Page 1 of The Wish
CHAPTER 1
‘Hi, waves, how are you today? Having a rough one? Me too.’
The question is shouted into the wind and the ocean answers, slapping a wave against a rocky outcrop on the beach where fifteen-year-old Jesse sits, dangling her legs above the water. It’s late summer, but despite the heat, she wears a long-sleeved T-shirt and shorts, far too big for her, belted tightly around her narrow waist. A large floppy hat in bright neon pink protects her face and neck from the sun. She’s very slender and tall, with big brown eyes in a pale face. A gentle spray reaches her knees and she smiles as she watches the water merge back into the body of the ocean.
‘You know why I’m here today, don’t you? Why we need to talk?’
Another wave crashes into the rock and this time the water sends a salty mist right up to her waist.
‘Thank you. So here goes: when Mum went to get Sammy from his friend’s place yesterday, I called Kelly, my social worker. She’s been there for me ever since it all started – well, you know how long she’s been in my life. We had a talk a couple of weeks ago and I told her what I wanted, if the time came. So yesterday I asked her to make it happen.’
The next wave slams into the rock, throwing seawater all over her. She laughs and wipes her face. ‘Don’t be like that, you knew this was coming.’
When the next wave reaches the bottom of the rock, it breaks in two, swooshing up around the girl, as if trying to embrace her.
‘Thank you. But it’s going to be fine and, more importantly, my family is going to be fine. But now it’s time for me to make sure my wish comes true.’
‘Jesse! Come on, honey, it’s time to go.’
Jesse doesn’t turn around at hearing her name called. She knows it’s fanciful to be talking to the waves but she’s always felt an affinity with the sea, especially when she sits on this particular spot, looking out at her favourite view in all the world. The spray of an incoming wave hits her in the face, drenching her. She squeezes water from her shorts and in doing so recognises how slack they are around her legs. These legs that had grown too long a few years back for her to continue her passion for gymnastics, and her feet turned into two lefts as she’d continued ballet classes. Wriggling her toes, she smiles. ‘But you never slowed me down, did you?’ she laughs to herself. Athletics had become her thing, once she’d accepted that she’d never be a prima ballerina. Had things been different, she would have been competing in the under-16s this year, and who knows where she would have gone on to from there?
A gust of wind whips around, lifting her now-soggy floppy hat from her head, but she catches it before it flies away. She rubs her hand over her scalp, enjoying the feeling of the downy regrowth. She’d been delighted to discover it was growing back the colour it had been when she was younger, a soft strawberry-blond, the envy of her friends. When she’d hit puberty, it had turned a mousy brown and she and her mum had expected it to regrow the same.
‘Jesse, please, we have to go.’
Jesse sighs, and her smile dissolves. Her mother Mandy is standing below her, beckoning for her to come down. Jesse looksat her mum and her heart aches. Since she was little, everyone said there was no denying that they were mother and daughter. She laughed every time she heard this. To Jesse, her mother is the most beautiful woman in the world, and she does not see that same beauty in herself. A few feet away from her mum, her eight-year-old brother, Sam, plays in the sand. He has the same strawberry-blond hair, bleached lighter by the sun. He, too, seems to be ignoring their mum, filling a bucket with sand only to plonk it haphazardly down, with no interest in creating anything resembling the elaborate castles the two of them have made in the past. Jesse has always felt connected to Sam – a typical protective older sister – and she hates how what’s happening to her is affecting his childhood, denying him the puppy he craves, the vacations and outings they once had. She scrambles down the rocks to her mother and hugs her.
‘Come on, Sam!’ Mandy calls to her son.
Sam acts like he didn’t hear her and continues pushing sand into piles.
‘Sam!’ Mandy calls out louder.
‘I’ll get him, Mum. You go on, we’ll be right behind you,’ Jesse tells her mother.
Mandy looks at her daughter, shaking her head. ‘I knew you’d be drenched; there’s a change of clothes inside the back door.’
Jesse kneels in the sand beside her brother. Gently, she lifts Sam’s chin. At first, he resists but then he gives in. Looking into his eyes, Jesse sees how worried he is. She knows that he wants to delay the inevitable, to stay here on the beach that he loves so much, in the hope that perhaps if they don’t face it, it will all go away. She knows how he’s feeling because she once felt exactly the same way.
‘We’ve got to go, Sam,’ Jesse whispers.
‘I’m not ready,’ Sam bites back.
‘I know, I know. I’m not either. But we still have to go.’
Taking his hand, Jesse pulls Sam to his feet and reluctantly he allows her to lead him away from their sanctuary: the beach, the water, the shells, the driftwood that he loves to collect, the smell of the sea. A place of peace. ‘Why can’t I live here?’ she remembers him asking their mother when Jesse first became sick.
They make their way to the gate that separates their property from the beach. As they pass through, Mandy hands them each a towel. Using the outside tap, they rinse their feet and dry them off before putting on the sandals their mother hands them. They walk slowly up the path that connects the beach to their rear deck with its hammock, empty now but once Jesse’s favourite spot to read, nap or gaze at the waves beyond. Another thing to leave behind. She follows her mother inside their modest home. There is no comforting smell of dinner cooking or freshly baked cookies cooling down on the bench for Sam to snatch. The table is bare, no places are laid. When Mandy and Sam return home later, Jesse knows that dinner will be taken from the freezer and reheated in the microwave, or it might have to be a sandwich if it’s close to Sam’s bedtime.
‘Get changed, honey, everything else is in the car, we will wait for you there,’ their mum says as Sam follows her through the house to the car waiting in the driveway.
Within minutes Jesse joins them outside. Before she gets in the car, she looks back at her home. Her eyes wander up to the window of the bedroom where she has spent more time than a girl her age should.
‘I’ll be back,’ she whispers. She’s not sure if it’s a promise to the house or to herself.
The dreamcatcher hanging inside the window flutters back at her. She must have left the fan on in her bedroom. She considers telling her mum and going inside to turn it off, but she knows Mandy will go into her room after Sam is asleep anyway. Shewill sit on Jesse’s bed, cuddle one of the soft toys and weep. Just thinking about how this will unfold, knowing there is nothing she can do to make things easier for her mum, causes Jesse to slump against the car. The heat from the car panel sears through her thin clothes and she jumps back. Head down, she takes her place in the front passenger seat.
In the back seat, Sam folds his arms defiantly and stares out the window as Mandy drives out of their quiet street and onto the main beach road, homes and apartments on one side, the grassed foreshore leading to the beach on the other. Outside of the car, bathed in the warm, golden light of early evening, people are going about their normal lives. Couples walk hand in hand, parents chase small children into the shallow waves, dogs run after sticks or balls thrown for them.
