Wanting

Joni shades her eyes from the sun with a stiff hand over her brows. The heat is starting to catch up with the harsh summer shine and a pulse of growing tension beats through the line-goers like a fast-acting virus.

Someone’s shouting from the front of the line pulls Joni’s attention away from the drifting clouds she wishes would cover up the sun. Maybe it’ll appropriately darken the sky a bit. Get into the spirit of Earth’s last days.

She peers over the old woman in front of her who—like everyone else—has allowed her curiosity to push the line into a wide curve, trying to see the commotion up ahead.

It's a long ways up, but Joni can see a little boy banging on the glass of the little parlor’s walk-up-and-go window.

It’s closed? Joni thinks and frowns as she strains to listen and hopefully make sense of the situation.

There’s not much she can hear among the growing number of voices calling up ahead to inquire about the confusion. “What’s going on up there?” someone just behind her calls.

“What’s happening?”

“Let’s get this line moving!!”

Just then, a young man and woman who both appear around Joni’s age come jogging from the front towards acquaintances in line several places behind Joni. “It’s closed!” They tell their companions. “They’ve closed up shop!! Some officers came and ordered them to cease business operations immediately. They’ve been hit with the notice!”

“What?!” Multiple voices chorus at once. “They can’t do that! Why now? What’s changed!”

Some lament the hour they’ve wasted standing in line for some dumb ass frozen cake.

Most lament the feeling of weightlessness that even one bite could have gifted them for hours on end. The way they could have moved through a few of these tense final days with careless abandon and a smile on their face.

That’s the way Mishy’s Ice Cream grew to fame. Her ability has long been considered a fool’s remedy for heartache, a bruised behind, and a bad day. One cone of soft serve could have a kid forget about her parents’ pending divorce for the afternoon. A creamy sundae could rejuvenate a grown man with a broken femur until he lays down for the night and wakes up the next morning needing another bowl. A whole ice cream cake?

Forget the world is ending. Live carefree a few days. Die happy.

It’s a powerful drug, that ice cream, and everyone in line wanted it bad enough to sacrifice one of their precious mornings. Some of them would sacrifice anything for the chance to turn their future into a lie and the world into their playground.

Joni wanted that cake badly and she feels like crying. It’s only been sixty-five days, dammit! How are things disappearing so fast? When will things start to get better?

I tried to make things better!

Things weren’t like this on the second day. Not for Joni, anyway.

Joni lay in bed, eyes dry and wide open but unfocused, her breathing slow while listening with careful ears to the sounds slipping through the crack in her bedroom door.

It was jarring and made her uncomfortable with hope. Those sounds didn’t belong to a house that was always empty. She knew that the feeling she had thrumming in her heart right now was dangerous. So many things—everything—could go wrong with the way she was feeling.

She felt like the world was bigger than it had ever been, because the faint, reminiscent smell of her mom’s morning soup was catching her nose. She dared to think that her wish, her work, from the previous night might have come true.

It brought prickly hot tears to her dry eyes, and she blinked hard, holding them there while she dealt with that damned hope in her heart.

Maybe… she started but stopped instantly. She rolled off the bed, cutting the thought short in her need to escape her hopes, which felt strong enough to wring her heart dry.

Joni crossed her bedroom floor and gripped the door handle with the might of God for several seconds before wrenching it open and was hit full force with that smell. That wonderful, wonderful smell.

She heard music playing softly from the living room around the corner and felt her dad’s presence touch her shoulder like the weight of a hand.

And the gravity of it all brought her to her knees. She fell to the carpet in front of her bedroom and wept loudly like a wounded child—chest to her knees, hands covering her face, palms catching her tears.

She hadn’t yet laid eyes on either one of them, but she cried, “Th-They—They’re h-here!” Still, her wavering voice was barely a whisper. “They’re here!”

She fought against those ‘what-ifs’ inside that kept hold of her, unwilling now to give into her fears. It was the end of the world, after all! The end of everything that kept her awake at night. The end of a pressing loneliness which danced hand-in-hand with self-loathing. The end of her life as Lonely Joni, the “nickname” given to her in middle school after the incident that left her orphaned and homeless.

Alive again. She thought, clutching the fabric at her heart.

She didn’t know if she was talking about her parents or herself right then. But alive they were, indeed.

Joni wasn't sure when she would stop crying, but the end didn’t feel near. Her mother’s morning soup was all the food she’d need for the rest of her life—

That almost made Joni laugh. The rest of the year, I guess, she corrected.

Her dad’s soothing music—she was glad she'd decided to include her grandfather’s old record player in the drawing—was as beautiful as her memory served her. And the way they both looked… the way they looked at her, like she was the diamond ring they’d sworn their love over, was too much to bear. Joni loved it.

She loved them.

She’d chosen pictures the pair had taken on a trip across the ocean to Chichén Itzá, so her parents were looking young and vibrant with dark, sun-kissed skin. Her mom’s closely cropped brown hair and her dad’s wavy black hair reminded her of her own looks, the way she was simply a mixture of them, stirred in a pot to come out just right. She had her dad’s freckles and her mom’s wide smile, her mom’s height and her dad’s lithe body.

Wow, she thought. They look… lovely. Just perfect in every way.

Their return put them at just ten years older than Joni was now, and yet, it didn’t bother her at all. It was as if she’d reverted to her twelve-year-old self again and could only watch them speak and smile at each other, listen to their laughter as tears dropped into her soup.

It was such a sweet song and nothing could make it any better.

Until something did.

“Ah!” Joni screamed, jumping from her seat at her small kitchen table and sending it clattering backwards to the floor. Heart racing, she looked down to find whatever had brushed against her leg beneath the table.

Dark, beady eyes blinked up at her. A tongue hanging from a whiskered snout; a furry, golden face, matching shaggy hair, and a rapidly wagging tail.

“Fireball!”

For the second time that morning, Joni sank to her knees, throwing her arms around her childhood dog and burying her face in his furry neck. “It worked!” she yelled against his happy, wriggling body. Fireball barked in agreement and Joni pulled back to admire his handsome features.

Oh, God, it’s working!!! She stared at her beloved pet, My dog… She could hardly see him through the ocean dancing in her eyes.

“I love you, I love you, I love you!” Joni nuzzled Fireball several more times before standing up with renewed hope and expectation. She picked up the fallen chair and found herself glancing around the room like a customer waiting to be seen until her mom asked in her always-gentle voice, “What are you doing, hun? Looking for something? And what worked? You said that when you saw Fireball. Seems like something good happened.”

“Huh? Oh! It’s, uh, nothing. It’s nothing, I just thought—” Joni stopped herself, her gaze trained on her mom’s brilliant eyes, unwavering, shining as brightly as they ever did. As if no time at all had passed between her tragic death and this moment. Like she still knew everything about Joni, whether Joni told her or not.

It forced Joni to think, Does she know? Her heart rate sped up at the possibility. She’ll be so pissed if she finds out I used it. Even if I was desperate to live. To really live! Y’know? If this is really it for all of us. If we’re out of time…

Okay, Mom? She asked no one like she normally did, not practiced in using her voice because her mom—no one—was ever around to respond.

But not now. Joni opened up her quivering mouth and tried the sound out on her tongue, “O-Okay, Mom?” It came out breathier than expected, like she’d been punched in the gut.

Joni’s mom quirked an eyebrow and the corner of her lip, an amused expression of confusion, and replied, “Yeah. Sure, honey. Whatever you say.”

In her head, among the quiet in her life, Joni had continued asking her mom questions, permission, and advice all along.

This one response did more for her than any dream, job, or meal had in the last fifteen years.

Her face was hot with tears and messy with snot. Joni couldn’t stop her lips from quivering as she remembered how she’d regularly imagine incurring her mother’s wrath after doing something reckless, and always knowing the result would never come. But now, it could, and Joni’s fear was validated. It was real.

And she missed it. So much.

“And now you’re crying more than ever! What’s going on, sweetie?” Her mom was saying, concern evident in her voice.

Joni wasn’t sure she could take all of this company, this love, this newness all at once. She felt about ready to implode. Snapping to, Joni shook her head rapidly and swiped her whole forearm across her messy face. ‘I’m good,’ she wanted to say in reply, but her voice wasn’t going to help her say it. Instead, she smiled weakly at her mother, almost nauseous beneath this joyous feeling.

Joni’s mom chuckled a little, “Alright… You can tell me later. Well, if you’re not busy or anything, come help me clean up. I’ll treat you to ice cream later if you do?”

“Ooh, ice cream? Count me in!” said Joni’s dad, getting up from his seat at the tiny table to help his wife. He, too, had been watching Joni closely, but had long been one to let events unfold naturally as he looked on.

Her mother laughed, pushing against his chest as he came near, “No, Ray, go away! I already asked my daughter and I don’t need two helpers!”

Her dad was laughing, too. He pretended to cry and grasp at his wife with lazy attempts. “But please! Ice cream. Ice cream!”

Laughter filled the small room as the two continued their antics, dancing around each other until they were eventually in each other’s arms, dancing to the music Joni’s dad, Ray, always had playing in the background. It was like Joni had stepped into a time machine, flying backwards headfirst into her happiest days. The pair had always done this, her parents, every morning for as long as she could remember. She stood there for a time, watching them, allowing her heart to fill eighty percent of the way.

At last, she glanced around the room again, hoping—that painful feeling—her grandma would appear next, allowing her family to become complete again. She envisioned her materializing right there on the couch before the television, in the pretty, purple dress and gold-rimmed glasses Joni drew her in, watching her morning soap operas too close to the screen for her aging eyes.

This hope brought with it the very real fear that, despite her efforts, she would never see her grandmother again.

Because she’d committed the taboo. She’d returned those that had passed away to the world of the living, muddying the lines where the energies touch but never intermingle. It was an ability that only descendants on her mother’s side possessed, and it was to be hidden indefinitely. And yet…

Two humans and a dog were already plenty, and here, Joni had drawn two more, hoping for completion.

Wanting everything.

Joni settled down beside her golden retriever and wrapped him up in her arms. With the smell of his fur and the ticklish feeling on her skin; by looking at her parents dancing across the ugly kitchen tile of her cheap one-bedroom apartment, Joni reminded herself of what she’d gained overnight.

Fortifying those hopes once again.