She looks rather comfortable, lying diagonally across the mattress, snuggled inside a sleeping bag, my quilt over the top. She has two pillows, one under her arm and the other under her head.
An errant gumball is under my calf, and I resist the urge to throw it at Ann. Instead I toss it in the garbage can.
I push my hair out of my face and glare at her, though she doesn’t seem to notice because she’s snoring loudly.
“Buon giorno,”
I mutter under my breath. The words are nice even if my tone isn’t.
I kneel and pick up the ruler from the bookshelf next to me and poke her with it. Her snore turns into this weird gurgle for a minute, but then she resumes the sound of sawing wood.
Whatever.
I put a hand on the bed and stand up, but I feel oddly off balance, like I’m standing on gumballs.
I swear, if those things show up again . . .
A quick look, though, shows me there’s nothing between my feet and the brown Berber. Weird. It’s like the ground is uneven. I keep leaning forward and have to force myself upright.
I walk to my closet, but I sway again and have to grab ahold of the doorknob to catch myself. I close my eyes for a minute, trying to find my balance.
My equilibrium is all messed up. It’s like that stood-up-too-fast feeling you get when you’ve been vegging on the couch all day and then you jump to your feet. The world is a little crooked, and my legs are swaying underneath me to compensate. It would be one thing if I’d overloaded on sugar, but that’s not the case this morning. Unless you count Ann’s saccharine-sweet personality.
I glance at Ann one more time on my way to the bathroom. She’s so not moving. I guess she only
thought
she didn’t need sleep.
Just before I flip the shower on, I turn around and happen to glimpse myself in the mirror.
And let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Oh. Mio. Dio.
Boobs.
I have boobs.
I clamp my hand over my mouth and stare, my eyes wider than they’ve ever been, at my chest. I wore a tank top to bed, and I have enough cleavage to work at Hooters. And I’m not even wearing a bra.
Er, I don’t think I even
own
a bra that would harness these things.
I swallow and step forward until I am directly in front of the mirror.
“Honey? You okay in there?” my mom calls through the door. The knob is turning.
Uh-oh.
“Don’t come in!” I shout. “I’m, uh, naked. I’m okay, I just . . . um, stubbed my toe. I’m fine!”
I look over at the doorknob, willing my mom to let it go. If she walks in right now, there’s no way I could explain away these babies.
The knob spins back into its normal resting position. “Okay. I’ve got a company-picnic thing today, so I’ll be gone until at least six or seven tonight. I left a twenty on the counter so you and your brother can get some pizza.”
I sigh, not moving my eyes from my reflection. Another pizza night. Of course. I wonder if she’ll ever eat another meal with us again.
“Okay,” I say when I realize I haven’t answered. I’m still staring at myself in the mirror.
“Bye,” she says, her footsteps retreating down the hall.
My heart is beating so loudly that it’s making my chest heave, which makes me think of some horrible romance novel.
Because I have heaving bosoms. Or is it a bosom?
Whatever.
I pick my hands up, and they kind of hover over my chest. I don’t think I can touch them. That’s too . . . weird. Because they’re not really
mine
, per se. They’re . . .
Magic boobs.
Perfect.
I groan and drop my hands back to the counter. Steam is starting to fill the bathroom, and the top of the mirror is fogging over. I lean against the counter and get as close to the mirror as I can and then stare down my own shirt.
I feel like a perv right now. This is so creepy.
I bet I was twelve when I wished for these. I guess twelve-year-old boys and twelve-year-old girls think about the same thing, because I hated being flat chested. Nicole was an early bloomer, and I felt like such a dork next to her. All the boys stared at her boobs, completely ignoring me, like I didn’t exist. I just stood there, her boy-shaped bestie.
That was the year we went roller skating for my birthday. My mom rented out this little room at the rink and brought in a cake and some of my relatives, and me and Nicole spent two hours straight skating. A group of boys was there. We talked about them all that night, eating candy and staying up late.
Eventually, the steam overtakes the window and I can’t see my reflection anymore. It’s just a shimmery silhouette.
A curvy, shimmery silhouette.
How am I going to hide this? Everyone is going to think I’m stuffing.
And not even in a subtle way, either. I went from an A cup to at least a C. Maybe a D.
EWWW, I’m going to have to raid my mom’s bra drawer! At least, just until I get to the store. I’ll just buy one bra that fits right to get me through until I get the wishes undone.
At least it’s Saturday. Going to school like this is going to be a nightmare.
I have two days to figure out how to hide my ginormous new rack.
18
IT TAKES ME
twenty minutes of digging through my closet to find an outfit that works on Ann, let alone one for me that will hide my chest.
I tend to like a lot of fluorescent colors with really bad designs on them, and the colors do
not
work well on Ann, being that she’s a redhead. She does like trying it all on, though, throwing clothes all over my room in her excitement.
I bet there are a lot of ten-year-olds who would pay big money to have an actual life-sized doll who likes playing dress up. Maybe I should rent Ann out as a babysitter. Two birds, one stone.
She ends up in a baby-blue tank top I haven’t worn since eighth grade and a pair of torn-up jeans. She seems to be a size smaller than I am, so I have to find a belt for her so they won’t fall off.
Even with the ill-fitting jeans, though, she looks kind of hot.
Raggedy Ann has a banging body. Who knew.
While her hair is still wet from a shower, it looks kind of normal—almost cute, because the water has tamed her curls. The strands look longer, straighter, and the darkened red is much prettier than the orangey red she normally sports.
But by the time we’ve been in the car for ten minutes with the windows down, her hair has gone insane, a little like Sideshow Bob on
The Simpsons
. Ann spends the whole ride giggling about the way it’s whipping her in the face, halfheartedly trying to hold it down around the nape of her neck.
I have my mom’s twenty in the pocket of my plaid cutoff shorts. They don’t really match my hoodie, but I’m wearing it anyway to hide my honkers. It made sense at home, but now I feel really weird, like I shouldn’t have left the house looking this freakish.
Ann follows me into Fred Meyer, and I grab a small cart.
I’m on a mission.
I was so distracted by my new boobs that I forgot to talk to my mom about the bakery. I don’t want to wait another day, so we’re moving to plan B: I’ll bake my own cake, a perfect mini-replica of the sweet-sixteen monstrosity. I’ll do four small layers and decorate them with frosting flowers and put four candles on each tier. If I’m careful, I bet I can get it to look quite similar to the birthday cake.
Then I’ll make Ann sing me “Happy Birthday,” I’ll blow them out, and when I open my eyes, she’ll be gone, my chest will shrink, I won’t be spouting off in Italian every time I’m annoyed, the pony will be in her make-believe plastic barn, and the gumballs will be occupying gumball machines everywhere.
Let’s be real here—if those are the first five wishes, do I really want to know what the others are?
Ann follows me across the store, her eyes roving all over the place. She keeps stopping at various end caps and picking up bags of chips and two-liter bottles of soda. She pokes the fresh loaves of French bread and she knocks over a few boxes of crackers.
This is an amusement park to her.
“Ann! I don’t have all day!”
Technically I guess I
do
have all day, but I’m on a mission here. She groans and stomps after me to the baking aisle, and we stare at the cake-mix boxes for a few moments in silence.
“This one looks yummy,” she says, holding up a box of German-chocolate mix.
“It needs to be white. Like this one.”
I hold up a box with a picture of a white-frosted cake.
“Sprinkles!” she shouts, jumping up and down.
Just kill me now.
I toss two boxes into the cart and then ponder whether I’m totally sure that it was white mix. It could have been yellow.
I crouch down and reach over to grab the yellow mix off the bottom shelf. When I lean forward, my new chest knocks into the shelf and a half-dozen cake-mix boxes make loud
smack
sounds as they land on the floor.
I stare at them, contemplating just leaving them, then sigh and scoop them up and place them back on the shelves. When I stand up, I have to grab ahold of the cart to keep from tripping.
Next we pick out an assortment of frosting, including some pink stuff in tubes that should work for making the flowers. I grab a box of birthday candles and then drag Ann down to the refrigerated aisle to get some eggs and milk.
My back hurts a little already. I feel like I have mountains sticking straight out, and it’s hard to reach for things because I knock into them. So not fun.
And also? It is so odd wearing your mom’s bra. I took one straight out of the dryer so I know it’s clean and all, but it totally gives me the willies.
I drag Ann over to the clothing section. If she was excited over the food, she’s
ecstatic
over the clothing.
“You can buy
any
of this?”
I look over at her. She’s holding up a pink V-neck with lacy arms and flowers all over it.
“Yep. And they’ll give you the noose to hang yourself too.” Ann regards me with a skeptical look and then shrugs and puts the shirt back on the rack. I wonder how long it will take her to pick up sarcasm and wield it against me. I give her until tomorrow.
My mom’s bra is a C cup. I think I’m probably supposed to be a D now, because I think I might bust right out of the top of it, but I refuse to buy anything with a D on it. I buy the most full-coverage C cup I can find and also a sports bra. Maybe if they don’t have shape, they won’t look so gigantic.
For good measure, I find the first aid supplies and grab some Ace bandages. Maybe I can bind them down and make them less . . .
Obtrusive.
By the time I’ve left, I’ve spent forty-four dollars’ worth of my birthday money and all of the twenty my mom left on the counter. There goes the pizza dinner for my brother. Poor guy, he’ll be eating Hot Pockets again.
I use the last six dollars I have in my pocket for a couple of dollar cheeseburgers, which Ann and I scarf down on the way back to the house.
This whole cake thing better work.
Because as it turns out, getting everything you ever wished for is really expensive.
19
ANN AND I
get out the measuring cups and spoons and a few giant bowls. I flip on MTV, which, shockingly, is playing music videos. Katy Perry is just coming on-screen, introducing another poppy, bouncy song. She probably has a choreographed dance with a bowl of fruit later.
Ann is really excited about our baking experiment. “I’ve never baked a cake before!” she says, throwing her arms out. Her hands knock into one of the boxes of mix and it flies off the granite countertop and lands on the travertine-tiled floor with a loud
smack
.
At least it wasn’t open yet.
“Chill,” I say, picking up the box and ripping the top off.
She smiles and scrunches her shoulders up like a little kid who has been scolded. “But this is so cool! I saw your birthday cake when you turned eleven, you know. You put me on the counter, right next to it. It was this giant homemade thing. I think it was a turtle.”
I scrunch up my brows. “I had a cake that looked like a turtle?”
She nods enthusiastically. “Green frosting and lots of sprinkles. It looked delicious.”
“Oh. Um, right.” I’m not sure what to say to that. Ann has a spectacular memory. I change the subject. “Uh, okay, we need to put the white mix in this bowl and the yellow in that bowl and get all the lumps out, because I don’t know where my mom put the sifter.”
My mom had this whole gourmet kitchen designed and stocked with fancy gadgets, because once upon a time she really liked cooking. I loved it too. We’d spend hours creating gourmet meals and then we’d make my brother and my dad sit at the table with blindfolds and we’d have them taste test it. They pretended to hate it, groaning and protesting, but they always sat right down and put the blindfolds on and then ate until they could barely move and we almost had to roll them into the living room.
My mom and I wouldn’t tell them what the food was. We’d just make them open their mouths on cue and accept the spoonful of whatever we made. We’d giggle when their faces turned sour and then tell them all the ingredients.
It was amazing, the glow of my family when we were happy. Like we were one big clan from
Leave It to Beaver.
But then he left and it’s not the same with just my brother, and then my mom got too busy with her company and started leaving us cash for Chinese takeout or pizza delivery, and the gourmet tasting parties became just a memory.
I hand Ann a fork and the box of yellow mix, and she sets to work pouring it into the bowl and mashing down the lumps with her fork.
Then she eats a forkful of cake dust. It sticks to her lips.
“Ew! Don’t do that.”
“Oh! Sorry.” Then she puts the licked fork back into the mix.