When we got home, there was a postcard from Lucy waiting for me on the kitchen table. I took it up to my room to read. I had told her about Peter and the VS Depot. Mostly she thought it was strange that he was a PJ Walker fan. She was kind of right, because in my whole life, I’d never met anyone else who even knew about PJ Walker’s books.
In the middle of the postcard was a little picture of someone sitting inside a canoe, waving. Lucy is good at drawing, so I could tell that it was supposed to be her. It was cute. Under the picture was a whole list of questions about Claire for me to answer; it was nice that she was interested, but answering them all was going to take a while. It would have been easier, and more fun, just to talk about everything on the phone. Sometimes writing a letter, even to a friend, can feel kind of like homework. At the very bottom of the postcard was a sentence about how Lucy had made a new friend. It was hard to believe, but her new friend’s name was Claire, just like my new friend—only my Claire was more of a job than a friend. I put down the postcard. I couldn’t write back. Not right away. I had too many other things to think about. I stood up and walked around the room, trying to clear my head.
Finally I just sat on the bed. Walking around wasn’t working. The only person who could help me was Sam. When he blew up the picture and read the sign on the back of the building, then I’d know. Was it really Anderson’s, or was it just some other place that looked exactly the same as Anderson’s? Just thinking about it made me shiver. It was going to be hard to wait, but maybe it would only be until tomorrow. All I had to do was get Claire to the pool and find Sam.
I took out the wish map and studied the wishes. I wanted to go back to the Dumpster ones—look around, pay more attention. Could I do that? Would they work twice? It was too dangerous to try. Mom was sitting in the kitchen, and there was no way to get down to the basement without her seeing me. I was just going to have to wait. I put the map away and pulled out the PJ Walker book. I was not excited about the story, but I opened it and forced myself to read.
chapter twenty-three
Face
I spent a good part of the morning trying to get Claire to agree to go to the pool. If Lucy had been here, she would have been shocked. I usually avoid the pool as much as I can. I hate it. For me, going to the pool is like being plopped down with a bunch of penguins and then being asked to tell them apart. It’s impossible. At the pool, no one is wearing their regular clothes or looking like they normally do—I can’t recognize anyone. But still, I wanted to go. I wanted to find Sam and ask about the photo, and I needed Claire’s help. I’d never find Sam on my own.
It was a battle, and no matter how hard I tried, Claire wouldn’t give in.
I stood in front of her, furrowed my brow, and tried to sound like Mom. “You have to go!”
“No I don’t!” she said. She crossed her arms and stared me down.
I tried again, this time with a threat. “Well, if you don’t go, we’re going to stay here, and you’re going to learn to ride that bike.” I pointed toward the garage. I felt good about this one. I could see that she was hesitating.
“What if we go tomorrow? Do I still have to ride the bike?” She seemed nervous.
I could feel victory. I didn’t back down. I looked her in the eye and said, “Yes!”
Claire thought for a minute, then ran off and reappeared with the kitty helmet on. It was over; I’d lost.
We spent the rest of the morning going up and down the road, me holding the back of her seat, and her wobbling and almost hitting every parked car. It was stressful. By lunchtime she was getting better, but my back was killing me. After lunch we tried again, and then suddenly, she could do it. She wasn’t great at stopping, but she could ride. I stood in the driveway and watched her go back and forth. I’d never taught anyone anything before. Watching her made me feel proud—for both of us.
Mom had bought us a watermelon, so I made Claire stop practicing so we could slice it up and eat it.
“But I don’t like watermelon,” complained Claire.
I wasn’t sure I believed her. How could she not like watermelon? Watermelons were delicious.
“Have you ever tried it?” I asked.
She nodded and made a gagging sound. I put the watermelon on the table. Claire played with it and spun it around while I went to get a knife.
When I came back, she said, “Look—it has a face.”
I looked, but I couldn’t see it. She pointed to two dark green blotches—the eyes—and a longish squiggly line of brown—the mouth. I took a step back. Now I saw it. She was right—it was a face. And seeing it suddenly gave me an idea—a great idea! An idea that could make a watermelon-hating person into a watermelon-loving person.
I stabbed the top of the watermelon with my knife. “Let’s carve it.”
Claire was confused.
I pointed the knife to the eyes she had shown me. “Like a pumpkin—we can make a face.”
Suddenly, she got it.
“That’s on my list!” she shouted. Now she was excited. She wanted the knife, but I told her she had to wait.
“There’s an order to carving. Clean first, carve second.” I cut the top off the watermelon.
If there was ever a carve-off between pumpkins and watermelons, pumpkins would be in trouble. Watermelons had lots of pluses. One of the best pluses was the cleaning-it-out part. I hate cleaning out pumpkins—they’re slimy and stringy—but the watermelon was completely different. It was easy to scoop, and the insides were delicious. I’d tasted raw pumpkin before—it’s disgusting.
Claire drew on the face, and I cut it out. I thought she might be upset that I wasn’t letting her use the knife, but she didn’t seem to care. When we were done, I put a fake candle in the watermelon and we took it into the garage to see it glow. It was kind of disappointing, because it really wasn’t dark enough yet—it would be better at night. But still, Claire was excited, and she ran off to get Mom. It was good that Mom came, because she knew stuff about watermelons that we didn’t. She said watermelons rotted faster than pumpkins, and that we needed to put it in the fridge, or it would shrivel up and go mushy. I guess that’s why pumpkins are better than watermelons after all—too bad. We put the watermelon in the fridge and got ready to go down to the VS Depot.
I had another letter for Lucy. I’d finished it before the bike lesson. Mom had finally used up the last of the pancake mix, so I took the empty box for my letter. I’d taken it apart, written on the inside, put some candy in it, and glued it all back together. At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it as much as the other stuff I’d sent her, but now that it was finished, I did. I painted some extra things on the box to make it look better. I changed MIDLAND PANCAKES into LUCY’S PANCAKES and painted Lucy’s address in fancy script. The other plus was that the pancake box, when it was all opened up, had lots of room for writing. I didn’t write about Sam—I still wasn’t sure what I thought of him, and even a pancake box wasn’t big enough to explain everything that had happened so far—so mostly I wrote about what I was doing with Claire, and Peter. I didn’t really have any answers to the questions she’d asked, but I’d try to get some today.
Even though Claire could now ride her own bike, she wanted to take the trailer bike. In a way that was good. It was less for me to worry about—she couldn’t crash into anything when she was sitting right behind me. When we got to the store, Peter wasn’t behind the desk, so Claire ran to the back to find him. They both walked up to the counter together—two small people suddenly getting bigger. By now Peter was used to me giving him strange things to mail. He’d probably have been shocked if I had handed him a normal letter. I took the pancake box out of my backpack and set it on the counter.
Peter picked up the box. “Who’s been eating all the pancakes?”
Claire bounced up and down. “It was me! I ate the whole box.”
I nodded. “Well, most of it.”
Peter put the box on the scale and pulled out some stamps.
“Does your friend send you odd things too?” he asked.
I shook my head. “She’s only allowed to send postcards and letters.”
“Speaking of letters”—Peter stuck the stamp on the box—“have you gotten to the part in the book where Percy sends Viola a letter?”
I shook my head again.
Peter nodded. “Well, I think you’ll like it.”
Now I was curious.
Peter shook his head. “I won’t give it away, but it’s kind of a twist in the story.”
I wanted to know more, but he changed the subject and told Claire that he had another pad of paper for her. They walked to the back of the store to get it. A minute later Claire reappeared carrying a large pad of paper. Across the top of the page were the words “Woodman & Sons.” It was a relief that it was something normal.
I’d been hoping to ask Peter some of Lucy’s questions, but Peter was working on something behind the counter, and Claire was by the door, ready to go. It was too late. Lucy would have to wait. Plus, there probably wasn’t anything unusual to discover anyway.
On the ride home I brought up the pool again, but that only reminded Claire of Sam, which made her remember my impossible promise to make Mr. Gripes and Miss Sato fall in love. There was no way I could make that happen. That had been a dumb thing to promise. It ended up being a silent ride. And even though I didn’t want to, I couldn’t stop thinking about Sam. Was he part of this whole wish thing? Maybe it was just another coincidence. Could I make myself believe that?
Claire finally got another call from her dad that night. It was only the third one. At first I thought they’d talk every night, but I guess he was busy with work. Claire said he had to travel a lot, all over the country. I’d been meaning to ask Mom what he did, but I kept forgetting. I guess I had more important stuff to think about. Claire and her dad only talked for a few minutes, but I could tell that it made a difference. When she got off the phone, she was superhappy. While we were setting the table for dinner, she told me a little bit about it.
“Daddy’s been busy. He had to go on a scuba diving thing to help some people.”
Scuba diving. I didn’t know he was a scuba diver. That was kind of cool; maybe that’s why Claire loved goldfish.
I couldn’t believe we hadn’t talked about this before. I wanted to know more. “Is that his job? Is he a marine scientist?”
Claire shook her head. “No, he fixes things, so sometimes it’s other stuff, but this time it was scuba diving stuff. He had to go really far away, and he saw a shark, a real live one, but he wasn’t scared.”
I handed Claire the forks and put the knives and spoons out around the table.
“Has your dad been to Hawaii? Or other places where there are sharks?”
I waited for an answer, but Claire ignored me. There was no way she hadn’t heard me. I was standing right next to her.
She fumbled with the forks and looked down. “I don’t know.”
Something about this was weird. Claire put the forks on the table and went to the kitchen to be with Mom. I waited for a few minutes, but she didn’t come back. I guess our conversation was over.
After dinner we took the watermelon out of the fridge and put it out on a little table in the backyard. I put the candle in it. Mom served us ice cream, and we ate and watched the face flicker in the darkness. Claire’s drawing was kind of uneven—one eye was bigger than the other, and the mouth turned up on the left and drooped down on the right—but still, I liked it. Plus, I could say something about it that I couldn’t say about a human—I’d recognize that face anywhere.
chapter twenty-four
Love
I woke up thinking about Anderson’s. It was too late to sneak into the basement, because I could hear the faint voices of Mom and Claire in the kitchen. I pulled on my bathing suit, shorts, and a shirt. I had a mission—we were going to the pool no matter what! I needed to know what that sign said. Part of me was hoping I was wrong, that it was somewhere else, that it didn’t say Anderson’s. The wishes by themselves were enough. I didn’t want it to get bigger. I wasn’t sure I could handle bigger.
I sat on the side of the bed and pulled on a sock. The PJ Walker book was next to me. I picked it up, flipped through the pages, and found Percy’s letter. Peter had been right; it was a twist in the story, and it explained a lot. Now I liked Percy more, even felt sorry for him. The letter explained Percy’s childhood—how he’d lived in an orphanage and had never been adopted. Mostly it was because he was different—he had one short leg and his foot turned in the wrong way; and then there were the three moles on his nose, and his crossed left eye. The kids at the orphanage had liked him once they got to know him, but no parents ever did. That explained why he’d told Viola those crazy stories about his childhood. The truth was boring—and maybe too painful.
It was hard to imagine Percy as a funny-looking kid. Now that he was a grown-up, he seemed handsome, confident, and outgoing, but that was the new him—after all the operations. Now he was perfect, and no one would ever be able to tell what he used to look like. It made me wonder: Which was harder—having something different about you that everyone could see, or having something different about you that was hidden? I didn’t have time to decide, because five seconds later Claire charged into my room. When she’d first arrived, I’d made a rule about knocking first, but now it didn’t seem as important.
“Do you know how to make Miss Sato and Mr. Gripes fall in love?” asked Claire.
I shook my head.
“Well, I do.” She sat on the side of my bed. “All you have to do is find out what Miss Sato’s handwriting looks like, copy it, and write a love letter to Mr. Gripes. It’s perfect, because when Mr. Gripes gets the letter, he’ll think it’s from Miss Sato and he’ll fall in love with her again.”
Claire was extra pleased with herself. I could tell she couldn’t wait for me to get started, but her plan had flaws—lots and lots of flaws. Mostly I was stuck on the “write a love letter to Mr. Gripes” part—there was no way I would ever be able to do that. Part of me even felt sorry for Miss Sato—Mr. Gripes didn’t seem very lovable.
I shook my head. “I can’t write a love letter.”
Claire was surprised. “But it’s perfect!”
Her plan was nothing close to perfect. But I knew Claire—if I didn’t have another plan to offer her, or a really good reason not to do it, she wouldn’t give up.
I wanted her to believe me, so I looked her in the eyes and said it again: “I can’t write a love letter.” There were about a hundred reasons why I didn’t want to do it, but I told Claire the one I thought would make the most sense to her. First I explained that it was against the law to write a letter and pretend to be someone else. I wasn’t sure if it was really against the law, but it seemed like it should be.
We sat there for a few minutes, both silently thinking our own thoughts. I studied the swirls and splotches on my bedspread—I seemed to be doing that a lot lately.
Finally I spoke. “Plus I’ve never been in love.”
Claire stared at me, shocked.
“You haven’t?”
I nodded, shrugged, and stood up.
“So I don’t even know how to write a love letter.”
Claire looked at her hands. I had won.
But I wasn’t done. I had a plan—a plan to get us to the pool and satisfy Claire, both at the same time. We were going to be love detectives. On the way down to the kitchen, I described it to Claire. At first she said no, but I was ready for that.
“If we don’t go to the pool and talk to Sam, I won’t find out any more information about Miss Sato and Mr. Gripes. We need to be good love detectives.”
Claire was quiet. I took that as a win. I had a good feeling about everything working out.
But suddenly Claire changed the subject. “Do we have to go into the water?”
Why would you go to the pool and not go into the water? The swimming was the only good part. In
the water, you did your own thing. Nobody bothered you, and you didn’t have to meet or talk to anyone.
“I’ll go, but only if we don’t go in the water!” Claire turned her back to me.
Now I was annoyed. “What’s the matter? Can’t you swim?”
Suddenly Claire burst into tears and ran out of the room.
I found her in the living room. She was lying on the sofa, her head buried in the cushion, but she wasn’t crying.
I sat down next to her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know, but guess what. Learning to swim is a lot easier than learning to ride a bike.”
Claire looked up. “Is that true?”
“Yes, and I can teach you.” I smiled, and she sat up.
Now I felt even better about going. It would be good to have something to do at the pool. I liked having a plan—a plan was good.
chapter twenty-five
Discovery
The pool was crowded like I knew it would be. I purposely talked to Claire the whole time, hoping that no one would notice or see me. The worst is when you catch someone’s eye and they say hi. I wasn’t going to let that happen—my eyes were glued to Claire. And she had her mission—find Sam. There was no way I could find him in this sea of people. I needed her to do it. Someone behind me laughed; I resisted the urge to turn around and look. We did two quick tours around the perimeter of the pool, but there was no Sam.
I pointed to the pool. “Maybe he’s in the water.”
Claire pulled back.
“We’ll only go in the shallow end, where you can stand.” I nudged her forward. “I promise.”
It took Claire forever to get into the water. I could tell that she didn’t trust that the bottom wouldn’t suddenly drop out from below her feet, even though I was standing there waiting for her and nothing was happening to me. It wasn’t easy to be patient, but after another five minutes she was in. I thought she would cling to me in terror, but she didn’t, and once she felt more confident, she even showed me how she could float. I was surprised—floating is the hardest part. All I had to do was teach her how to move her arms and legs. In no time she’d be swimming.
Dreamer, Wisher, Liar Page 11
