Wishful Thinking (18 page)

But this wasn’t the kind of answer Luke was looking for. Hazel cleared her throat, tucking the salty, blond ends of her long hair behind one ear. “I don’t know,” she started again. “I got into this school for photography in New York City, but…”

“You did?” Luke asked, leaning around her shoulder to look her in the eye. “That’s awesome! When does it start?”

Hazel turned away, glancing back out at the blanket of endless ocean. “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t really wanted to think about it.”

“Why not?” Luke asked. “Because the idea of being away from me is just too awful?”

He tickled her again, and this time Hazel wriggled out of his grasp. She hadn’t been thinking about the future, and now she knew why. Because if things worked out, and she got what she wanted, she’d get a chance to start her life over again. She could use her last dress and wish to go back in time, and relive her childhood, this time with happy, loving parents watching over her. But starting over would mean saying goodbye to everything she’d known before—she couldn’t even keep the memories—as well as the life she was living now. And that included Luke.

“I’m just kidding,” Luke teased, pulling her back in for a hug. “You don’t have to think about it if you don’t want to. In fact, no more thinking allowed.”

Luke reached for Hazel’s chin and tilted it up to his face.
She felt a burning behind her eyes and looked quickly back at the puddle in the boat.

“Hey,” he said softly. “What’s wrong?”

Hazel shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. She wanted to tell him what she was thinking, she wanted to explain to him how she felt, but there was no way to make him understand. They could never be together. Not really.

“Whatever happens, we’re going to be fine,” Luke said. “We’ll figure out a way to make it work. Okay?”

Hazel swallowed a lump in her throat. She didn’t want to lie, but she had to. She had no other choice.

“Okay,” she managed.

He hugged her closer beside him and played with a few strands of her hair, before lifting her chin to his. He pressed his lips gently against hers and she closed her eyes, trying to lose herself in the kiss. She wished she could stay here, with the sun frozen low in the sky, and never have to think about what came next. She wished she could live forever in this moment.

“T
his is a total disaster.”

Jaime shook her head, squatting between two rows of strawberry plants as Hazel let herself into the garden. It was late afternoon. Hazel had been making her way back from packing boxes in the office when she’d spotted Jaime on her knees, pulling up handfuls of thick, gnarly weeds and tossing them into a pile.

“I have no idea what Maura is doing out here all day,” Jaime sighed as Hazel crouched low beside her. “I swear, I heard her talking to the lettuce the other morning. How could she not notice that these poor little guys are being totally strangled?”

It was the first time Hazel had been inside the garden’s mesh-wire fencing. There were rows and rows of lettuce and squash, tomato plants, grown taller than she was, tied to wooden stakes, and long, skinny pole beans casting swinging shadows out onto the footpath. The strawberry patch was tucked in a sunny spot on the far side of the garden, and was
so tangled in weeds and sprouting vines that it was hard to see any of the tender red fruit poking through.

“How do you know what’s a weed?” Hazel asked, gently tugging at a stringy patch of unwanted-looking green. Her fingers were stiff from ripping packing tape all day, but it felt good to be working outside.

“If it comes up easy, it’s probably not supposed to be there,” Jaime explained, plunging her hands into the soft dirt and dragging up fingers full of tiny green clovers. “The roots will resist if you tug on them too hard.”

Hazel found a smattering of loose weeds and ripped them easily out of the earth. “Weeds?” she asked uncertainly.

“Weeds,” Jaime confirmed, tossing them into the growing pile. “But look out for the runners. Strawberries are weirdos. They shoot out these long stems and root down again about a foot away. See?”

Jaime picked up a long, thick root and followed it to another smaller patch of plants, closer to the fence. “That’s how you get mothers and daughters. The ones you plant are the mothers, and the ones that sprout up where the runners reroot are the daughters. And then the daughters send out runners of their own. It’s like girl-only procreation. Pretty bad-ass, huh?”

Hazel smiled to herself, carefully picking around the bottom of one of the plants at her feet. There was something satisfying about pulling up weeds. It was almost like she could feel the plants breathing easier as she cleared up the crowded space around them.

“I’m telling him tomorrow,” Jaime said all of a sudden. Hazel still hadn’t quite gotten used to the way Jaime just picked up in the middle of a thought. She was either not in the
mood for conversation or racing toward the end of one. There was never any in-between.

“Reid,” Jaime continued, mistaking Hazel’s quiet for confusion. “I’m telling him about the baby.”

“Wow.” Hazel swallowed, her heart jumping into her throat. “That’s… big.”

Hazel took a deep breath, trying to stay calm, but her pulse was beating an insistent rhythm in her veins. She’d been waiting for this moment ever since she made the wish for Reid to come back. It had been almost unbearable, and the last few times Reid had been over to the guesthouse it was all Hazel could do not to “accidentally” blurt out the secret herself. She couldn’t wait until the truth was out, and they could all start planning for what would happen next. It was as if she were running a race; she could see the finish line, and all she could think about was getting there.

Jaime dusted off a tight knot of roots. She was obsessively patting the dirt around the bottom of the plant, in a way that seemed like stalling. “I think I’ll tell him at Illumination Night,” she said firmly. “It seems fitting, don’t you think?”

There had been talk of Illumination Night all week long. Hazel still wasn’t totally sure what it was, aside from an end-of-summer tradition in town involving live music, more fireworks, and lots of lanterns. Luke had asked her to go with him, as if she’d have gone with anyone else. He still got all nervous and shy about things like that, in a way that made Hazel fall for him even harder.

Now Illumination Night would be important for two reasons. A special date with Luke, before the summer’s end, and the night Reid found out he was going to be a father.

“How do you think he’s going to take it?” Hazel asked, forcing more calming breaths to steady the nervous tremors in her voice.

Jaime stopped weeding and stared off into the open fields. “I don’t know,” she said. Hazel could tell Jaime was doing her best to stay calm, too. “I really hope he’s not mad at me for hiding it so long.”

Hazel nodded. She pictured Reid’s face, the tender way he looked at Jaime, always checking in to make sure she was okay. She couldn’t imagine him ever being angry.

“And he leaves for school pretty soon,” Jaime added, digging her hands back into the ground. “I have to say something if I want to go with him.”

Hazel’s hands froze in midair, a knotty mess of weeds clutched between her fingers. “Go with him?” she asked dumbly. She knew that Reid was going to Dartmouth in the fall. But she figured that once Jaime had told him she was pregnant, he’d change his mind and stay with her on the island. Hazel had never seriously considered the possibility that they’d go together anywhere else.

“Yeah,” Jaime said. “I can’t ask him not to go to college. It wouldn’t be fair. And we’ve already kind of talked about finding an apartment together. It’s supposed to be a really cool town. Lots of kids our age, tons of stuff to do, and near the mountains.”

Hazel sat back on her heels. Her knees were starting to hurt from crouching for so long, and the tops of her toes were tingling. New Hampshire wouldn’t be terrible, she guessed. It wouldn’t be as comfortable as the island, since they wouldn’t know anyone, but Reid would have his friends at school. It
would be cool to grow up with young parents in a hip college town. And wherever they were, they’d all be together, and that was the important part. No more foster families that never seemed to have enough room, or on-again, off-again stints with Roy.

Hazel stared at her dirty fingernails, her vision blurring as she imagined what her life would be like. If Jaime kept her, and she and Reid raised her together, when she made her final wish to go back home, where would “home” be?

She’d have everything she always wanted. Parents who loved her, worried about her, asked how her day was over dinner every night. A real house. A real bed. Friends she’d grow up with and not have to leave behind before she’d really made them.

What would it be like? What would she be like? Would she be interested in the same things? Would she still care about taking pictures?

Or would she be a totally different person? What if she became somebody else? What if she turned into one of those ungrateful girls who complained all the time and lied to their parents? Without any idea of what her life could have been, would she even appreciate all that she had?

Yes, she decided. With a mom like Jaime, and a dad like Reid, of course she would be grateful. The three of them would be all of the family she’d ever wanted, and she’d never need to make another wish again.

“It sounds perfect,” she said, turning to Jaime with a smile.

“I think so, too,” Jaime agreed, though there was something small in her voice. Her thick eyebrows were knit tightly together, and the corners of her mouth were pulled in.

“What do you think you’d do there?” Hazel asked, stretching her long legs out in front of her and giving them a rest. She’d been so busy thinking about how her own life would be changing, she hadn’t once thought about what it would all mean for Jaime.

Jaime shrugged and picked up another handful of weeds from the ground between her bare feet. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I guess I could take classes or something. That way maybe I wouldn’t feel so bad about turning down the scholarship.”

Hazel paused mid-stretch and turned to look at Jaime. “Scholarship?” she asked. “What scholarship?”

Jaime reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, handing it to Hazel. “A while back, before… all this… I applied to this program that organizes digs in Peru,” she said. “You know, like lost civilizations, ancient ruins, that sort of thing. It’s no big deal.”

“No big deal?” Hazel repeated. The letter was on thick paper with some kind of government seal, and lots of words in a language that looked a lot like Spanish but wasn’t. “How long have you known about this?”

Jaime shrugged again, taking the paper back and folding it in half. “A couple weeks,” she said. “But there’s nothing I can do. The timing couldn’t be any worse.”

Jaime leaned forward and smoothed the ground where she’d been digging, tucking the plant back into the soft, solid earth. “Besides,” she went on, “when I applied, I had no idea what I’d be going through. It just doesn’t seem as important now that I have a family to think about. All that matters is that we stay together.”

Hot tears burned at the corner of Hazel’s eyes and she leaned forward to hide her face. It was exactly what she’d wanted to hear. She dug her hands back into the ground, tugging at a thick, stubborn vine. It snapped in her hand and she fell back, holding a ball of broken roots.

“Nice one,” Jaime laughed in mock disappointment, tracing the root back to the mother plant. “Daughter down.”

Hazel looked at the wounded roots sagging in her hands and took a deep breath, silently apologizing to the uprooted plant. She’d been there. And whatever it meant, whatever it took, things were going to be different now. She’d never have to feel so alone again.

H
azel should have known there would be walking involved.

First, there was the walking
to
town, from what appeared to be the last available parking spot on the entire island. For Illumination Night, every road leading into Oak Bluffs was lined bumper-to-bumper with cars, not to mention the soccer fields overflowing with creatively parked sedans and pickup trucks. Reid, who had volunteered to chauffeur in his dad’s BMW, eventually found a spot near the gas station, and Luke announced cheerfully that they’d have a bit of a hike into town.

Next came the walking
around
town, which even Jaime agreed was the only way to properly enjoy the spectacle of glowing lanterns at the center of the evening’s festivities. Strings of colored paper lanterns were strung delicately from porches and hung across the windows of each of the painted gingerbread houses.

Luke led them through narrow back alleys, closed to traffic
and teeming with visitors on foot. Rows and rows of glittering houses stretched beyond them toward the ocean. Older couples sat swinging on porch chairs, holding hands and admiring the view. Every so often, Luke would wave and call out a hello.

“Is there anybody on this island who doesn’t know you?” Reid asked as they crossed the street to the sprawling green of Ocean Park.

“Sure,” Luke said, and smiled, his brown eyes crinkling at the edges. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t know them.”

In the middle of the park, a swing band was playing on the wooden stage of a gazebo, and a small crowd had gathered to dance barefoot on the lawn. The sun was just beginning to set and little kids waving glow sticks ran over rumpled blankets and hopped between their parents’ legs. Adults sipped wine from plastic cups and toasted another summer nearly gone by.

Luke went ahead to find a spot on the lawn, while Reid and Jaime hung back by the curb. “We’ll catch up with you guys later,” Reid called, grabbing for Jaime’s hand.

Hazel caught Jaime’s eye over her shoulder and tossed her an encouraging smile. She looked beautiful in her simple white sundress, but Hazel knew she was nervous. This was the night she was going to tell Reid about the baby. Hazel wanted to hug her friend but knew it would draw suspicion, so she held up a hand and mouthed
Good luck,
after Reid had turned to cross the street.