“Not at all. There are skills I’m expected to learn on this assignment. I shall receive a promotion based on
my
performance.
You
are incidental.”
I let this new piece of data sink into my brain, feeling more stupid the deeper it settled. I’d been naïve enough to think that
I
mattered. But no.
Why did this knowledge hurt me so much? Why should I care that I was nothing more than a stepping stone? Either way, my family benefited. “Nice. Glad we could be of service.”
His mouth tightened. “May I finish the lawn?”
“Not yet.” Even though Grant had executed this wish perfectly, this day had turned into an epic disaster. I didn’t want him hanging out with them. Henry craved the kind of guy-attention he couldn’t get from us. And Mom? She was fragile in every way possible. They might make the mistake of caring for Grant, and in a month he’d move on to his next project. “I need you to avoid Mom and Henry. Understand?”
“Certainly, I understand.” His eyes glittered. “I am, however, under no obligation to follow your instructions.”
“I thought I was the mistress.”
“For one wish per day. Otherwise, your whims have no effect.”
He gave the mower a push and left me in a cloud of dust.
Status Report #6
Wednesday’s Wish: Landscaping
Dear Boss,
I acquired and distributed pine straw around the flower beds. It was more than Chief asked for, but I didn’t mind the effort. If that is how generosity feels, it is quite an intriguing sensation.
I had to barter for the pine straw. Mrs. Williford is a kind but lonely woman.
The vegetable garden received a special application of compost. It should be exceptionally productive this fall.
Henry Jones has a real talent for soccer.
Chief has claimed that her mother is hollow. Now that I have met Mrs. Jones, it is my opinion that the opposite is true. She is saturated with pain. May I reveal myself to her?
My mistress has serious control issues. I allowed her to goad me into accepting a dinner invitation. The meal turned out to be pleasant. Chief had to work tonight and could not attend.
I detected an odd note in her voice when she uttered the word “charity,” as if it were an expletive. Is her attitude part of the family’s problem?
Humbly submitted,
Grant
F
or the second night in a row, Grant ate dinner with my family. And, like yesterday, I had to work. Under normal circumstances, I could’ve rushed right home to make sure he didn’t hang out too long with Mom and Henry. But not tonight. It was Thursday and I’d promised to meet with Kimberley about the APUSH project.
I needed to chill. Grant wouldn’t tell them who he really was. Right?
The French glass doors separating The Reading Corner from its sister business, The Java Corner, swung open with a creak. I looked up to find the owner, Mrs. Lubis, scanning the bookstore, her lips set in a thin, angry line. The evening barista hadn’t shown up and hadn’t called, which meant Mrs. Lubis would have to substitute.
Satisfied that all was well, she gave me a sharp nod and returned to the coffee shop, shutting the doors behind her.
The door chime alerted me to a customer. Then another. I put away the duster and hovered near the checkout counter at the front, prepared to offer assistance. The after-dinner flood had arrived.
Someone nudged my shoulder. “Hi, Lacey.”
I looked around, surprised to find Kimberley. “You’re a little early.”
“When does your shift end?”
“In another ten minutes, as soon as my replacement arrives.” Kimberley must not have been planning on making much progress tonight, because she hadn’t brought a purse or backpack. Just the obligatory iPad.
“Good. I’ll text Mom.”
While she played on her tablet, I cut a sideways glance at the glass doors. If Mrs. Lubis saw me talking to a friend, I’d get a lecture and maybe a dock in pay. “Look, Kimberley—”
“My mom says fine.”
Okay, totally confused. “What?”
Kimberley smiled. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in this place. It smells like damp cardboard.”
I didn’t have control of this conversation, but it didn’t seem like she did either. “Do you want to wait over there?” I indicated a leather couch.
“I’ll wait here.”
Politeness hadn’t worked. I’d have to try again. “I’m on the clock. If my boss sees us talking, it won’t be good.”
“I’ll pretend I’m buying something.” She picked up a bestseller from a display on the counter. “I want to do our project on cooking. Do you mind?”
This was Kimberley. Just roll with it. “No, I don’t mind.”
“Good. My granddad has access to a collection of kitchen things.” She bit her lip. “I mean, kitchen utensils.”
“From the colonial period?”
“Yes. The collection belongs to the history department at Piedmont College. Granddad works there. They said he could borrow the reproductions.”
“Rather convenient for us.” My gaze made a quick sweep of the store. We were busier than usual. To my left was a young couple with a stroller, a fussing baby, and a growing stack of picture books. In the center, an elderly woman browsed through self-help manuals. Near the front, a man in a business suit scowled at a shelf of romance novels. Sara Tucker looked through the poetry section.
No one looked interested in shoplifting. I relaxed my vigilance. “Mr. Jarrett loves politics. We’re not likely to get an A if we do anything else.”
“I think we can agree that anyone on
my
project team should not obsess over getting a good grade.” Her face scrunched as if in deep thought. “Why did he pick me to abuse?”
Her blunt honesty with me demanded blunt honesty in return. “You challenged him about your iPad in front of the entire class.”
“I see.” She sighed. “That’s about the brain damage.”
I would’ve laughed if she hadn’t been staring at me so solemnly. Wow, oh wow. She meant it. “You’re not joking.”
“Wish I were.” She frowned at her tablet. “My mom’s out front to pick us up.”
“We’re not studying here at the shop?”
“My house would be better.”
A customer cleared her throat. “Excuse me.”
Sara waited in front of the cash register. I pasted on my sales-associate smile. “How may I help you?”
“I’ll take these.” She handed me two paperbacks and some cash.
Curious, I checked the titles.
Turning Your Hobby into Revenue
and
Midnight Meditations
. Hmmm. Was someone starting a small business at the Tuckers’s? I handed over the bag and the receipt.
Kimberley craned her neck to watch Sara exit the store, then asked, “Do you know her?”
Maybe. “Since first grade.”
“She looks familiar. What’s her name again?”
“Sara Tucker.”
“Her brother is my dance partner in PE. Ballroom dancing.”
“Yeah, he’s great.” Sean was the perfect blend of sweet, careful, and determined. If he tried something, he didn’t give up until he succeeded. “Everybody likes Sean.”
“Has it been ten minutes yet?”
I laughed. “Yeah.”
Once my replacement took over, I followed Kimberley to a silver SUV in the parking area. She introduced me to her mother and climbed into the back seat.
Did I sit with Kimberley or ride shotgun?
I made the safe choice and crawled into the back.
It only took a few minutes for Mrs. Rey to drive us to their home. It was located midway between the college and downtown, as far away from my house as we could get and still be within the town limits.
Their yard looked like someone had clipped it with a pair of scissors. A spotlight on the front porch shone on big pots of flowers in yellow and fuchsia. The garage was spotless. The floor had been swept. A single bike hung suspended upside-down from the ceiling.
Kimberley and I entered the kitchen and dropped our backpacks onto the table. Yanking open the refrigerator, she pulled out two bottles of water and handed one to me.
The obsessive cleanliness spread across the room. The counters had nothing on them. No containers, rags, or small appliances. There was not a dust mite or tiny insect to be found, quite a feat in North Carolina. Her mom must have worked on the house all day long.
Kimberley laid her tablet on the kitchen table. “I’ve drafted a few slides. Want to see?”
Okay, but she couldn’t expect me to leave her earlier bombshell alone. “Let’s talk first.”
She froze for an instant and then nodded.
I took a deep breath, bracing myself. “How long have you had brain damage?”
“Ten years.” She watched me, her dark eyes big and round. “My short-term memory is impaired.”
I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what that meant, but it sounded bad. “Permanently?”
“Yes.”
“So the iPad…?” I gestured at her computer.
“If I don’t key in everything I hear, I might not remember it.” She picked up her bottle of water, unscrewed the top, and took a sip.
“What caused it?”
“Chemotherapy.” She relaxed into a seat and wiggled for comfort. “I had leukemia when I was a little kid.”
“Is that why you moved away after first grade?”
“Yes.” She watched me carefully. “Don’t be sad for me. If I weren’t damaged, I’d be dead.”
“I won’t be sad for you, but let me know how I can help.”
“Just try to treat me normal.”
“Sure.” I nodded. Since Kimberley didn’t seem to mind this topic, I would keep trying—but gently. “May I ask you something else?”
“Go ahead.”
“How do short-term memory problems affect you?”
“It’s like being a person who is sleep-deprived. I can’t trust my brain to keep track of everything that I need.” Her response was crisp and immediate, as if rehearsed. “I often walk around in a fog. I have to make decisions slowly. Repetition helps my brain remember things, so I take everything down and then reread my notes until they stick.” Her face flattened into calm acceptance. “It takes a lot of work to succeed, but I can.”
“When did you move back to Magnolia Grove?”
“This summer. We had been living near DC. The hospitals there are very good.” With a sudden hitch forward, she pulled her chair closer to the table and looked at her tablet. After tapping at it some, she added, “Mom moved here first. She’s a mural artist and had a commission to work on. Dad decided to stay in Northern Virginia. I was up there with him until last week.”
Kimberley was so matter-of-fact. Was that part of her natural personality? Or part of the…?
I couldn’t go there. “Are your parents divorced?”
“Not yet.” She looked over at me. “What happened to your stepfather? I heard he died.”
A fast and unexpected transition. “Yes, in an accident.”
Motorcycle hits tree; rider without helmet
.
“Did you like him?”
My eyeballs ached. “I liked him a lot.”
“Cool. I don’t know many kids who get along with their steps.” Her fingers fluttered. “Enough personal stuff. Let’s take a look at these slides.”
I sat back and watched. She’d gone to extraordinary lengths to research and contrast colonial utensils with their modern-day equivalents. The whole presentation was brilliant.
Apparently, my sole contribution would be my name. Given how little I cared about “Daily Life in the Colonies”—and the high probability Mr. Jarrett had predetermined the score for the Linden/Rey Team—I went along with this. Flipping to a clean sheet in my notebook, I doodled pictures of toasting forks and tea kettles.
After an hour of tweaking colors and fonts on the slides, Kimberley was still not satisfied. “Do you think we have enough?”
I paused in the act of doodling. “We have the slides, plus we’re demoing with reproduction utensils. It’s twice as much as anyone else will do. We’re fine.” This assignment was only worth five percent of our final grade. Why was she trying so hard?
“The project doesn’t feel complete yet. You need a bigger part in the presentation.”
Anything would be bigger than what I was doing now. “What’s left? The only thing we’re lacking is a reproduction kitchen maid.”
Her eyes widened. “Great idea.”
“Wait. I was joking.”
Her fingers flew across the computer. “My mom has a costume. It’s more like a pirate’s damsel, but we could modify it. It looks something like this.” She angled the screen around to show an image of a serving wench in a mob cap, dark skirt, white blouse, and a red corset stopping just below the breasts. “Would you wear it?”
It was…wow. “Possibly,” I said in a strangled voice.
“Good. We’re done.”
Kimberley changed into a cleaning machine. She folded up her tablet case, collected our water bottles, and tossed them into a recycling bin. Maybe I’d been wrong about who the perfectionist was in this house.
“I haven’t given up,” Kimberley said in a monotone as she wiped the condensation circles from the table before me.
“On what?”
“My mom and dad getting back together.”
“Uh-huh.” I kept still. Mr. Rey lived hundreds of miles away from his wife and daughter. That made reconciliation difficult.
“Dad is an architect.”
Kimberley watched me, like she was expecting something.
Was she inviting me to ask more? I looked at the clock. Already past nine. It was getting late. I had laundry to do and Henry’s homework to check over. But it felt like I needed to keep the conversation going. “How often do you talk to your dad?”
“Most nights.” She pulled out her phone and checked through her messages. “I have two texts from him today.”
“Are you going to call him back?”
She nodded. “He’s in Norfolk this week. He’s been asked to design an amphitheater for an art museum.” Her lips curved a tiny bit, like she wanted to smile but couldn’t quite go all the way. “He likes to work on projects involving nature.”
“Norfolk’s not very far. You should visit him.”
Kimberley shrugged. “Are you ready to go home?”
“Sure. Are you taking me?”
“I decided long ago that I shouldn’t get a license. Mom will have to drive.”
Status Report #7
Thursday’s Wish: Plumbing
Dear Boss,
The plumbing is like new.