Jessi's Wish

  “All right.”

  “But I’m not tired,” whined Greg. “I don’t want everyone to go home. I want to stay up and play. I want …” Greg trailed off. He watched his sister follow Mrs. Roberts into the house.

  Then he sighed.

  I decided that having a brother or sister who’s sick must be awfully difficult. Greg probably didn’t understand much about leukemia — except that because of it, his sister had spent a lot of time in the hospital. So his parents had, too. And that Greg spent a lot of time with neighbors and his grandparents. And that after Danielle came home, people gave her most of the attention. I wasn’t too surprised when, a little later, Greg flung himself on the ground and threw a tantrum, yelling, “I wish I was sick, too!” (Mr. and Mrs. Roberts tried to ignore him.)

  By the time Daddy arrived to take Becca and Charlotte and me home, Greg was quiet. And Becca had run out of steam. It was only nine o’clock, but she’d been pretty active. Charlotte was tired, too. Danielle was nearly asleep.

  The girls called exhausted good-byes to each other, and then we left. That night, I couldn’t stop thinking about Danielle and her family. They needed a vacation badly, I thought. I wished that Danielle’s wish would come true soon.

  * * *

  Guess what happened the next afternoon. My friends and I decided to hold another weekend BSC meeting. But this time the meeting was held in my room! That was a first. I felt honored.

  However, I decided my room did not look fit for a meeting. So I spent two hours cleaning it. I swept dustballs out from under my bed. Those dustballs must have been as old as I was. Well, not really. But they had probably started forming the day we moved into the house. I dusted my collection of ceramic horses. I wiped the glass covering my ballet posters. I straightened up my stuffed animals, and I organized my books.

  I finished just as our doorbell rang. A few moments later, Mary Anne and Dawn ran upstairs. Soon we were joined by Kristy, Mallory, Claud, and Stace.

  “Welcome,” said Kristy, “to another totally casual BSC meeting. Today’s topic of conversation is … Our Activities, An Update. I’ll start.”

  Kristy talked about the babies. She especially liked Joy. (Maybe that was because Joy especially liked Kristy.)

  “Frankie is making progress,” reported Mary Anne. “Just a little, but it’s progress anyway. His parents chart his skills so they can actually see if he improves. It’s sort of hard to tell, if you just watch Frankie. But when you look at the charts and you see that this week Frankie sat up for eight seconds straight, and last week his record was six seconds, then you know you’re making a difference. Frankie might be able to crawl someday. Maybe even walk.”

  “I had a talk with Charmaine,” Stacey announced. “I told her that I have not always been such a great diabetes patient. And I told her about the time when I gorged on candy and stuff and finally wound up in the hospital. I think I made an impression. Charmaine asked about a zillion questions.”

  “That’s great,” said Mal. “I’m having fun at the playground. All the kids are neat, but there’s this one boy, Danny. He’s five years old. I just love him. I know we shouldn’t play favorites, and I really try not to. But Danny is so sweet. Yesterday he picked a bouquet of weeds for me.”

  “I guess I sort of singled out Danielle,” I said. “I’ve gotten to know her family, and … and, oh! She might get her wish! She’s on the YWIMC wish list!”

  “Cool,” said Dawn. “I tried not to play favorites, either. But at the Institute I always see a little girl named Kendra. She has cerebral palsy. Boy, you guys should hear about what happens at Baker….”

  Dawn’s afternoons at the Baker Institute for physically disabled kids sounded fascinating. She rode to Stamford in a specially equipped van with four children from Stoneybrook who went to Baker for physical therapy, classes in the arts, and a chance to make new friends. The bus driver was a woman who was going to college to learn to be a physical therapist. She drove the bus to earn some extra money, but the kids were more than just a job to her. She really enjoyed being with them.

  “Candace is so funny,” Dawn told me. “She jokes around with the kids, and they love her. She treats all of them the way you’d treat kids who aren’t in wheelchairs or wearing braces. She’ll say to them, ‘Hurry up! I haven’t got all day,’ and the kids just giggle. Most people tiptoe around the kids like they’re going to break. And never mention their braces or anything. But if a friend of yours got new clothes, you’d make a comment, right? So if a kid gets on the bus with decorations all over the back of his wheelchair, Candace will say, ‘Your chair looks great today! I think you should go into business as a decorator.’”

  Anyway, when the bus arrived at Baker, Dawn and Candace would help the kids inside. The kids and teachers and therapists would gather in this one huge room and talk. Dawn usually looked around for Kendra. Or Kendra found Dawn.

  “Dawn! Yo, Dawn!” Kendra called one afternoon.

  Dawn started laughing. She turned around and saw Kendra zipping toward her in her motorized wheelchair.

  “What’s this ‘Yo, Dawn’?” Dawn teased. “What ever happened to ‘Good afternoon, Dawn. Nice to see you’?”

  “My big brother says ‘yo’ all the time,” replied Kendra. “He even answers the phone that way. He picks it up and he says, ‘Yo, the Bogdanoffs’. Who’s this?’”

  “And what do your parents think of that?” asked Dawn.

  “They don’t know he does it.” Kendra grinned.

  Kendra is nine years old. She has cerebral palsy. Her muscles don’t work the way most people’s muscles do. Her legs don’t support her, so she can’t stand or walk. And she doesn’t have much control over her arms. That’s why her wheelchair is motorized. She can steer it just by moving these buttons. She doesn’t have to push the wheels along.

  When Dawn told me that, I said, “If she doesn’t have good muscle control, how can she do anything? You need muscles to write … even to see.”

  “Well, she has better control over some of her muscles than others,” Dawn replied. “Also, she uses a computer. It’s much easier for her just to hit keys than it is for her to write. Although she can write. She can see, too, but she really has to concentrate in order to read. Even so, she reads a lot, which only goes to show how much she enjoys it.”

  Kendra was always writing something. She really did plan to be an author one day. She was good at writing, and she was proud of her work.

  “Look what I wrote last night,” Kendra said to Dawn. Slowly she reached into the tote bag that hung from the side of her chair. She pulled out a piece of paper and held it toward Dawn.

  Dawn reached for it. “ ‘Why I Hate Tomatoes,’ ” she read aloud. She laughed. “Was this a school assignment?”

  “No. My mom made me eat a tomato last night, even though I hate them.”

  “So you decided to write about that?”

  “Yup. My favorite part of my story — well, I guess it’s really more of an essay — is the time I bit into one of those little cherry tomatoes?” (Dawn nodded.) “And I squished it between my teeth and the seeds shot all the way across the table and hit my mother in the face. I thought she would say, ‘Okay, Kendra. No more tomatoes.’ But she didn’t. Someday I think I’ll write a book about tomatoes. I’ll call it My War Against Tomatoes, the Most Disgusting Food There Is…. Hey, there’s Polly. Yo, Polly! Wait for me!”

  I couldn’t help thinking, when Dawn told me the story, that Kendra was actually luckier than Danielle. I knew I shouldn’t compare the girls. I knew there was no point in it. But I couldn’t help it. I’m sure both Danielle and Kendra would have thought I was crazy. I mean, take Danielle. Her muscles work fine. She can walk and run and chase after Mr. Toes. She doesn’t have to concentrate extra hard to read. If she wants to write a quick note, she just picks up a pencil and a piece of paper. If she wants to make a phone call, she picks up the phone and dials it. When the phone rings, she runs to the kitchen and answers it. All very e
asy for her.

  But.

  But when Danielle thinks of the future, she thinks of fifth grade, maybe sixth grade. She wishes to be able to graduate from Stoneybrook Elementary. When Kendra thinks of the future, she thinks of college, of being an adult, of becoming a writer. Kendra has a future. Danielle has a future, too, of course, but hers is much more uncertain.

  When the last bus had arrived at Baker, one teacher took a head count of the kids who had shown up. Then the others guided their students to various areas. One small group went to an art class for extremely disabled kids, another to an art class for more mobile kids, another to physical therapy, etc. Dawn had decided to help in a writing class for fairly mobile students. Kendra was a member of that class.

  Into a small room rolled Kendra and six other kids. Four of Kendra’s friends rode in motorized wheelchairs. The other two pushed themselves in manual chairs, using strong arms. They positioned themselves in front of computers. Kendra was grinning.

  “Today’s subject,” began Mr. Arno, the writing teacher, “is humor. I want you to write a humorous story, and I want you to tell your story in dialogue.”

  “Just dialogue?” asked a boy.

  “Just dialogue,” replied Mr. Arno.

  “Oh, boy!” said Kendra softly. “This is going to be fun.”

  For the next half hour, Dawn helped the kids with their assignment. Blaire, who’s a year older than Kendra, had a lot of questions — and used a voice synthesizer to ask them. Like Kendra, she has cerebral palsy, except that the muscles that control her speech are affected, so she has to communicate by writing or by using her computer. Mickey, who has muscular dystrophy, wrote quickly, his fingers flying over the keys.

  “Our champ,” said Mr. Arno, smiling. “He took a typing class.”

  Mickey had begun to develop muscular dystrophy just a couple of years earlier. So far, his legs were affected, but not his arms.

  “However,” Mr. Arno had told Dawn one day, “muscular dystrophy is a progressive disease.”

  “Progressive?” Dawn repeated, watching Mickey.

  “Meaning it keeps getting worse.”

  “Oh.” Dawn nodded her head soberly.

  That was when I’d realized how silly it was for me to compare children. What was the point of wondering why Danielle had gotten leukemia instead of cerebral palsy? Or why Mickey had gotten muscular dystrophy instead of leukemia? If he’d gotten leukemia, he would still be able to use his legs. But then, he would have been so sick….

  Life is not fair, I had reminded myself. Everybody gets a bad break from time to time. The important thing is not what those breaks are, but how you deal with them. If I ever got as sick as Danielle, I hoped I could also be as cheerful and funny and realistic as she was.

  I admired Danielle’s special brand of hope.

  And Dawn admired Kendra’s optimism.

  “Hey, Dawn,” said Kendra, looking up from the computer. “How do you spell ‘yo’?”

  Dawn laughed. “Y-O,” she replied.

  “Oh. Just like it sounds. All right.” Kendra tapped away at her keyboard. Five minutes later, she said, “Done!” Then she added, “Someday this story is going to be published!”

  “The kids are going to be off the wall today,” Mr. Katz warned me. But he didn’t look terribly concerned. In fact, he was smiling.

  Mr. Katz and I were getting ready for a Kids Club meeting. I had passed my four-meeting trial and was now the permanent temporary assistant. I would be helping with the club for a few more weeks — until Ms. Simon came back. She had phoned Mr. Katz several days earlier to announce her upcoming return. I would be helping for longer than I had originally planned, but Kristy didn’t care.

  “Why are the kids going to be off the wall?” I asked.

  “The popcorn, for one thing.”

  The members of the Kids Club had decided to fill goody baskets and deliver them to the elderly people who live at Stoneybrook Manor. One item in each basket would be a small bag of popcorn. This afternoon was Popcorn Afternoon, when the club members would pop the corn and fill small bags with it.

  “Also,” continued Mr. Katz, “the kids were given vision tests this morning, and this afternoon they had an assembly.”

  “Oh. They will be off the wall, then,” I agreed, remembering the excitement over assemblies. And over eye tests, as well.

  I was lugging a bag of popcorn kernels onto a desk, when I heard a shriek in the hallway. Then Danielle bounded into the room.

  “Danielle? What’s going on?” I asked her.

  Danielle tried to sober up. “Nothing much,” she replied.

  “You were shrieking over nothing?”

  “Shrieking? Oh, that wasn’t me. That was my friend Susanna. I was just telling her the news that Mommy and Daddy told Greg and me at breakfast this morning.”

  “What news?” I asked.

  “Last night Mommy got a phone call. It was from someone at this place called Your Wish Is My Command. They’re granting my wish. We’re going to Disney World! Oh, thank you, Jessi! Mommy told me what you did.” Danielle gave me a hug.

  “You’re going to Disney World?” asked Nicky Pike incredulously.

  “Yup,” said Danielle. “Mommy and Daddy and Greg and I are going next week for three whole days! We’re going to fly to Florida and everything!”

  The other kids were arriving.

  “Next week? During school?” squeaked Vanessa.

  “Lucky duck,” said my sister, smiling. Then she ran across the room and threw her arms around Danielle. “You got your wish!” she exclaimed.

  “Yup, I really did.”

  “What’s all this?” Mr. Katz asked me.

  I explained about YWIMC, and the people I’d talked to there.

  “And her wish is being granted?” said Mr. Katz. “Fantastic. Jessi, I hope you’re feeling particularly proud of yourself right now.”

  “I — I don’t know,” I stammered. “I’m just glad the Robertses can go on their vacation. Danielle and Greg will have so much fun.”

  I looked across the room at Danielle. She was in the center of a crowd of kids who were leaning over her, peering at something. I wondered what they were looking at. At the same time I noticed something important.

  “Mr. Katz!” I exclaimed. “Look! The kids are touching Danielle. They’ve forgotten she’s sick, I think.”

  “Finally,” murmured Mr. Katz, which was the way I felt.

  Danielle stood up then, and I saw what she was holding. A book about Disney World. A guide to the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT Center.

  “Do you like roller coasters?” Nicky asked Danielle, who nodded. “Then you have to go on Space Mountain. It’s the best ride.”

  Danielle was holding a pad of paper. She scribbled something on it.

  “Are you going during school?” Vanessa asked again.

  “Yup.”

  “Why?”

  Danielle shrugged. “Because we just are.”

  Wendy Jervis, who had been leaning over Danielle’s shoulder for a look at the book, suddenly gasped. “Danielle!” she cried.

  “What?” Danielle looked alarmed.

  “Your — your hair is growing back!” Wendy was staring at the blue plaid scarf covering Danielle’s head.

  Danielle bit her lip. “I know. It just started to.”

  “Mm-hm,” said Wendy. “I can see under the scarf in the back. Right here.” Wendy pointed to a spot, and the crowd of kids shifted so that they were behind Danielle.

  “Hey, your hair’s reddish!” exclaimed Peter Tiegreen.

  “It wasn’t that color before,” added Wendy.

  “Well, I told you my hair might change.” Danielle looked uncomfortable.

  Mr. Katz must have noticed, too, because he said, “Okay, kids. Enough.”

  But Danielle interrupted him. “No,” she said. She stood up. Then, slowly, she removed her scarf. Underneath was a stubble of red-brown hair.

  What would the kids say?


  At first, not much.

  Then, they spoke up tentatively.

  “I like the color,” said Charlotte.

  “I wish my hair had red in it,” added Wendy.

  And Peter, moving around to look at Danielle from the front, said, “Oh, cool! I just realized that you’ve got the haircut I wanted. Mom wouldn’t let me get it, though.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “It really is nice hair,” said Vanessa.

  “Yeah. Why’re you still wearing the scarf?” asked Wendy. “Leave it off.”

  Mr. Katz and I glanced at each other.

  “Really?” said Danielle in a small voice.

  “Definitely,” said Becca. “Hey, can I brush your hair?”

  “No, let me.” Wendy was waving around a brush. “I have a styling idea.”

  While Wendy worked on Danielle’s hair, the other kids continued to bombard her with questions about Disney World.

  “Would you get me a pair of mouse ears — if I give you the money?”

  “Are you going to stay in a hotel with a pool?”

  “Do you think your parents will let you ride Space Mountain twice?”

  “Are you going to go to the park with the water rides?”

  Danielle attempted to answer the questions. Finally, she said, “I’ve never been to Disney World! I can’t tell you that much. How about if I write you guys a postcard while I’m in Florida?”

  “And take lots of pictures,” suggested Peter.

  “Yeah, get someone to take a picture of you and Goofy,” said Nicky.

  At that point Mr. Katz wandered over to the members of the Kids Club and said, “Maybe the hair salon ought to close down for awhile. We have goody baskets to put together. The popcorn is waiting to be popped.”

  “Right,” said Danielle agreeably. “Can I just see how I look first?”

  Seven kids dove for mirrors and handed them to Danielle.

  She chose one, held it before her face, and admired herself. “Thanks, Wendy,” she said after a moment. “I like that hairstyle. I don’t look the way I used to, but —”