Page 29 of Wish For Me

A laugh bubbles up in my throat. If someone would have told me this morning that I’d be having this much fun in the presence of Peter, I would have laughed in their face.

“Are you in, Peter Pee-eater?” Cade asks.

“So long as you stop calling me that.” When we all just stare at him, he sighs, and puts his hand on ours. “I’m in.”

“Littles on three,” CeCe says.

Peter starts to argue. “I’m not saying that.”

Her eyes narrow to slits and she glares at him. “Littles. On. Three.”

“Fine,” he mutters, and I once again have to fight off a laugh. Who would have thought that Peter Dumont would be so scared of my tiny younger cousin?

CeCe counts and we all shout “Littles” in unison. Even Violet joins in from over by the fire, though her voice is weak.

“Okay, listen up,” CeCe says, leaning in closer. “I’ve got a battle plan.”

* * *

The Littles win the game.Ofcoursewe win the game. That battle plan of Cecelia’s? Yeah, the girl is positively evil. She convinced Ash to half bury himself in snow just outside the neutral zone. He took out at least a dozen players before someone figured out where the snowballs were coming from. His lips turned blue and he was still shaking long after the game was over, but he assured me that a little potential hypothermia was worth it to hit both his brothers, his dad, and our Aunt Paige with bright green snowballs.

CeCe climbed into trees to hit our opponents from above. She got Cade to pretend to be injured so Ash could pelt Uncle Lennon with snow when he went to check on his kid. At one point when she was being chased by Fox and June, she let out an ear-piercing scream that could probably be heard back at the house, and turned to run straight toward them. “I knocked over a bee hive!” she shrieked as she ran. “There are masses of them!”

“It’s winter,” Fox said, pausing in the act of raising the snowball he’d been about to aim at her back. “Bees aren’t supposed to be active in winter, are they?”

“Well these bees didn’t get the memo!” she shouted. Fox and June turned and started running in the same direction as her, leaving a stack of snowballs on the ground—right where I could pick them up and hit them in the back as they ran.

Towards the end of the game, CeCe and Cade attacked Bodhi and Everly’s team the moment they stepped into the clearing where the flag was waiting. They knocked out a few players—including Leo, which was a nice little payback for the vests— with their barrage of snowballs, but that wasn’t the real move. Using the melee as a distraction, I was instructed to make a run for the flag—and to veer straight past a grove of pine trees right on the edge of the clearing. As predicted, two of their players chased after me, and that’s where Peter came in. CeCe had stuck evergreen fronds and pine needles all over his clothes, doing a pretty damn good job of camouflaging him. Bodhi and Rose never even saw him before he smashed snowballs in their face, leaving me free to run unobstructed to the flag.

“You play dirty,” Uncle Cash says, sounding a little awed, once we’ve all gathered around the bonfire to receive our trophy. He’s gazing at his daughter with a mixture of pride and fear in his eyes.

“She lied about the bees!” Fox complains. “Who does that?”

“Dirty,” Wyatt agrees.

CeCe just shrugs. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Alex brings over a cheap plastic trophy, holding it high over her head. “Spoils for the victors,” she says, sounding a little annoyed—probably because she was the recipient of a snowball shoved down the back of her coat when CeCe snuck up behind her at the start of the game.

“That’s it?” Peter mutters. “We went through this whole thing for that?”

The trophyisa little lame looking. But it’s the principal of the thing. The Littles have bragging rights now, and in this family, that counts for everything.

“I suppose the five of you would like to negotiate,” Will says, arms crossed over his broad chest as he looks between us. “What do you really want?”

“We all know what they want,” River says, sounding put out. “They want us to start calling them the Fierce Five.”

“I think they earned it,” Uncle Lennon says, looking at Cade with amusement-tinged pride.

I look at my cousins, including Violet, who seems to be feeling marginally better now, and I know just what they’re thinking.

“Actually, no,” CeCe says. “We’ve decided to keep the name.”

“Seriously?” Rose asks. “You’ve been trying to get us to stop calling you that for years.”

I shrug. “I think it’s kind of grown on us. Besides, if tonight proved anything, it’s that the Littles rule and the rest of you suck.”

Cade, Ash, Violet, and CeCe all cheer loudly.