When You Wish upon a Rat by Maureen McCarthy Page A

Marcus had knocked on her door holding a fifty-dollar note.
    â€œHey, Ruthie, I’m really sorry,” he’d said. “I know you loved that rat. I’ll make it up to you if I can.”
    She could tell immediately that he was genuinely sorry. It was there in his eyes. No one was making him apologize. He felt bad. He held the money out to her.
    â€œHere, have this, and I’ll have another fifty on Thursday when I get paid.”
    She’d stared at him and the money and then shut the door in his face.
    â€œI mean it, Ruthie.” He’d thumped the door. “I just lost it. I’m sorry.”
    â€œJust piss off!” she’d shouted. How could she forgive him when he’d thrown away the most precious thing she’d ever owned?
    Ruth turned to Howard, but he seemed more cut off than ever, hunched over, tracing one raindrop with his finger as it made its way slowly down the pane. She looked past him out the window.
    It was good being up so high in the bus. When they stopped at the lights, she could see pedestrians hurrying across the wet, shining road, turning their heads away from the wind. She sawa couple of little kids in cute yellow raincoats and a group of teenagers, soaked through, their hair plastered to their faces, throwing around an orange and laughing.
    She liked the steady rushing sound of the engine, the shifting of gears and hissing of brakes and the sudden jolts. If only the trip would go on forever. If only she and Howard could just stay on the bus and travel for days and nights to some unknown place and end up in some big, strange city and live with people who didn’t know them; if only she could just start all over again!
    That first morning after losing Rodney, she had been the last into the kitchen. Marcus and Paul had already had breakfast and were getting ready for school.
    â€œSo when can we go back to look?” she’d asked curtly.
    â€œBack where?” Her mother was sorting through the dishes. “Come and do your lunch quickly. There isn’t much time.”
    â€œTo the bridge?”
    Her mother had sighed as if it were the last thing she wanted to think about.
    â€œLook, I don’t know,” she’d said. “Ask your father.”
    â€œDad?” But he was writing notes to himself at the table. She could see the rows of figures—calculations for some stupid new idea, she guessed—and it filled her with fury.
Couldn’t he just give up and go to work like a normal person?
She’d heard him talking on the phone about a new-style yogurt he was developing thatwas going to be different from anything else available because it made itself in the tub or something. Not even her mother bothered to get excited anymore.
    â€œKen?” Mrs. Craze waved one hand in front of his face to get his attention. “Concentrate.”
    â€œWhat?” He looked up, blinking.
    â€œRuth wants to know when we’ll go back to the river to look for her rat.”
    â€œOh.” Her father sighed and took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
    â€œYou said we’d go soon.”
    â€œRuth, it doesn’t make sense. Unfortunately, that thing is gone.”
    That thing? How
dare
he?
Ruth glowered at him.
    â€œBut you promised.”
    â€œI know, but—”
    At exactly that point, the phone had rung.
    It was a short call. Mary Ellen had taken a turn for the worse overnight and they were being told to go to the hospital immediately. After Ruth’s mother had relayed the news, she stood looking from her husband to her daughter and then back again expectantly, as though either of them might say something that would make what had just happened make sense. Mr. Craze simply looked back at his wife without speaking, his face devoid of expression.
    Mrs. Craze suddenly gasped and put one hand over her mouth and the other arm around her belly. She doubled over as though she’d been hit with a sudden excruciating