I Wish

Chapter 52

The answer to whether I was successful in telling my family about Ivy before they busted her? Hard no. Did I even manage to tell them before they confronted me about them? Also no. The thing was… it was a really good week. Now that I knew that Ivy was going to show up at the same time everyday, and I could count on her to do that things got a lot easier. Yeah, I missed her but it didn’t hurt. Didn’t feel like the end of the world, or like someone was removing my internal organs, it was just… I missed her. Thankfully she always brought food, because I never wanted to be that hungry again in my life. I never wanted anyone to ever be that hungry ever again. 

I got to bond with my brothers during the day, and I realized that somewhere along the line I had stopped doing that. I just sort of… existed around them, and that wasn’t the way that I wanted to be. I didn’t want to take them for granted, because I could still remember what it felt like to think I was going to die and never see them again. So Jeremy and I hung out and did all the things he’d wanted to do with me, but never got to because it was just assumed that they were girl things and he wouldn’t be interested. We watched tutorials, hair transformations, and anything with Molly Ringwald in it. I’d even pulled out an old build your own bracelets kit that I’d gotten for Christmas years ago, and we’d made each other bracelets. One of the things that Jermey had always wanted to do was get his ears pierced. Both of them, and it wasn’t a big deal he just hadn’t known that. Which led us to where we were now. With him sitting in a kitchen chair, waiting for mum to straight up Parent Trap it, and pierce his ears herself because apparently she’d been the one to do hers.

“Are you sure?” she asked him, letting him see her sterilize the fresh out the packet sewing needle with alcohol. He’d been holding ice cubes to his ears for about five minutes now, and I was leaning against the Island and watching this all unfold in front of me.

“Stick me,” he said, pale and taking a shaky breath in. He squeaked when she did it, but quicker than I would have thought Jeremy was sporting two silver studs with aqua gems. 

“Hey mum, can you do mine?” Mark asked only just after she’d finished popping the back on, and explaining how to take care of them. Of course, I thought, chuckling to myself. If one of them had it, the other one generally wanted one or two. It had always been like that, always had been and always will.  Mum hummed, and pretended to think about it. The grin gave her away to anyone not anxiously awaiting her response.

“Yeah hon, I can do that,” she said after making him sweat and stare at her with puppy dog eyes, “I just need to get a new needle. I could just strealize, this if push came to shove, but I don’t want to risk it.” That felt smart, no need to go taking unnecessary risks when you don’t have to. 

“It does sound extremely iffy,” I commented in agreement, not that my opinion would have made a difference either way.

“Can I only have one ear though,” Mark asked her before she left. Which was good, because after she did the first one there was no way that he was letting her get anywhere near him to do the other one. I could only imagine how he would have reacted if it had come with the BANG that the piercing gun did. Just having the needle go through his ear was enough without the noise making him jump out of his skin.

Mark and I had watched more gorefest horror movies than you could shake a stick at. I swear that this kid had nerves of steel, and a preference for the room to be dark when we watched them. If the world hasn’t completely s**t itself and imploded by the time he was old enough to get into a movie with an MA15+ rating then I was taking him to see the scariest option available at the nearest cinemas. He’d also been a part of my video call with Candice, because now that I knew that she was in the hospital there was no way that she was going to pass up the opportunity to screen my facial expressions for clues. Clues to what exactly? I had no idea, but she's done her best to sound vague and mysterious when she’d dropped that line, so I let her get away with it. I think Mark liked it when we invited him to come chat, as if he were one of the big kids. Plus they both wanted to know everything I was willing to tell them about Ivy, before I tapped out in fear of sounding like a crazy person. It was nice to talk about her to somebody. I’d been whirling around in circles, not sure what was me and what was magically influenced. They were good sounding boards, and they helped me remember. Now that I wasn’t constantly doubting my decisions, my mental health was getting a lovely break in that department.

Mum and I had proceeded to her newest hobby, crochet. I was terrible, but we’d sit in the lounge room and giggle at how bad our first attempts were. The stereo playing in the background, and with me having firmly lost the battle the radio was tuned to 1323 AM Cruise. The music wasn’t bad, but I’d had a lot of fun teasing her about it. Which got less amusing once she realised that I was messing with her, and began to throw back shade without a care. Dad and I started cooking together, all the time. None of it was appealing to me, but everybody else in the house sure appreciated it. Not as much as dad did though, and not because he wanted to eat it but because he spent a whole bunch of time locked up in that office sitting still and working. Given that when he gets out of there he can barely keep still I’m going to assume that would cost him something. Cooking was one of those things that while you’re doing it you never really stop moving. You walked around, you kept your hands busy and chatted. It was good.

In fact the whole damn week was great. I was genuinely feeling that my life was as good as it got under these circumstances. It could be better, but I would have to say the W word again and hope for the best. I’d learned from that, really I promise I have. Tonight they’d even gone to bed early, everyone disappearing into their own room by quarter past nine. I met Ivy five minutes later just past the treeline down the back, and we were honestly just eating. Don’t get me wrong, we were lying all over each other to the point where you couldn’t tell where she stopped and I started. Neither of us felt the need to fill the silence. Nothing could ruin this right now.

“Rose! I can’t believe you make that girl sit outside after she comes all the way out here to the middle of nowhere to see you, rather than introduce her to us,” mum hollered from the backyard, “At least get in the house before it rains on you. I promise none of us bite.” It felt like all the blood had drained out of my body, and I craned my neck to look up at Ivy in embarrassed horror.

“Don’t worry,” she said, sitting us up and running a hand down my back, “I can teach you the biting.” Well at least I was laughing now.