Down With the Shine (22 page)

LABOR DAY WEEKEND—SATURDAY

I
should be dead. That’s what everyone says. The doctors say it so often, I can’t help but think they’re a little miffed I’m still alive.

Not just alive. After a few months chilling in a coma, I woke up, and—besides feeling a little stiff from lying around for so long—I feel fine.

They tell me I’ve been a mystery case from the beginning.

Apparently, that bullet of Rollo’s getting fired at such close range should’ve torn my heart to shreds.

I should’ve been killed instantly.

Or if by some odd chance it merely nicked my heart, I should’ve bled out before I reached the hospital. That’s what they call dead on arrival.

But my heart wasn’t shredded. I didn’t die instantly
or bleed out. There was no DOA. Instead, by the time we reached the hospital (my uncles tell me they broke at least a dozen different traffic laws), the hole in my chest had already stopped gushing blood. And when they did an ultrasound they couldn’t find any damage to my heart at all. The entrance wounds on my chest and back (both of them already starting to close up on their own by this time) indicated that the bullet would’ve passed directly through my heart. Except somehow it hadn’t.

It’s almost like I was bulletproof.

Actually, that’s exactly what it was.

The morning I left the house on my way to school, never once realizing I was moments away from being kidnapped, I stopped to say good-bye to my mom. Ever since my uncles told me everything she had done to keep me safe from my father, well, it’s changed our relationship. On my side at least. She’s still a distant basket case. But I know that somewhere deep down inside of her she must still love me. How else can I explain what happened on that morning? Instead of ignoring me and blowing smoke in my face, Mom shoved her Niagara Falls souvenir mug into my hands.

Usually that mug was her ashtray, but on that day it was filled to the brim with moonshine. Kinda grayish-looking
shine. I don’t think Mom had done too great of a job cleaning the mug out. But anyway, she said, “Grant my wish.”

And I said, “Grant what wish?”

We went back and forth like that at least six times, before I was like, “Mom, stop!”

She took a moment to light a cigarette from the butt of her last one before finally nudging our conversation forward. “You get a chance to make a wish, Lennie. You ask to be bulletproof.”

“Oooo-kay. Good talk, Mom. I gotta get to school.” I handed her back the mug, but she refused to take it.

“Grant my wish.”

“Mom,” I said, sorta sighing and then feeling guilty for being annoyed. So I explained. “The uncs don’t want me granting any more wishes. I’ve already done one, and you know they don’t want me anywhere near to that third-wish threshold for at least another two years. So, I’m sorry, but I’m not gonna do it.”

I sorta patted her then, trying to comfort her. She pushed me away. “Bulletproof. You. That’s my wish.”

I probably should’ve walked away then, but the thing is, I’d been getting antsy with my uncles “don’t make any more wishes” rule for a while now. And let’s face it, when I get antsy, things can get a little hairy. Also, it probably wouldn’t hurt for me to be bulletproof, what with the
whole antsiness leading to hairiness problem.

“Okay, Mom, but I really think you should wish to stop smoking.”

In response she grabbed the mug and glugged down half the moonshine.

“All right then,” I said. “To having a bulletproof daughter. May all your wishes come true, or at least just this one.”

As soon as I made the wish, I wished that I hadn’t. Of course, now I’m glad that I did, but at the time, not realizing a bullet was in my near future, I felt bad about disobeying my uncles’ rules. I sort of justified it by promising myself I wouldn’t make that third wish (the one that would transfer all of their wish-granting abilities over to the next generation, otherwise known as me) anytime soon. And if for some reason I did end up needing that third wish sooner than expected, well, I figured I’d break the news right after presenting each of my uncles with an extra-big bucket of KFC to soften the blow.

Obviously, that plan didn’t end up working out, so when I woke up from my coma, I was a little worried they were gonna be upset. And I didn’t even have a fried chicken distraction.

Imagine my relief, then, when I realized they were mostly critical of the wish because I hadn’t followed their
rule of specificity. Broad wishes like being bulletproof left too many things open to interpretation by whatever being or greater power out there makes wishes come true. Also, they thought it might have been smarter if I’d been knife-proof along with bulletproof. That way I might still have had all my fingers.

I couldn’t really argue with that last point.

So I felt better about granting my third wish, but I was still worried about what my uncles would do for money, since they used the shine/wish granting as their livelihood, and I’d essentially put them out of business. They laughed about that, and then confessed that the swear jar that had always sat in the kitchen was wish-powered. Instead of them putting a dollar inside every time someone swore, one magically appeared. Now I also finally understood why none of them had ever told me to watch my language.

So with my uncles taken care of, I started asking questions about what happened after I exhaled my last shuddering, pain-filled breath. It’s kind of crazy, but I really wanted to know how things ended for poor old Rollo.

Turns out, not so well.

From what I’ve been told, the sun rose and Rollo started screaming, crying, and begging for forgiveness. He wasn’t talking to my uncles, but instead to his sainted dead mother, as if she were standing right in front of him
and eyeing him with the sort of parental disappointment that could drive a certain sort of person insane. Rollo was that certain type of person. You could even say this was his own personal hell. My wish and his had come together in the most devastating way possible.

Three days after he shot me, the poor bastard hung himself in his jail cell.

I try not to think about that. Luckily, I have a permanent distraction who’s been by my side holding my hand from the minute I woke up from my coma.

Dyl’s wan little face was the first one I saw after opening my eyes.

She looked awful. Pale and skinny and drowning in contrition, she looked like she’d been living underground for the last six months.

“Lennie!” she’d cried, with actual real tears falling, when she saw my eyes were open and looking her way.

“Not gonna say I told you so,” I replied in my raspy voice.

Dyl gave me a little bit of water to wet my throat, and then as if my waking had lifted some sort of spell from her too, grinned. “Technically, you just did.”

“Respect the hospital bed,” I replied, using the controls to get myself into a more upright position.

Dyl fluffed my pillows. “Respect.”

I waited a beat, letting her sit down again, before reminding her, “You owe me a blind date. Don’t think I forgot.”

And Dyl laughed. “Is that why you’ve been lying here for the last six months? You’ve been wracking your brains for the worst possible person to make me go out with?”

“Six months?” I’d asked. Then Dyl called in my uncles and all the doctors and everyone explained about Rollo and the coma and everything else. But a few hours later we continued our blind date conversation and I told Dyl exactly who I had in mind for her.

“My bio lab partner, Larry.”

“The one who’s in love with you?” Dyl asked. “He’s been here, like, a hundred times.” She pointed to a pile of various stuffed animals holding hearts between their little paws.

“Those are terrible. But trust me, he’s a really good guy. And I don’t know, I think you’d hit it off.”

Dyl looked down at her hands and didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally, she mumbled, “You’re right. We would.” That horribly guilty look back on her face, her gaze met mine again. “We’ve made out in the hospital stairwell, like, three times. He keeps wanting to bring me home to meet his mother.”

And then it was my turn to laugh, “I guess your date won’t be so blind after all.”

For the record, their date went really well.

Now Dyl is making noise about a double date. And I’m like, “Hello, I’m still in the hospital while the doctors poke at me and try to figure out what kind of freak I am. Also, I need a date for myself to make it a double and not a horrible third-wheel situation.”

Of course, Dyl has to mention Smith. “He’s not dating anyone right now. Hasn’t since you—”

“Oh, no no no.” I shut that down real quick.

Smith is Dylan’s twin brother. He’s cool and hot at the same time. We’ve been flirting since forever, but have never taken it any further than that.

Well, except for this one time.

It was one of those impulse things. I was at their house, hanging with Dyl, and I happened to walk by the bathroom while he was gargling mouthwash and . . . I don’t know. Spit and rinse had never been a big turn-on of mine before, but at that moment . . . it felt almost déjà-vu-ish. Like I’d been there before and I knew Smith. Like, really knew him, down to the bottom of his soul.

So I threw myself at him and we kissed. Which sounds pretty tame, except it wasn’t. It was crazy. Our lips met and that déjà vu feeling nearly swallowed me. Then Smith’s hands went into my hair and I freaked out. Pulled away, babbled something. He was freaked too. I could tell. He
kept looking down at his right hand and clenching it like it hurt him or something. We nearly sprinted in opposite directions and have kept our distance since then.

So no. No Smith and me. No me and Smith. It’s not gonna happen. Even if a part of me wishes that it would.

Besides which, I have bigger things to think about than double dates. Tomorrow I finally get out of the hospital and then it’s on to senior year and after that—the rest of my life.

I’m feeling pretty good about that, though. Something about being bulletproof makes me optimistic about the future. My uncles can see me turning over the possibilities in my head. They know it’s not in me to lay low the way they have. I’m gonna do things my own way, and it’s probably gonna get messy. Or as Uncle Jet put it a few minutes ago, “If you’re not careful, by the time you’re twenty you’ll be so full of bullet holes, people’ll think you’re made of Swiss cheese.”

I told him he was acting like an old lady and he stormed out. Then Uncle Dune and Uncle Rod went after him, leaving me alone for the rest of the night. Which is how I like it. Having them hovering at my bedside like little old ladies makes me nervous. It feels good to fall asleep with no one watching me, worrying I’ll slip back into another coma.

You can never get rid of them for long, though, and the next morning I wake up with someone once again holding my hand. I try to jerk it away, but Dyl is holding tight this morning. Peeling my eyes open, I turn to ask her how the third date with Larry went. Instead, my mouth falls open and I blink stupidly.

It’s Smith. His hair is mussed and his expression uncertain, but only for an instant and then that confident smile slides into place.

“Smith,” I say. The word nearly gets caught in my throat. “What are you doing here?”

“Lennie,” he answers, that smile not wavering. “Everyone was asking about you at Kayla’s party last night.”

It takes a minute for me to remember what he’s talking about. Then I do. Michaela’s Labor Day party is an annual event for all the people who matter at our school. Smith is on this list. I am not. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been to the party. On the contrary, I make it a point of going every year, just as Michaela makes a point of humiliating party crashers. Except she’s never been able to catch me. I’m actually a bit notorious for being the only person to crash her party and get away unscathed three times running.

“Everyone knows I’m in the hospital,” I say now. “You know, that whole being in a coma thing?”

Smith shrugs. “I guess people figured that wouldn’t stop you. Or maybe they were hoping against hope to see you there.” His eyes meet and hold mine in this significant way that seems to be saying
he
specifically was hoping. But then he looks away, and I wonder if I imagined it. “Anyway, you didn’t miss anything. Not even the challenge of crashing. I don’t know if you heard, but after you were shot, Michaela had some sort of weird ‘come to Jesus’ moment or something. She started this whole anti-bullying thing, and apologized to everyone she’d ever hurt, and to top it all off, started dating Wee Willie Winkie.”

“Yeah, Dyl told me about some of that. She also said Michaela brings the pain to anyone who dares call Todd Wee Willie Winkie.”

“True,” Smith admits with a laugh. “But I like to live dangerously.”

I laugh too and then Smith entertains me with a story of how Zinkowski and Turlington were the bright spot of an otherwise boring party. Apparently, they showed up totally baked and starting doing this Jedi mind trick thing. According to Smith, it was pretty cool at first. They sat facing each other and would then say the same thing at the exact same time like, “Cheetos touch” or “wisdom of the ages, man.” They swore it wasn’t rehearsed, but after
a while everyone lost interest and started drifting away. Turlington and Zinkowski didn’t even seem to notice.

It’s a pretty funny story, but when he’s done, I can’t help but ask the question that’s been on my mind this whole time. “So what are you doing here, Smith? Why aren’t you passed out on Michaela’s floor like everyone else?”

Smith shakes his head. “No one is passed out on Michaela’s floor. A little after midnight, she turned off the music, turned up the lights, and began dumping all the liquor down the sink. Then she went room by room telling people to get out. I asked her what the deal was, and she just said she had this nervous feeling that if they didn’t leave now, she might be stuck with them forever. It was crazy, but I also sorta think she had a point. You know?”

“Yeah,” I agree, without quite knowing why. Then, refusing to let him off the hook, I ask again, “Why are you here, Smith?”