Wish Upon A Star
Jasinda Wilder
Copyright © 2021 by Jasinda Wilder
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Prologue
1. Sunset, Somewhere in Venice
2. It’s All About Relevance
3. Last Chance
4. The Smart Thing vs. The Right Thing
5. Saying Yes
6. Taking Risks
7. Love, Concentrated
8. Exploration
9. A Good Day; A Bad Day
10. Get Back to the Good
11. More Than Okay
12. Flower in the Dawn
13. La-La Land
14. Round Two
15. Love—A Rise, Not A Fall
16. One Day More
17. This One Magical Day
18. You Were Meant For Me
19. Kneeling
20. More Everything, And Nothing At All
21. A Sacred Silence
22. A Spar of Hope
23. Draw Me Back to You
24. Homecoming
25. With This Ring, I thee Wed
Epilogue
PLAYLIST
Also by Jasinda Wilder
Prologue
Cancer Girl
In the oncology ward of a hospital just outside Chicago, a fifteen-year-old girl sits propped up against a nest of pillows. She has an oxygen cannula in her nose. An IV drips beside her, the machine chug-chugging steadily, dripping poison into her veins. Sweat dots her bald scalp. She has freckles on her wan, sunken cheeks, and on her forearms, and everywhere. Her eyes are green—they sparkle bright with eagerness, with glee, with adoration. She has a cell phone held landscape in both hands, palm cupped around the ends to amplify the sound. She’s watching a livestream of the Swan Song concert; they’re her second favorite band, second only to One Direction. On her screen, she watches with awe as a young fan is called up on stage to meet his musical heroes; instead of freezing in embarrassment, he shocks everyone, and himself, by singing Swan Song’s viral number one hit, flawlessly, acapella. They give him a guitar, and he starts playing, accompanying himself. Swan Song themselves join in, and the whole world watches as a star is born, there on the stage.
All around her, the children’s oncology ward buzzes with the quiet intensity of suffering and healing and death, nurses coming and going, IVs working, kids laughing and crying, parents holding it together by the skin of their teeth.
The girl is oblivious. She’s watching a beautiful boy sing a beautiful song, and there are stars in her eyes.
“He’s gorgeous, Mom!” She breathes. She turns the phone toward her mother, sitting nearby. “Look! His name is Westley, like from The Princess Bride.”
Her mother, eyes swimming with barely contained emotion, just nods. “He is cute, isn’t he?”
“Cute? He’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. And are you listening to him sing? He has the voice of a literal angel.”
“I thought Harry Styles was the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen, with the voice of a literal angel?” Her mother is teasing, keeping her voice light. “You said that about him just yesterday, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Harry who?” She laughs. “I’ll always have a special place in my heart for my man Harry, but…Westley is it, Mom. He’s everything. He’s going to be famous, I know it.”
“He is talented, I agree. And it does take a certain amount of…presence, I suppose, to perform like that without any warning, in front of fifty thousand people.”
“I have to check out his YouTube.” The phone rotates upright, and her thumbs fly. “Here it is.”
Back landscape, and the young man in question fills the screen, just him with an electric guitar, in a bedroom, bi-fold white closet doors behind him, popcorn ceiling above, a floor lamp with a bare bulb just on-screen to his left. He doesn’t say anything, just starts playing. He does a cover of “Clocks.” It’s utterly beautiful, his voice somehow making the song sound haunting. He has a slight rasp to his voice, which gives it texture, roughens the perfection and thus makes it even more mesmerizing.
The next video is in the same place—same guitar, same room, different hoodie. His eyes are deep, dark brown, molten and hypnotizing. She can’t take her eyes off him. This time, he covers “House of the Rising Sun.” He has dozens of covers as well as several original songs, and each one shows a different part of his range, and depth of talent. As she does a deep dive into Westley Britton’s YouTube channel, she notices she’s not the only one. The number of followers on his page goes, in a matter of hours, from under a thousand to over two hundred thousand.
By the time the girl is back on YouTube the next morning, he has over a million followers.
Within a week, he appears on Good Morning America, followed by appearances on the top names in late-night talk shows.
At the end of a month, he’s recorded his first single with a major label and it’s on every radio in America.
The girl watches every interview, records every performance, cuts out every article.
It’s something to look forward to, after all. Something other than chemo, that is.
Sunset, Somewhere in Venice
Jolene
It’s not a good day.
The pain is intense, all-consuming. Everywhere. It makes thinking hard. Makes even being awake an exercise in agony endurance.
My palliative care plan largely consists of painkillers, and nausea dampeners, and a pile of other things to mitigate the effects of the painkillers and the nausea medications. It’s kind of odd, the whole process. Take one med to help with the pain, but that causes nausea. Take something for the nausea, and I get constipated. Take something for the constipation, and I deal with staying hydrated.
Sometimes, it’s easier to simply endure the pain.
Today is not that day.
Today, I’m doubling down on the pain meds. Don’t tell Mom, though. She still seems to think there’s a chance I’m getting out of this alive. God bless her heart.
I’m curled up in my nest of blankets on my bed, watching My Fair Lady. I’m old school when it comes to movies; I love the classics.
Th’rAIYn in spAIYn falls mAIYNly on the plAIYn.
I mouth the familiar lines, hear the accent in my head.
Next up is Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I know, I know, Mickey Rooney’s character is all sorts of problematic and awful. But I love Audrey’s aura of aloof coolness. She just seems to float above everything. Until she can’t float above it anymore.
I want to float above this.
A knock on my door has me pausing My Fair Lady. “Yeah.” It comes out as a miserable grunt more than an intelligible word.
Mom peeks her head in. “Grandma is here to see you.”
If it was anyone else—literally, anyone—I would say I’m not up for a visitor. But I’m always up for a visit from Grandma. She’s my favorite person on the planet.
Well…favorite person I actually know, like in real life.
A moment later, Grandma breezes in. She’s past eighty, but she’s as active and spry as someone twenty years younger. Shoot, she could walk circles around me on my best day. She’s short and thin, wearing her silver hair in a short, side-swept bob. Purple-framed glasses, and a pair of well-fitted jeans and a nice yellow sleeveless top. Mom could take fashion lessons, honestly.
She kicks off her sandals and sits on the bed next to me, rubs my hip with a gentle touch. “H
i, honey-bunny. Not a good day, huh?”
“Mmm-mmm.” It’s all I can manage.
She murmurs a sympathetic sound. “Take heart, my love. God has a plan even for this.”
She’s a Christian. The type that says she’ll pray for you, but instead of leaving it at that, she takes your hands in hers that very moment and prays. It can be awkward, at times, because she literally does not care where we are, who’s around, or anything.
It’s endearing.
Mostly.
But days like today, it’s hard to believe in a God who could do this to me. Who could sit up in heaven and watch me suffer, and think it’s doing anyone any good.
I can’t answer. Not even a grunt or a groan.
She hunts under the blanket and takes my hand. Her hands are cool, dry, clasping mine tightly. “Father God, I ask that you help my sweet, beautiful granddaughter as she deals with the pain of her illness. If it is within your will, Lord, I ask that you would take the cancer from her. I ask for healing, complete and miraculous and immediate, in the name of your son, Jesus. Amen.”
I want to believe the prayers do something. Anything is worth believing in, when you’re facing your own end, and soon.
I find the strength, from somewhere, to look at her. “Did Mom tell you?”
“About what, my love?” Her dark eyes are kind. Loving. Patient. Understanding. Compassionate.
“My last visit with Dr. Miller.”
Grandma sighs. “Yes. She told me.”
“I think if God was going to do some sort of miraculous healing, he’d have done it by now, Grandma.”
She shakes her head, smiling. “Last-minute miracles only feel last minute to us. Because our point of view is utterly dependent on our own limited understanding of time. God sees all of time, start to finish, so what is to us last minute, to him is exactly when he means for it to happen.”
“What if there is no last-minute miracle, Grandma? What if I’m really going to just…die, and that’s it?”
“Only God knows what’s going to happen, darling.”
“That’s not much comfort.”
“I suppose not. I don’t have all the answers, honey. I just know I believe that God loves you, and that he’s capable of healing you. So I will continue to believe he’s going to, every moment, every day. I pray for you all throughout the day, Jo. All day. Every day. And I just know you’re going to be okay.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
“I don’t imagine it does.”
I sniffle. “It’s hard not to be angry.”
“You’re allowed to be. God’s not threatened by your emotions, honey.”
I fumble for the remote. “Can you stay and watch this with me?”
“Of course I can. As long as you want.”
The next week, I’m a little better. Which is amazing, because it coincides with Mom and Dad taking me to Italy for a week and a half. Rome is everything I imagined it to be. So are Florence and Venice. The countryside is my favorite part, though. The rolling hills, the sun setting on endless vineyards. It’s like the sun is just brighter and more golden in Italy.
My favorite moment, though, is in Venice. Dad pays for me to have a gondola ride all by myself. The boat guy is handsome, rugged with dark eyes and dark hair and a neat beard and he even sings to me in a quiet voice. I don’t know what he’s saying to me, but it sounds beautiful and romantic simply because he’s singing in Italian.
I close my eyes and imagine he’s my lover. He’s singing a love song to me. It’s just us on the canal, and all the rest of the world is hidden from us. Giving us this private moment alone.
It’s over all too soon, and he’s sweet and thoughtful, holding my hand to help me up and out of the boat. He murmurs something to me in Italian, but I just smile and shrug.
“Ciao, bella. Andare con Dio.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Italian.”
He clasps my hand. Smiles, handsome and kind. “You are beauty. I pray to all the saints for you.”
Ah. He either was told that I’m sick, or it’s just obvious.
“Thank you.” I do know this word, in his language. “Grazie.”
I join my parents up top, and I’m thankful that they don’t say anything. It’s easier to walk with them and continue my imagination’s game of pretend—that I’m here with someone special.
Dad wraps an arm around me. “You hungry?”
Dad thinks food fixes everything. He’s the most stereotypical internet dad there ever was, and I love him for it. He’s unironically wearing white New Balance sneakers with white crew socks pulled all the way up. Khaki cargo shorts. And, most embarrassing of all, a shitty screen-printed T-shirt with a photo of himself pretending to hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The shot is not even lined up right, for crap’s sake. His hat is the kind of ball cap that has a low, narrow crown with a long brim, and a floppy piece hanging off the back where he has it cinched as tight as it will go. His wallet is a good three inches thick. His phone lives in a case that clips to his belt, which is braided leather.
Dad’s way of coping is pretending like everything is normal and fine. Gruff hugs. Asking if I want to throw the frisbee with him on a Saturday morning, when I spent half of the night before vomiting bile because I’d long since barfed up anything I’d eaten. You hungry? It’s his go-to. And as embarrassing and annoying as he can be, he means well. His intention is to provide normalcy, stability. He’s the same, no matter what. I crave that, desperately, and I love him for it as fiercely as I’m utterly mortified by him just in general.
He doesn’t treat me like cancer girl. Like I’m defined by the cells that are killing me from the inside out. He’s just my dad. He thinks music stopped with James Taylor and AC/DC. The movie HEAT is, to him, the final word in cinema, followed closely by Dances with Wolves.
He has never, to my knowledge or in my presence, directly addressed the fact that I’m even sick, let alone weeks at most from dying.
I fall against him on purpose. “Can we get pizza?”
He sighs dramatically. “I know we’re in Italy, babe, but there is other food here besides pizza.”
“But you eat with a fork and knife! You could almost eat it with a spoon.”
He staggers with me, as if my weight is just too much for him. “I guess. But if we eat too much more pizza while we’re here, we’re gonna need a C-130 to fly us all home.”
“Charles!” Mom scolds. “You are so bad.”
He grabs his belly and jiggles it. “I was doing okay with my diet, and then we came to Italy and eat pizza four meals a day. You’re gonna need a damn Chinook just to get me to the airport. Good thing we’re leaving in a couple days or I’d be an actual walrus.” He winks at me. “A sexy walrus, but still a walrus.”
I snicker. “Dad, gross.”
He wiggles his eyebrows at Mom. “Hey, your mom thinks I’m sexy. How do you think we ended up with you?”
“OHMYGOD, Dad! Gross!”
Mom rolls her eyes. “Yeah, that one time. And I think there was champagne involved. Lots and lots of champagne.”
Dad claps a hand to his heart and staggers. “You wound me, Sherri. I may never recover my Alpha male confidence, after that blow to my ego.”
“Stop embarrassing your daughter—my god. You’re incorrigible.”
I laugh, though. “Pizza. Then tiramisu. And cannoli.”
“As you wish, my lady.” He finishes this with an elaborate bow, complete with a foppish flourish of his hand.
I cover my face with both hands. “Stop, ohmygod, stop. God, you’re so embarrassing.”
“Hey, you remember Princess Bride, right? Westley, Buttercup, Humperdink?”
I groan. “Yes, Dad. It’s only one of my top ten favorite movies of all time.”
Mom snickers, failing to suppress a laugh. “Yeah, only because you’re in love with Westley Britton.”
“Who?” Dad asks.
I glare at Mom. “I’m not in love with him.�
�
“Are too.”
“I just like him. A lot. He’s a triple threat: he can sing, dance, and act.”
“The jumping around on stage he did with that boy band he was in doesn’t count as dancing, Jolene. You said so yourself.” Mom is just goading me. She knows my favorite topic is Westley Britton.
I fish my phone from my back pocket. “Ah, true, I did say that. But have you seen the video that came out yesterday?”
Mom arches an eyebrow. “No, I have not. Show me.”
I have the video cued up on YouTube pretty much all the time. Because…well, because he’s dressed in nothing but a pair of short gym shorts, and he’s sweaty and glistening, and he’s all muscle and golden skin. His hair is swept back and wet, messy, sticking to his forehead and chiseled cheekbones. He’s out of breath, and he’s clearly been dancing for hours.
I play the video and watch with Mom. I know every second of it. I could do the choreography myself, if I had the strength. He’s dancing to a Lewis Capaldi song, and I’ve already started learning in on my uke. He spins, leaps, rolls, tumbles. It’s mostly contemporary dance, but there are elements of ballet and jazz. It’s a melding of styles. It’s all him, original choreography. He’s not just learning the steps for Singin’ in the Rain, he’s becoming a dancer. As if he needed to be even more perfect, right?
My parents have spent most of their life savings on my public bucket list. You know, the usual stuff: Paris and the Eiffel Tower, Italy, the Caribbean, things like that. See the world before I die. You know, the usual.
But I have a secret bucket list. There are three items on it:
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