A Drop of Hope

by Keith Calabrese

  “Colorforms?” Mr. Earle said, surprised.

  “That’s it,” Paige said.

  Ryan heard Ernest across the room, squeaking.

  “My word. Colorforms,” Mr. Earle chuckled. “Do they even make those anymore?”

  “I don’t know. This one was a really old set. Like an antique or something.”

  Another squeak, this one longer and higher pitched, like Ernest was a balloon losing air.

  “Anyway, someone had left these Colorforms in the library, I guess. So, as she went to pick up the book, she found it facedown on the floor and open to the page that talked about my brother’s eye problem. And she wrote her paper about it. Isn’t that weird?”

  “That,” said Mr. Earle slowly, “just might be the most remarkable thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Ryan struggled gamely to look for a bright side. At least, he thought, she didn’t mention going to Thompkins Well.

  “I know,” said Paige. “I guess that well really is magic.”

  Nuts.

  “Come again?” Mr. Earle said.

  “Oh, right,” Paige said. “Whoops! I left that part out. What do you call that, when you tell a story and forget the most important part?”

  “I think ‘burying the lede’ is the expression you’re looking for.”

  “Right. So two weeks ago I went to Thompkins Well. I remembered the story you told in class, Mr. Earle, and figured it couldn’t hurt.”

  “You wished for your brother to be able to read?”

  Please, please don’t say it, Ryan thought.

  “Uh-huh. And now he’s reading!”

  Ryan’s head dropped onto his desk as the class erupted in excited chatter.

  SHUT UP, ERNEST

  “Magic. Magic, magic, magic!”

  “Shut up, Ernest.”

  But Ernest was far too excited to shut up.

  “Ryan,” Lizzy admonished.

  “Oh, he’s fine,” Ernest said blithely as he danced around them in victory, singing, “Magic, magic, magic!” like a one-person conga line.

  “Will you stop that!”

  Ernest did. “Sorry,” he said. “But you gotta admit this is all too much to be a coincidence.”

  Ryan took a loud breath through his nose. “Maybe,” he said doubtfully.

  “Yes!” Ernest exclaimed. “I knew you’d come around.”

  “Maybe,” Ryan continued. “Maybe there is something …”

  “Magical,” Ernest coaxed. “Say magical.”

  “Unexplainable—”

  “Really?”

  “—going on here. But whatever it is, thinking we’re a part of it is still a stretch.”

  “A stretch? A stretch?!” Ernest couldn’t believe this guy.

  “He’s right, Ryan,” Lizzy said. “First the art set and now the Colorforms? We have to see how far this goes.”

  “Do we?” Ryan all but pleaded. “Do we really?”

  “Of course we do,” Ernest said.

  LAWN MOWER MUSINGS

  Eddie Wilmette’s lawn was huge and took forever to mow. But today Ryan didn’t care. It gave him lots of time to think, and lately there’d been a lot for Ryan to think about.

  After Paige had told her story to the class a couple of weeks ago, more kids started going to the well. Not just kids from their class, either. Kids from other homerooms, other grades, other schools, even.

  And all those kids had wishes. Over the last few weeks, Ryan, Ernest, and Lizzy had probably heard most of them. They had it down to a little routine. When the last bell rang, the three of them met behind the school and then went into the woods, following the trails to the hidden cave.

  Once inside the well, they’d listen to the wishes, sometimes for an hour or more. Afterward they’d leave, at which time Ernest would unfailingly forget his windbreaker and have to scurry back into the well to get it before they could walk to Ryan’s house.

  Ryan still didn’t feel right about listening to the wishes, but Ernest was so certain it was the thing to do. And insistent. For a small, bony kid who weighed less than the average golden retriever, Ernest had a strange knack for asserting his will.

  Many of the wishes were just ridiculous, outrageous requests for a Maserati or a million dollars. One kid wished for a pet lion. Aaron Robinette came back to wish for Bigfoot a couple more times.

  But some of the wishes were really serious. One boy was worried about his older sister. She was in high school and hanging out with some other kids who smoked and ditched school, and maybe worse. The boy’s sister and their parents were always yelling at each other, and he was afraid something bad was going to happen.

  Another kid, a girl a grade ahead of them, came to Thompkins Well to make a wish for her cousin, a soldier who had served in Afghanistan for a year and a half. He’d been home about a month now and he was having trouble readjusting. He was moody and hard to talk to. He went jogging a lot and couldn’t sleep at night.

  It surprised Ryan how often people made wishes for others and not themselves. Those were the ones he remembered. For him, the wish that stuck the most was still that boy on the first day with Lizzy, the one whose dad was out of work and the family had all those bills and was trying to save up to send his mom to see his dying grandmother. He hadn’t even recognized the kid’s voice, but Ryan felt like he knew him, understood him.

  That was the problem, though. He kept thinking about this stuff. He was getting sucked in. Especially after the business with Paige Barnett’s brother and those ridiculous Colorforms. He was starting to wonder if Ernest might really be onto something.

  And that scared him. Not because Ryan was against people catching a break for a change. But he was of the life philosophy that the light at the end of the tunnel was usually an oncoming train. For Ryan the other shoe never just dropped. The universe usually threw it at you.

  A SATURDAY OF ONE’S OWN

  One thing Lizzy could say for sure about this business with the well, it had certainly changed her Saturdays for the better. She had been hanging out with Ryan and Ernest almost daily for the last three weeks, so much so that she had been able to convince her mom to let her stay home alone this Saturday, provided Mrs. Hardy was going to be around in case of an emergency.

  Today was the first Saturday in months that Lizzy didn’t have to deal with her aunt and her cousin, and she was in heaven. She had the whole house to herself, even though all she did was eat cereal, read, and stay in her pajamas until eleven thirty.

  That was when Mrs. Hardy called and invited her over to lunch. She and Mrs. Wilmette were sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee when Lizzy arrived. Lizzy played with Declan while the moms made lunch. Ryan was across the street mowing the Wilmette lawn while Ernest was up in his grandfather’s attic. This was the usual routine; the three of them would go into the well during the week, and then Ernest would search the attic for “inspiration.”

  Ryan always snorted when Ernest said that, but Ernest didn’t seem to let it bother him. Lizzy couldn’t get over how persistently hopeful that kid was. She also couldn’t get over how infectious his hopefulness could be.

  Not that Lizzy was completely sold on the whole idea. She was still a very rational person at heart and not one to believe in fairy tales. Still, something strange was going on in Cliffs Donnelly.

  Things around town were getting better, or at least feeling better. People seemed happier, upbeat. The difference wasn’t huge, but it was noticeable. Cliffs Donnelly was changing. Even her own mom had seemed less tired and run-down these last few weeks.

  Then again, a Saturday away from Chelsea and Aunt Patty was enough to make anybody see the world differently.

  TOO BIG FOR A BACKPACK

  Ernest was getting nowhere. This was the second, no, third Saturday he’d come up to the attic, and it was looking to be the third Saturday he would come down empty-handed. With each passing weekend, he felt his confidence waning and his indecision growing, like it was all slipping away from him.


  The smell of freshly cut grass wafted through the attic window from the backyard. It bothered Ernest that his parents never considered that he could take care of the lawn. Of course, his head did barely crest the handlebar on the lawn mower. And the size of the machine did intimidate him a tiny bit. But he wasn’t ever going to grow at all if everyone kept treating him like a little kid. Ernest firmly believed that condescension could keep a kid small, and not just figuratively. That it could literally, physically stunt your growth.

  But that was a worry for another day. Ernest was afraid that if he didn’t come down with something soon, Ryan and Lizzy were going to stop helping him. Should he just grab something? Anything? It couldn’t hurt. So far the only consistent part of what he’d been doing was that nothing went according to plan.

  At least, nothing went according to his plan.

  Once he took something out of the attic, the art set or the Colorforms, it somehow managed to wind up where it belonged. Which meant, in theory, that if he just took all the toys out of the attic, then things would eventually sort themselves out like they were meant to.

  It wasn’t a theory he was particularly keen to test, though.

  Ernest took a breath and went back to the beginning. A magical beam of light had guided him to the art set, but there had been no light when he took the Colorforms. For that he’d used logic, assuming that if there was an order to which items he should take, it would probably be the order in which they were all stacked on the chair.

  But here was the problem. The fire extinguisher and the ray gun were both resting, side by side, against the back of the chair. So which one would be next? The fire extinguisher was on the left, and we read left to right, so that would make the fire extinguisher next in line. But the box for the ray gun was lying on its side, which made it stick out a little farther, so it was technically closer. The fire extinguisher, meanwhile, didn’t even feel like it was part of the pile. But at the same time, Ernest wanted to pick the ray gun, because it was pretty cool, so that might be clouding his judgment.

  He remembered something his dad had said once about making tough decisions. “When in doubt, the harder choice is usually the right one.”

  Well, Ernest knew which one would be harder to carry.

  Ryan would think it was stupid.

  “A fire extinguisher?” Ryan said as they walked into his house. “That’s stupid.”

  “Ryan!” Lizzy scolded. She’d come to get them for lunch.

  Ryan rolled his eyes. “Where is it?”

  “I left it on the back porch,” Ernest said. “It’s kind of heavy.”

  “So, what? Now you just bring it to school and see what happens?”

  Ernest sulked. “When you say it like that, it doesn’t really sound like much of a plan, huh?”

  Back at Ryan’s they sat down to turkey sandwiches and corn chips. Mrs. Wilmette left to run some errands while Mrs. Hardy put Declan down for a nap.

  Ryan had a little of Grandpa Eddie’s lawn left to mow, so after they ate, the three of them went back over there. Ryan finished up, and then Ernest showed them the fire extinguisher.

  “Wow,” Lizzy said. “It’s an antique.”

  Ryan said, “It’s big.”

  It was big. Almost three feet tall and a good six inches in diameter at the base of the cylinder.

  “They had to be back then,” Lizzy explained. “The compression system alone—”

  “I mean it’s too big,” Ryan said.

  “He’s right,” Ernest said. “I’ll never get that into school.”

  “Can’t exactly hide it under your bed, either,” Ryan said.

  “I know,” Lizzy said after some thought. “We can keep it in the well. No one will find it there, right? At least until we figure out what to do with it.”

  TOOLS (THE OTHER KIND)

  Ernest, Ryan, and Lizzy took turns carrying the old copper fire extinguisher as they walked into the woods behind the school.

  It was Ernest’s shift when they stumbled upon the high school kids. There were four of them, two guys and two girls. They were smoking cigarettes and drinking, of all things, peppermint schnapps. Ryan tried not to dwell on the irony.

  “Come on,” he said. “We should get out of here.”

  They picked up the pace, but one of the guys spotted them. “Hey, come back here, you little punks!”

  The two guys were typical burnout idiots. Ryan knew, though, that sometimes tools like this could be more trouble than the real tough kids. It’s always the posers who take things too far.

  Ryan really hated running from them. But he had Lizzy and Ernest to think about. It was the smart thing to do.

  The burnouts started to give chase while the two girls tried to call them back. The idiots made a show of it, running hard like they really cared about catching a bunch of sixth graders. A few seconds later they were slowing down and hacking so hard Ryan thought they’d cough up a lung.

  “We see you again, we’re gonna kick your little butts!” one of them called out.

  “Tools,” Ryan muttered as he, Lizzy, and Ernest caught their breath. He looked around. They’d run onto a different trail, one that looped back toward the school. Doubling back would risk crossing the burnouts again.

  Ryan didn’t have much trouble convincing Ernest and Lizzy to forgo the well for the day. That’s when Ernest realized that he didn’t have the fire extinguisher anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, hanging his head in shame. “I dropped it when we started running.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Ryan said. “It was smart. We can’t go look for it, though. Not today, at least.”

  They continued on the trail until it led them back out of the woods a couple of hundred yards from where they’d entered.

  By the time they returned to Ryan’s, Mrs. Wilmette was back from her errands. A little while later Lizzy’s mom came over, still in her hospital scrubs, and the three moms sat in the kitchen talking for the rest of the afternoon. Ryan didn’t know what they were talking about, but they clearly didn’t want to be bothered. Any time he came into the kitchen to get something from the fridge, his mom shooed him out of the room.

  Ryan, Lizzy, and Ernest watched TV and drank soda in the den for a while. But Ernest was still down about losing the fire extinguisher.

  Luckily, Ryan had an idea that would cheer him up.

  ROLLO STORIES

  “More lemonade, anyone?” Mrs. Haemmerle said, holding the pitcher up for takers. Their mouths full of cookies, Ernest, Ryan, and Lizzy all held out their glasses for a refill.

  Ernest had been down about losing the fire extinguisher in the woods, but he forgot all about that as soon as Ryan came in from the kitchen, turned off the TV, and announced that they were all going over to Mrs. Haemmerle’s house. Ever since Ernest had first met the old woman, he’d wanted to go back to her house and talk to her some more.

  The kids had been gorging on cookies and lemonade for the last half hour while Ernest asked questions about Rollo. Mrs. Haemmerle explained that because of Rollo’s enlarged heart, he was never expected to live long enough to become an adult. The grown-ups all seemed to know this, but none of the kids did.

  Some things never change, Ernest thought.

  A couple of days later, Ryan told Ernest that Mrs. Haemmerle wanted them to come over again next Saturday.

  “Okay,” Ernest said. “Did she say why?”

  Ryan shook his head. “Just said to bring you over.”

  “She say anything else?”

  Ryan shook his head again. Actually, Mrs. Haemmerle had told him to bring “his little girlfriend” along as well. He kept that part to himself.

  This time when the kids came over to Mrs. Haemmerle’s house, she wasn’t alone. There was an old man with her, probably as old as Mrs. Haemmerle, more or less.

  “Kids, this is Jack Hought,” Mrs. Haemmerle said.

  Mr. Hought shook all their hands. “Nice to meet you all,” he said. When he got to Ernest, he
stopped and stared. “You weren’t kidding, Annie,” he said to Mrs. Haemmerle without taking his eyes off Ernest. “He looks so much like Rollo.”

  “Ernest, Jack here was Rollo’s best friend. If you really want to hear stories about Rollo, he’s your man.”

  BUDDY THE IDIOT

  Buddy was an idiot. And Heather knew he was an idiot. It was kind of hard to miss. The guy liked to do three things: smoke cigarettes, break things, and wear this ugly brown parka with grimy fake fur along the hood, sleeves, and waistline.

  At the present moment he was accomplishing all three at once. They were in the woods behind the middle school with Drake and Margo, like they were most afternoons. Sitting around and smoking. Truth be told, it was kind of boring.

  Then Buddy found an old liquor bottle in the brush and started throwing it around. He threw it against the ground. Then he threw it against a tree. And then against a bigger tree. But it wouldn’t break.

  This bottle is getting the better of him, Heather thought.

  Heather knew she couldn’t keep doing this. Over the last several weeks she’d been getting in trouble, kind of a lot. Skipping school, blowing off homework, fighting with her parents, breaking curfew. Two weeks ago, Drake got caught trying to steal beer from the grocery store. Heather didn’t know he was doing it, but she was with him—they all were—so they all got busted.

  Then last weekend, there was that business with those middle school kids. Buddy and Drake heard them walking on one of the nearby trails and chased them off. The kids ran, of course, but then Buddy, all worked up, kept yelling at them, like he was really mad or something. Heather didn’t understand what he had to be so mad about.

  Like why was he getting so mad about this dumb bottle?

  “Heather, come over here,” Buddy yelled to her. She went and found him standing over a large stone embedded in the ground. “Watch this. Here it comes.”