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    What was to become a ritual was always interrupted by her brothers bursting through the front door like horses through the starting gate, except these ponies punched, jostled and called out obscenities. That was Joy’s cue to become a ghost again, sliding out the backdoor, past the basket of wet laundry into the backyard. There she found her best companion, her trusty wooden swing, hanging under the oak tree. Hopping up onto its weathered seat, she twisted into a large loop, her palm squeezing the last cookie for dear life.
    And there he was. Georgey Pfeifer. The boy she’d first met in kindergarten: the one she’d lifted her pink dress for to show her scallop-edged polyester slip underneath, the one who made her feel like a fairy princess and who responded like Prince Charming reaching out to touch it…“Is it supposed to be so soft?”
    Joy craned her neck to see what he was up to now, two backyards over. His family had moved there during the middle of the school year after his mother found out she was pregnant with twins. The only thing separating Georgey from Joy was a green chain-link fence and a revolving clothesline of pink-striped sheets.
    Joy watched Georgey line up his Matchbox cars in a straight row on the metal bulkhead. Once in order, he let them fly at full speed and crash to their destiny below… a walkway made of flagstones. Some cars would ricochet across the lawn as Georgey let out a loud “Yeaaaah!” before he fell to the ground dead.
    And then he looked up, as if he knew she’d been watching him all along “Hi,” he mouthed, with a half-ass wave, the kind little boys do when they don’t really want to be bothered waving.
    As far as Joy was concerned it didn’t really matter if he waved now or not, because someday she would kiss him and then they’d have to get married. He could bring all his toy cars into their big bedroom and she’d line up all her Barbie dolls on the shelf next to the dresser. And they’d live happily ever after.
    Joy slammed the toes of her white Ked sneakers into the dirt pit she formed beneath her. Twirling her ropes into a mad twist, she hummed a song to herself.
    Joy lived in a Houdini world of disappearance and illusion. Her mother hadn’t been there today to know she lost the spelling bee to the word “soapy” (she’d spelt it “ey.”) and nobody ever attended her school plays, not even the recent one where she was a pilgrim girl. She had practiced her one line in the bathroom mirror every morning “Let us harvest cranberries and be bountiful.” Georgey Pfeifer got to be a Wampanoag Indian.
His
mother had hand-cut and glued him a loin cloth with a full-feathered headdress, adorned by beads that twinkled in the stage lighting. If he’d only landed the role of Governor William Bradford of the
Mayflower
, Joy could have married him right then on the spot. But everybody knew pilgrims didn’t marry Indians. And besides, she almost lost her role as the pilgrim girl because Alice kept forgetting to sew Joy’s costume since the brown leather buttons cost too much. It was quite a surprise when all the other mothers chipped in and sewed a smock out of brown felt that tied in the back.
    Joy waited for the sound of a car door in the driveway, the signal that Alice was home. She dug her sneakers deeper into the hole, making sure the dirt on her sneakers killed the white laces for good. With each stamp, she counted wishes. “Wish one. When I grow up I’m going to marry a rich man and stay at home and bake cupcakes all day long with my daughter. Wish two, we’ll go to Disneyland and—”
    â€œHey, brat!” her brother screamed out. Joy froze from swinging, knotted up in her ropes. He called again from behind the kitchen screen door, “Who do you think you’re talking to out there?”
    â€œNone of your bee’s wax,” Joy mouthed back.