What You Ask For

As soon as I saw it, I knew what it was. It wasn’t supposed to exist – a story made up by my grandfather to excuse his behavior – and yet, I was holding it. My fingers brushed off a layer of dust to reveal the smooth, supple leather covering the little book. There were no marks on the black leather; no initials or embossment indicating what lay between the covers.

When I opened the book to the first page, I heard my mother’s footsteps in the hallway and in a panic, flung the book back into the closet behind me just as she entered the room.

“Hey sweetie,” she said with a tired smile, “I’m almost done with the kitchen. How’s it going in here?”

I looked around at the boxes I had packed already and back to her, “It’s going.”

She bent to look into a box only half-filled with clothes. I knew she was dying to go through everything now, but the apartment complex said we had to be done today. Each day this place stayed empty was another day of lost rent, death in the family be damned.

“I’m going to get us some lunch. What sounds good to you?”

I shrugged, “Anything, I guess.”

Her eyes narrowed and I realized I should have come up with something faster. It wasn’t normal for me to be so amenable to lunch options, but I had other things on my mind and couldn’t wait for her to leave so I could find a way to smuggle my treasure out of the apartment.

“Oh-kaaaay…tacos then?”

I nodded, “Yep, sure – tacos sound great!”

She gave a short nod of her own, still looking puzzled, “Great…See you in a few.”

I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as I listened to her leaving. When I heard the door’s lock engage, I leapt towards the doorway and leaned out into the hallway just to make absolutely sure she was gone. The breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding burst forth and I sagged against the doorframe.

I was finally alone with an artifact from my family’s history; a cursed object, my grandfather had always said.

I retrieved it from the back of the closet, feeling my hands tingle when I touched the soft covering and ran them down the black leather. It was almost disappointing – this book that was obviously real and had ruined my family beyond repair. I expected it to have more weight, be larger in some way; more grandiose and intimidating than what I was looking at. This book could be mistaken for someone’s daily planner forgotten on a bus seat in a moment of panic over missing their stop.

I opened it, not knowing what to expect, but was met with another disappointment as my eyes drifted over blank pages. I flipped quickly through the book and then, more slowly, went page by page. As colored and brittle with age as they were, every single page was blank. I even ran my fingers over them to check for indentations of writing. Still nothing.

The longer I looked at the book the less time I would have to hide it. The taco place wasn’t that far away; mom would be back any minute.

As I was a teenage girl who actually enjoyed reading and would never be caught dead without a book, I happened to have three of them stashed in my bag at the moment. I pulled them out, shoved the black book at the bottom and then piled the three back on top of it. It wasn’t long before I heard my mom knocking on the door to be let back in.

◊◊◊

Having borrowed a friend’s truck for the day, everything that could be packed into a box was loaded onto the truck and back home we went. The furniture had to be left behind as it would have cost more to have it moved and there wasn’t space for it in the tiny house my mom managed to afford.

As we bumped along the road, looking back every now and then to be sure we hadn’t lost a box, I looked over at my mom to gage her mood. She looked tired, which was to be expected as packing up the apartment had been an all-day affair, but that seemed to be it. Maybe being distracted by driving might help my cause, as I knew this subject was a sensitive one.

Here goes nothing, I guess.

“Mom, what else did grandpa say about that book?”

She full-on looked at me with furrowed brows for a moment before whipping back to keep an eye on the road, “Why bring that up all of a sudden?”

Whatever placid mood she had been in was ruined and I had to pick my words carefully now. “I don’t know, it just seems weird that grandpa would make up something so – freaky. And all just to justify his…habits?”

My mother blew out a breath from between clenched teeth, “Some people will do anything, say anything, to avoid taking blame and responsibility for their actions. Why it had to be some stupid book that took double what it gave? Your guess is as good as mine.”

I licked my lips, wanting to get to the point, but not wanting to arose suspicions, “Yeah, but – how did this book supposedly work? From what I remember from his stories, it was like, magic or something…”

Her hands were clenched on the steering wheel and she had to take another steadying breath before speaking again, “He wasn’t supposed to say anything to you about that, but – according to what he told mom – you just wrote a dollar amount in the book and that dollar amount would come to you, but always at a greater expense down the road.”

“Like…?”

She braked for a red light and turned to look at me, “Samantha, drop it, okay? It was a BS story your grandfather told because he couldn’t face the fact that his gambling addiction left the family in financial ruin. Is it any wonder he only had $20,000 left in his bank account after we settled his debts and funeral expenses? It cost him his marriage; his family. I only agreed to see him again if he promised to never – ever – talk about that book…A promise he obviously broke.”

I had shame enough to blush, “I heard one of grandma’s friends bring it up in conversation with her when I was little and I…I asked grandpa about it when you dropped me off for a visit one time.”

The light turned green and the car accelerated again back to the speed limit.

“Still, he shouldn’t have said anything to you.”

◊◊◊

I tapped the blank page absently with the erasure-end of my pencil, wondering if I dared write anything at all – even as a test. Curiosity, though, was a strong motivator and I quickly jotted down the dollar symbol with the number five just after it and then quickly flipped the book closed and laid my pencil across it. According to the stories, I would only be out ten bucks now, right?

I got up from my desk and started gathering up my clothes from around my room and tossing them into the laundry basket. Every jacket got zipped up and every pocket got checked. Sometimes the errant lip gloss made it into the washer.

I picked up a pair of jeans and rooted around in the pockets, pausing when my hand brushed against something that crinkled. Thinking it was a tag, I gently pulled on it and was surprised at the $5 bill that slipped free. I stood there, probably half in shock, wondering what I was looking at and if there was some way I forgotten I had stuffed money there. I knew I hadn’t. I was a very meticulous teenager – backpack filled the night before with school supplies, clothes laid out for the next day, money stored in denominational order in my wallet which sat on my dresser with my lip gloss and keys to my POS ’00 Ford Escort. There was no way I would have put this in my pocket, but I also had no memory of a monetary exchange this week that involved getting a $5 bill back.

I tossed the offending money onto the dresser by the wallet and threw my jeans into the basket before picking it up and walking into the hallway. As I passed by the decorative table, my foot caught on the leg and before I had a chance to react I saw, as if in slow motion, the vase tip over and crash onto the floor.

At the sound of shattering, my mom was in the hallway faster than I could even blink.

She looked down in dismay at the once pretty vase and then back at me, “You’re buying me a new one.”

With wide eyes, I asked her how much it had cost. She shrugged in reply and said, “About ten dollars.”

I closed my eyes and cursed under my breath.

◊◊◊

“Sorry, miss – Miss? Can you spare any change? Please, miss?”

The man trying to get my attention was dressed in soiled clothing with just a trash bag at his feet, presumably containing all of his worldly possessions, and holding a cardboard sign with writing on it in black marker. My friend pulled insistently at my arm to get past the vestibule doors and into the theater plaza as fast as possible. Whether it was because she didn’t want to be late for the show or because she wanted to get away from this man, I wasn’t sure.

I looked into his eyes and – call it a trick of the light or whatever – but I glimpsed my grandfather. A man, who could have easily been this guy if the book had continued to tempt him.

“Uh, sure,” I said, while digging into my pockets for what I knew would be there since I had brought it along to pay for popcorn.

“What are you doing? You’re just gonna encourage him!” My friend hissed at my side.

Ignoring her, I found that ill-gotten $5 bill and passed it over to the man, “Here ya go. Sorry it’s not a lot.”

The man gave me the biggest smile, “No, this is great! Thanks, miss! You have a good day!”

I smiled back at him, my heart twinging because I felt so powerless at not being able to change his circumstances with a snap of my fingers, and said, “No problem. Be safe.”

Eventually, we made our way to the counter and I pulled out the gift card I had gotten for participating in a contest at school. It wasn’t enough to completely cover tickets, so my friend had pulled out a few dollars to cover whatever the remaining balance would come to.

The guy at the counter handed us our tickets and said, “Your remaining balance is $10,” and handed the card back to me.

I blinked at him for a moment, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” he handed me the receipt, “There was $20 on there.”

And that was when it clicked; when I figured out what my grandfather never had.