The Summer of Lost Wishes (16 page)

Yet I don’t like any of them.

The girl with the butterfly mask decides
against it and chooses a white lace and pearl mask instead. Her
friend picks one that reminds me of an ice princess – white and
pastel blue with clear rhinestones.

“You really don’t like any of them?” Rooks
asks, studying the wall. He grabs one from the shelving. “What
about this one?”

It’s turquoise with shading of lighter blues
and greens. It sparkles across the cheeks with glitter. Tiny
seashells and blue rhinestones decorate it.

I shake my head. “It’s pretty, but it
reminds me of my mom and all of her decorating. I don’t want to
look like a mermaid. It’s overdone.”

Rooks rolls his eyes dramatically before
laughing and placing the mask back in its place. “You want to look
somewhere else?” he asks. “This is probably your best bet, but some
of the other places around here may have limited stock.”

“It’s worth a try,” I say. I feel a little
bit defeated. I thought something would just jump out at me
screaming my name. “We can always come back,” I tell him.

As we walk toward his truck, Rooks comments
on a black and white phantom mask he saw inside and how the
selection is slim for guys. He refuses to be a phantom, and I’m
cool with that. I have plenty of phantoms in my head. That’s all I
need.

But then I see him – my real life
phantom.

“Hide!” I whisper in a hiss. I grab Rooks’
arm and duck down below his driver’s side door.

He glances around but squats down next to
me. “What are we hiding from?” he whispers. His eyes narrow at me,
like I’m crazy or he’s confused or both.

“Frank,” I whisper back, motioning my head
toward the hardware store. “The creepy fisherman guy who screamed
at my mom and me.”

“Whoa. What?” Rooks asks, his voice in a
normal tone. “You didn’t tell me about this. What happened?”

I give him a quick version of Frank’s
outburst toward us on the pier – how he screamed and people stared
and my mom threatened him with the cops. I leave out a few details
simply because the sun is reflecting off the pavement and burning
holes into my flip-flops and I’m ready to seek refuge in the air
conditioned truck.

I pop up from by the truck and peek through
the window to see if Frank is out of sight. His old truck sits in
the hardware store’s parking lot, but he appears to have gone
inside. I use this moment as my opportunity to rush around and
secure a safe spot in the passenger seat.

Rooks gets in and cranks up, turning the air
on full blast. But he refuses to leave until I explain,
play-by-play, what happened the other day. So I tell him everything
– from the giant fish that flopped around on the pier to the
pineapple milkshakes and how we talked about my dad. Then I tell
him about Frank and the mop handle shoved in our faces. I quote the
words exchanged between my mom and the fisherman. Rooks keeps an
eye on my window, watching for whenever Frank makes his exit.

“There’s another thing,” I say, glancing
over my shoulder, as if Frank can hear me from next door. “I think
he may know something about the letters. He made it very clear that
he didn’t like us being here, opening old wounds by moving into our
house, but then I got to thinking. Maybe it’s because he knows
something.”

Rooks nods. “We need to bridge the gap from
the time of the tragedy to the time when the letters were put in
the wall,” he says. He leans his head back against the headrest. “I
wonder who found the letters afterward. But why give them to Frank?
He was like what, eight years old?”

I shrug, but I realize we’re covering fifty
years of time. “You know, those letters may not have even been in
the wall that long,” I rationalize. “We’ve been thinking they’ve
been there for fifty years, and maybe they have, but what if
someone found them later? They might have figured the house had
been empty for decades, so it was the best place to hide them.
We’ve been looking at it from the wrong angle.”

I suddenly feel more hopeless about solving
this puzzle than I did before. Anyone could have found his letters.
His family may have or a friend who wanted some of his belongings.
The person could have stumbled upon them, thought it made Seth look
badly, and then hid them in the one place no one would ever look.
Or maybe someone connected to Rosa came across them and wanted to
keep her name out of it. The person behind the letters in the wall
could have moved away or died by now. It could be a really simple
cover up to protect Seth’s reputation and the memory of him with
Hanna.

“There he is,” Rooks says, pointing toward
the hardware store.

Frank tosses a coil of rope over the side of
his truck. That sends up all kinds of red flags. Next he’ll have a
roll of duct tape.

“Don’t panic,” Rooks says. “He’s a
fisherman. They use rope a lot.”

An employee pushes out a cart with planks of
wood and helps Frank load them into the bed of the truck. I tell
myself he’s probably building something. A bench, maybe.

But then the employee hands Frank an ax, and
I audibly gasp.

“You can’t tell me he needs an ax for
fishing,” I say, turning toward Rooks and hiding my face from the
window. “What’s he going to do? Chop the rope? Cut off fish
heads?”

I barely turn my head, keeping my hair over
my cheek so he can’t see me if he looks over. I peer through the
strands of my hair. Frank nods to the employee, places the ax
behind the seat inside the cab of his truck, and glances around
suspiciously before getting in.

“Follow him,” I say. “Keep a distance so
it’s not obvious, but follow him.”

I don’t have to explain myself or defend my
spontaneous decision. Rooks pulls out of the parking lot just a
moment or two after Frank leaves the hardware store. He lets a
yellow Beetle slip in between us before the first red light.

Frank turns into the parking lot of a
familiar location – Casa Garcia. He parks in a ‘take out only’ spot
and locks his truck before going inside. Rooks parks across the
street.

“He’s going to kill Rosa,” I say, even
though it makes zero sense and I realize it once the words
formulate.

“Or maybe he likes her food?” Rooks says. He
seems sort of embarrassed that we followed the guy just for Mexican
takeout.

“You know it’s more than a coincidence,” I
tell him. I shake my head in defiance.

There’s no way anyone could convince me that
Frank is casually buying fishing supplies and lunch. He just bought
a serial killer starter kit, and now he’s canvassing Casa Garcia to
study his future victim.

“Here he comes,” Rooks says, his voice low,
even though we’re across the street. “Looks like he
has…takeout.”

We remain parked in this spot until Frank
cranks up his truck and eventually pulls back onto the main street
of downtown. He doesn’t go far, though. He parks in a nearby
parking lot, close to the docks. He gets out of the truck, food bag
and a bottled water in hand, and cuts in between two buildings.

Rooks throws his truck into DRIVE and zips
down past the buildings to see where the fisherman went. An
alleyway with two dumpsters is planted between the downtown
businesses. It’s dreary, even on a pretty summer day like
today.

We pull around to the exit, but Frank is
nowhere in sight.

“Looks like he got away,” Rooks says. He
pulls into an open lot to turn around.

A vintage thrift store sits on the opposite
side of the street. A shimmery yellow dress adorns the mannequin in
the window. I wonder if they’d have something for the Town Hall
party.

“Detour,” I say, pointing toward Second
Wind. “They may have something more unique than Cornelia’s
did.”

Rooks speeds across the street when there’s
a break in traffic. He parks directly in front of the door, as
there’s not nearly as big a crowd here as there was at the costume
shop.

“Lead the way,” he says, holding his arm out
for me.

The lady behind the counter asks if we need
any help, but we tell her we’re just browsing for now. I stroll
over to the dress in the window, but there’s no way I could pull it
off. I’d have to be a brunette to wear that shade of yellow, and
I’d need a much better tan.

“Piper,” Rooks says, motioning me his way.
“I’ve found what you’re looking for.”

He holds up a masquerade mask – pink with
sequins, feathers, a touch of lace, and a pink flower. The beak
extends from the mask at a curved angle. It’s a flamingo.

He smiles proudly. “You can’t deny this,” he
says. “Am I good or am I good?”

Oh, he’s so incredibly good.

This is it. I’m going to do it. I’m ending
things with Hanna. I haven’t figured out exactly what I’m going to
tell her, but I won’t reveal our secrets. I like to think of it as
setting her free, like I’m giving her a chance to run down a new
path and find a new dream, one that’s her own.

I don’t know how she will react. I don’t
know how anyone will react. I hate to see her hurt because she
doesn’t deserve that, but she also doesn’t deserve to be in a
marriage with someone who loves someone else.

But I’m doing this for us, so we can escape.
So we can leave. I need you to be ready. I’m telling her now. I’m
not waiting for graduation or after exams. I’ll deal with my
family. I’ll pretend I’m stressed or scared. I’ll say I need time
to process all of it. I’ll give them false hope. But the day after
graduation,
we
are making our escape. Be ready.

I’ll be there. I have our IDs ready. It
wasn’t easy, but the money you gave me was enough to convince my
contact to do it. No one will know who we are, where we’re from, or
what we left behind.

We’ll be traces in the wind, remnants of
falling stars and what used to be lost wishes. I’m scared, but I’m
excited. I’m ready for this. It won’t be long before you can
finally take me dancing.

I wake up with my face buried into Rosa’s
words. I jump up in a hurry, folding the letter and stashing it
under my pillow. It takes a moment to realize where I am. I inhale
sharply but exhale slowly. This is my new bedroom. Sunlight pours
in from the balcony window. I can’t believe I completely crashed
while reading her letter.

After double checking that my door is
locked, I retrieve the crumpled paper from under my pillow and
reread the short paragraph. This was it. She was ready. They were
really going to do it. All of her wishes were coming true. She
finally caught a falling star.

I don’t want to read the ending because I
know what happened shortly after. I wish I could just stop here and
be oblivious to what played out in the following days. I could
believe that they made their great escape, went to a big city,
danced under the lights of a nightclub, and lived happily ever
after.

A drill buzzes outside. I fold the letter
and place it with the others, deep in the confines of my purse.
There’s one piece of paper left, but I don’t have time to read it
if I want to put on a fresh face before seeing Rooks today. Vanity
wins again.

Once I’m dressed and presentable, I stroll
out onto the balcony to see Mr. Carter, Rooks, and Mac working on
the fence that Mom wanted at the last minute. It’s a replica of the
small fence I saw at the beach near the sand dunes. Mom made an
offhand remark about how cute and rustic it was that day we drank
milkshakes, but I never thought she’d actually want a weathered
fence around our yard. She insisted that it was for privacy. Even
if it’s not, she knows too well what lines to use on me because it
worked.

The scent of coffee fills the entire house
once I step out of my bedroom. The dishwasher growls downstairs,
and Mom’s voice floats in the air. She says something about tea
light candles and seashells. She was up late last night carefully
boxing up her decorations for this upcoming party in
Chesterfield.

I sort of wish it didn’t fall on the night
of the Town Hall party. I’d feel better about going if she were
close by. I don’t trust these townsfolk alone. I know Rooks will be
with me, and he’ll guard me with his life. Mr. Carter will be a
phone call away. But I feel like I’m taking on the world by myself
now, a little baby flamingo out of the nest. Coral Sands versus the
pink baby bird.

Mom looks toward me when I walk downstairs.
“Go try on the dress,” she says, strung out on excitement and
coffee. “I want to see it on you in person. I loved the
pictures.”

Good morning to you too, Mom. I almost don’t
take her seriously, but she stands up, abandoning her boxes of
seashells, driftwood wreaths, and blue table cloths.

She follows me back to my room, plops
herself down on my bed, and waits while I change in the bathroom.
The dress is perfect. It’s a shorter dress, a bit more fun and
flirty than elegant. It’s a hot pink strapless with lots of sequins
and a tulle skirt to give it that extra flamingo fluff.

When I walk back into my bedroom, she jumps
up with excitement like it’s my wedding day rather than a costume
for a Town Hall masquerade party.

“With the mask,” she says, reaching for it
on the bedside table.

Rooks found a perfect jacket with the long
coattails he wanted. It’s charcoal gray and makes his eyes pop,
even behind the dark phoenix mask he got at Second Wind. The lady
at the checkout register made a lame remark about two birds
flocking together, and I desperately hope no one says anything
similar at the party.

“Ohhhh, I love it,” Mom says dreamily,
clasping her hands on either of her cheeks. “You’re the prettiest
flamingo I’ve ever seen.”

After she’s through admiring and oooh’ing
and ahh’ing, I change out of the costume before anyone else can see
me in it. Then I roam outside to see how the fence is coming along.
Rooks wears an old T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, and I melt
instantly upon seeing his muscles with that power drill.