The Wishing Thread (18 page)

The old firehouse where the Tappan Watch met had wooden paneling, fluorescent lights, and a weary pink kitchen that could be scrubbed with a toothbrush from top to bottom and yet
still
never look clean. On a good night, twenty or so people might show up to say the Pledge of Allegiance, circle their folding chairs, and pass around a petition. On a bad night—which was to say, a normal night—eight people might wander in late or leave early, mostly for the doughnuts and cider.

This particular Thursday, however, was not a normal night. It was—Aubrey thought as she sat with her knitting, waiting quietly for the meeting to begin—a tremendously good night. News of the “incident” at Mariah’s funeral picnic had spread, and nearly all of Tappan Square had shown up at the Watch meeting. Something about Mariah’s death coupled with the approaching deadline for the council’s vote had galvanized the neighbors to fight—fight at long last. And yet the flourishing crowd left Aubrey with an empty spot in her heart. It seemed such a shame that the Watch had finally been able to muster the energy that Mariah had been hell-bent on mustering—but only after she’d died.

She gathered the heavy Peruvian wool of her poncho more tightly around her shoulders. A cold snap had stampeded
across the valley with darkness and rain riding hard at its heels. The chill was the kind that knocked on the bones.

“Hey.”

Vic dropped into a metal chair beside her, and the hard freeze that had wrapped like a fist around her midsection began to loosen. She finished a stitch and then lifted her eyelids to take him in. He wore a jacket the color of burnt cedar. He smelled of leather, rain, and some faint cologne. His hair was dark and dripping. “Doing okay?”

“Yep.”

“Whatcha making? Can I see?” He motioned to her knitting. She had a new project—a beanie in pale pink with a black skull-and-crossbones motif. With such brutally short hair, Meggie would need a warm hat on nights like this. If she stayed in Tarrytown.

Aubrey moved the work a little closer to Vic, and he touched the stockinette with reverence, caressing the pattern with the pad of his thumb. Her mouth went dry and her poncho felt far too warm on her shoulders.

“Are you making, um, a spell?”

“No. This is just for fun.”

“Is that a pirate symbol?”

She laughed. “Kind of.”

“That’s pretty badass. And to think my grandmother used to knit toilet paper covers.”

“Ah yes. Cozies,” she said. “Knitters make the weirdest things. If you see a woman walking around in a hat that looks like it came out of a Dr. Seuss book, chances are she’s a knitter.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Because we like to show off what we make. Even if it’s not really practical … like a toilet paper roll cover.”

“Hey, now.” His eyebrows drew down in false seriousness.
“Don’t hate the cozies. I have fond memories of using them to hold paintball pellets.”

She smiled. “As if I haven’t knit my share.”

He pulled away from her a bit. “Jeanette coming tonight?”

“She’ll be here later.” She glanced at him. He wasn’t just looking at her; he was staring. His wide shoulders were turned nearly perpendicular to the back of his chair. She squirmed in her seat, heating under his scrutiny. “What’s wrong?”

“You do know that it’s dark outside.”

“Oh.” She touched her face. She’d decided to wear her brown-tinted glasses tonight—just to take the edge off should she catch anyone’s eye. Should she catch
his
. “I’m really sensitive to the light. And I put my eyeballs through hell—you know—with the knitting.”

“Why don’t you take a break?”

She glanced down at the beanie in her hands. She had told him a partial truth: Her eyes hurt. Also, her hands ached with what she suspected was early arthritis. And working the kinks out of her back was as futile as massaging the knots out of a pine tree. But she loved knitting far too much to stop. How could she explain that to be sitting still and
not
be knitting,
not
be creating something, made her feel like she was wasting time?

“I’ll take a break,” she told him. “Later.”

“Right. When you’re sleeping.” He smiled. His teeth, which she hadn’t been close enough to notice until now, were nice teeth—adequately white and with just enough crookedness to please her. He looked around as if checking for eavesdroppers, then leaned closer. He put his arm around the backrest of her chair. Something warm and glowy eased open within her.

“So,” he whispered. “Are you going to run?”

She whispered back. “From what?”

He laughed. “
For
what. Are you going to run to be the new president?”

“Oh. No.”

He tipped his head. “Why not? Aren’t you the natural heir?”

She looked at him now without trying to hide her face. Was he crazy? The leader of the Tappan Watch had to be many things—things Aubrey was not. The leader had to be confident about public speaking; Aubrey had not even spoken at Mariah’s funeral. The leader had to be outspoken and brassy; Aubrey’s sauciest moment had been in the eighth grade, when a teacher had asked her for an answer and she’d said, “You’re the teacher, you tell me.” The leader also had to be popular in Tarrytown—because who except a popular person could mobilize the people of Tappan Square for victory? That Vic thought Aubrey could be the new leader was flattering, but also ridiculous. She wished she could see herself through his eyes.

“I can’t run,” she said.

“But you’ll at least get up and say something, right? To set the tone? I think people would want to hear from you, given everything that’s happening.”

She looked down at her hands in her lap, a dark swell of guilt coming over her. She wanted to help. She did. She wished she were a different person—the kind who could get up in front of a crowd without breaking a sweat. But then she reminded herself: It was actually better for everyone if she did what she always did, played a supporting role instead of a lead one. A bad leader was extremely dangerous. And while she knew she would not be
bad
, she didn’t imagine she could be good, either.

“I’m really awful at speaking in public,” she said.

“Really? But you’re so … oh … what’s the word I’m looking
for? You know—when you have a way of putting things, when you have a way of making a point  …?”

“Articulate?”

He snapped his fingers. “See? You’re a natural.”

“Cute.” She laughed. “That’s just the bookworm in me. When I talk in front of a group, I lose the feeling in my feet. Seriously.”

“Good thing you talk with your mouth then,” he said. And if Aubrey didn’t imagine it, his gaze dropped for a moment to the mouth in question.

At the podium near the front of the room, someone was tapping on the microphone and saying, “Testing. Hello. Hello. If everyone could please take your seats?”

A flash of disappointment crossed Vic’s face, and it was a moment before he turned away from her and faced front. Outside, the wind gave a long, low howl.

“Everyone? Please?” Dan Hatters, the Watch’s treasurer and the closest thing to a leader they had left, was a small man, nearly bald, with a nice argyle sweater and cheap jeans. His voice was piercing. “Everyone? Hello? Take your seats?”

Aubrey lifted her knitting. The proceedings to replace Mariah began.

The Tappan Watch did not have an especially long or auspicious history in Tarrytown. It was formed some time ago—no one could quite remember when—as a way for Tappan Square to rally against a rising tide of crime. The Watch put up street signs that declared a zero-tolerance policy. It sponsored “go-cart night” for students who kept up their grades. It held an annual street fair. In short, it
tried
.

But in recent years, some of the steam had gone out of the Tappan Watch as residents became less concerned about crime and more concerned about feeding their families. The street fair shrank to a few card tables and an amateur clown.
Students realized that one night of go-carts didn’t make up for an entire semester of studying math. The zero-tolerance street signs had been vandalized so that pairs of watchful eyes now looked like pairs of droopy boobs. Aubrey did not quite know how the Watch would be able to put itself together, especially now that Mariah was gone.

“And now we’ll hear from our candidates for president.” Dan Hatters leaned a little too close to the microphone, and it squealed. The crowd grumbled. “Sorry. So … who’s ready?”

First to approach the podium was Redmond Kingly. Between two limp flags he spoke about preserving Tappan Square for the future and protecting their homes. He was so impassioned that his fist pummeled the air and his face got sweaty and scarlet—and if it wasn’t for his state of perpetual drunkenness he might have stood a chance.

Next was Gretel Couenhoven, a math teacher who had a voice like an airplane gliding past on a summer’s day—distant, droning, and of a nature to put a person instantly to sleep. In fact, when Gretel had finally finished her speech, a long moment of silence stretched out before someone finally came to attention and began to clap—because no one had heard a difference between when she was talking and when she was not.

Old Wouter Van Twiller gave a little speech, too—and it was quite a good speech. Passionate yet educated. Cerebral yet accessible. The problem was that Wouter, a member of the historical society who spent his retirement digitizing old books, smelled like hamburger and mothballs, and he had a habit of picking the dry skin off his face when he got nervous.

Aubrey slumped in her chair.

“We’re doomed,” Jeanette, who had snuck in late as usual, whispered beside her.

Vic leaned in and sighed. “I would nominate myself. But
I’ve got my sister living in the house. And it’s not a
legal
two-family. I can’t put myself up for scrutiny.”

“Half of the people in this room are illegal one way or another,” Aubrey said.

“I can’t do it either,” Jeanette said. “I don’t think a Tarrytown citizens’ group much wants a Sleepy Hollower leading the fight.”

Aubrey twisted her hands in her lap. She knew that being a leader meant being a little singular and
apart;
one couldn’t lead a crowd forward from the middle of the pack. But how could Shawn Prior, who was banging on the podium and hollering about Moses dying within sight of the Promised Land, lead Tappan Square to any kind of victory? The wrong leader could do more harm than good. And the stakes were too high to make a bad choice. There was a little over two weeks before the vote that would determine the fate of Tappan Square.

“Is there anyone else?” Dan Hatters asked. He gripped the podium. “Come on now, people. Anyone? Anyone at all?”

The room was quiet except for the snap of raindrops on the window. Aubrey’s palms were sweating. She held her breath. Her heart in her chest was beating at her ribs like an angry mob. Her feet began to tingle. None of the candidates who had voiced their opinions so far had come close to Mariah’s energy, passion, eloquence, and chutzpah. Anyone would be an improvement—even Aubrey. Even
her
.

Please
, she thought.
Somebody, please
. She could not be the one.

“Well then.” Dan looked out over the crowd. “I guess. I guess if there’s no one—if we’re sure—and there really isn’t
anybody
else who wants to run … anybody at all …”

“Oh,
hell
,” Aubrey said.

And she stood up.

It was said that a great rush of wind blew into the Tappan Square firehouse, so strong that chairs were knocked over, flags were blown off their flagpoles, and hair was whipped into stinging eyes. In any case, just as Aubrey got to her feet—her guts rumbling around within her, her feet like blocks of ice—the doors to the firehouse flew open and if it wasn’t a wind that rushed in it was a man, Mason Boss, who seemed to be not at all caught off guard when everyone in the room turned to face him.

“Hello, good people of Tappan Square,” he said.

Chairs whined and creaked as people craned their necks for a better view. He wore pants that on another man would have been called
gray
but on him were definitely silver. He had on a black leather jacket over a white button-down shirt. He did not carry an umbrella, and yet it was as if the rain had politely refrained from falling on him because he did not appear even slightly wet. His beautiful face and gorgeous dark skin were bright with cold.

“Sorry I’m late. What’d I miss?”

Dan Hatters was not immune to Mason’s charm. He fluttered like a preening bird at the podium. “We were just going to vote on the new president.”

“Then I’m right on time. Can I—” here, he paused to take off an invisible hat and then flick it like a Frisbee, “—throw my hat into the ring?”

No one had noticed that Aubrey was half standing, with her knees still slightly bent and her mouth open and her butt sticking out over her chair. Slowly, so she didn’t attract any attention, she sank down. She was surprised to find that she was slightly disappointed. Relieved—and yet disappointed. Vic patted her leg. She was sure he meant to be reassuring. He kept his hand there.

“We just heard the campaign speeches.” Dan Hatters’
voice was charged with new excitement. “If you have one ready, it’s not too late.”