s package.

  “What’s that?” Ardis pointed at the box.

  “Gourmet dog treats. I came over to give them to your dog.” She handed them to me.

  “What’s a gourmet dog treat?” Ardis asked.

  “How should I know?” Suzanne said. “But I’m dying to find out. Open it, Wilma.”