“Parent. Singular.” She shook her head. “And no, my mom can’t move here unless she gets a job, which she can’t, ’cause there aren’t any.”
“Tell me about it,” I replied, trying not to think too much about Pa.
And then I came to it. Right in front of me, I had the raw makings of a wish! All it needed was a little patting and baking. “So, uh, Jura. If you had your druthers—”
“My what?”
I wasn’t offended. It wasn’t Jura’s fault she came from the city, where folks’ talk was dry as sawdust. “You know, your pick. If you had your pick,” I clarified.
“Oh.”
“What would you choose?” I continued. “For your auntie to be your guardian or your ma to get a job here?”
Jura lit up. “Oh, my mom to get a job, definitely! She hates Ardenville! She’d be so happy. And Auntie, too, she’d practically be dancing around with a rose between her teeth—”
I imagined Sass’s prim and proper banker, Trish Spencer, turning a tango ’round her living room, and I began to cackle. “Nuh-unh!”
The notion must have struck Jura funny, too, because there she was, giggling right along with me.
After a time, Jura wiped the mirth water from her eyes. “You’re thinking about wish fetching it, aren’t you? For me and my mom?”
“Unless you don’t want me to,” I told her.
“Really? You’d use your first wish on two strangers?”
I nodded.
“Live here. In Sass. For real.” Jura considered the Sass Police ATV as it rumbled by. She watched Davy Pierce leading Curly, his 4-H sheep, on a leash down Main Street.
At last, she took a deep breath and said, “If you really want to do this for me, Genuine, then yes! Two channels and no cell phone reception is a small price to pay to get away from those drones at Ardenville Central Middle. Ha! Even that name is stupid!”
I chuckled.
Jura put her phone in her purse. “And you know what? If you need some help with the whole wish-to-save-the-world, relief-of-human-suffering thing, I’m totally in,” she said.
“Deal.” We shook on it.
“I’ll let you get to the library, then,” I said. “I should warn you, though, it’s only itty-bitty.”
“Are there computers?” she asked.
“Two of ’em.”
“That’s all I need.”
We stopped outside the city hall.
“All right, Miss Jura.” I set my hands on my hips. “Meet me here tomorrow morning, and we’ll see what I can do.”
There we parted ways. Jura to her computer, and me to consider two things: my first, reallive wish, and Jura’s notion of wishing to save the world.
3
Miracle Flour
ON MY WAY HOME, DILLY BARKER FLAGGED ME down and handed me a sack of flour for Gram.
Dilly, who was only a year or two older than my ma would have been, was the sort of neighbor who always lent a hand when troubles set in.
“Tell her somebody canceled their order, so I had extra,” she said.
I told her I would and spent the rest of my walk trying to figure out a comfortable way to carry a ten-pound lumpy rectangle. Over the shoulder, under the arm—I was switching it from the crook of one elbow to the other when I came upon my own dirt road.
“Gram!” I hollered from the gate. Pa was off on a bender, so I wasn’t worried about waking him. “Dilly Barker sent some flour!”
The front door swung open. Gram was dressed and made up for the day. You’d have thought she was expecting company, if it weren’t for the mangy-looking fuzzy slippers on her feet. At the sight of the flour, her eyes lit up—and dimmed just as quick.
“Charity? Have we really come to that?” She clicked her tongue.
“She had a canceled order, she said.”
“Hmm,” Gram said skeptically, but she took the flour all the same. “Well, what do you say to dumplings and broth for lunch?”
After muffins for breakfast, it sounded sort of like a miracle, but I didn’t say so.
It took a while for Gram to coax enough ingredients from our pantry to assemble a respectable meal, so while she worked, I told her about Jura and Jura’s wish, and also about Greg Mittler’s swollen face.
Gram frowned. “Poor boy. You hate to see something like that happen to a newcomer. He’ll presume we’re all bad luck.”
I gave an amused shake of my head. Truth to tell, Greg had lived in Sass for at least three years, but anyone who isn’t actually born here will always be “new in town.”
“I think he knows us pretty well by now, Gram.”
“This Jura—you say she’s Trish Spencer’s kin?” She wiped a smudge of flour from her nose.
I said she was.
“And you mentioned your wish fetching to her?” A look of concern crossed Gram’s face.
“You didn’t say it was a secret,” I said.
“No, not a secret, exactly.”
“Then what?”
Gram pressed her lips tight against each other. “It’s just that . . . some things ain’t exactly fit for public consumption, is all.”
“Public consumption?” What on earth was she getting at?
Gram wiped her hands on her apron and reached for the salt shaker. She joggled it twice before she realized it was empty.
“You never know what a person might think. Or do. That’s all I’m saying.” She set a bowl of soup before me. “A wish fetcher has a lot of responsibility. It can be a burden for anyone—but for a young’un, especially. I kept it from your ma until she was sixteen. I probably should have waited to tell you, too.” Her nostrils flared. “You ain’t the only one worried about practical things, I s’pose.”
I took to my soup with such vigor, broth dribbled down my chin. Gram wiped it away with her thumb.
“You know,” she went on, “you might find that wish fetching is . . . specialer when the wishes come more infrequent. And without anybody knowing. Some fetchers do feel that way. Fewer wishes to pack a bigger . . . quieter wallop.”