We each raise our linked arms and swish them in a big arc at the same time as our legs. Our feet bump into each other, making us giggle harder.
“Ow, Will, your toenails are sharp,” I yelp.
“Seriously, William!” Penny shrieks. “You’re like a three-toed sloth over there.”
Will spreads his feet even wider and runs his toenails up my shin. “Come closer, my pretty!” Will says in a creepy old-lady voice.
My back thumps against the sand, shaking from silent laughter. “Stop! Stop!” I say, clutching my sides and curling into a ball.
“Quick! Everybody up!” Penny shouts.
We scramble to our feet, brushing granules from the back of our legs and shoulders. Together, we step back to admire our handiwork. Three matching sand angels have been traced together on the beach. The glowing embers of our campfire light our silhouettes in the sand.
“Pretty,” I say. Because of course this was Penny’s idea.
“Not bad,” Will agrees. “Except for that one in the center.” He points to the angel that he made. “It looks a little chunky.”
I shove his arm. The remnants of our night are scattered around. Chocolate. Marshmallows. Graham crackers. Penny’s weird bottles of kombucha.
There’s nothing particularly special about this moment, but it feels perfect. There’s a swell of emotion inside me. Will’s the first one to break away. “Last one in has to lick Harrison Vines’s face.” Shoot. I do not want to lick Harrison’s face.
So I take off sprinting after Will. Penny and I run neck and neck, our elbows jostling each other, screaming all the way. Will plunges into the surf. Penny’s long gazelle legs hit the water first.
“No!” I tumble into the water with such feigned tragedy, I should win an award. And I should actually be way more disappointed than I am, given that I am now going to have to beg my two best friends to please, please, please not make me lick Harrison, which I will absolutely hate doing. But while I wash the sand out from between my toes and under my armpits and around my neck, I can’t help but think instead that I’m very lucky.
The sky is clear and coated with starry glitter. I stare up at the full moon and push my bike toward it. My dad’s road bicycle zips along much faster than Penny’s Huffy bike did and I’m wearing sensible sneakers this time, another plus, but my cast is clumsy on the handles and makes me swerve back and forth across the yellow line painted on the blacktop’s shoulder.
The clock on my phone reads just after 11:30 p.m. Ringo’s breathing is heavy and shallow behind me and I listen to the spin of our wheels.
Even going uphill, I don’t have to stop and walk beside my bike. I press on, letting my lungs burn for oxygen. The farther we go, the less the air smells like the salt of the sea and the more it smells like rain-starved farmland.
Too much has happened for me to believe in magic any longer.
For instance, I know why I don’t need my inhaler anymore. It’s not an unexplained miracle, I was just dead.
And I’ve accepted that when Will, Penny, and I wrote down our wishes, we weren’t doing it so that by some strange twist of fate I would one day have answers to impossible questions. We were just three kids who loved each other. And that counts for plenty, as Ringo has convinced me.
After all, it’s Ringo who has pushed me to finish the hunt, to find the wishes, no matter what he had said to begin with about how I’ve been hanging on to the possibility of those tiny, hidden scraps too hard.
I hop off my bike while the wheels are still moving and drop it with a bang-crash on the side of the road. Ringo skids to a stop behind me. It’s so dark beneath his helmet that his face looks one color and it makes my stomach twist uncomfortably. I’m glad when he removes the helmet and I see that it’s still him there underneath.
I read the ragged wooden sign. It’s barely legible now: Cat Mountain State Park.
“This is it,” I say, reverently, while dumping my helmet on top of the front wheel.
Ringo steps over his turned-over bike. “It’s, uh, lovely. Where are we exactly?”
One more thing. I just have to do this one more thing and then what will be, will be and what I’ll do, I’ll do. “It’s the last full moon of the summer,” I tell him. “That’s when dreams are born.” Because I owe Penny the memory of that much.
He takes my hand and I pull my dad’s headband lantern from around my neck and onto my forehead. I lead Ringo past the trailhead, where the terrain turns craggy and we have to carefully watch our steps.
I still expect the ground to feel sacred when we enter the abandoned cougar den. Instead, it just feels like ground. Ringo drops my hand and walks around the cave’s perimeter. “Whoa, you guys came here when you were fourteen?”
“Almost fifteen,” I correct him.
Because we have exactly eleven minutes until midnight if we’re to be exactly respectful of Will’s plan, I show him the set of ribs mostly buried in the red dirt, and together we search for the gopher skull, but neither of us can find it.
We uncover other treasures, though, like a fossilized paw print and a dead lizard being gnawed to bits by ants.
I watch the clock on my phone as it flips the numbers to midnight. It’s officially my birthday.
“What now?” asks Ringo.
“I—I don’t know,” I admit. I turn on the spot. For several long moments, I worry that Will hadn’t gotten to this last part, that the wishes aren’t exactly here. I search the walls of the cave and trace my feet over the perimeter—nothing.
“Will, Penny, and I, we did this friendship ritual right here years ago, but—”
“Should we do it?”
I frown and tuck my hands into my armpits, hugging myself tightly. “I—”
Then Ringo nods. “It’s your thing. The three of you. You’re right.”
My shoulders relax, thankful. Yes, he gets it. Almost as well as Will and Penny would have, and for that I’m so fortunate.
Crickets and cicadas scream in the night around us. I walk to the spot where we cut our hands and rubbed our blood in the dirt. Ringo stays close but doesn’t touch me. I tilt my head up to the moon—a perfect orb of a frosty silver light. “I don’t know,” I say, letting my palms clap against the sides of my legs. “I’m stumped.”
I think back to that night. It feels like eons ago when the three of us sat here together and vowed to be family. Had we failed? Or am I wrong to feel hurt because, in truth, we had the same issues as every other family?
The spit grows thick and sticky in my throat. I remember how I’d been all alone—or at least it had felt that way—before I met Will and Penny, and how I’d stood in this same spot, bleeding and giddy, feeling as if I’d just won the lottery.
But Ringo is looking over my shoulder. He taps my arm. “What’s that?” He points and my heart skips.
“What’s what?”