Wish: Chapters 1–3

My sister, Jackie, inherited Daddy’s inky black hair and I inherited his fiery red temper.

“It’s better to stay with kin,” she told me.

I slumped down in my seat and wiped my sweaty palms on my shorts.

A misty rain had begun to fall and dark gray clouds hovered over the tops of the mountains in the distance.

“Gus and Bertha told my mama you were coming. They go to my church and I gave them a cat one time,” Howard said. “A scrawny gray cat that was living up under my porch.”

The rain had stopped and wavy plumes of steam drifted up off the asphalt.

The rain had stopped and wavy plumes of steam drifted up off the asphalt.

I trudged up the long driveway, jumping over puddles of muddy rainwater and wondering what Jackie was doing right that very minute.

The front of the house sat smack on the ground with flowering shrubs nestled right up against it. But the back was on stilts stuck into the steep mountainside.

The front of the house sat smack on the ground with flowering shrubs nestled right up against it. But the back was on stilts stuck into the steep mountainside.

Gus and Bertha had a whole passel of cats, sleeping under the porch, sunning on the windowsills, swatting bees out in the garden.

I went inside and dropped my backpack on Gus’s tattered easy chair.

I had been surprised when I saw how much they looked alike, though. Same mousy brown hair. Same long, thin fingers. Even the same crinkly lines along the sides of their mouths.

A small gray cat sat on the kitchen counter grooming himself. I wondered if that was the one Howard had given them. Bertha picked him up and kissed the top of his head. “Charlie don’t want cat hair in her coffee cake, Walter.” Then she gently put him down on the linoleum floor.

She rambled on and on but I didn’t even listen.

That afternoon Jackie called from Raleigh. She told me how Carol Lee’s cousin came to visit and gave her a cashmere sweater she didn’t want anymore.

I watched Gus and Bertha sitting there gazing at the night sky, the corners of their mouths turned up into contented smiles.

I thought about Howard Odom with his up-down walk and his good-hearted family. And I thought about Gus and Bertha holding hands under the glow of Pegasus. And then I thought about my own pitiful self, laying there wondering if my wish would ever come true.

As I headed toward the line, a girl from my class named Audrey Mitchell waltzed right up to me and said, “Nice boots.” She smirked while her friends giggled behind her.

That afternoon on the bus, Howard ignored my laser thoughts again and made a beeline right for me.

A smoky haze hovered over them, soft gray against the deep blue of the mountains.

I watched him and his brother go up the rickety steps of their front porch and disappear inside the house, letting the screen door slam with a bang behind them.

Wilted yellowing plants and dried-up flowers planted in coffee cans lined the edges of the porch.

I was thinking about what I was going to say to Bertha about my kicking incident when a commotion outside the window caught my eye.

I pressed my face against the window and watched him lope along the side of the road and then turn and disappear into the woods.