The Wishing Game

by Meg Shaffer

Where are you going? Five O’Clock. When will you be back? By the lighthouse. Places were times. Times were places. Confusing at first.

Love it

What else do you want to wish for?” she asked. “Does it matter?” “What? Our wishes? Of course they matter.”

I know you think kids need nothing but love, but a strong dose of stability doesn’t hurt either.

Truth bullets

Don’t give up, Lucy. Always remember that the only wishes ever granted are the wishes of brave children who keep on wishing even when it seems no one is listening because someone always is. Someone like me. Keep wishing.

Dangerous things, wishes. Sometimes they come to you when you call. Sometimes they fly away after biting you.”

“Hugo,” Jack said with a large and rather terrifying grin on his face, “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.

Touché Jack

there was no such thing as a serious artist.

“God—or whoever is in charge of this planet—got drunk on the job one day and decided to give me the gift of writing. The way I see it, I have two choices. I can set that gift on a high shelf so it won’t get dinged up and nobody can make fun of me for playing with it.” He smiled until the crinkles at the corners of his eyes were deep enough to hide state secrets. “Or I can have fun with it and play with the gift I was given until the engine burns out and the wheels come off. I decided to play.

But which one was the real Jack? The watching moon? The haunted boy running toward the light? Or the lonely Mastermind, trapped behind the glass,

Hugo never tried to analyze the strange images his brain threw at him. He left the symbology and theorizing to the art critics. He dreamed. He imagined. He painted.

“Hate is a knife without a handle. You can’t cut something with it without cutting yourself.”