Page 37

10

Heather called them loopholes.

Her wishes had always been ambitious, in the same way invasive plants were: unwieldy and inconvenient, creeping their way past the parameters of what was acceptable. Over generations, the family learned what kind of wishes the garden granted, and what kind it tended to ignore. Many of Heather’s desires never sprouted, but that hadn’t stopped her from trying. She always found a way—a loophole—to force the garden to grant her whatever she wanted.

Hart’s philosophy on wishes was a little different. After the summer of endless candy, and the fall of lost teeth, he learned his lesson and made up his own rule about wish-making: Keep wishes limited to minuscule desires or things that really mattered. No in between. The only times Hart ever went into the Wish Garden were when his mother came along to teach him more about it. Otherwise, there was no wish he wanted badly enough that could justify the unknown consequence that would come with it.

By the time the twins started high school, Hart knew the names of hundreds of flower varieties. He knew how to prevent black spot on roses. He knew which ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium was needed for the soil and just how to add it. He knew when to cut back hardy perennials to help them survive the winter and when not to. But Heather knew more about making wishes.

Heather bloomed from a girl into an uncannily beautiful young woman. Something that anyone else might’ve thought natural but that the Hargroves knew to attribute, at least in part, to the gracious whims of the garden at the center of the hedge maze. The highlights in her thick hair, the pert nose that didn’t look like anyone else’s in the family. If her twin’s appearance was any indication, Heather didn’t need to wish so hard to be pretty. Hart did not wish for bulging muscles, impressive height, unblemished skin. He didn’t have any of that, yet he was still beautiful. And that was always in the cards for Heather, too.

If she’d wanted to, Heather could’ve found highlights in a bottle, or white teeth from bleaching strips. The gifts she’d been granted could’ve been achieved without testing the mercies of the garden. Her parents were afraid that she might go overboard. That was when the spoiling started. Once Mr. Hargrove made it clear that he’d buy Heather whatever she wanted rather than have her leach it off the garden, she got everything she asked for. That was the sort of thing that could change someone’s entire mentality. And it definitely changed Heather. It made her greedy.

Heather wanted everything. And the material gifts didn’t stop her visits to the Wish Garden. The problem was, a lot of what she wanted was beyond the garden’s control.

Freshman year, no matter what she did, Heather couldn’t get Jason Coletta to give her the time of day, and since she couldn’t wish for him to like her, she found a way to control the situation. Literally wishing for control. Just in small bouts—but enough so that if she grazed her arm along his in the cafeteria line, she could make him look at her, smile at her, love her fully for that brief moment.

It wasn’t the kind of wish you could see on her, but Hart knew, of course. There weren’t many things you could hide from your twin. “What you’re doing isn’t right,” he told her. “You’re manipulating him.”

“Hardly,” Heather said. “It only lasts three seconds. Five max. For those five seconds I’m the only person who exists to him. What’s the harm in that?”

No matter how she tried to justify it, Hart couldn’t understand Heather’s reasoning. He wanted to live life truthfully, organically. Naturally. While everything that Heather achieved was through artificial means. It drew a line in the sand between the twins. Where once they were so close, sharing secrets only with each other, now Hart couldn’t agree with the way Heather used the Wish Garden. It was unethical. Immoral. And dangerous. Especially when she started messing with her own mind.

It got really out of control at the end of sophomore year, when Seb Pardel’s rejection of Heather broke her heart. Heather’s instinct was to get him back, hit him where it hurt. But since the garden wouldn’t allow her to wish anything bad onto him, she found that her only choice was to wish something on herself. Later, when she told Hart about it, she called it a loophole. A term that would come to define the nature of her wishes. Since Heather couldn’t hex Seb like she wanted, she decided to erase him from her own memory. This way she could still get rid of all the bad feelings she associated with him. A perfect loophole.

But the wish came with consequences. One night, Hart answered his phone and Heather’s voice on the other end came through distant and shaky. “Can you come get me?” she asked.

Hart, bleary-eyed, pulled the phone away from his ear so he could get a look at the time. “It’s almost three in the morning. Where are you?”

“I don’t know,” Heather said.

The words, and the way she’d said them—hushed, confused—made a sleepy Hart suddenly alert. He sat up, pulling his blanket off. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” Heather said again.

She hadn’t called their parents, which only made Hart worry more. It was something bad, something secret, and she didn’t want anyone else to know except him. “Drop a pin,” Hart said. “Can you do that?”

There was a pause on the other end, and in its silence Hart strained to hear for clues of where Heather could be. He thought he heard wind, though it might have been phone static. And then maybe a car passing by. Was she outside? “Heather? Can you do that?” he asked again.

But instead of her answer, his phone beeped. When he checked the screen, he was relieved to find that Heather had had the wherewithal to text him her location. It wasn’t too far, less than ten miles, but when he pinched his thumb and index finger to the screen and expanded the map, there was nothing. No stores nearby, no houses, nothing to indicate where she’d come from or how she’d gotten there. Just a road and a stretch of land that connected one part of town to another.

Hart cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear, grabbed pants off the floor, and shoved his legs through them, both at the same time. “I’m coming, don’t go anywhere.”

Hart’s was the only car out this late, and for most of the way, the only light on the road came from his headlights. Soon they came to shine on Heather, sitting on the ground against a wooden fence, knees drawn up to her chin. Hart left the driver’s-side door open as he rushed out to her, going cold with fear. Not because she looked hurt, but because she looked so lost. He was here, she wasn’t alone anymore, and yet when she looked up at her brother, Heather’s eyes swam with disorientation.

Hart crouched next to her. Then he said something he’d never thought he’d need to say to his twin. “It’s me. Hart.”

Heather watched him, dazed, but she began to nod, and she let him help her up.

They’d only just gotten their permits three weeks before, on their sixteenth birthday, and they’d made a whole event out of it, wearing party hats and plastic neon sunglasses to the DMV, noisemakers ready in their pockets in anticipation of acing the driving test. When they got their temporary slips of paper declaring them legally able to drive, Heather raced him to the car outside, got the keys from their mom, and was the one to drive them home. Now, though he should’ve been keeping his eyes on the road, Hart kept stealing glances at his sister in the passenger seat. That day at the DMV seemed so far away.

“Did you take something?” he asked. “Did somebody give you something?”

Heather’s head lolled against the window. “No.”

And Hart could no longer hold back from asking what he’d suspected all along. “Did you make a wish?”

She was facing away from him, so the clearest look Hart got of his sister was through her reflection in the glass. “I just wanted to erase it…,” she muttered.

Her words sparked like a low flame, bringing everything in Hart to a simmer. There was so much he wanted to say, just bubbling beneath the surface, but he held his emotions in. Anger at his sister, but fear for her, too. She was doing something dangerous to herself and there was nothing he could do or say to make her see that. And this—picking her up in the middle of the night, safely bringing her back home—was totally useless if she was intent on playing these dangerous games. Hart kept his eyes on the road, if only so he’d have something to focus on that wouldn’t make him fall apart.

He knew, just by the state of Heather and how close his own emotions were to boiling over, that this was the wrong time for a conversation.

And yet. He couldn’t help himself.

“You gotta stop doing that, Heather.” Hart said it as softly as he could, and chanced a look at her, to see if she was listening. But they were nearing the end of the drive, slowing beneath the canopy of oaks that led to their house, and it was too dark to see her face. “Please stop making those wishes.”

In the end, Heather didn’t promise him that she would stop. She didn’t even acknowledge that she’d heard him. And by breakfast the next morning, as they sat at the dining room table, Heather acted like the night before never happened. Their mom sat with them, talking about her plans for the day, and Heather’s wishes weren’t something that Hart could bring up again.

But watching Heather, and how the loopholes were messing with her life, was the only warning Hart ever needed to know never to make a wish that way. Until his girlfriend died, and it was the only option he had left.

Now, with his dad gone again, back to the city, Hart trekked through the garden with his intended loophole in mind, clear and foolproof. He’d stopped at the utility shed first and picked up a cordless hedge trimmer. He waved at Barry, one of the Hargroves’ gardeners, watering the roses in the Rose Garden. Hart made sure Barry noticed the tool he was holding. It was a performative routine, meant to show the staff at Hemlock Hill that trimming the hedge maze was Hart’s chore. Something he did so they never had to. But at the first turn in the maze, Hart dumped the trimmer on the ground and kept walking until he was at the Wish Garden. He’d already picked the moment he wanted to go back to. It couldn’t be right before Rose got into the car, because there wouldn’t be enough time to convince her not to do it. They’d been in a fight. He needed to go back further. In fact, he needed to do all of it over. The way he revealed the garden to her, the way he first kissed her—Hart needed to redo everything to make sure he got it right this time.

So he took the rose seeds out of his pocket, closed his eyes, and made his wish.

“I wish to go back to the moment I met Rose.”