“Sure you can. It’s easy. Watch.” He leans over and grabs a handful of pennies in his left hand and picks one up with his right. He thinks for a second and then tosses it into the fountain. “See? You don’t even need good aim.” He turns to me expectantly.
“Here.” I can smell the sawdust on him as he takes my left hand and pours a fistful of pennies into it. My hand stutters and he steadies it with his, for a moment, before letting go. “Your turn.”
I look at the pennies and up to the fountain and wonder if there is such a thing as magic or miracles. Josh is watching me as I make the same wish I always do. It’s the one that won’t come true, but I wish it anyway, so maybe I haven’t totally given up after all. I toss the penny into the air and watch it fall into the water while the lights below switch from pink to purple.
“What’d you wish?”
“I can’t tell you that!” I say indignantly.
“Why not?”
“Because it won’t come true.” Do I really need to say this? I’m pretty sure it’s a given in wish situations.
“Bullshit.”
“It’s the rule,” I insist.
“It’s only the rule with birthday cakes and shooting stars, not pennies in fountains.”
“Who says?” I ask, sounding like a first grader.
“My mom.”
That shuts me up quick. I look at the pennies and the fountain and anywhere but at him because I don’t want to scare him away, and I’m hoping he’ll say something else. Then he does, and I wish he hadn’t.
“Then again, I doubt many of her wishes actually came true, so maybe she didn’t know what she was talking about after all.”
For just one moment, I see an eight year-old boy glued to a television set, waiting for his mother to come home.
“Maybe she just made the wrong one,” I say quietly.
“Maybe.”
“You talk about your mom more than your dad.”
“My dad was around longer. I remember him. I remember what he was like. I’ve forgotten almost everything about my mom so I try to make myself think about her more. Otherwise, I’m afraid one day I’ll wake up and I won’t remember her at all.” He tosses a penny into the fountain and I watch it sink. “If you asked me now about my sister, the only word I’d be able to come up with is annoying. I remember that she bugged the hell out of me and that’s about it. If I didn’t have pictures, I don’t even think I could tell you what she looked like.” He looks at me. “Your turn.”
I’m not sure if he’s referring to the wishing or the confessions, but I go with the pennies. I don’t even wish. I just throw one.
“I’m sorry.” The two easiest and emptiest words to say and I say them.
“Because I don’t remember my mom or because you asked?”
“Both. But mostly the asking.”
“No one ever asks. Like they think they’re doing me a favor. That if they don’t bring it up, I won’t have to think about it. I never stop thinking about it. Just because I don’t talk about it, doesn’t mean I forget. I don’t talk about it because no one ever asks.” He stops and looks at me again and I wonder if I’m supposed to say something, but I don’t want to, because if I say something, I’m afraid I might say everything. He turns back to the fountain so his eyes aren’t on me anymore, but I think he’s still watching. “I’d ask you, you know. If I was allowed. I’d ask you a thousand times until you’d tell me. But you won’t let me ask.”
***
We manage to find the laughter in the evening again, and we wish ourselves through most of the bucket of pennies. At one point, a mother with two little girls passes through and Josh gives them each a handful of pennies and begs them to help us because we’re running out of things to wish for. They take the affair very seriously as if each wish is so precious that they can’t afford to waste it. They squeeze their eyes shut and concentrate, making sure they do it just right. And I wish for every one of their wishes to come true.
Towards the end, we start making mega-wishes and fortifying them with handfuls of pennies. One of those wishes results in the clasp of my bracelet coming undone, causing it to fly off into the fountain along with my wish-imbued pennies. Josh rolls up the bottoms of his jeans and pulls off his boots. I just have to take off my shoes because I’m still in the skirt I wore to school and it’s plenty short. We scan around, hoping there aren’t any security guards in the area before we step in. Thankfully the water is shallow, because it’s freakishly cold and my legs are ice the second I get in.
“Where did it go?” he asks. I point off in the direction I threw the pennies. I don’t think it could have gotten very far. We head off in that direction but it’s impossible to see anything because the entire fountain floor is carpeted with coins. Half of them probably came from us. It’s a tapestry of silver and copper and colored light. Every time I see something I think might be my bracelet, I have to reach down and submerge my arm into the water, which is what I’m doing when Josh decides to push my leg with his foot just enough to knock me off balance and send me face first into the ice cold water. The splash is followed by laughter from him and a death glare from me. I plan to grab him and pull him in after me, but I don’t have to, because he tries to step away from my grasp too quickly and falls in all on his own.
“Karma’s a bitch, Bennett.”
His pants and half of his shirt are soaked, but he managed to keep his head out of the water unlike the drowned rat that is me. When he looks at me, he starts laughing all over again and I finally dissolve in it, too. “Don’t do the last name bullshit. I hate it,” he says.
“Not really caring what you hate right now,” I say, trying to force some venom into my voice, but it’s hard when I’m fighting what I am quite certain are the early stages of hypothermia. I feel like one of those insane polar bear people who jump in the freezing cold ocean every year and I mentally put that on my list of things I will never do.
“Screw the bracelet. It’s not worth it,” I say, climbing out of the water with Josh right behind me. He doesn’t argue.
We split up the rest of the pennies between the two little girls whose mother gives us a dirty look because I think she’s had enough wishing for the night. Or maybe because we’re soaking wet and just climbed out of the fountain. I pick up the empty pail and swing it back and forth between us while we walk to the parking garage, leaving the fountain, my bracelet, eighteen dollars in pennies and two giggling girls behind us. Josh reaches over to take the pail from me. He stops my hand and opens my fingers, retrieving the handle with his left hand and holding mine open with his right. His hand is no warmer than my own, but it feels good anyway, and I wait for him to let go, but he doesn’t.