2,938 words - teen fiction
Charlotte got sick the first week of spring. Mom and I thought she had the flu. Charlotte always got the flu when the weather changed.
When a week had gone by and Charlotte was still coughing, Mom got her out of bed and out of her dirty pajamas. She pulled a shirt and a little pair of leggings on her, poked a cough drop in her mouth, and handed her off to me.
“She needs some fresh air. Take her outside for the day, will you Katie?”
Mom was a business consultant who worked from home. But all that meant was she was never really home from work. Her office was the old guest bedroom on the first floor and was always overflowing with papers and phone calls.
I found an old quilt that smelled like laundry detergent - a good sign that it might be clean - and wrapped Charlotte up. She was four as of last summer, but she still held out her hands for me to pick her up. I didn’t mind carrying her. She was light and thin like the blanket that trailed onto the floor behind us, and she nestled her head against my neck.
I stood in the doorway of Mom’s office. Mom was sitting on her twirly chair, still in her pajamas because she didn’t have to go to any meetings on Saturdays, with a coffee cup in one hand, a red pen in the other and the phone tucked against her cheek.
“Yes, of course,” she said to the phone. She raised her eyebrows at me.
“Where should we go?” I whispered.
“What?” she mouthed at me.
“Outside.” I pointed to Charlotte and myself and shrugged. “Where should we go?”
“Oh yes, that sounds great!” said Mom. She shrugged one shoulder at me and turned to her computer. She set down the coffee on a stack of papers and started typing.
I hoisted Charlotte up higher on my hip and pushed open the screen door at the back of our house. We lived on the edge of our little empty town, so all you could see out back was big open fields stretching to the horizon. Most of them were dark brown with spring plowing. There was a wooden fence around what Mom called the backyard. But the fence was rotting and falling down, and the yard was really just a big abandoned farmer’s field that used to grow alfalfa. Now it was just a lot of weeds and brown grass.
“Hey Charlotte,” I said. “You awake?”
She picked up her head. “I'm awake.” And then she coughed on me.
I set her down in the grass and fixed my overall strap that was always falling off my shoulder. Charlotte put her thumb in her mouth. Next to her were two dandelions that had turned into little parachute seeds. I picked them and handed one to Charlotte, but I didn't know why I did it.
“This is a dandelion-blow,” I told her. “What you do is you make a wish and then try to blow all the seeds away. If you can, then maybe your wish will come true.” Sometimes.
Her eyes got very big and solemn. She pulled her thumb out of her mouth. “For real?”
I didn't look at her, but I nodded. “For real.”
“Katie?” Charlotte asked. “What’s your wish?” She didn’t know yet that wishes didn’t work. But that was alright with me.
“I can’t tell you,” I said.
Charlotte’s eyes got shiny with tears and her mouth turned into a perfect little frown.
"Otherwise it won't come true," I said.
Her lower lip stuck out. "But I never made a wish before!"
"Okay, fine." Sometimes Charlotte made her tragic face on purpose. "You can listen to my wish if you want.”
“'Kay.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes.
I closed mine and tried to think of a wish. But thinking was hard with Charlotte waiting for my thoughts to come out of my mouth. A peeked an eye open. Charlotte was right there next to me with round eyes, sucking her thumb. She looked so serious. Like she was waiting for a miracle. A miracle I knew would never happen.
She took her thumb out of her mouth and crunched on her cough drop.
"Don't do that. You'll break your teeth." I twirled my dandelion. "I wish for a brownie,” I said, because I knew I would never get one. Mom didn't bake. Then I blew hard and all the seeds came off.
“I wish for a brownie,” Charlotte whispered next to me and blew spit all over dandelion.
"You can’t have the same wish.”
“Why?"
“Because that’s my wish." And because it's never going to come true. "You have to have your own.”
“I like your wish," she said.
I crossed my arms. “That was my wish.”
“My wish too.” She stuck out her lower lip.
"Let's do something else." I twirled the empty stem in my fingers and threw it as far as I could. I shouldn't have told her about wishing on dandelions. It was dumb.
Charlotte tried to throw her stem too. It landed in front of me.
Charlotte pointed and I saw Mrs. Paterson waving from behind what was left of our fence.
“Hello!” I called, standing up and taking Charlotte's hand.
“Hello!” copied Charlotte.
We came over stood next to the fence.
“What are you young ladies up to?” Mrs. Paterson asked. She lived next door, which meant the closest house to ours. I could see it when I was sitting on the roof.
“Wishes,” said Charlotte. Then she coughed.
I pulled the blanket closer around her and lifted her onto the fence, setting her down carefully to make sure the wood didn't collapse.
“Wishes, eh?”
Charlotte coughed again, deep and heavy. I guessed her cough drop had dissolved.
"Oh, I almost forgot." Mrs. Paterson reached into her purse. "It might be a little squashed." She pulled out a plastic-wrapped lump. "Here, Ms. Charlotte. Baked it fresh this morning. I heard you were under the weather, and there's nothing like chocolate to cheer the soul." She peeled back the plastic wrap and handed the brown lump to Charlotte.
It was a brownie.
"Katie!" Charlotte's voice came up the stairs and I closed my bedroom door so I wouldn't have to hear her. I flopped on my bed and put a pillow over my face, breathing in the scent of my shampoo.
I just stayed there, with my eyes closed, trying to think about nothing. Which is impossible. So I thought about ice cream instead. And summer, when school would be over and I wouldn't have to talk to teacher's with frowns. When me and Keith could play basketball in his driveway all day long.
"Katie!" It was my Mom.
I shoved the pillow against my ears with my fists.
It was stupid to tell Charlotte to make a wish.
I didn't want to think about wishes anymore. Why had I picked up that dandelion? The last time I blew one and made all the seeds come off was a year ago. And that wish hadn't come true. Dad was never coming back.
My chest was tight, so I breathed deeper.
"Katie!" Mom's voice was high and out of control. "Katie! Get down here! Now!"
The panic in her voice made me sit up fast.
"Katie! Where are you?" Mom was screaming.
It made my blood all skittered and cold. I threw the pillow on the floor and dashed out the door.
Mom was at the bottom of the staircase holding Charlotte. Mom's face was white and Charlotte's forehead was bleeding. I took the stairs two at a time on the way down and had to grab the railing when my worn out sneakers slipped on the carpeted edge. "What is it? What happened?"
Charlotte was starting to cry, her eyes filling with tears that spilled over onto her cheeks. But she didn't make a sound. Her lower lip trembled.
"Take her. Get her in the car. Something isn't right. I'll grab my keys."
I lifted Charlotte from Mom's arms and cradled her, careful not to touch the cut on her forehead.
"She needs a heart transplant."
I heard Mom breath in a sob.
I leaned against the wall on the other side of the door. Charlotte was in a hospital bed with and needed to be holding my hand, but I needed to hear. I needed to know. If I didn't know, how could I fix it?
"There's a waiting list," the nurse said. "It's not very long for her age group, but there aren't many four-year-old hearts available either. She isn't going to last long without a transplant."
I pressed my forehead into the white wall, as hard as I could.
When the nurse spoke again, her voice was gentle, and it made me want to slap her. "I'm sorry. I don't think she'll make it to the top of the list."
Mom was crying steadily now. I could hear the way she was breathing. But I wasn't crying. Maybe I should be. Maybe I should have cried when Dad left. Maybe I should be crying all day every day.
"How long?" Mom asked.
I wanted to shove my fingers in my ears. That was a dumb question that no one wanted to know the answer to.
"I don't think she'll make it through the summer. Her heart is getting weaker by the day. It would take a miracle to save her. Prepare for the worst, but don't stop hoping. I've seen miracles happen."
I pushed away from the wall. Miracles didn't happen. Miracles were prayers that came true. Prayers God liked. And prayers were just another word for wishes. Wishes didn't come true. Not for me.
But they did come true for Charlotte.
Looking at her across the room in her paper gown with wires clicked to stickers on her chest, I made myself smile.
"What is mommy saying?" she asked.
I couldn't keep the smile for long. It was melting at the edges, running down my face. I pushed it back into place. "I'll be right back," I said. "I need you to make a wish."
I pushed open the door I had been listening through, almost knocking the nurse right over.
Mom turned fast, her face white. "Katie." She tried to mop up the tears.
I felt the door bump closed behind me.
"Were you ever going to tell me?" I asked.
I could see by the way her wide eyes flicked to the nurse that she hadn't been planning to tell me.
"Or were you just going to let it happen?" I asked. "Like you let it happen when Dad left."
Mom crumpled like a rag doll, her face falling, leaning back into the wall. "Katie." She put her hands to her face and tears leaked out of her eyes, her shoulders jerking with a sob. "Katie, don't."
I didn't answer, just ran down the hall, ran right out the twirly hospital door and into the grass of the front lawn. I needed a dandelion. I needed a wish.
There weren't any dandelions on the little patch of hospital grass. I kept running, across the street, kept running until I was standing in front of a gas station. There was a strip of grass between the station parking lot and the street. And there were five dandelions. Three had turned to seed. I pulled one of the dandelion-blows up and ran back to the hospital, my hand cupped around it to make sure the seeds didn't fall off yet.
"Charlotte!" I backed into the door to open it and swiped the curtain around her bed aside. I didn't see Mom anywhere. "Charlotte! I need you to make a wish."
She smiled. "I like wishes!" She looked exhausted.
"I know. I have one for you." I gave her the dandelion. "I need you to wish to get better."
As I said the words, I realized what they meant. It meant she'd have surgery. I knew what a transplant was. She needed someone else's heart. A heart that was working the way it should. She needed a dead girl's heart.
I closed my eyes to make the ground stop tipping.
I couldn't think about that. Not now.
Charlotte had to make the wish. That was all that mattered.
"You make a wish," Charlotte said trying to hand it back to me.
I held my hands up and shook my head. "This is your wish, Charlotte. Not mine."
She sniffed. "Your wish too." She looked like she was about to cry.
"Okay, fine," I said. "I'll be right back." I ran back out the door, sprinting to the gas station, gasping for breath. I grabbed up another dandelion, not caring if all the seeds fell off. It didn't matter. Charlotte had to make this wish.
I swung myself back into her room, panting. I held up the sorry-looking stem.
"'Kay," she said, blinking little tears out of her eyes. "You first."
"I'll make a wish," I said, getting my breath back under control. "And then you have to make the same wish."
She nodded and held her stem in both fists.
I closed my eyes and whispered, just loud enough for her to hear, "I wish my sister would get better." Then I blew every single seed that was left off that dandelion.
"I wish my sister would get better," Charlotte whispered and blew out her lips.
"No!" I snatched the dandelion away. "That's not what you were supposed to wish for!" My voice was loud and hard. "I don't need to get better! You do!"
Charlotte leaned away from me and started to cry.
Mom rushed into the room. "Oh, baby. What's wrong?" She put her hand on Charlotte's hair and stroked it. "You don't need to cry. Everything's going to be okay."
That was a lie.
Charlotte looked at me with tears in her eyelashes, her brown eyes murky with more. "Sorry, Katie," she said. "Sorry."
"What happened?" Mom asked me.
I stuck the dandelions behind my back, then realized I shouldn't have.
"What have you got?" Mom asked.
I held them out, my bald stem and Charlotte's full one.
"It's a wish," Charlotte said.
Mom looked between me and Charlotte. "What were you wishing for?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said, and threw the dandelions on the floor.
Charlotte started to cry again.
That night, I snuck outside after Mom Charlotte was asleep in her bed. Mom was sitting in the rocking chair beside her. She would never notice I'd left. It wasn't chilly. Not really. I kept walking, right down the road, all the way to the cemetery.
On my way, I picked another dandelion-blow. A girl at school once told me not to go in the graveyard at night because that's when the dead people are awake, but dead people aren't real. They're just gone.
I looked at Dad's headstone in the moonlight. He had probably turned into dirt by now.
Richard Madison. Beloved Husband and Father.
Then I looked at the dandelion-blow. Hard. I twirled it in my fingers and some of the seed tops glistened with early dew.
"I need to know," I said, "if this wish is going to come true. Because if it's not, there's no point in wishing it."
I stared until I couldn't see anything but the dandelion. Then I looked back at the headstone.
"Fine," I said out loud. "I'll make my wish anyway. It doesn't matter." I looked up at the stars. They looked a lot like the wet dandelion seeds, twinkling up there. So I pretended each star was a wish that God was looking at, choosing the best ones to come true. "I wish Charlotte's heart would get better and never need surgery," I said. "I wish..." This wish needed to be bright and big. It needed to light up the sky. It needed to shine so bold that God would have to notice it. "I wish Charlotte would live." It didn't sound loud enough though, so I said it again. "I wish Charlotte would live!"
I stepped forward and planted my feet in the grass, right in front of Dad. "Do you hear me?" I shouted. "I, Katie Madison, am making a wish for my sister to stay alive!"
I wished it so hard inside me my brain almost exploded.
Then I pulled in all the air my lungs could hold and made the dandelion seeds explode instead. The bald dandelion stem fell to the ground.
And that was when I started to cry.
I curled up on my side right there on Dad's grave and sobbed. Every tear I had been saving up from the moment Mom picked up the phone and listened to the police, poured out of me. I pictured them running over my hands like they did for Mom when she cried at the funeral, and I had just watched. And the tears in my memory looked like the dewy dandelion seeds. They looked like shimmery stars. Maybe all those tears were wishes. Maybe that's the real reason Mom cried and I didn't. Until now. Now I cried and wished so hard I figured there would be nothing left of me but a puddle of stars and moonlight when I finished.
When the tears ran out, all that was left was dry sobs and shaking. I collapsed back on the grass and watched the sky, waiting for my wish to light up.
Charlotte got sick the first week of spring. Mom and I thought she had the flu. Charlotte always got the flu when the weather changed.
When a week had gone by and Charlotte was still coughing, Mom got her out of bed and out of her dirty pajamas. She pulled a shirt and a little pair of leggings on her, poked a cough drop in her mouth, and handed her off to me.
“She needs some fresh air. Take her outside for the day, will you Katie?”
Mom was a business consultant who worked from home. But all that meant was she was never really home from work. Her office was the old guest bedroom on the first floor and was always overflowing with papers and phone calls.
I found an old quilt that smelled like laundry detergent - a good sign that it might be clean - and wrapped Charlotte up. She was four as of last summer, but she still held out her hands for me to pick her up. I didn’t mind carrying her. She was light and thin like the blanket that trailed onto the floor behind us, and she nestled her head against my neck.
I stood in the doorway of Mom’s office. Mom was sitting on her twirly chair, still in her pajamas because she didn’t have to go to any meetings on Saturdays, with a coffee cup in one hand, a red pen in the other and the phone tucked against her cheek.
“Yes, of course,” she said to the phone. She raised her eyebrows at me.
“Where should we go?” I whispered.
“What?” she mouthed at me.
“Outside.” I pointed to Charlotte and myself and shrugged. “Where should we go?”
“Oh yes, that sounds great!” said Mom. She shrugged one shoulder at me and turned to her computer. She set down the coffee on a stack of papers and started typing.
I hoisted Charlotte up higher on my hip and pushed open the screen door at the back of our house. We lived on the edge of our little empty town, so all you could see out back was big open fields stretching to the horizon. Most of them were dark brown with spring plowing. There was a wooden fence around what Mom called the backyard. But the fence was rotting and falling down, and the yard was really just a big abandoned farmer’s field that used to grow alfalfa. Now it was just a lot of weeds and brown grass.
“Hey Charlotte,” I said. “You awake?”
She picked up her head. “I'm awake.” And then she coughed on me.
I set her down in the grass and fixed my overall strap that was always falling off my shoulder. Charlotte put her thumb in her mouth. Next to her were two dandelions that had turned into little parachute seeds. I picked them and handed one to Charlotte, but I didn't know why I did it.
“This is a dandelion-blow,” I told her. “What you do is you make a wish and then try to blow all the seeds away. If you can, then maybe your wish will come true.” Sometimes.
Her eyes got very big and solemn. She pulled her thumb out of her mouth. “For real?”
I didn't look at her, but I nodded. “For real.”
“Katie?” Charlotte asked. “What’s your wish?” She didn’t know yet that wishes didn’t work. But that was alright with me.
“I can’t tell you,” I said.
Charlotte’s eyes got shiny with tears and her mouth turned into a perfect little frown.
"Otherwise it won't come true," I said.
Her lower lip stuck out. "But I never made a wish before!"
"Okay, fine." Sometimes Charlotte made her tragic face on purpose. "You can listen to my wish if you want.”
“'Kay.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes.
I closed mine and tried to think of a wish. But thinking was hard with Charlotte waiting for my thoughts to come out of my mouth. A peeked an eye open. Charlotte was right there next to me with round eyes, sucking her thumb. She looked so serious. Like she was waiting for a miracle. A miracle I knew would never happen.
She took her thumb out of her mouth and crunched on her cough drop.
"Don't do that. You'll break your teeth." I twirled my dandelion. "I wish for a brownie,” I said, because I knew I would never get one. Mom didn't bake. Then I blew hard and all the seeds came off.
“I wish for a brownie,” Charlotte whispered next to me and blew spit all over dandelion.
"You can’t have the same wish.”
“Why?"
“Because that’s my wish." And because it's never going to come true. "You have to have your own.”
“I like your wish," she said.
I crossed my arms. “That was my wish.”
“My wish too.” She stuck out her lower lip.
"Let's do something else." I twirled the empty stem in my fingers and threw it as far as I could. I shouldn't have told her about wishing on dandelions. It was dumb.
Charlotte tried to throw her stem too. It landed in front of me.
Charlotte pointed and I saw Mrs. Paterson waving from behind what was left of our fence.
“Hello!” I called, standing up and taking Charlotte's hand.
“Hello!” copied Charlotte.
We came over stood next to the fence.
“What are you young ladies up to?” Mrs. Paterson asked. She lived next door, which meant the closest house to ours. I could see it when I was sitting on the roof.
“Wishes,” said Charlotte. Then she coughed.
I pulled the blanket closer around her and lifted her onto the fence, setting her down carefully to make sure the wood didn't collapse.
“Wishes, eh?”
Charlotte coughed again, deep and heavy. I guessed her cough drop had dissolved.
"Oh, I almost forgot." Mrs. Paterson reached into her purse. "It might be a little squashed." She pulled out a plastic-wrapped lump. "Here, Ms. Charlotte. Baked it fresh this morning. I heard you were under the weather, and there's nothing like chocolate to cheer the soul." She peeled back the plastic wrap and handed the brown lump to Charlotte.
It was a brownie.
"Katie!" Charlotte's voice came up the stairs and I closed my bedroom door so I wouldn't have to hear her. I flopped on my bed and put a pillow over my face, breathing in the scent of my shampoo.
I just stayed there, with my eyes closed, trying to think about nothing. Which is impossible. So I thought about ice cream instead. And summer, when school would be over and I wouldn't have to talk to teacher's with frowns. When me and Keith could play basketball in his driveway all day long.
"Katie!" It was my Mom.
I shoved the pillow against my ears with my fists.
It was stupid to tell Charlotte to make a wish.
I didn't want to think about wishes anymore. Why had I picked up that dandelion? The last time I blew one and made all the seeds come off was a year ago. And that wish hadn't come true. Dad was never coming back.
My chest was tight, so I breathed deeper.
"Katie!" Mom's voice was high and out of control. "Katie! Get down here! Now!"
The panic in her voice made me sit up fast.
"Katie! Where are you?" Mom was screaming.
It made my blood all skittered and cold. I threw the pillow on the floor and dashed out the door.
Mom was at the bottom of the staircase holding Charlotte. Mom's face was white and Charlotte's forehead was bleeding. I took the stairs two at a time on the way down and had to grab the railing when my worn out sneakers slipped on the carpeted edge. "What is it? What happened?"
Charlotte was starting to cry, her eyes filling with tears that spilled over onto her cheeks. But she didn't make a sound. Her lower lip trembled.
"Take her. Get her in the car. Something isn't right. I'll grab my keys."
I lifted Charlotte from Mom's arms and cradled her, careful not to touch the cut on her forehead.
"She needs a heart transplant."
I heard Mom breath in a sob.
I leaned against the wall on the other side of the door. Charlotte was in a hospital bed with and needed to be holding my hand, but I needed to hear. I needed to know. If I didn't know, how could I fix it?
"There's a waiting list," the nurse said. "It's not very long for her age group, but there aren't many four-year-old hearts available either. She isn't going to last long without a transplant."
I pressed my forehead into the white wall, as hard as I could.
When the nurse spoke again, her voice was gentle, and it made me want to slap her. "I'm sorry. I don't think she'll make it to the top of the list."
Mom was crying steadily now. I could hear the way she was breathing. But I wasn't crying. Maybe I should be. Maybe I should have cried when Dad left. Maybe I should be crying all day every day.
"How long?" Mom asked.
I wanted to shove my fingers in my ears. That was a dumb question that no one wanted to know the answer to.
"I don't think she'll make it through the summer. Her heart is getting weaker by the day. It would take a miracle to save her. Prepare for the worst, but don't stop hoping. I've seen miracles happen."
I pushed away from the wall. Miracles didn't happen. Miracles were prayers that came true. Prayers God liked. And prayers were just another word for wishes. Wishes didn't come true. Not for me.
But they did come true for Charlotte.
Looking at her across the room in her paper gown with wires clicked to stickers on her chest, I made myself smile.
"What is mommy saying?" she asked.
I couldn't keep the smile for long. It was melting at the edges, running down my face. I pushed it back into place. "I'll be right back," I said. "I need you to make a wish."
I pushed open the door I had been listening through, almost knocking the nurse right over.
Mom turned fast, her face white. "Katie." She tried to mop up the tears.
I felt the door bump closed behind me.
"Were you ever going to tell me?" I asked.
I could see by the way her wide eyes flicked to the nurse that she hadn't been planning to tell me.
"Or were you just going to let it happen?" I asked. "Like you let it happen when Dad left."
Mom crumpled like a rag doll, her face falling, leaning back into the wall. "Katie." She put her hands to her face and tears leaked out of her eyes, her shoulders jerking with a sob. "Katie, don't."
I didn't answer, just ran down the hall, ran right out the twirly hospital door and into the grass of the front lawn. I needed a dandelion. I needed a wish.
There weren't any dandelions on the little patch of hospital grass. I kept running, across the street, kept running until I was standing in front of a gas station. There was a strip of grass between the station parking lot and the street. And there were five dandelions. Three had turned to seed. I pulled one of the dandelion-blows up and ran back to the hospital, my hand cupped around it to make sure the seeds didn't fall off yet.
"Charlotte!" I backed into the door to open it and swiped the curtain around her bed aside. I didn't see Mom anywhere. "Charlotte! I need you to make a wish."
She smiled. "I like wishes!" She looked exhausted.
"I know. I have one for you." I gave her the dandelion. "I need you to wish to get better."
As I said the words, I realized what they meant. It meant she'd have surgery. I knew what a transplant was. She needed someone else's heart. A heart that was working the way it should. She needed a dead girl's heart.
I closed my eyes to make the ground stop tipping.
I couldn't think about that. Not now.
Charlotte had to make the wish. That was all that mattered.
"You make a wish," Charlotte said trying to hand it back to me.
I held my hands up and shook my head. "This is your wish, Charlotte. Not mine."
She sniffed. "Your wish too." She looked like she was about to cry.
"Okay, fine," I said. "I'll be right back." I ran back out the door, sprinting to the gas station, gasping for breath. I grabbed up another dandelion, not caring if all the seeds fell off. It didn't matter. Charlotte had to make this wish.
I swung myself back into her room, panting. I held up the sorry-looking stem.
"'Kay," she said, blinking little tears out of her eyes. "You first."
"I'll make a wish," I said, getting my breath back under control. "And then you have to make the same wish."
She nodded and held her stem in both fists.
I closed my eyes and whispered, just loud enough for her to hear, "I wish my sister would get better." Then I blew every single seed that was left off that dandelion.
"I wish my sister would get better," Charlotte whispered and blew out her lips.
"No!" I snatched the dandelion away. "That's not what you were supposed to wish for!" My voice was loud and hard. "I don't need to get better! You do!"
Charlotte leaned away from me and started to cry.
Mom rushed into the room. "Oh, baby. What's wrong?" She put her hand on Charlotte's hair and stroked it. "You don't need to cry. Everything's going to be okay."
That was a lie.
Charlotte looked at me with tears in her eyelashes, her brown eyes murky with more. "Sorry, Katie," she said. "Sorry."
"What happened?" Mom asked me.
I stuck the dandelions behind my back, then realized I shouldn't have.
"What have you got?" Mom asked.
I held them out, my bald stem and Charlotte's full one.
"It's a wish," Charlotte said.
Mom looked between me and Charlotte. "What were you wishing for?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said, and threw the dandelions on the floor.
Charlotte started to cry again.
That night, I snuck outside after Mom Charlotte was asleep in her bed. Mom was sitting in the rocking chair beside her. She would never notice I'd left. It wasn't chilly. Not really. I kept walking, right down the road, all the way to the cemetery.
On my way, I picked another dandelion-blow. A girl at school once told me not to go in the graveyard at night because that's when the dead people are awake, but dead people aren't real. They're just gone.
I looked at Dad's headstone in the moonlight. He had probably turned into dirt by now.
Richard Madison. Beloved Husband and Father.
Then I looked at the dandelion-blow. Hard. I twirled it in my fingers and some of the seed tops glistened with early dew.
"I need to know," I said, "if this wish is going to come true. Because if it's not, there's no point in wishing it."
I stared until I couldn't see anything but the dandelion. Then I looked back at the headstone.
"Fine," I said out loud. "I'll make my wish anyway. It doesn't matter." I looked up at the stars. They looked a lot like the wet dandelion seeds, twinkling up there. So I pretended each star was a wish that God was looking at, choosing the best ones to come true. "I wish Charlotte's heart would get better and never need surgery," I said. "I wish..." This wish needed to be bright and big. It needed to light up the sky. It needed to shine so bold that God would have to notice it. "I wish Charlotte would live." It didn't sound loud enough though, so I said it again. "I wish Charlotte would live!"
I stepped forward and planted my feet in the grass, right in front of Dad. "Do you hear me?" I shouted. "I, Katie Madison, am making a wish for my sister to stay alive!"
I wished it so hard inside me my brain almost exploded.
Then I pulled in all the air my lungs could hold and made the dandelion seeds explode instead. The bald dandelion stem fell to the ground.
And that was when I started to cry.
I curled up on my side right there on Dad's grave and sobbed. Every tear I had been saving up from the moment Mom picked up the phone and listened to the police, poured out of me. I pictured them running over my hands like they did for Mom when she cried at the funeral, and I had just watched. And the tears in my memory looked like the dewy dandelion seeds. They looked like shimmery stars. Maybe all those tears were wishes. Maybe that's the real reason Mom cried and I didn't. Until now. Now I cried and wished so hard I figured there would be nothing left of me but a puddle of stars and moonlight when I finished.
When the tears ran out, all that was left was dry sobs and shaking. I collapsed back on the grass and watched the sky, waiting for my wish to light up.
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| Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool |
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