Be Careful What You Wish For
Autor:in
Elizabeth Bevarly
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HarlequinPrologue
“This is lame.”
“Says you. The food is awesome.”
“Holy crow, who paints a ceiling like that?”
Fifteen-year-old Chance Foley tugged at his necktie for the billionth time and gazed at his three companions sitting on the other side of the table at the Galaxy Ball. His brother, Logan, had naturally been the one to complain, because Logan, at nineteen, complained about everything and thought he was better than everyone else. Certainly better than the three fifteen-year-olds their mother had made him promise to keep an eye on tonight. Chance’s friend Felix Suarez was shoveling his dessert into his mouth like it was the last bite of food he’d ever get, even though he lived above his grandmother’s restaurant. And his other friend Max Travers, whose hand-me-down suit fitted him even worse than Logan’s hand-me-down fitted Chance, was staring at the high ceiling overhead, fascinated.
Chance looked up, too. Max had a point. Although the whole ballroom of Mrs. Pendleton Barclay’s estate was pretty gnarly, the ceiling was super trippy. Bright blue and dotted with stars, there was a giant sun and moon in the middle surrounded by cartoon renditions of all the planets. And streaking through the middle of them was a comet. Comet Bob. It actually had a more official handle, the name of the Eastern European scientist who had discovered him, but that name had more consonants than vowels and more syllables than anyone was comfortable with, so Comet Bob it was.
It was the whole reason for the party tonight. Mrs. Barclay’s Galaxy Ball was the final event of the monthlong Welcome Back Bob Comet Festival that the small southern Indiana town of Endicott hosted every fifteen years. Comet Bob came back to Earth every fifteen years, always during the third week of September, and he always made his closest pass to the planet at coordinates that were directly above Endicott. It was an anomaly scientists had been trying to explain for generations, but meanwhile the little town had come to claim it as their own.
“I think the ceiling’s dope,” Chance said. “It would be cool to live in a place like this.”
Not that it would ever be in the cards for the Foleys. His dad had been killed by a drunk driver when Chance was twelve, and his mother was newly recovered from a bout with cancer that had dumped the family into medical debt they weren’t likely to ever crawl out from under. But Chance didn’t care about the money. He was just glad his mom was okay. Hell, if he had to work his part-time job at the boatyard for the rest of his life to help pay off her medical bills, he would.
“Mrs. Barclay is such a weirdo,” Logan said.
“I think she’s nice,” Chance told him. “Not many rich old ladies would invite a bunch of fifteen-year-olds to a house like this.”
Then again, Chance and his friends—and all the other fifteen-year-olds at the party tonight—weren’t just any fifteen-year-olds. They’d all been born the last year Bob came around. In Endicott, you didn’t get much more prestige than being born in a year of the comet. Too bad it didn’t bring riches, too.
It could, though. Maybe. A lot of folklore had risen up around Comet Bob over the years. Like the bit about making wishes. Legend had it that if someone in Endicott was born in a year of the comet, and if that person made a wish when Bob came back, then that wish would come true when Bob returned next time. So late last night, when the comet was directly overhead, Chance had sent his wish skyward—a wish for a million dollars. He didn’t care if it took fifteen years for it to come true. His mom would have barely made a dent in her medical bills by then. A million bucks, he was sure, could pay off whatever was left. Then he and his mom and his brother could put the whole terrible ordeal of her illness behind them forever.
“Hey, did you guys make a wish last night?” he asked his friends. “I did.”
His friends exchanged an anxious glance.
“Um, yeah. Okay. I guess I did, too,” Felix confessed.
Max exhaled a defeated sound. “All right. Fine. I did, too.”
“Wishes?” Logan asked incredulously. “You guys actually made wishes when Bob passed overhead?”
“Shh,” Max shot back. “Will you please keep it down? The wishes may not come true if other people hear, even if we were all born in the last year of the comet.”
Logan shook his head at the three younger guys. “Incredible. Just what the hell did you wish for?”
Max dropped his glance to his lap. “I wished Marcy Hanlon would see me as something other than the lawn boy.”
Chance bit back a smile. The worst-kept secret at Endicott High School was Max’s unrequited love for Marcy, whose family was so rich and so much higher on the social ladder than practically anyone in Indiana he might as well have been pining for a Greek goddess. Good luck filling that wish, Bob.
“I wished for a million dollars,” Chance offered readily. He didn’t care if anyone knew what he wished for. It was a legit request.
Felix added, “And I wished that, just once, something interesting would happen in this town.”
Oh, sure. That was even less likely to happen than Marcy Hanlon seeing Max as something other than the lawn boy. Comet festivals aside, nothing interesting ever happened in Endicott.
Chance was about to say something else, but a blonde lady at the next table suddenly turned around and smiled at them. “Be careful what you wish for, boys,” she said. She took the hand of the dark-haired man sitting beside her. “Because you know...you might just get it.”
They both smiled as they stood up and walked toward the ballroom exit. For some reason, as he watched them go, Chance couldn’t quite shake the idea that whoever the lady was, she was a comet kid, too, and Bob had done right by her this year and granted her wish.
It was a good sign. Maybe in fifteen years he really would have a million bucks dropped into his lap. Maybe, somehow, the next time Bob came around, he really would make Chance’s wish come true.
