The Art of Wishing Read Free Page A

there was a secret in the room, and they were the only two people who knew it.

    The porch lights were already on when I got home that night, and my mom’s car sat ominously in the driveway. And the house, as I’d feared, was a mess. There were coats draped over the back of the couch, shoes strewn all around the floor, and four suitcases in the hallway, one of which was open and spilling clothes everywhere. I tried not to think about how I’d cleaned this room just three days ago.
    Ziggy was the first to greet me when I opened the door, jumping off her perch on the couch and rubbing herself against my legs. She purred as I bent to scritch her little tabby head. “Did Mommy and Daddy come home?” I whispered to her. “Did they remember to feed you?”
    “Margo?” came Mom’s voice from the kitchen. “Honey, is that you?”
    I rolled my eyes. “No, it’s a burglar. I’ve come to steal all your silverware and jewelry. And your cat,” I added, giving Ziggy another scratch.
    “As long as you don’t steal our daughter,” she replied. Emerging from the kitchen with a huge grin on her face and Dad trailing behind her, she gave me a quick hug and a peck on the forehead.
    “How was the cruise?” I asked, unzipping my boots and placing them neatly on the shoe rack by the door. I’d deal with my parents’ shoes later.
    She sighed dramatically. “Absolute heaven. Maybe even better than the last one. I know they say you should wait for summer to visit Alaska, but what’s a little cold?”
    “Cold schmold,” added Dad. “That’s what the parkas were for. Not to mention the indoor cabin.”
    Mom gave him a secretive little smile. “The honeymoon suite, you mean.”
    “Honeymoon suite, still?” I asked, doing my best to ignore the dewy-eyed looks they were exchanging. “What is this, the third honeymoon you’ve been on since the wedding?”
    Mom thought for a moment. “Fourth, if you count the Grand Canyon trip.”
    “Which I do,” said Dad. “Oh, and we have pictures!” He ran over to the open suitcase and began rifling through it. “Wait till you see these, Margo. Some of the ones your mother took are just, wow.”
    Ever since the wedding last May, our lives had been one continuous cycle of Mom and Dad planning a trip, Mom and Dad leaving on their trip, a week or two of peace and quiet, Mom and Dad coming back from their trip, and the grand finale, Mom and Dad showing me pictures of their trip. The pictures were always the same, too: Mom pretending to fall over the railing of a cruise ship, Dad wearing another cheesy Hawaiian shirt, stuff like that. Sometimes it felt like they were the teenagers and I was the adult.
    “How’s school?” asked Mom. “Anything exciting happen while we were gone?”
    “Nope,” I said quickly. “Same old same old.”
    I thought about telling her about the cast list fiasco, but this wasn’t the time. At best, they’d both go “Aw, that’s too bad” and jump right back into honeymoon talk. At worst, they wouldn’t even understand why I was so upset. As far as they were concerned, it didn’t matter what role I had, as long as their daughter was onstage. These were, after all, the people who’d thrown me a party after I’d played Frightened Theatergoer Number Two in my first-grade musical about Abraham Lincoln.
    “Where did I put that camera?” muttered Dad.
    “Red suitcase, inside pocket, next to the toothbrushes,” replied Mom almost absently, and then turned back to me. “You’ll never guess what movie was playing on the plane today.
The Parent Trap
. Can you believe it?”
    “Oh, I almost forgot about that!” said Dad, unzipping the red suitcase.
    “It was the old Hayley Mills one,” said Mom. “The good one, not the remake they did with that awful drug addict girl.”
    I was about to point out that Lindsay Lohan probably hadn’t been a drug addict at the time, but Mom continued, “And we said, take away the twin thing and the summer camp, and