The Wishing World Read online

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  To Elowyn

  Your imagination makes the world a bigger place. Keep that feather close.

  To Dash

  My favorite superhero. You are a mirror of justice and strength for us all.

  To Brighteyes

  Your gaze upon me lights my way.

  CHAPTER 1

  I ran like there was a monster behind me. Because one year ago today, there had been. Black tentacles slithered right out of the rain and snatched my little brother. Snatched my parents, too. That’s the way it happened. Freaky truth, right? Bright like a neon sign in your face.

  Too bad nobody believed me.

  The clouds were low and dark, bellies full of water, so I didn’t stop running until I got to my house. By then my legs were jelly. Lungs burning. I had that metal taste in my mouth that you get when you run too hard. Florid Flecks of Phlegm. Gick.

  The towering streetlight made a bright circle on the blacktop, the sidewalk, and the sloped lawn. The first rain droplets speckled my face lightly like they were innocent. Like they hadn’t snatched my whole childhood away. But I was done being afraid. I was done flinching. I stood still with my fists clenched and let the drops hit me. I wanted my family back.

  I spat out the nasty acid taste and tried the purple front door. Locked. And I didn’t have a key anymore. Auntie Carrie and Uncle Jone had sold my house last week and sent me to a sleepover in the old neighborhood to make me feel better. Like that works. Have a pillow fight and a cup of hot chocolate, and you’ll forget they’re selling your house. You’ll forget you ever had a brother or a mom or a dad. Welcome to the new normal. You get with the program yet, Lorelei?

  No. Double no with a forget-you on top.

  So I’d slipped past my best friend’s parents. They thought I was tucked deep in my sleeping bag. Turns out five big stuffed animals look a lot like a Lorelei lump. But they would notice I was gone soon. They would check on me. Auntie Carrie and Uncle Jone would have asked them to. My aunt and uncle were trying to be “good parents,” trying everything to make “the transition” easier on me. Auntie Carrie cried sometimes because I wouldn’t respond to the nice things she did, wouldn’t listen to her advice. They just didn’t get it. I didn’t need a replacement family; I didn’t want a replacement family. I needed my brother and my mother and my father back. Nothing else even mattered. Nothing.

  This last year I had been searching, doing everything I could to find my missing family. And wow, nobody liked that. Adults hate it when girls hitchhike, or go camping in the woods by themselves without telling anyone, or do Internet searches on kidnappers, then e-mail them questions.

  When you do things like that, they use words like “trauma” and “delusions.” They talk to you slowly, say everything twice, like you can’t understand them the first time.

  They used to call me imaginative, decisive. A good student and a better friend. But since the rain and the tentacles, since Narolev’s Comet streaked the sky, it was Loopy Lorelei and her not-so-cute delusions. My replacement parents didn’t know what to do with me, so they sent me to the creepy shrink, Mr. Schmindly.

  Adults don’t have a snappy solution for tentacles in the rain. Can we focus on the tentacles, adults?

  No. Double no with a sit-down-and-be-quiet on top.

  So I stopped pleading with them. Now my caring replacement family was afraid I was some kind of mute because I didn’t cry anymore. But I stopped crying because it didn’t do anything. Crying was really just waiting. Except with tears.

  I was done waiting.

  Dad said that life is like a story, and we get to fill it with what we want. Well, this last year of my story sucked, and I was going to rewrite it.

  Then last week I got the Big Idea: Dad’s comet stone. Dippy Lorelei. That was the first thing I should have thought of after the rainstorm. Narolev’s Comet had been in the air when all the bad stuff happened; it was why we had been in the mountains in the first place. What if it was linked to what had happened? It had to be. Dad said he’d had a chunk of it in the basement, back in the crawl space. And the skeezoids who bought my house were moving in tomorrow. I couldn’t wait one second longer.

  I shook the thoughts away. I had to get going. My replacement family could be on their way right now. I looked up at the dark, overcast sky. I couldn’t see Narolev’s Comet, but it was up there somewhere, past those heavy clouds, streaking across the sky. I could feel it, looking down with its white eye.

  I walked past the FOR SALE: SOLD sign stuck in my lawn, past the giant green bush to the backyard fence, and I thought of my brother Theron. He was always climbing this fence because the gate didn’t work. He was always climbing everything.

  Without Mom and Dad, I woke up most nights feeling like I was falling with no one to catch me. But without Theron, I felt like I’d lost my arm. Awake or asleep, I felt like I was missing something because he and I had almost always been together. The first memory of my life was when he was born. He showed up early. The midwife didn’t get there in time. So I stood right there in the upstairs bathroom watching him take his first breath, squalling in a half-filled tub of water.

  Theron was a protector. He fought that mean girl Shandra when she pushed me down and punched me. He leapt from the monkey bars and collared Danny Brogue when that bully stole my Halloween candy. Last year, he even stood between me and the fourth grade substitute teacher, Mrs. Coswell, when she blamed me for something Shandra had done. Theron threw a chair that time. He couldn’t be still when something wasn’t fair, or when someone he loved was threatened. He didn’t know what else to do but fight.

  And I protected him, too. Theron had nightmares every night. When he woke up thrashing and huffing like he’d run a mile, I would tell him good stories to calm him down. I would send him back to sleep and save him from the monsters in his head.

  I jumped up, grabbed the top of the fence, and swung a leg over. It was up to me to find out where he had gone. Where they had all gone. Nothing else mattered.

  I’m just like Theron, I thought. Strong as a gorilla. I can do four pull-ups.

  I could really only do three. But imagining what I couldn’t do never helped.

  See it real, make it real. Do it real. One practice pull-up at a time.

  I hoisted myself up, twisted, and balanced on top of the fence, letting my breath out.

  I stretched, reached for the rain gutter, and caught it with my fingertips. Slowly, I pulled myself up. I hooked my heel into the rain gutter and leaned forward. It groaned, but I ignored it. It wasn’t going to fall.

  I rolled my body onto the sloped roof. Dark rain dots marked the shingles.

  I am an Olympic gymnas
t, I thought, standing up. I can balance on anything.

  I leaned into the roof and walked toward the upstairs window. Each step was tricky. My backpack was heavy, jammed with food instead of stuffed animals for the sleepover, and kept pulling me to the side.…

  My foot slipped and I went down so fast I cried out. I hit the shingles and slid to the edge of the roof.

  “No!” I shouted and jammed my heel into the rain gutter.

  It clanged loudly and shook …

  I drew a sharp breath, pushing hard on it, trying to get higher up as I stared at the drop below.

  The gutter gave way with a sharp crunk.

  Double suck with a yikes on top.

  I shrieked and went over the edge, falling to the wood chips in the yard below.

  CHAPTER 2

  At first, I thought I was dead, but if I was dead, I wouldn’t have this need to breathe so badly.

  You should be able to knock the wind back into yourself after you get the wind knocked out of you. Instead, it just feels like you’re dying … dying … until …

  I sucked in a great big breath.

  Leapin’ lungsuckers!

  My backpack was jammed underneath me. Little drops raced toward my face. I bit my lip and laid there, breathing hard, blinking away the stinging rain.

  I’d just slid off a wet rooftop. And that was super smart. Maybe this whole thing was ridiculous. Maybe I should just lay here until they found me. And then Auntie Carrie would give me her worried face, her hands hovering near me like she wanted to touch me but was afraid she’d break me. And Uncle Jone would take me fishing again, take me somewhere quiet to spend “quality time.” Don’t talk about what’s bothering her. Don’t focus on that. She might start with the weird stories again. Just fish and try not to look at her.

  I stood up and tears pricked my eyes.

  The rain gutter had broken in the center and leaned like a ramp up to the corner of the house. I walked back to the old fence, hunched over, taking great big shuddering breaths. I was about to cry. Oh perfect.

  I bit my lip, stared at the fence to make the tears stop, and then I saw the names.

  Rocket-Boots Girl and Thorn Boy.

  They were carved into the fence post. Theron and my superhero alter egos from when we were little, when he was four years old and I was six. We would race around the yard, creating stories where the heroes win and the bad guys lose. Always beating them. Always together. Good stories. Not stories where a girl’s family disappears and she’s all alone.

  This story sucked. I needed a better one.

  See it real. Make it real. Do it real.

  I put my finger over the words and traced a new story over the superhero names. I wrote it slowly, carefully, like it was the only story that had ever mattered: Lorelei climbed to the window. She crossed the roof without falling and went into her house.

  The wood seemed warmer where I had touched it. The rain seemed to shimmer, and I stopped. I balled up my fists and looked around. No tentacles launched out of the dark.

  But I had felt something, and that gave me hope, like I was on the right track. Like I could feel Dad’s comet stone somewhere in this house, and that it meant something. That it would explain the unknowable. All those things that the adults thought hadn’t happened.

  I jumped onto the fence. It rocked and I started up, hand over hand.

  Don’t think. Just do. I am a giant crab. I walk on slick rocks like they’re sandpaper.

  I rolled back onto the roof, started inching my way toward the window, careful of each step on the wet shingles.

  Lightning flashed overhead. Thunder rumbled. Rain came down harder.

  The window is right in front of me. I am already there.

  I scooted, breathed, scooted some more. I slipped, then caught myself and held very still. I breathed there for a minute, then started forward again.

  This is my story. A better story.

  I looked only at the window. A little closer. A little closer …

  Then I was there. I pushed it open, slipped inside, and fell to my knees. My wet hands slapped the hardwood floor.

  I let the ache of the fall fill me now. I let it hurt. I was safe. This was home, where I belonged. Where my family belonged.

  I got up and got straight to business. Dad’s comet stone was the clue, my last hope. I’d tried everything else, so this had to work.

  I went downstairs, squeezing through the thin, wooden-planked doorway into the spooky basement. All the junk my father had stored down there was gone. I climbed the shelves and slithered on my belly into the crawl space underneath the floors, flicking away spiders and searching with the little flashlight I’d brought. I peered into every dark, dirty corner, under every steel heater duct. The comet stone wasn’t there. So I climbed back down and looked behind the furnace, through the crack in the brick wall that led underneath the bathroom. I checked everywhere. I checked everything.

  Don’t give up.

  Clenching my teeth, I left the basement and went up to the main floor. I looked in the kitchen, the living room, the dining room. Every corner. Every closet. Every cupboard. Everywhere.

  Dead end, Lorelei. Dead everything.

  I stood in the center of the kitchen, clenching my fist.

  I whirled around and went upstairs. There was no comet stone. Dad had made it up to amuse us. To entertain us. Like he did with so many things. Dorky Dad and his funny stories.

  I stood in front of Mom and Dad’s room, looking with eyes that saw back to when we lived here. I could feel them here, my family. I could see Theron running crazy through the bedroom, leaping onto the giant bed and body-slamming Dad. Then the wrestling would begin. Theron and I were always a team when we wrestled with Dad. It was the only way we could pin him.

  I moved from Mom and Dad’s bedroom into Theron’s room. It was empty like everything else. There were no shelves filled with superhero action figures. No cutouts of Spider-Man, Captain America, and Black Panther on the wall. No basket of toy swords, bows, shields, and helmets.

  Now only dust bunnies lived here, curled up in the corner around one stray Lego.

  The rain outside streaked the window.

  I touched the necklace Dad had given me in the mountains when we’d all gone camping to see the comet a year ago today. The necklace had a white stone in a little silver clasp. He’d also given Theron a silvery rock that looked like a knight. “From the comet,” he had told us. Except they weren’t real. His big piece of comet stone was a big fake, and I should have known that. I’d done the research. Bits of rock that fell to Earth were called meteorites. Comets were too far away to drop bits into our atmosphere.

  I closed my eyes and that night came back in a rush.

  “Stay here!” Mom said, looking back into the tent, which sagged with the weight of the water pouring onto it. “Stay here and I’ll find them.”

  “Mom, don’t go!”

  “It’ll be okay, sweetie. I’ll be right back. I promise.” Mom kissed me on the forehead and then she was gone.

  Lightning flashed. Shadowy tentacles writhed over the tent. Menace oozed through the fabric. Tentacles were trying to get to me, trying to reach into the tent.

  “Mom!” I screamed, clenching Dad’s necklace in my fist. It felt hot, like it had a fire inside it.

  The tent lit up and thunder boomed like lightning had struck the ground right outside. The shadow tentacles suddenly vanished and a different shadow took their place, dark and tall, painted on the side of the tent. I shrieked.

  The shadow had a huge head, round and sloped into a beak-like muzzle, and four legs like a dog. Its back was deformed, with bumps behind its shoulders. I screamed again, but the creature didn’t try to come inside. It just stood there in the flashes of light as rain lashed the tent.

  “Theron!” I called, but no one answered.

  The beak-nosed dog-thing remained there throughout the storm. I didn’t dare go outside. I waited until morning. When sunlight filtered throu
gh the clouds and the rain stopped, the shadow was gone. So was my family.

  I pulled the “comet stone” necklace out from underneath my wet shirt and sat down cross-legged, wriggled my left arm out of my backpack, and let it thump on the floor. I took a shuddering breath and calmed myself. I wanted a “Lorelei sandwich,” when Mom and Dad hugged me at the same time. “And I’m the jelly in the middle,” I would say, squeezing them so tight.

  I wanted Theron back, to walk with me through all the scary things. To make the good stories with me again. “I’ll be Thorn Boy, and you be Rocket-Boots Girl. Grab my hand and let’s fly, Rocket-Boots Girl!”

  They had taken away his bed, of course, but I imagined it. In my mind, I put back the quilt Granny had made for him: dark blues, light blues, and whites. Granny had cleverly sewn together triangle scraps to make circle patterns, and they had wondrous pictures on them: shooting stars and colorful toucans, a pug dog and a silver tree, flying foxes and tall flowers, griffons and sharks.

  And there was clutter in the corner, of course. Theron’s stack of comic books and clothes and half-assembled Legos, all in a pile.

  I tried to believe the story. Couldn’t I just live there instead, with my family a year and a day ago? But Dad’s big comet stone wasn’t here. It wasn’t my clue. I was back to where I started. Back to nothing and no clues and no family and they’d sold my house to some skeezoids I’d never met. My story was weak. It peeled away like wallpaper.

  A thin whimper leaked out of my mouth. I cleared my throat and hit my fist on the hardwood floor and made it stop.

  I drew a deep breath, stood up, and held out my hand.

  I’ll find you. I wrote the words on the air. I will find you.

  I squinched my eyes and imagined the words staying, like they were written in fire, hovering and flickering. Like they were truth.

  Lightning flashed, and my necklace suddenly felt hot like that night in the rain. Thunder boomed, and an enormous shadow appeared, slanted across the ceiling: the same shadow from outside my tent a year ago.