Free One Summer by JoAnn Ross Page B

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    Then, assuring him no one would notice, she’d rubbed out the pink script Debbie with a kitchen knife, which had left a big smear in the middle of the cake. In the middle of the smear, she’d stuck six striped candles.
    “Five for how many years you’ve been alive,” she’d told him. “And one more to grow on.”
    Despite the laughter over the Barbie pink cake, the party wasn’t too bad, although he wished the desert sand would open up and swallow him when his grandmother brought out a surprise—a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game she’d gotten at the Goodwill. Johnny knew she meant well, but he was still dying inside when all the kids started asking why they couldn’t just play a video game.
    “You do have one, don’t you?” Kyle Conners had challenged. The smirk on his fat face told Johnny that he already knew the answer to that question.
    Johnny was about to lie and claim it had broken just before everyone showed up, when the metal door burst open and his mother arrived home, bringing with her a charged energy that caused his gut to clench. He could practically see the energy sparking around her, like the heat lightning that had flashed over the ocean that summer they lived in Jacksonville, Florida.
    “Let’s get this celebration for my baby boy started!” She flashed her most brilliant smile at the kids sitting around the card table they used as a kitchen table.
    “About time,” his grandmother muttered as she pulled a pack of the matches she used to light the stove from the kitchen drawer. She struck a match against the rough strip, causing a flame to spark to life.
    A hush came over the room as she lit one candle, then another until all six were blazing merrily.
    “Make a wish!” his mother demanded.
    “Make a wish!” all the kids shouted.
    Johnny closed his eyes and wished the same thing he did every morning when he first woke up and every night, right before he fell asleep.
    Please let my mom just be normal. Like other kids’ moms.
    He took a deep breath.
    Then blew.
    And blew.
    The flames continued to flicker.
    Trying again, he drew in a deeper breath, then blew it out on a huge puff of air.
    But the flames still burned.
    “Weenie,” Kyle said, laughing at him. The others, following their leader, echoed the taunt.
    Unable to figure out what was happening (though he later realized they were trick candles), Johnny sucked in another breath, all the way to his lungs. Then let it out.
    Although this time the flames bent sideways, they continued to burn as steadily as the sun.
    How hard could it be to blow out six tiny candles? Johnny was trying to figure out what he was doing wrong when his mother screeched like some monster from a horror movie was chasing her.
    “You can’t have him!”
    As all the kids turned toward her, eyes bugging out of their heads, mouths wide open, she snatched up the plastic pitcher of cherry Kool-Aid from the table and dumped it over Johnny’s head.
    The bloodred liquid flowed over his shoulders, onto the cake, finally dousing the six small flames.
    “Don’t worry, darling.” She dropped to her knees into a puddle of Kool-Aid surrounding his chair and gathered him into her arms, pressing his face against the soft cushion of her breasts. “I won’t let that bad old devil burn you alive.”
    While the other kids were caught between laughter and shock, Johnny had known that his wish would not be coming true.
    Pushing down the long-ago painful memory, he’d just shoved his underwear into the duffel bag that probably had more mileage on it than the space shuttle when there was a knock at his door.
    “May I come in?” the voice on the other side asked.
    “Sure.” Like he had a choice? None of the temporary homes he’d lived in over the years had ever had a lock on his bedroom door. Which Johnny figured said a lot about how much people trusted him.
    “So, are you ready for tomorrow?”
    This foster mother, who was married to a cop, was actually kind of cool.