Winning Pelicans
What We Want, What We Wish
The balls spun, twirled, whirled, and drifted down to land, a yellow one in a gull’s mouth, the others resting on the bottom. Inez pushed the fat, white button again, bubbles gurgled upward into the water, sending the balls pirouetting haphazardly toward the gulls.
“Inez!” Sandra yelled. “Enough, already! It’s too nice out. Put the game down and go outside and play!”
“But I’m so close, Mama!” Inez huffed, belly flat on her bed, feet criss-crossing back and forth behind her, hands cradling her plastic aquarium, she willed the balls telepathically toward the gulls’ mouths. Beaming, she proudly watched a blue ball land in another gull’s mouth; the other six balls softly flitting back to the bottom.
There was no controlling the balls, Sandra had told Inez last week when Inez brought the game home — a gift from Inez’s dad, of course.
But, Inez insisted, as she huffed down the stairs from her room, she could make them do it. She knew because her dad had done it. He’d gotten all the balls into all the gull’s mouths. She’d seen it with her own eyes, she insisted. She’d seen him do it!
Sandra tried not to roll her eyes. She, privately, loved hating Inez’s dad, almost as much as she had loved loving him. And, she just as equally, hated that Inez adored…
