Winky Does Not Believe It

I called Winky. So what if he was mad at me and thought I’d put the stink on his sports hero and ruined them both for baseball. I needed my friend.

I explained everything. Winky didn’t say anything, but I felt his friendship and understanding very strongly through the phone line.

“So I think he may be in shock,” I told him. “Heck! He didn’t know!” I said. “It’s perfectly understandable he finds it hard to accept that he’s a dad, my dad, and with his own recent and very public heartbreak, plus his near-death experience at the House of Harmony Church…”

I reached into my pocket and wrapped my hand around the bail money. “It makes a lot of sense that he doesn’t understand what I’m telling him. And we don’t look all that much alike, really, other than the hair and the freckles. Do you think? I think it’s mostly in the eyes.” I stopped talking and the line was quiet.

Winky finally spoke. I wished he hadn’t. “Josie,” he said, “it’s a stretch.”

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I hung up on Winky Wheaton. Then I banged the phone a couple more times for good measure. Then I kicked the phone table and hurt my foot.

I hobbled up to my room. I flopped on my bed and buried my face in the pillow and imagined being dead till I had to lift my head and take a gasping breath. I sat up and looked at the little red plastic heart-shaped frame on my bedside table. There was my father’s—my father’s—XOXO, framed there in that heart, the way they say in love songs on the radio it was written on my mother’s heart, on my heart. Maybe the reason I felt so bad was more than needing help. Maybe it was more than needing money.

And Winky Wheaton! How could he not believe me? How could he do that to me? Winky, of all people, my best friend. I flopped on my tummy again and buried my face in the pillow again and imagined being dead again. Then I fell asleep.

Some time later, I woke with a start. Grandpa was home—I could tell from the lively game show noises clanging and ringing from the TV downstairs. I sat up. I had to try again. Just like Mrs. Blyth-Barrow had told me to. (She was talking about my poor grades and absence of homework and my ennui, whatever that is, but still.)

I would try again. I would make Joe Viola believe me. I would march right back there with my good-faith money and make him believe the truth. Because once he believed me that he was my father, then all my problems—Grandpa, the money, the old folks’ home, the orphanage—all my worries, well they’d go right up in smoke, the magic kind, not the cigarette or arson kind. Poof!