A Drop of Hope

by Keith Calabrese

  His dad shrugged. “I don’t know. But it’s worth a shot.”

  RUMMAGE SALE

  Old shirts. Old dresses. So many old-people clothes.

  This was not how Jeanne had planned to spend her day off. Sorting through old clothes. She’d just come off a double shift at the hospital where she was a nurse in the neonatal unit, and she was exhausted. But her mom gave her that whole “you work all the time and I never get to see you anymore” guilt trip, and so here they were, down in the church basement, tagging old junk for the bi-monthly rummage sale.

  The boxes on Jeanne’s table were donated by the granddaughter of an old parishioner who had recently died. Jeanne had been sorting through boxes for the better part of an hour, and there were still three or four boxes left.

  She grabbed the next one, which was filled with random items: a toaster, some garden shears, a wall clock, and a … What the …

  In the bottom of the pile was a really old box, still in good shape. She pulled it out of the pile for a closer look.

  It was a ray gun. A really old toy ray gun. Like from the fifties. Never been opened.

  A Flash Gordon click ray pistol, according to the box. Jeanne had no earthly clue what most of that meant, but enough of her boyfriend Drew’s geek-speak had filtered into her brain to recognize the name Flash Gordon. The box itself was sci-fi gold. It was decorated with a drawing of Flash Gordon with what looked like a five-gallon water-cooler bottle on his head, shooting his laser pistol at some creepy goblin-like alien.

  She carefully opened the box to check inside. The pistol was in perfect condition.

  Drew would go nuts for this.

  THE REDIGGERS

  Chad Finnegan had been sitting in his car for about ten minutes, parked half a block down from the house. He’d driven by this house a lot since he first got home, sometimes three or four times a week. Wanting to stop but too afraid to go through with it.

  But something about those two boys in the back of the ambulance last night—the little one with the broken arm, the bigger one with the crazy laugh—told him it was time.

  SETTLING ACCOUNTS

  Ryan spent the next day on the couch, his ankle propped on a pillow, watching movies with his dad. Lizzy came over after school. She was still pretty keyed up over the last couple of days and couldn’t decide whether to hug him or punch him in the arm as hard as she could. So she did both.

  And in both cases, Ryan just took it.

  Then, late in the afternoon, Ryan had some other visitors. Mr. Earle came over with Tess. The light of day wasn’t doing any favors to the beating Mr. Earle had taken on last night’s little adventure. If anything, he looked worse. His face had swollen and bruised overnight and he had two black eyes along with the broken nose courtesy of Ryan’s forehead.

  Tess, by contrast, was completely put together. She wore a gray suit with heels and carried a leather briefcase. And she was acting a little different, too. Kind of serious, professional even, like she was here on business.

  Which, it turned out, she was.

  She took a seat across from Ryan and his parents. “Remember last night, when I told you that my grandmother wasn’t senile, that she knew you weren’t letting her pay you?” she said. “Well, this is what she did with that money.”

  She removed a small stack of documents from her briefcase and handed Ryan the top page. It was a quarterly earnings report for an investment portfolio made out in his name.

  “I don’t understand,” Ryan said.

  “Since you were too kind to ever take her money,” Tess explained, “she started putting money aside for you, in a trust. She then invested that money in a start-up I was financing.” She pointed to a highlighted number at the bottom of the page. “You could say that it took off.”

  Ryan looked at the highlighted number, the portfolio’s net worth. It was a really big number. The kind of number people from the South Side don’t come across that often.

  “Holy … wow,” his dad said.

  “It’s not enough to buy a house on the Riviera,” Tess said. “But it should help out with college.”

  Ryan looked at his mom. “Looks like you’re going back to school,” he said.

  “What?” his mom said, stunned. “No, honey. That’s for you—”

  “And I’m investing it,” Ryan said. He gave his dad a look. “My business, right?”

  “It certainly is,” his dad said.

  JOSH GETS HIS WISH

  Josh Redigger came home to the sound of laughing in the kitchen.

  It had already been a weird day at school. Ernest Wilmette and Ryan Hardy were both absent, and there was a sub in Mr. Earle’s class. A lot of rumors were circulating through the school about an incident in the woods last night. The most popular of these had Mr. Earle rescuing Ernest and Ryan from a devil-worshipping cult sacrifice.

  “In here, Josh!” his mom called to him from the kitchen. He dropped his bag and went in. There he saw his mom and dad sitting at the kitchen table with …

  “Chad!”

  “Hey, buddy,” Chad said, getting up and giving Josh a bear hug. “You’ve gotten taller.”

  “Eh, barely,” Josh said as he sat down at the table.

  “Chad and your father were just reminiscing about the time he taught the boys how to drive a stick shift.”

  “Your brother,” Chad said to Josh, “kept looking down whenever he had to shift.”

  “And drifting across the center line,” his dad added.

  “So then your dad yells, ‘Matt! Eyes on the road!’ and Matt panics, looks up, and yanks his foot off the clutch.”

  Josh’s father laughed. “That poor car never drove the same after you two boys.”

  Chad and his parents went on like this for hours. Josh had no idea what in the heck they were talking about. But he didn’t care. He just didn’t want them to stop.

  HAPPINESS IS A WARM FLASH GORDON CLICK RAY PISTOL

  “Are you sure?” the woman asked, brushing her hand lightly on top of the airline agent’s. “I know there are first-class seats available. I checked online.”

  She was pretty, strikingly so. Pretty enough to be on TV.

  Drew had seen plenty of her kind before. The kind used to getting her way.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Chase,” he said. “But we’re not offering any upgrades for this flight.”

  The woman huffed indignantly and walked away.

  Drew took out his phone and looked at the text again. It was from his girlfriend, Jeanne. She had sent him a photo attachment, a picture of … He still couldn’t believe it.

  An original Louis Marx Flash Gordon click ray pistol. Mint condition!

  It was an awesome find, to be sure. But the best part, the very best part, was that Jeanne found it. He knew she secretly hated that stuff (well, not secretly, though patiently, at least). But she got it for him anyway.

  Drew looked up and saw a lady with kind yet tired eyes standing quietly at his station.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, embarrassed. “Um, checking in?”

  “No worries.” The lady smiled and handed Drew her ticket.

  The reservation appeared on the screen. Evelyn Reeves. She’d booked two days ago.

  Drew looked back up at the lady. Working the service desk, you get pretty good at reading faces. Evelyn Reeves, Drew knew, was not traveling for fun. The recently booked ticket, the sad patience in her eyes. She was either going to a funeral or to see a very sick relative.

  Drew worked his computer. “Going to New York, then continuing on to Boston?”

  “Yes, sir,” Evelyn Reeves said softly.

  Drew hit a few more keys and printed up her boarding passes. “Here you go, Mrs. Reeves,” he said. He leaned forward furtively as he handed her the passes. “I hope you don’t mind,” he whispered, “but I upgraded you to first class for both legs.”

  Mrs. Reeves took the passes, confused. “I … Thank you,” she said, emitting the tiniest breath of surprise. “Thank you
so much.”

  Drew smiled. “Have a good flight, Mrs. Reeves.”

  OLD HOUSE, NEW BEGINNING

  “Ernest!” his mom called from downstairs.

  “Coming, Mom.”

  On his way from his bedroom, Ernest had to pass the steps leading up to that creepy attic door. It didn’t scare him anymore, though. Summer vacation had just begun, and this had been his house for a while now.

  It was the first of many welcome changes for Ernest Wilmette. There was a time, shortly after Ernest had come home from the hospital in a massive cast that ran the length of his arm, when he feared his parents would treat him like a fragile little baby doll for the rest of his life. But to his surprise, Ernest’s injury actually toughened him up in his parents’ eyes.

  For starters, his parents let him ride in the front seat, following a late fall growth spurt. (Well, more of a growth trickle, to be accurate.) Ernest’s dad had even promised to teach him how to mow the lawn this summer.

  And they talked to him more, told him more, about both big and small things. In fact, one day while looking through some ancient family photos, Ernest’s dad pointed out an eccentric old lady, Great-Aunt Myrtle. Obsessed with catastrophe, she notoriously gave out the worst birthday and Christmas presents—a first aid kit, a canteen, water purification tablets, maybe a ham radio, or, on special occasions …

  … a fire extinguisher.

  Because, as Great-Aunt Myrtle was often fond of saying, you never know.

  When Ernest got downstairs, Declan was already in his chair eating apple slices.

  “Was Ryan here?” Ernest asked.

  “Just to drop off Declan,” his mom said. “He has to do the Haemmerle lawn this morning.”

  Ryan’s mom had started going back to school three days a week at Ohio State, and Ernest’s mom looked after Declan on the days when Mrs. Hardy was at class or studying.

  In fact, over the last few months the Wilmette house had become an unofficial after-school hub for Ernest and his friends. Ryan and Lizzy were over most afternoons, and sometimes Lizzy brought along her cousin Amber. Tommy and Winston stopped by now and again. The house was often loud and busy, and there was always someone tracking in dirt, making a mess, adding to the chaos.

  Ernest knew that’s how his mom liked it. Crowded, loud, messy. Home.

  “Dad already gone?”

  “He and Mr. Hardy were out the door first thing,” his mom said. Ryan’s dad was in charge of the expansion and had become Ernest’s dad’s second-in-command at the factory.

  As Ernest had suggested, his dad had put their house on the market last fall, just before Thanksgiving. It sold quickly to a very motivated buyer, and Ernest and his family moved into Grandpa Eddie’s old house.

  Even though Ernest’s dad got a great price for the house, the money still fell far short of covering the proposed expansion. But once word had gotten out that the Wilmette family was putting up their own money, their own house, even, to save the factory and, to no small degree, the town, people responded.

  People like Marcus Earle and Tess Haemmerle. Like Detective Stanley Donan (Ret.) and Jack Hought. Dr. Tom Shay and Dr. Salman Patil. Lizzy’s mom and the nurses she worked with, along with the doctors, orderlies, and administrators. And lots of other people Ernest didn’t even know.

  People who had wishes.

  Or people who just had hope.

  And all those people, well, they weren’t shy about letting one R. Peter Bilkes, the president of Donnelly Fidelity Bank, know that they were considering pulling their money from his bank. R. Peter Bilkes, a great believer in the almighty bottom line, decided it was maybe time to recheck some of his figures.

  Wilmette Stamping, Tool & Die got the loan just in time for Christmas.

  KEEPING IT IN THE FAMILY

  After dropping off Declan at the Wilmettes’ house, Ryan went across the street to Mrs. Haemmerle’s old house. Ever since the funeral, Tess had been splitting her time between Cliffs Donnelly and San Francisco. Ryan was surprised when she didn’t put her grandmother’s house on the market, then less surprised when Tess and Mr. Earle started seeing each other.

  Tess waved at Ryan from the kitchen window as he walked up to the garage. He waved back. When Tess was in California, she left Ryan in charge of looking after the house. That meant his usual yard work, but also taking in the mail and generally keeping an eye on the place. She paid him, of course, but in truth he would have been happy to do it for free.

  Ryan opened the garage and topped off the lawn mower with gas. As he put the gas can back, he recalled the time, last fall, when Ernest had come over with a bag containing Rollo’s remaining birthday gifts, a quilt and a toy ray gun. He’d used the quilt when Mrs. Haemmerle died, but to this day he had no idea what ever happened to that ray gun. Sometimes he thought he might find it buried behind some old boxes in the garage, but deep down he knew it was gone.

  FRIENDS LIKE THESE

  “You look lovely.”

  “I look ridiculous.”

  “Stop that,” Lizzy’s mother said. They had just gotten Lizzy’s bridesmaid dress back from the tailor, and her mom couldn’t wait to make her try it on.

  Lizzy’s mom and Dr. Shay were getting married in the fall. It was going to be a small wedding, just family and a few close friends. Dr. Shay’s brother was the best man and Lizzy was her mom’s maid of honor, but that was it for the bridal party.

  “I need to get a picture to send Tom,” she said, taking out her phone.

  “Mom,” Lizzy groaned.

  “Ugh. The light in here is terrible,” her mom said, trying different angles for the picture. “Let’s go outside.”

  “Mom!” Lizzy groaned with heightened emphasis.

  It was no use. Lizzy’s mom would not be deterred. She put down the phone, took Lizzy’s hand in both of hers, and led her outside.

  Then she remembered the phone.

  “Stay there,” she said. “Be right back.”

  Lizzy stood on the front lawn, hoping no one would come down the street for the next three to five minutes.

  “Hey,” Ryan said as he dragged Mrs. Haemmerle’s trash bins up from the curb. “A little early for back-to-school shopping, isn’t it?”

  “Shut up,” Lizzy snapped. “It’s my dress for the wedding.”

  “I figured,” Ryan said.

  Lizzy fidgeted when he didn’t say anything after that.

  “You don’t like it,” she said.

  “I do,” he insisted.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to pretend.”

  “I’m not pretending,” he said.

  “I just know that, well, dresses aren’t really my thing.”

  “Lizzy,” Ryan said, “I’ve already told you once I thought you were pretty.”

  “That time didn’t count.”

  “Yes, it did.”

  “Nope,” she said. “I was crying. You felt compelled.”

  “I meant it.”

  “Still doesn’t count.” She wasn’t going to budge.

  “I meant it,” he said directly. “I mean it. You are pretty. Really pretty. And not just because of all this,” he said, waving his hands to suggest the dress, her hair, face, and everything else. “Lizzy, you are pretty all the way through.”

  She hadn’t expected that, and it made her gasp a little. The best part, though, was that while it was certainly nice to hear, she was surprised to discover it wasn’t something she needed to hear.

  Even from Ryan Hardy.

  And that, Lizzy realized, was perhaps what she had really wanted all along.

  After her mom finally finished taking pictures of her in her bridesmaid dress, Lizzy changed as fast as she could back into her regular clothes, had a quick sandwich for lunch, and then went to get Ernest.

  About two weeks before the end of the school year, Mr. Earle’s old Sunday school teacher, a woman named Evelyn Reeves, had asked him for a favor. She had sold a kids’ book to a big New York publishing house and was
about to turn in her final manuscript to her editor. First, however, she wondered if Mr. Earle had any students he thought might be up for taking her novel out for a test drive.

  Naturally, he thought of Ernest and Lizzy.

  The book was called Friends Like These. It was about a thirteen-year-old boy named Stuart in a small New England town who discovers one day that his best friend, Nash, is secretly, and literally, a devil. It was scary and dangerous, of course, with lots of demons and angels (who can be surprisingly scarier than the demons) and angry mobs of frightened townspeople (who can be, less surprisingly to Lizzy, scarier than both), but Stuart sticks by his friend. Because that’s what you do, even if your friend comes from the wrong side of the tracks.

  Lizzy loved the book and had even tried to get Ryan to read it, but with no success. Now she and Ernest were meeting Mrs. Reeves and Mr. Earle at the school to discuss it and give her feedback before she sent the final revision to her publisher.

  As Lizzy approached Ernest’s house, a thick, manila envelope tucked under her arm, she couldn’t help but think about her cousin Chelsea. It was Chelsea’s parents who had bought Ernest’s house on the North Side. Once Lizzy’s mom made it abundantly clear that neither she nor Lizzy would be apologizing to Chelsea or Aunt Patty, Lizzy’s uncle Ron had to do something to appease his domineering wife and daughter.

  Fortunately for him, the most coveted house in town was about to be put on the market.

  Funny how things work out like that.

  And while it might have irked Lizzy that Chelsea and Aunt Patty had been, in a way, rewarded for their many acts of petty, and not so petty, cruelty, she tried not to dwell on it.

  Besides, the move was a godsend to poor Amber. While Aunt Patty was absorbed with the new house, and Chelsea was absorbed with, well, Chelsea, Amber could now devote the energy she’d previously spent on hiding in plain sight on more rewarding pursuits. Like sports (she was quite the volleyball player), and hanging out with Lizzy. Lizzy had never forgotten the way Amber had silently sat beside her that day when she had finally stood up to Chelsea. It was a little thing, perhaps.

  But the strongest friendships are often based on the little things.