I Wish

I Wish

Book One in the
I Wish
Series

ELIZABETH LANGSTON

S
PENCER
H
ILL
P
RESS

Copyright © 2014 by Elizabeth Langston

Sale of the paperback edition of this book without its cover is unauthorized.

Spencer Hill Press

This book is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Contact: Spencer Hill Press, PO Box 247, Contoocook, NH 03229, USA

Please visit our website at
www.spencerhillpress.com

First Edition: November 2014.
Elizabeth Langston
I Wish: a novel / by Elizabeth Langston – 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary:
A genie grants a month of wishes to a struggling teenage girl.

The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this fiction: Advanced Placement (AP), Barbie, Eagle Scout, Ford Focus, Gatorade, Godiva,
Gone with the Wind
, Google, iPad, JELL-O, McDonald’s, Mustang, Pez,
National Geographic, The Twilight Zone
,
The Washington Post
, Wikipedia

Cover design by Lisa Amowitz
Interior layout by Marie Romero
Image credit: Svetlana Prikhnenko

ISBN 978-1-939392-23-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-939392-24-4 (e-book)

Printed in the United States of America

To the original Lacey—
thank you for daring to take a different path

Also by Elizabeth Langston

The
Whisper Falls
Series

(Spencer Hill Press)

Whisper Falls
A Whisper in Time
Whispers from the Past

I
skipped the pep rally that day. No one would notice, and I could use the extra hour.

Apparently, a lot of my classmates had the same idea. There was a traffic jam at the side door, dozens of us streaming out, smiling silently as we headed off on our separate paths. My route home took me through the senior parking lot, down a shaded alley, and along the town square—each step changing the school-me into the home-me.

I rounded the corner onto our street and leveled a critical eye on our house, a grumpy old pile of bricks baking on an overgrown yard.
Mowing
needed to move higher on my to-do list. I thumped up the front steps, across the wooden porch, and in through the door.

It was dim and cool in the foyer, way cooler than we could afford. Yet for a brief moment, I closed my eyes and let myself enjoy it.

Okay, enough. I reached for the thermostat as I shouted, “Mom?”

There was no response. I hesitated, wondering whether I should hunt her down, when I saw that the door leading to the attic—and my bedroom—stood ajar.

Strange. I charged up the narrow staircase.

When I entered my room, I could tell she’d been in here. Maybe it was a sixth sense, or a lingering whiff of her unwashed body. Either way, I knew.

I also knew why.

Rushing to my desk, I yanked the top drawer open. Empty. This morning, it had held an envelope full of twenty-dollar bills. Now, nothing.

My heart rocketed into overdrive. “Mom?” I took the stairs two at a time and skidded to a halt in the doorway of the kitchen. “Where’s my money?”

She sat at the end of the table, hands wrapped around a mug of coffee, hair clinging to her cheeks in dark, greasy strands. “Gone.”

“Did you take it?”

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

“Yes. I gave it to Henry.”

Wow. “You gave Henry
my
three hundred dollars?”

“Yes.”

Okay, deep breath. An eight-year-old boy didn’t need that kind of cash. She must be confused again. “Why?”

“So he can play soccer.”

I repeated the sentence silently, one word at a time, waiting for the concept to sink in. Soccer? “Henry knows we can’t afford to waste that much money on a game.”

“He didn’t ask. The coach did.” She hunched lower over the table. “The team wants Henry back. He was one of their stars last year.”

“You could’ve said no.”

“I didn’t want to. He loves to play.”

I swallowed hard against the panic scalding my throat. After nearly a year of her uncontrolled stupidity, I should be used to it by now. But no. “Mom. I haven’t paid the electric bill or bought groceries this week. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

I slumped against the doorframe for support. Had she looked at our bank statements recently?

Of course not. In the ten months since my stepfather’s death, it had become a habit for her to leave everything to me. “Mom, I don’t think you realize how much trouble we’re in.” “We’ll manage.” She tightened the belt on her bathrobe.

“We’re not managing now.” I pressed fists to my eyes, fighting back the feeling of being overwhelmed. “Who can I contact to get the money back?”

“The fee is non-refundable.” Her voice had thickened. “We have to find a way to let him do this, Lacey. He’s good.”

“He won’t be if he’s starving.” I gripped the doorframe, my fingernails scraping off flecks of paint, and tried really hard to pretend that I didn’t want to slap her. If I didn’t raise two hundred dollars by tomorrow, we’d have the power to the house turned off, a horrible thought with September temperatures in the nineties. “What do you want me to sell this time?”

She wrapped her arms around her waist and laid her head on the table. “What’s left?”

“Great-Grandma’s silver. Your sewing machine.”

“No, neither one of those,” she said, tears squeezing from closed eyes. “What else?”

“Aunt Myra’s candlesticks.”

“I never liked Aunt Myra,” she whispered.

I stared at her still form. Depression hovered around her like a fog. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” And I would somehow, just like she’d counted on. I grabbed the car keys, rummaged in the closet for the candlesticks, and headed out the door.

When I pulled into the flea-market parking lot, the Carolina sun had already driven away most of the shoppers. I hurried past the clothing stalls and the tacky reproduction furniture and walked straight to my destination. Madame Noir’s Collectibles sweltered in its prime location at the intersection of the two main aisles.

“Hi, Madame.”

“Lacey Linden, it’s good to see you.” She sat in an extra-wide lawn chair under a huge umbrella, too fat to budge often from her spot, which didn’t matter because people came to her. “What have you got for me today, sugar?”

Much as I hated the reason that I was here, haggling with Madame was always fun. I held out the brass candlesticks.

Her gaze flicked over them. “Hmmph.” She lifted first one, then the other, weighing them in her hands. “Business is slow.”

She was trying to psych me out. It wasn’t going to work. I forced myself not to smile. “You won’t have any trouble selling these.” Madame had several “special clients,” a mysterious group of people who never came to the flea market yet always had plenty of money for the antiques she found for them there. It was good for me; her special clients had bought enough stuff from my house to keep the creditors away for months.

Madame took a sip from her glass of sweet tea and grunted. “I don’t know.”

I said nothing. It was best to leave her alone until she made up her mind.

“There’s a basket of stuff in my station wagon, sugar. Do me a favor and fetch it.”

It was a ploy to get me out of the way while she considered a price. Cool. The more she thought, the more I’d get. “Sure.”

I circled the stall to where Madame had parked her car. It looked sort of like a hearse—big, black, and muddy with rusted tire wells. When I opened the back door, the smell of stale fries and ripe banana peel puffed out. Holding my breath, I ducked into the car, hoisted a huge wicker basket, and kicked the door shut. “Are you going to unload this stuff now?” I asked.

“No, sugar. You can.”

I set the basket on the display table and considered her latest discoveries. On top were two silver handheld mirrors, the kind of collectibles Madame sold in bulk. The third object resembled a squarish shoebox made of inlaid wood. I placed the badly scratched box on the table, released the catch, and lifted the hinged lid. Half of the inside held a small compartment, lined in golden velvet. The other half? A miniature winter scene.

Wow
.

Chills whispered along my spine. A tiny Victorian couple skated across a frozen lake framed by inch-high, snow-dusted evergreens. Snowdrifts formed along a cobblestone street which curved past shops and a church. “What is this thing?” I asked.

“It’s a music box.” Her eyes narrowed speculatively.

I’d never owned a music box before—had never wanted to—but I couldn’t help coveting this one. Unable to contain my curiosity, I twisted the key at the back and listened to a few bars of “Silent Night, Holy Night.”

It was perfection.

A long-forgotten memory tickled in a corner of my brain. My dad and I had traveled somewhere up north for Christmas. Michigan or Massachusetts—I couldn’t remember any more. It’d been incredibly cold. He’d bundled me up and taken me out to a frozen pond—just the two of us.

“Yoo hoo, Lacey!” Madame’s drawl brought me rudely back to the present. “What do you think? Are you going to buy something for a change?”

“Not a chance.” I adored it, but no way could I let her know. “It’s too beat up.” Disinterest, feigned or not, played a role in any negotiation.

“Are you sure? I could let you have it for thirty bucks.”

That was thirty more than I had. “I don’t think so.” I closed the lid and turned my back on the box. “What will you give me for the candlesticks?”

“One hundred fifty.”

I gritted my teeth to keep my expression neutral. That wasn’t close enough to what they were worth. “Two hundred.”

“One seventy.”

Maybe the utility company would take one hundred seventy dollars as a down payment and I could owe them the rest, something they were used to from us. It was just hard to know when they’d run out of patience.

The music box tinkled two more notes.

I turned and looked down at it. Was it trying to remind me of its presence? Did it want me to take it home?

I needed to get a grip. A music box did not communicate with the random humans who stopped by to admire it. No matter how perfect it was.

Oh, who was I fooling? For the past year, I’d only thought about our
needs
. It had been so long since I’d allowed myself to want anything that I’d forgotten how it felt, and I wanted the box. Badly. I couldn’t leave it behind. Before I could think through the words, I blurted, “One hundred seventy-five and throw in the music box.”

“Deal.”

Even though it was Friday night, my mother had gone to bed early, claiming to be worn out by her day of doing nothing. When I got home from my shift at the bookstore around nine, she was snoring lightly. I shut her door with a quiet click.

“Lacey?” my brother called from his room.

I stopped and looked in. “Hey, little man. Do you need something?”

He sat cross-legged on his bed, wearing his father’s Carolina Panthers football jersey instead of pajamas. “Do you mind that I joined the soccer team again?”

“I’m not thrilled about it.”

Henry’s face fell. “Sorry.”

“I’m sorry too. I hate to say ‘no’ so much, but we don’t have the money for extras. Okay?”

He nodded, his lower lip trembling. “Mom said you’d figure it out.”

She had more confidence than I did, but I couldn’t let Henry know that. “Mom’s right. I will.” I stepped farther into the room and gave him a good imitation of a smile. It was impossible to stay upset with Henry around. “Do you know what you can do to pay me back?”

His eyes grew big. “What?”

When he looked at me like that, half-scared and half-hopeful, my heart just melted. “Be the best player on the team.”

He blinked. “That’s easy. I already am.”

“Uh-huh. And the most modest.” I kissed him on the top of his head and left, turning off his lamp as I went.

Restlessly, I wandered into the kitchen and stared out the back window, my gaze landing on the detached one-car garage. It sat in the shadows, a lonely, padlocked hulk. My stepfather had converted it into an art studio, a place where he’d coaxed masterpieces from bits of wood.

When I’d returned from the flea market that afternoon, I’d stored the music box in the studio out of desperation. It made more sense than bringing it into the house, especially since I didn’t want to explain to my mom why I got it when I didn’t understand that myself.