The Secret Ingredient of Wishes Read online

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  FOR MARK

  Acknowledgments

  To my agent, Patricia Nelson, you are a rock star. I am so lucky to have you on my side with all of your enthusiasm, exclamation points, and spot-on insight into revisions. My books could not be in better hands. And to #TheRevisionists, I am so happy to have found you all through Patricia.

  A massive thank-you to my amazing editor, Kat Brzozowski. I will be forever grateful that you fell in love with this book so quickly and so completely. And thank you to the whole St. Martin’s team for making this experience so wonderful.

  There are not enough words to express my gratitude to Karma Brown. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of the hours you put into helping me make this book shine. I would not be writing these words right now if it wasn’t for you and your Pitch Wars mentor magic.

  A lifetime of hugs to my brilliant/talented/fangirling/insert-kickass-adjective-here critique partners Rebekah Faubion, Jessica Fonseca, and Courtney Howell. I am so damn grateful for your friendship every day.

  To my parents, Elwynn Schwartz and George and Susan Bishop, your never-ending love and support mean the world to me. So much love to my sister, Karen Johnson, for being one of my best friends after so many years of us both wishing the other would disappear. And to my in-laws, Gary and Pat Crispell, thank you for always treating me like one of your own.

  So many hearts to JoAn and Stacy Shaw for being my stand-in parents and weekly coffee companions; Suzanne Junered, Sarah Collier, and Ashley Williams for being my oldest and dearest friends; Krysti Wetherill, Lindsay Smith, Erin Capps, and Thalia Floyd for demanding to read my books and being the most loyal friends a girl could have; Ashley Harp and Katherine Vernon for thinking I’m cool enough to hang out with you, and for being the names at the end of the sentence “When I grow up, I want to be…”

  And the biggest thank-you to my husband, Mark (even though he might never read this), for sharing me with these characters and for never complaining when I got lost in my fictional world. ♥

  1

  Birthday parties made her nervous. Itchy. She didn’t mind the screaming kids, puddles of melted ice cream, or even the clowns who twisted dogs out of skinny, colored balloons.

  It was the birthday candles—and subsequent wishes—that did it.

  Wishes had a funny way of coming true around Rachel Monroe. Whether she wanted them to or not.

  Too bad that excuse didn’t fly with four-year-olds. So there she sat, sideways in a plastic booth, next to a pile of discarded plates and crumpled, pizza-sauced napkins, flicking her gaze to anything in the cramped party room but the source of her discomfort.

  “Ray!” the birthday girl, Violet, yelled, waving her twiggy arm in a circle to beckon Rachel over. “Cake! Cake! Cake!”

  Rachel scooted out of the booth but stayed a safe distance from Violet and her unicorn-shaped cake with four candles protruding from its back. The ice cream cone horn was slathered in white icing and silver sprinkles. “I’m not hungry,” she said and avoided looking at her best friend, Violet’s mom Mary Beth Foster, who was no doubt rolling her eyes at Rachel’s wariness.

  Violet stared, mesmerized, as Mary Beth lit the candles and said, “Make a wish, baby.” Then she scrunched up her face, squeezed her eyes tight, and blew as hard as she could.

  Mary Beth gave her daughter a thumbs-up, then walked to where Rachel stood—still a good five feet away. She brushed her auburn bangs out of her eyes and gave Rachel’s hand a squeeze, whispering, “Nothing bad is going to happen.”

  Rachel squeezed her hand back, grateful that Mary Beth had always believed her about wishes. But, she thought, experiencing it firsthand made it hard not to believe. “Reflex,” she said. “Sorry.”

  Logically, she knew Mary Beth was right. But moments like that sent her right back to her teenage years when she couldn’t tell what was real and what was all in her head. “When everyone tells you you’re crazy for years, it kind of sticks, you know?”

  “I know,” Mary Beth said, rubbing Rachel’s back. “But you can handle it.”

  “Really, Maeby? Because from where I’m standing, it feels like if I can’t even make it through a four-year-old’s birthday party, I’m pretty much screwed.”

  “Thinking like that is not going to help, Ray. You’ve got to focus on the good. A wish was made, and nothing happened.”

  Rachel took a ragged breath and focused on Mary Beth’s husband, Geoff, as he sliced up the unicorn cake. A faint outline of the Blue Sun logo bled through the button-up shirt he wore over his favorite tee. “Well, yeah, there is that.”

  She shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal, but her nerves refused to settle down. Sometimes the wishes, which floated down on small, white slips of paper unnoticed by everyone but Rachel, went wrong. And there was nothing she could do to fix them. Still, the fact that Violet’s birthday wish hadn’t immediately materialized in front of them meant Rachel might have a better handle on things than she’d thought.

  “There’s also the fact that I refuse to let you backslide,” Mary Beth said. “We didn’t go through years of sharing our feelings with a bunch of other head-case teens just to relapse when things get hard. You’re going to be okay. I promise.”

  “How are you always so sure?”

  Mary Beth shook her arm gently, forcing Rachel to look at her. “Because you’ll do anything to keep from letting down the people you love.”

  I’ve done enough of that already. Rachel shoved the guilt down and forced a smile. “All right, all right. Point made. I will stop obsessing and enjoy your kid’s birthday.”

  Geoff, having broken free from the mass of cake-devouring kids, sandwiched himself between his wife and Rachel and draped his arms over their shoulders. “Don’t tell me you ladies are skipping out on the cake.”

  Mary Beth wrapped her arm around his waist, pulling him closer. “Just letting things calm down first.”

  “I just gave massive amounts of sugar to a roomful of kids. A rush like that could last a week,” he said.

  “I guess we better go get some before they come back for seconds,” Mary Beth said.

  “I’ll be there in a minute. I just need to…” Unable to decide on a suitable excuse, Rachel trailed off. She shrugged out from under Geoff’s arm.

  His thick eyebrows pulled down in confusion as he watched Rachel retreat. “Don’t take too long. Presents are up next and Violet’s got your gift on top of the pile.”

  Mary Beth gave Rachel a tentative smile and tugged her husband toward Violet and her mound of presents.

  Rachel found the bathroom door hidden between the soda fountain and the token machine. She could just make out the melody of some teenybopper song over the clanging, whooping, and beeping of the games from the arcade on the other side of the door.

  She hadn’t seen a wish appear in years. And then a month ago, some unkn
own person somewhere else in Memphis had wished for their deepest desire and it found Rachel as she swept the front walk of the coffee shop where she worked. She left it unread—and ungranted—on the sidewalk, hoping that was the end of it. But another one turned up a few days later curled into the bottom of a mug with the dregs of someone’s coffee. Then another appeared in the pocket of her favorite jeans when she pulled them from the dryer. Wishes had come almost daily after that, and she’d done a good job of pretending they didn’t exist. But if anyone would have a wish strong enough to push through Rachel’s defenses, it would be Violet, who’d been talking about her birthday wish in high-pitched squeals and a perma-smile for weeks.

  Rachel twisted on the faucet and splashed water on her face. The shock of cold helped to dull the worst of her nerves. Even if the wish appeared, she didn’t have to end her wishing boycott. Didn’t have to read it and make it come true. She didn’t have to make another wish come true ever again if she didn’t want to.

  Because if the ability refused to give back what it had taken from her, she was done with it. For good.

  With a deep breath, she reentered the mayhem and hoped her resolve didn’t crumble under the weight of Violet’s pleading brown eyes.

  “Ray, c’mon! Presents!” Violet called as soon as she saw Rachel. Her blond hair was a mass of stringy tangles. A cluster of pink icing was crusted at the tips as if she’d tried to make her hair match the flowing mane on the cake. Her lips and tongue were stained purple from the dye the baker had used on the vanilla cake to make the unicorn’s inside match Violet’s favorite color.

  Before Mary Beth had even pulled the empty plate out of her way, Violet hugged the box wrapped in Sunday funnies and tore through the paper.

  Nudging Geoff’s shoulder, Rachel asked, “Does she have retractable claws?”

  “She’s our very own Wolverine,” Geoff said, chuckling.

  “Too bad I got her a kitten. She might accidentally stab it while trying to get it open.” Geoff raised an eyebrow, and Rachel laughed. “Kidding.”

  With the wrapping paper floating to the ground beside her, Violet tugged on the lid of the box. It opened with a soft pop. The pink and orange plastic slug night-lights looked even cuter in person than they had online. Their crooked antennae-like eyes stared up at Rachel as Violet showed them off by dancing them back and forth through the air.

  “Bunnies! I love them!”

  “How can you love them? You don’t even know what they are,” Rachel teased. She took the slugs and placed them in the white fitted base. “They’re not bunnies, they’re slugs. And they’re also night-lights. You can pick them up and carry them around at night and they’ll make it so you can see in the dark.”

  Violet launched out of the booth and threw herself at Rachel. The force of it knocked her back a step. “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” Rachel said. Leaning down, she didn’t even attempt to avoid the icing on the girl’s puckered lips as she smacked a kiss on her mouth.

  “Wanna know what I wished for?” Violet asked before Rachel could pull away.

  “If you tell me, it won’t come true,” Rachel said, hoping the threat would be enough to tamp down some of Violet’s desire for whatever she wanted.

  Violet shrugged, her eyes bright with wanting, and leaned in to Rachel’s ear, whispering her secret with warm, vanilla-scented breath. She held a sticky finger to her lips for secrecy, then raced back to her parents.

  Rachel’s laugh bubbled out of her when, with a quick flash of white, a small piece of paper materialized in mid-air. Grabbing the wish, she read it and shook her head. Leave it to Violet to wish that hard for something that doesn’t exist. Poor kid’s in for a hell of a letdown when this doesn’t come true.

  2

  Rachel dreamed about unicorns. Despite the absurdity of Violet’s wish, it had rooted in Rachel’s subconscious while she slept, and she awoke the next morning with a stress headache that felt like dozens of hooves bucking against her skull. Massaging the base of her neck, she closed her eyes against the dull grayish-blue light that slithered in between the slats of the metal window blinds and reminded herself this particular wish was not one she needed to worry about.

  She hadn’t always known she could make wishes come true. At first, they seemed like happy coincidences. Like when she was five and her favorite stuffed animal, a rabbit called Bit, appeared in her bed with both ears still attached—despite having been thrown in the garbage the week before, his fluffy brains spilling out of the hole in his head. When her mom asked her how she’d gotten him back, and fixed, she just smiled and said, “Magic!”

  As she grew, she discovered that it wasn’t just her wishes that came true. She didn’t have to be in the presence of someone making a wish for it to appear, just in the same town, as she discovered one year at sleepaway camp. And most of the time, she had no idea who a wish belonged to. She just knew that when a wish was strong enough, it would pop into existence, written on a scrap of paper like the ones that came out of fortune cookies, and make its way to her. She’d find them floating in the air, and tumbling out of the cereal box when she poured her breakfast, and underneath her pillow at night.

  No one else seemed to notice them appear, but once she’d touched them, igniting their power, anyone could see them clutched in her hand or stuffed into the pocket of her jeans. And anyone could read them if they managed to snatch them away from her. Anyone could discover what she could do if she wasn’t careful, even if they were unlikely to believe it.

  So she waited until no one was looking to pick up the wishes. Then she hid them all in a wooden box on her dresser, the papers stacked a few inches high in neat rows, and smiled to herself when she overheard kids at school excitedly whispering about how they’d gotten exactly what they wanted.

  When her mom found the stash when Rachel was eight and asked why she was collecting these bits of paper with wishes written across them, Rachel confessed they weren’t hers but that she had made them come true. Her mom nodded, like she believed her, and joked about all of the things she’d wish for. Then she told Rachel to be sure and add her wishes to the top of her pile so they would come true first.

  But that was when her parents thought she just had a very active imagination, before anyone said there was something wrong with Rachel’s brain.

  Rolling out of bed, the headache reined in to a dull ache, she thought as she always did after a wish appeared about wishing things could go back to the way they used to be. Before Michael—the little brother she wished away one rainy, ordinary afternoon because he was irritating her. Before her parents watched her warily and spoke to her in soft, concerned voices, reminding her over and over that she never had a little brother. Before her dad walked out on them and her mom started to believe in Michael too, and, unable to live with the possibility she’d had a son and lost him without even remembering he existed, downed a handful of Rachel’s antipsychotics and chased it with a five-dollar bottle of Cabernet a month after Rachel’s eighteenth birthday.

  But no amount of wishing could change the past. In the eight years since her mom’s death, she’d tried countless times to set everything right.

  And she’d failed.

  She paused in the hallway on her way downstairs. She’d inherited her childhood home after her mom died and hadn’t changed a thing. Discolored patches of wallpaper created a mosaic on the wall as if half a dozen frames had been removed from the collage of family photos and the wallpaper refused to blend back into one monotonous shade of green.

  The wall had once held pictures of Michael next to the rest of her family. She could see his face as clearly as if he were standing in front of her. The curly brown hair and easy smile he’d inherited from their dad. The three-quarter-inch scar through his right eyebrow from when he’d fallen out of bed at age three and cut his head open on the nightstand.

  But everyone else insisted Michael had never been real. They said he was just a delusion her mind had created. The fi
rst symptom of her psychotic break. That was the line the doctors gave her parents when she was ten to convince them to sign the papers and have her hospitalized for a month in the psychiatric ward.

  Pinching her eyes shut, she counted to three. With each number, she inhaled long and deep before releasing it. He’s gone. And there’s nothing I can do to bring him back. She touched one of the discolored spots on the wall as if she could will a photograph to appear. Breathing in deep, she imagined what Michael would look like now. Would his hair still be scruffy and tease the collar of his shirts? Would his baby face have slimmed down so his jaw and cheekbones are sharp and angular like our father’s? Would he still smile at me in the way that said we were about to do something silly?

  But try as she might, the face remained stubbornly childlike. Something in her brain refused to let him age past four—the age he was when she wished him away.

  When she was younger, Rachel told her parents and the doctors she no longer believed Michael had been real—it was less painful than meeting their faces, lined with worry and disappointment. But her memories of him were still very much alive. Especially here, in the house where she’d ended his existence.

  She kept waiting for them to disappear like the doctors had promised, but some small part of her refused to let him go.

  * * *

  In the kitchen, she started a pot of coffee and set to work on the dishes that were piled in both sides of the sink. Violet’s voice happily shouting “Ray!” broke her concentration. Startled, Rachel dropped a plate into the sink from her soapy hands, but thankfully it didn’t break. Her phone’s screen lit up on the windowsill when Violet’s voice—the ringtone she’d set for Mary Beth—called out her name again. She bumped the faucet handle with her wrist and dried her hands on the towel hanging from the oven door.

  “Did you do this?” Mary Beth asked when Rachel picked up.