Wish by Barbara O'Connor Page A

listening because I was thinking about Wishbone. I pictured him waiting at school for me every day. Then he’d run along beside the school bus like he’d done that day I saw him fighting. Maybe the bus driver would let him on the bus because he was so smart and would do tricks for all the kids.
    He’d sleep in my bed every night and I’d sing “Good Old Noah” to him. He’d let me put Jackie’s Raleigh High School T-shirt on him and maybe even paint his toenails red. I’d teach him to go up to the end of the driveway on Sunday mornings and get the newspaper before church. He’d chase rabbits out of the garden and sit out on the porch with us every night. I still had a little niggle about Mama having a hissy fit when I brought him back to Raleigh with me, but I pushed that aside.
    By the time Bertha went inside to get a box of graham crackers for us, I was so in love with Wishbone I couldn’t hardly stand it. I sure hoped Howard’s plan worked.
    â€œLet’s go set up the sprinkler in the garden,” Gus said to me, tugging on his dirty baseball cap.
    I followed him outside, with three cats sauntering along behind us. I helped him untangle the hose and drag it out to the garden. While he attached the sprinkler to it, I walked up and down the tidy rows of pole beans and squash and tomato plants growing bigger every day. The soft dirt was warm under my bare feet. Suddenly, a ladybug landed on my arm! I put my finger next to it and let it climb on. Then I held my finger up and whispered, “Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home.” As I watched that little ladybug fly off into the sky, I made my wish.
    Jackie called again that night. She told me she had put those blue streaks in her hair and now everybody at school was copying her.
    â€œI swear, Charlie,” she said. “Everybody in Raleigh’s got blue streaks in their hair.”
    Then she told me she met some boy who played guitar in a band and had his nose pierced. His name was Cockroach, and her sorta-kinda boyfriend, Arlo, didn’t like him.
    â€œCockroach?” I said, because what else can you say to that?
    But she just kept on talking. She couldn’t wait to graduate and kiss that school goodbye. She and some girl named Shayla might move to Fort Lauderdale if Shayla’s uncle could get them jobs in his Mexican restaurant. But if that didn’t happen, she might go to school to be a dental assistant.
    She sure had a lot of plans but it seemed like none of them included me.
    â€œAre you gonna come visit me sometime?” I asked in a tiny voice that sounded like a baby.
    â€œOf course I am, Charlie,” she said. “As soon as I get time.”
    I guess she had lots of time for Cockroach but not much time for me.
    Out on the porch that night, Bertha told Gus about her day while I sent my thoughts zipping through the trees to wherever Wishbone was. I wanted him to know he didn’t have to be a stray like me. I wanted him to be mine.
    Then my mind wandered to the Odoms. I wondered what they were doing right that very minute. I bet they were all piled on pillows on the floor eating popcorn and playing Crazy Eights. I bet Mrs. Odom was taping their school papers up on the wall and telling them how proud she was of them. Then she’d have to say “rutabaga” so Cotton would stop drawing on the wall with markers.
    Gus interrupted my thoughts when he stood up and stretched and said, “Time to turn in.”
    I hated the thought of another day at school. That awful bus with gum on the seats and kids snickering when I walked by. Mrs. Willibey frowning at me and tossing my marked-up papers onto my desk with a sigh. The cafeteria with kids flinging peas at each other and ignoring me. There were only a few more weeks of school left but it felt like a hundred years to me.
    There was no doubt about it. I needed Wishbone more than ever.

 
    Eleven
    The next day at school, it