Wish Girl (19 page)

“It's so beautiful,” Laura said.

Carlie put her finger to her lips. “Shh.”

I would never have believed they could do it, but they did. My whole family held as still as statues—as still as I did, almost. We watched the wind start across the valley, blowing tree branches like blades of grass. It shifted over the edge of the hill at our feet, hesitant.

But no one moved, no one spoke. Then Carlie pointed one chubby finger up.

It was like a conductor had lifted a baton. As her arm came down, the chorus frogs started peeping all around us, their trills echoing until it seemed like there were a million of them. A whippoorwill called across the hill and another one answered, back and forth, until they were calling out to each other, a counterpoint to the frogs.

An owl sang out, and the lap of water on stone inexplicably sailed all the way from Pretty Pool to my ears, calling me.

I shook my head. My mother had wrapped her hand in mine and was holding on tight, like she was afraid she might be swept away by the breeze. I peeked at her face; it was shining with tears . . . but she was smiling as wide as I'd ever seen.

And Dad was smiling right next to her. They were holding hands, too. I hadn't seen them do that in years.

The night became music, with owls and more nightjars adding their notes to the chorus . . . and then the light show began.

The valley was showing off. I thought I'd seen a lot of fireflies before, with Annie. But now, the whole valley seemed to come to life, the fireflies blinking and moving like circling constellations below us, echoing the real ones that had begun to appear above.

“Dight,” Carlie whispered, pointing. “Dight.”

The fireflies came dancing up from the valley floor in great spirals, in looping ribbons of light. For a moment, I almost thought the ribbon spelled out Annie's name—but then the fireflies were there, with us, surrounding us. They landed on me—on Carlie, too, and Mom and Dad and Laura—sparkling like lighted jewels until we all four shone and twinkled.

Like we were stars ourselves, bits of stardust, fallen to earth.

“It's magic,” Laura sighed.

“Yes,” I said.

“It's music. The most beautiful . . . is it always like this?” Dad asked, his lips hardly moving. A wreath of fireflies lit up his face.

“Sometimes,” I said as softly as my breath would allow, remembering the wild boar, the deer, the dandelion fluff in Annie's hair. “Sometimes it's even more magical. When you're really still.”

I felt Dad's hand on my shoulder, Laura's head leaning up against my legs, Mom's arms across my back, her hand still in mine, and Carlie warm and soft against my chest—and suddenly, for the first time in my life, I knew. I was home.

Really home.

I had made so many wishes, mostly to be left alone, to be by myself. But that wasn't what I'd needed, or at least not all of it. Deep down, I'd also needed my family around me, listening with me. To me.

Knowing who I was and loving me for it.

For a moment like this, I'd put up with a thousand hours of drums and guitars.

I had to tell them. When I did, Dad let out a broken sob. “Oh, Peter. What have I done to you?”

I'd never heard so much sadness in his voice.

“I'm sorry,” I breathed. As I did, the fireflies flew up in one great cloud, circling over our heads before they fell down into the valley, a blanket of light that dispersed before it tumbled to the earth below.

“No,” Mom said, pulling Dad closer and turning me to face them. “We're sorry. We never knew. Never knew this was even possible. It's so beautiful.”

She clutched me to her, squishing Carlie, who mournfully protested, in the middle. “Mo dight?”

“Yes,” Mom whispered. “We'll come back tomorrow and do it again. Whenever Peter wants us to come. If that's all right?”

“It's perfect,” I said, grabbing her and feeling Dad wrap his arms around us all. “It's a wish come true.”

It was better than anything I'd ever wished for. My life was going to be better than I'd ever dreamed, better than it ever had been—except for those days in the valley with Annie.

Annie.

If only Annie were still with me. Still in the valley. Still in the world, even. Still . . . Annie.

The sky got darker then, like a great lamp had been dimmed, and I knew I would be okay. I wouldn't run away again, wouldn't have to. But I would never be as happy as I had been. Even if everything at home changed, got perfect, Annie was gone.

And no amount of wishing would bring her back.

I
spent the rest of the summer making green grape jelly with Mrs. Empson, teaching Carlie how to be still enough that rabbits would come up and eat off her lap, and hugging Mom ten thousand times. She was still worried I would disappear again, I guessed. But I didn't want to run away anymore, no farther than the valley, in any case. I had everything I wanted. A friend, if I counted crazy Mrs. Empson (which I did), family, and—now that Dad had invested in some soundproofing for his music-room walls—I even had enough peace to think.

I had everything except Annie.

I'd tried to find her. Dad had even helped. We'd called MD Anderson, but they wouldn't give us any information, except that she had been a patient there. I sent a letter with photos of the art I had finished in the valley the month before school started. I'd tried to make real art, as Annie would say, but it wasn't the same. It was like the valley was asleep, after that last night when I had shown my family. That night Annie had gone away.

Maybe she had taken the magic with her. Maybe it had been her all along, bringing the magic to the place.

Maybe she had been a real wish girl after all.

I tried, though. I made forms out of cut grapevines, then waited until dark for the fireflies to come out. I took pictures of the few lightning bugs I could coax along the vines. My favorite photo was the one where the shape looked exactly like a rain lily.

I wouldn't have called my art
transformational,
but I thought Annie might have liked it. She'd probably call it
evocative
, or
phenomenological
, or some other word I'd never heard.

If she remembered words like those.

I wondered about that for a long time. Wondered if she'd recovered. If she'd had to do the treatment. If there was still any Annie left in the world, or if all that was left was what was in my heart.

There was a lot of Annie there, of course. My heart was so full of her, of memories of that week, sometimes it felt like she was there for real. When I was in the valley or sitting by Pretty Pool. Even when I saw Doug and Jake—from far away, since the police had had a talk with them and their parents about charges that might need pressing or something—I thought about Annie and how she had turned out to be the friend I hadn't known I'd needed.

The one who thought I was enough. Unique. Phenomenal.

I wished every day that she would come back. But my wishes never came true now. Annie had vanished, and she'd taken the magic with her.

And then, one day in early fall, a letter came.

There wasn't any writing, exactly. It was a picture drawn on paper that said “St. Jude's Children's Hospital” across the top.

It was hard to tell, but I thought . . . I thought it was a picture of damselflies covering a person—a girl who had little patches of bright red hair peeking through the insects' wings.

And at the bottom, like a title for the drawing, there were three words. The letters were all squished together and hard to read. But I was pretty sure it said:
Wish Girl, Transformed
.

My heart jumped, and I had to stop myself from shouting out loud. I grabbed the letter to my chest and ran as fast as I could to the rim of the valley. I held the page out in front of me, smiling as wide as I could. “Look,” I told the valley, “look! She's alive.”

Annie was alive. And making art.

And she remembered me.

Then I knew. Someday, she would come back. I knew it, like I knew how to be quiet, how to be still, how to listen. She would return to the valley and run with me through the soft thorn bushes, past the sleeping snakes, across meadows of fossils and flowers, through streams that flowed with water cleaner and purer than rain, followed by clouds of dragonflies and sparrows, butterflies and lightning bugs playing games in the sky. She would come back to us, and we would all be transformed, again and again.

I knew it. But, just to be sure, I spoke the words out loud: “I wish Annie would come back.”

The breeze rushed across the branches far below, moving the brush and trees on the floor of the valley, then up the sides in strange, living green waves as it raced to me, to my ears, to answer.

Yes.

When I was a girl, I spent my summers in a Texas hill country valley that I knew was a magical place. Many moments in this book were pulled from those memories, and I thank my sister, Lari Rogge, and my mother, Rae Dollard, for their help collecting the fossils from which I built this story.

A special thanks goes to Tara Adams, oncology nurse, leukemia survivor, and friend. Thank you for reading, encouraging, and answering endless questions about your work and experience. Any medical facts I got right are thanks to you! And any factual errors, of course, are all mine. Thanks also to my brother, Dr. Ryan Loftin, for help brainstorming in the early
and
late stages—you're the best Bubba ever.

April Coldsmith graciously helped me understand some of the ways childhood leukemia can affect parent behavior and a child survivor's personality. Although I wish you hadn't had the expertise to share, April, I am so grateful you offered it.

My writer friends fill my life with magic. Thank you especially to Shelli Cornelison, Shana Burg, Shellie Faught, and Diane Collier for your critique and encouragement, and to Suzie Townsend, Danielle Barthel, and everyone at New Leaf Literary for all that and more.

Gillian Levinson has the ability to read and truly hear what I mean to say—even if it isn't on the page yet. Thank you, Gillian, for your editorial skill and friendship, and to all the amazing people at Razorbill who made my wish a reality.

And, as always, my love and gratitude belong to my very own wishes come true: Dave, Cameron, and Drew.

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