Page 1 of Wish For Me

CHAPTER1

Noelle

That night, my greatest wish was a night to forget. Because I didn’t just come back to my hometown of Quince Valley, Vermont, for a Christmas visit.

I came back broke, jobless, and dumped.

It was two days after my twenty-sixth birthday, and I found myself standing in the doorway of my childhood bedroom, suitcase in hand, staring bleakly at a wall of clear totes filled with holiday accoutrements of every stripe.

Mom’s collection really was impressive.

“Are there more totes in here than last year?” I asked. That seemed physically impossible.

“I’m sorry, honey.” Mom tapped her fingers on her chin, like that might magically make the tubs of ribbon and wrapping paper levitate off my dusty twin-sized bed.

I sighed, kissing my mom on the cheek. “It’s fine. I didn’t expect to be back here either.”

“It’s just that you and Patrick always get a hotel room…”

I let go of the handle on my suitcase. “Can we not mention him for a bit?”

“I’m sorry. Too soon?”

“Considering he broke up with me this morning, yes, I’d say it’s too soon to mention his name.”

Mom grimaced, looking truly remorseful.

Guilt ran through me. “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t her fault my boyfriend—sorry, ex-boyfriend, had ruined not just our relationship, but might have tainted theater for me altogether. Theater. The only true love I should have relied on. My one dream.

Mom sighed, beginning to move the tubs. She still moved with the grace of a performer, even though she hadn’t been on stage since before I’d been born. Guiltily, I started helping her shift the tubs, biting back a yelp at a decorative robin that must have fallen off some garland and lay prone on the bedspread.

“Oh, sorry honey. I know how you feel about birds.”

“It’s fine,” I said, backing up as she tosses the cursed thing into one of the tubs. It’s not a phobia so much as an aversion. Mom says it’s from when I fell in goose poop when I was a toddler. Maybe it is, but I think it’s just because birds are creepy. They canfly,for God’s sake.

“I’ll only need to stay a couple of days,” I said, stacking tubs out in the hallway.

Mom stopped moving, looking at me with wide, worried eyes. Her chestnut hair, the same shade as mine, was rumpled, and one side of her pale face was pink and lined by a pillow. She’d been sleeping when I used my old key to crash through the front door, of course. On top of being broke, jobless, and loveless, I was selfish to come back here like this, too. I always worried acting would do that to me.

“Aren’t you staying for Christmas?” Mom asked. She looked truly distraught.

I hesitated. “I’m not sure.” I only planned on staying home to nurse my wounds for a bit and make a new plan for what to do back home in New York. Patrick and I lived together, we shared all the same friends, we worked together—we used to work together. I just needed a full extraction from the city. A reset. Then I was going to head right back and start over, wasn’t I?

The thought of getting back out and pounding the pavement for not only new auditions but an apartment and some kind of part time job made me exhausted just to think about it.

Mom’s face softened. I must have let all of that play out on my face.

“I’m okay,” I said, but I know it didn’t sound all that convincing.

Mom put her arm around me, rubbing my arm in that brisk but comforting way moms do. “You stay as long as you need to, Noelle. A day, a week, a year—but you know you’d make all my holiday wishes come true if you stayed at least through to Christmas.”

My mom lived for Christmas, as these dozens of totes attested. Patrick hated Christmas. He called it frivolous and capitalistic and a waste of time. Last year he’d done that at Christmas dinner in front of Mom.

Fuck Patrick. “Okay,” I said, making the decision on the spot. “Of course I’ll stay for Christmas.”

Mom teared up as she threw her arms around me. “Oh honey. That’s wonderful.”

The idea of staying here a couple of weeks made my shoulders loosen. I could chill out, gorge myself on Mom’s Christmas cookies, and make a plan for jumping back into everything in the New Year. Plus, making Mom happy gave me a special kind of warm and fuzzy feeling.

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