The sound of the gumballs rolling across the floor seems to be the only thing I can hear. A few people pick them up and toss them in the garbage, but the others just ignore them, as if they don’t exist. Or maybe they expect me to race around and collect all two dozen of them.
Ben is pursing his lips because he obviously doesn’t want to laugh, like the rest of the class is. Mrs. Vickers mercifully gets everyone’s attention and class resumes as my cheeks heat up and nearly burst into flames.
I can’t live like this. I have to figure out how to end the wishes.
I spend the rest of the class scribbling mathematical notes while leaning away from Ben. I feel really bad when he discreetly sniffs his armpits, because it’s obvious that he thinks I’m repulsed by him.
He can never know the truth, which is the very opposite of repulsion.
By the time I make it to history, I feel like I need to take one deep breath after another to make up for math. I’m positively gleeful when I discover we’re watching some kind of movie on Europe, because it means I can zone out and figure out a plan.
The film starts up and the lights go down, and I listen halfheartedly as the narrator talks about the storied history of Italy and how a lot of amazing painters and artists come from there.
The guy to my left, the one wearing a ridiculously fluffy sweater even though it’s an unseasonable seventy-five degrees out, raises his hand. “Uh, Mr. Martin? The subtitles aren’t working.”
The teacher looks up from his desk and then nods. “Sorry, just one moment.”
The teacher goes through some of the DVD menus and gets the subtitles turned on and then hits play again. As the narrator continues his monologue about the priceless works of art still found in Venice and Rome, I have a shocking realization: I don’t need the subtitles.
I understand Italian.
I have never, not once, taken a course in Italian, unless that includes mispronouncing the menu at Olive Garden and listening to the waitress correct me.
Unbelievable. I listen for a few more minutes to the lilt of the narrator’s accent, soaking in the words.
Elegante. Famoso. Rinomato. Museo.
Every word makes sense. As my classmates stare intently at the subtitles, I close my eyes and listen, and I know what is being said.
My father left us seven years ago. When the divorce was final, he wasted no time moving to Italy. His parents still live there, and he is a dual citizen. He attended a university here in the States, which was where he met my mother. I guess moving across town or across the state wasn’t enough for him. He had to put a whole ocean between him and us, the family he apparently didn’t want anymore.
When I was ten, a year after he left, I remember wishing I knew Italian so that I could visit him and prove that I could live in Italy with him. I figured if I knew the language, he’d let me stay, and everything would be good again. I could be a dual citizen just like him. I borrowed an Italian textbook from the library, but it was a hopeless cause and I gave up on the idea.
I remember sniffling as I pushed the book through the return slot. I was heartbroken watching it disappear into the hole, my hopes disappearing with it. Failing at Italian sealed my fate.
I was never going to see him again. I just knew it.
“This is not nap time, Miss McHenry. I do expect you to watch the film with the rest of the class.”
“Oh!” I say, my eyes popping open to meet the stern gaze of Mr. Martin. “Sorry. It’s, uh, just so rare for me to hear, uh, clear Italian. I was just listening.”
“Do you speak Italian?” He gives me a skeptical look. Mr. Martin is the sort of teacher who probably keeps a secret blacklist of students he dislikes, adding to it each day. I mean, he’s looking at me right now like I left the faucet running and flooded his house.
I nod and clear my throat. Either I
think
I speak Italian or I really do. Here goes nothing.
“Posso parlare bene nell’italiano. Non oh bisogno dei sottotitoli per capire il film.”
His expression changes. I can see that
he
doesn’t understand Italian and is trying to decide if my words sound real or totally made up. Seeing as I’m not totally sure either, I tense, waiting for his answer.
Then he just shrugs. “I see. Carry on, then.”
“Grazie,”
I say as my classmates turn to look at me. I just smile and rest my head on my desk and close my eyes.
Well, at least Ben isn’t going to kiss me today.
Although that means I just totally humiliated myself in math for nothing.
16
BY THE TIME
the day is done, I’ve made it through all my classes, I still haven’t seen Nicole, and Ben gave me an odd look as we passed in the hall. All I want is to get home and pull my quilt over my head and pretend like nothing exists outside my bedroom door, even if that means locking Ann out.
I’m only halfway across the ball fields in the back of the school when I see Ann strolling down the sidewalk. She must have found some rope in the shed because she’s made some kind of makeshift halter and she’s leading the horse along with it, letting it stop for bites of grass here and there.
“Mannaggia,”
I mutter to myself. Then I blink a few times. Great, now I’m even
thinking
Italian.
I jog across the rest of the baseball field, meeting up with her before she makes it all the way to the school. I glance back behind me and realize that several students are standing in the nearby parking lot, staring.
Great. If enough people didn’t see Ann at school before, now they get to see her and the life-sized My Little Pony. Ann is bound and determined to ruin my life.
“I told you to stay in the shed!”
“It was boring in there. And the pony was hungry for more than old carrots. I wasn’t going to go on campus, I swear. Just around it.”
I glance back over my shoulder. People are pointing.
“Fine. I’ll figure out what to feed that thing tonight. But you have to get it back to the shed.”
Ann pouts. “I still don’t see why you’re punishing
me
. It’s not my fault you had a magical birthday cake.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. It wasn’t—” The words die in my throat, and I blink a few times, staring at Ann but not really seeing her. Her frizzed-out red hair looks like a fuzzy blob of fire.
What if it
was
the cake?
I’ve made
lots
of birthday wishes. Every year, I made a wish. But none of them ever came true.
Until now.
And while my wish making was pretty consistent (close eyes, make wish, blow out candles), one thing changed: a gigantic pink mass of sugar.
I
knew
that stupid cake was trouble. With its four layers, big swirling icing, pink flowers, fancy candles . . .
“Ann, you’re a genius,” I finally say when my vision swims back into focus.
“I am?”
“Yes. Come with me. I have an idea.”
We walk back to the house, the pony trotting merrily along to keep up with our longer strides. Its head bobs happily as its blue-streaked tail drags on the ground.
A car slows down, the driver leaning out the window to get a good look at my walking freak show. The pony is happy as can be, jogging along, occasionally nipping at pieces of grass.
I look back at her. Okay, so it
is
kind of cute. Especially when it wiggles its lips against my pocket, as if I have a treat in there and I’m holding out.
“Quit it,” I say with a smile, knocking the pony’s nose away. It seems to be annoyed, and it nips back at me.
“Ouch!” I jump ahead a few feet, out of the range of the pony’s teeth. Freakin’ thing just bit me.
“Where are we going?” Ann asks, quickening her steps to catch up.
“To the supermall. Well, not the mall, but a bakery nearby.”
“Ooh, a bakery?”
“Yeah. I figure we can go to the same bakery where my mom got my sweet-sixteen cake and maybe I can buy a replica cake and make another wish to undo the one from my birthday.”
Raggedy Ann yanks me to a stop and the pony smashes into us. “You’re going to get rid of me?”
Her mouth is hanging open and she looks . . . horrified.
I cringe a little. I hadn’t thought about her reaction to this plan. To be honest, I hadn’t thought about her at all.
“Ann, there are wishes I made that just cannot come true. It’ll ruin my life and my best friend’s life and . . . it just can’t happen. So I have to undo this.”
“But I’ll be stuck in that stupid box forever!”
“I won’t make you sit in the box. You can hang out in my bed again,” I say, even though the very sound of that idea seems too creepy to actually do.
“No way! I’m just starting to figure out this whole walking thing! You can’t turn me back into a doll!”
Ann looks like she’s going to either hyperventilate or run screaming down the street. I swear even her
freckles
are trembling.
“Okay, okay, calm down. I won’t undo everything. I’ll exclude you when I make my wish,” I say.
Except I don’t think I can actually do that, because I can’t risk botching the unwish by trying to exclude her.
And also? Where is she going to live? Somehow I don’t think my mom would buy that she has to live in my room because she’s really my toy come to life. And I think you need birth certificates to go to school.
As Ann throws her arms around me in gratitude, I choke down the guilt in the back of my throat. She doesn’t belong here, and she can’t stay. It’s totally not mean of me to send her back, because that’s what any rational human being would do. Obviously.
She’s a doll.
When I open the doors to the shed, I discover it’s even messier than it was this morning. The pony has, ewww, totally pooped in here. And the gumball bags are in even worse shape, spilling everywhere.
There’s hardly any room for the pony. But we have no choice, so we lock it up in the shed with a bucket of water and a pile of hand-picked grass and cross our fingers that it doesn’t eat any of the gum and get sick because that would be
exactly
what I need to put the cherry on top of this whole mess. Then we jump in my brother’s truck and head to the mall.
I’m a little nervous about driving that far the very same day I got my license, but I don’t have to get onto the freeway, so I figure I can manage. We’ll be back before my mom gets home, so hopefully no one will know about our little excursion.
Twenty minutes later, I’m driving around the parking lot near the mall, heading to Cassie’s Confections, the place my mom always uses. I know, because I’ve seen the invoices sitting on her desk. Cassie has a
really
weird logo: It’s a dancing fish. You ask me, you probably shouldn’t associate a fish (and thus, that nasty fishy smell) with a bakery, but whatever. At least it’s memorable. A quick call to 411, and I know exactly where to look.
I should have known based on the fact that my cake looked like it came from
The Wizard of Oz
that it was going to be trouble. I mean, the four tiers alone was ridiculous, let alone all those whimsical swirls and flowers.
I pull up at the bakery and Ann jumps out as soon as it’s in park. Maybe she wants to be sure I don’t race in, make a wish on the first cake I see, and ensure her disappearance.
We step inside the bakery, and I’m immediately assaulted by the smell of sweets. A display case is packed to overflowing with cookies, donuts, cupcakes, and a dozen or so sheet cakes with cartoon characters and golf clubs and wedding bells covering them.
A short, rotund woman is standing next to the display case, spraying it with Windex and wiping vigorously at its surface, her belly sort of shaking, like a bowl full of jelly.
“Hi,” I say as I walk up to her. “My mom got me a sweet-sixteen cake a few weeks ago. Four layers, pink frosting? I was wondering if I could get another one. Maybe smaller, but almost identical.”
The woman just keeps buffing away at the glass. “I haven’t done a sweet sixteen in about a month. And I don’t do layers.”
I blink. That can’t be right. “But my mom uses you all the time. Are you sure?”
The lady points to the cakes in the case and then picks up her Windex bottle again and sprays it, so that the desserts look blurry through the cleaner that drips down the glass. “Sheet cakes only. Like those.”
“Do you have a worker here who might have made it?”
“Nope.” She picks up the white rag and starts buffing again, big swirly round motions.
If only she could erase my wish as easily as the dirt on the glass.
“Okay,” I say, my voice falling. “Thanks anyway.”
Great. So now I have to figure out where my mom got my cake. And by the time she gets home tonight, it’ll be too late to go on another expedition. I’m going to have to make it through at least one more wish.
I just have to pray that the wish is not Ben.
To console myself, we head to Mama Tortini’s, an authentic Italian restaurant a few blocks away. Eating something deliciously cheesy is about the only thing I can think of that would cheer me up right now. The waiters are actually Italian there, with thick accents and dark hair. I might as well try out my newfound language skills, right?
When the hostess seats us, she stares at Raggedy Ann’s clothing with an upturned brow. Whatever. It’s not like the hostess’s black nylons, black skirt, and white men’s-style dress shirt with black tie is any better.
At least Ann’s outfit has a little originality to it.
Though I guess I should probably loan Ann some of my wardrobe, huh? Then at least it wouldn’t be so embarrassing to be seen with her. Guess we’ll pick something out when we get home. I kind of thought she’d be gone before I had to worry about this.
I decide to go all out and I order fancy blended drinks for us, and it’s all worth it when Ann’s eyes practically bug out of her head. “This is so good!” She sucks so hard on the straw she looks like she’s doing the sour-lemon face, and the glass quickly drops to half empty.