Wish by Alexandra Bullen Read Free Book Online

bring this one,” Bowie said, grabbing Olivia’s wrist and shaking it. “It would be the neighborly thing to do.”
    “Oh, thanks,” Olivia said, “but I should probably go keep my dad company.” She gestured across the lobby to the bar. Bowie followed her gaze, to where Mac sat hunched over a bar stool with an empty seat beside him.
    “That’s your dad?” Bowie asked. “He’s hot.”
    It was not the first time Olivia had heard this about her father, but it still made her fidget and blush.
    “Fine,” Miles groaned and grabbed Bowie by the shoulders. “Let’s go before you get us all arrested. I guess this is my last chance to watch Graham have a tantrum when his disco ball turns into a piñata.”
    Bowie cheered and clapped Miles hard on the back. “That’s more like it,” she said, linking arms with Olivia. “Now let’s go say some good-byes.”

6
    “Y ou are going to die when you see this.”
    After a stomach-churning ride up and down roller-coaster hills in Miles’s moss green Volkswagen Rabbit, Bowie pulled Olivia out of the parked car and onto the sparkling sidewalk. Sea Cliff was far more glamorous than any neighborhood Olivia had yet seen, with boxy mansions surrounded by artful topiaries and imposing statues of lions flanking the columned front doors. Miles lingered by a high, wrought-iron gate that was set back from the road, and waited for the girls to catch up.
    “Whose house is this again?” Olivia asked, following Bowie along the sidewalk.
    “Graham Potter,” Bowie said, the heel of her boot catching in a crack and rocking her toward the curb. “He has this party every year. It’s sort of a spring tradition. Everybody meets at the community gardens in the morning and gets the ground ready for planting. And then they all come back to Graham’s, because it’s basically the most amazing house in the universe.”She gestured up a winding stone path illuminated by dim bulbs embedded in the ground.
    Tall hedges lined the property, and a few small bubbling fountains were scattered across the lawn, complete with backlit cherubic sculptures, naked and spitting into clear, shallow pools. “Graham’s dad invented some kind of software, I think,” Miles told her, digging his hands into his pockets and shuffling ahead. “Something computer related.”
    Olivia’s jaw dropped as the house came into view. It was literally dug into the side of a cliff, with square, stucco boxes jutting every which way. The roof was covered in arched Spanish tiles, and floor-to-ceiling windows revealed a sparkling modern interior, straight from the pages of one of the design magazines Olivia’s mother had bought at the airport and never gotten around to reading. “Are you sure he didn’t invent the computer?” she asked, dumbfounded.
    “I know, right?” Bowie laughed, dragging Olivia up onto the pristinely clipped lawn. Olivia expected an alarm to go off, or a pack of dogs to start howling at her heels, but Bowie seemed to know where she was going.
    Miles and Olivia followed Bowie through a sliding glass door and into the brightly lit kitchen, where a group of kids was huddled around a high center island, balancing eggs on its butcher-block top. A few of them wore white cotton sheets tied around one shoulder, with lopsided floral crowns circling their heads.
    “It’s the equinox,” Bowie explained, gesturing to the eggs. “You’re supposed to be able to balance an egg on its end. Pagans, togas…you know.”
    Olivia swallowed and forced a smile, tucking the folds ofher long black gown behind her as if to make it disappear. She couldn’t have felt more out of place. The half of the party that wasn’t dressed in sheets and garlands wore ratty old jeans and printed T-shirts over long-sleeved waffle tees. Olivia crumpled her scarf into a ball and tucked it into her purse, and wished she could flush both of them down the nearest toilet.
    Bowie grabbed a handful of cups from the marble countertop and