“Mom, we won the contest.” I suppose I should have jumped up and down with excitement. Instead, my puppy, Fluffy, ran in circles like a lunatic.
“Is that the poetry contest with the trip to Florida?”
“Yes. We won. We need a chaperone. Can you come?”
“I’m barely in the door. Give me a chance to think.”
“Here’s the information. It’s all here. Are you finished thinking yet?”
“I checked my schedule this morning. It looks like I can come.”
“I guess that’s good.”
“You guess?”
“I miss Dad. I wish he were here. I wish he could come with us.”
“I know. I miss him, too.” My mom hugged me. We held each other for a while.
“Are you sure Jasmine’s mother doesn’t want to go instead?”
“No. Forget that.”
“What’s going on?” My mom saw right through me. I tried to play it off, like nothing was bothering me.
I faced a dilemma —that’s a new vocabulary word I learned at school. I wanted to keep Jasmine’s secret, but I was afraid for her.
“Mom, is it ever OK to tell someone’s secret?”
“Is Jasmine in some kind of trouble?”
“No. But she told me some things about her mother. I saw some things today.”
“Like what?”
“Today, when me and Jasmine—I mean, Jasmine and I, found out about Florida, she told me she wants to go, but she’s afraid to leave her sister alone. Maybe she won’t be taken care of…”
“I had a feeling things weren’t right over there.”
I told her the rest of the story. “I feel so dumb that I didn’t see any of this.
She called her grandmother today, but I’m not sure how much that will help.”
“Very often people go out of their way to hide the truth of their lives. We’ll wait a couple of days to see if anything changes.”
“But, mom, I don’t want Jasmine to know I told you.”
“If we don’t help, then we’re as guilty as her mother.”
“She’ll never trust me again.”
“Sometimes things change on their own, but sometimes we need to help them along. Remember what I always told you when you were little?”
I was too upset to remember.
“Thought becomes action. Send positive energy into the universe. Visualize what you want and it will manifest itself.”
I closed my eyes and pictured myself being in Florida with Jasmine. “I wish, I wish, I wish …”