He still wouldn’t look at me. “I got to go to school.”
“Me, too. Want to walk together?”
He reached in through the window and pulled out his satchel. “Maybe you’d better take Earl Street.”
In other words, no, he didn’t want to walk together.
“. . . All right, then. Maybe I’ll see you at school,” I said.
He cleared his throat and walked off.
I went back around the house—toward Earl Street—and heard Miz Tromp murmur as I passed by, “I wish there was a good solution to all this. There has to be one.”
Halfway through third period, I got called out of class to talk to Missus Peeps, the school counselor. She was concerned about me, she said, and thought I might want to talk about losing my grandmother. I didn’t, and I said so.
She nodded, all counselor-like. I thought that was the end of it.
I was about to get up to leave, when she said, “You’ve had a lot on your turkey platter lately. Not just your grandma, but the wish power and all the attention it’s brought on you.”
“That’s all done now,” I told her.
“Done, how?” Missus Peeps asked, frowning.
“I can’t fetch wishes anymore.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?” She said it like I’d offended her.
“Can’t,” I said. “Why? Did you want something?”
I’d meant it to be snarky, but her eyes actually lit up.
“Well, since you asked—” she began.
I got up from the chair and walked out.
After school, I headed to the library to delete the Cornucopio profile for good. Genuine Sweet’s Wish to End Hunger was closing its doors.
As I marched down the sidewalk, chin jutting and arms pumping, it might have seemed like I couldn’t get there fast enough. You might have wondered if I was pulling the plug out of spite. But it wasn’t like I had a choice. I couldn’t fetch wishes anymore. People might be starving, but just as they had with the troubles in my own hungry family, the stars only helped when they saw fit to.
Jura was waiting outside for me, as if she’d known I was coming.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” I set my hands on the city hall/police department/historical society/library/extension office door handle.
She reached in front of me, gently blocking my way. “Are you mad at me?”
It would have been easy to say, No, of course I’m not mad. It’s just my gram dying. Sorry if I seem out of sorts. But I couldn’t forget—even if I wanted to—that we were friends. I owed her—and me—the truth.
“I’m not mad at you,” I said. “Not really.”
“Not really, but sort of?” Jura asked.
I sighed. “I was mad. Still am, but . . .” I tried to think of a way to say it. “It’s no one thing I’m mad at. It’s everything! I fetched a bunch of wishes for a bunch of folks, and my gram still died.”
“I can see that. Being mad,” she agreed.
“So I did the one unforgivable thing.” I turned away from the door and leaned my back against the library wall. “I broke the first rule. I made a wish for myself. Actually, I made a mess of wishes. Big ones. And now . . . I can’t fetch wishes at all.” I looked away from her. I didn’t want to watch her face as she realized I wasn’t good for much of anything anymore.
“Oh, Genuine.”
“What?” I bumped my toes on the sidewalk. The sole of my shoe had started peeling away. Ain’t that fittin’? I thought.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” I snapped. “’Cause I can’t wish you up the perfect wedding dress for when you marry Sonny?”
“No, you clabberhead.” She gave a somber little laugh. “Because that was the last thing your gram gave you, and now it’s gone.”
I very nearly went on the offensive. Who are you calling a clabberhead? But her words started to sink in, and I realized she was right. Gram had set that wish cup in my hands for the first time. Gram had taught me to draw down the starlight. Now Gram was gone. The cup was empty.
And I had no way to fill it up again.
My knees shook and my hands shook and even my lips and the very skin of my face shook from the inside, as if something sick was trying to get out.
I wept.
“Oh, God, Jura,” I managed between gasps. “It’s gone. I threw it away. Oh God, oh God, oh God.” And then it struck me—the most despisable thing of all. “Jura! All those hungry people! No more wishes, no more biscuits. They’re gonna starve!” I let out a moan from the deepest, hurtingest part of me.
I fell onto Jura and cried so hard that the whole shoulder of her sweater turned wet. She hugged me tight and stroked my hair in a way that reminded me of Gram, which made me bawl all the more. My whole world ended right there in Jura’s kind arms, if you can make any sense of that. When I finally pulled away from her, I felt clean but raw, as if I’d been roughly scrubbed inside and out.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Sure.” She tucked a bit of hair behind my ear.
“Travis might be moving to California.” It was a funny thing, I know, how that came to mind right then, but there it was.
Her eyebrows shot up. “How come?”
I told her about Travis’s pa and Miz Tromp’s quandary. “It’s a right fine mess, that’s all.”
“You know, I bet we can fix it,” Jura said after a time.
“How?”
“We could . . . get Travis’s dad a job in town!”
“Because Sass is just brimming over with jobs?” I teased.
She paused. “Okay, no. But how about if—what if we applied for some kind of grant? For Wish to End Hunger? And then we could hire—what’s his dad’s name?”
“Kip.”
“We could hire Kip to do all the mailing and stuff. Make him our office manager!” She looked at me with big, excited eyes.
“Jura.”
“Yeah?”
“Wish to End Hunger is done. I’m wishless. Useless.” My throat went tight. “Good for nothin’ but scrubbing floors.”
Jura jerked her chin back. “Genuine!”