The Wish Collector

by Mia Sheridan

"But, Daddy," she’d said, "if I don't let my tears out, won't I drown inside?"

“Love makes a place for itself even if there isn’t one, Mama,” she said quietly. “Love carves into the hardest of places.”

“Love can’t just disappear when this life is through, can it, Jonah? Even if our bodies turn to dust, the love we feel must go somewhere.”

Once upon a time, he had been a man used to the spotlight and now he was a man who danced between moonbeams.

Why must the color of one’s skin determine destiny? Determine wars.

“We must never choose safety over right. Safety is the blanket under which cowards sleep. Safety smothers hope and extinguishes all fight.”

I would do anything if I could bring her back. If I could go back in time . . .” Mrs. Kershaw smiled, though it held sadness. “Maybe a better plan is to move forward.”

“Relax and focus on all the information available to you first.”

“Also,” Eddy said, “my buddies, the ones who didn’t make it home because a bomb blew up underneath them?” Grief passed over his young features, Jonah recognized it immediately for what it was, and it caused his heart to clench in sympathy for what he’d lost, the very obvious toll it’d taken. “If only they had come home with a few burns. If only.”

the problem is not that others judge you harshly, it’s that you believe what they say.”