The Wishing Game

by Meg Shaffer

Kids with hard lives deserved gentle words.

Some people like to talk about how resilient kids are, but these were people who’d forgotten how hard everything hit you when you were a kid.

“your bad mood is scaring the children.” Hugo waved his arms around the room. “There are no children here.” “Weren’t we all children once?” Jack said.

Didn’t he realize that every kid on the planet thought they were special, that they’d be princes or queens or wizards if the universe hadn’t betrayed them by dropping them into the wrong family, into the wrong house in the wrong city in the wrong world?

The stories write us, you see. We read something that moves us, touches us, speaks to us and it…it changes us.”

Finding out the reason my parents and my sister didn’t love me is that there’s nothing to love about me. And trust me, I know how pathetic that sounds, but no matter how old you get, no matter how many times you tell yourself it was them and not you, you never really persuade yourself that it wasn’t you.”