The Wishing Game(56)
Instead, Astrid and her brother went to live with their dad again in the city where he’d found work. By coming to Clock Island, they learned to face their fears. And once they’d found their courage, they were brave enough to finally tell their mother they would be willing to give up their friends and their school and their home by the ocean if it meant they could all be together again.
Of course the Mastermind had a secret going-away gift for them. As they were pulling away in the moving van after selling their house, Astrid opened an envelope that had just arrived for her to find a note inside and a key. The letter told her it was the Mastermind who had bought their little blue house by the ocean, and it would be waiting for Astrid when she was all grown up and ready to come home again.
It was a bittersweet ending but one full of hope and promise. Ironically, it wasn’t Astrid’s gift for solving riddles that helped her wish come true, but her courage and her honesty. Very sweet. Very touching. But it didn’t help Lucy. Or did it?
What did the kids in the books have to do to get their wishes?
First, they had to make a wish. Then they had to get to Clock Island. After that, they answered riddles or played strange games. Then they had to face their fears. Was she afraid of anything? Anything other than failure?
Lucy took a deep breath of ocean air and started down the lighthouse ladder. She found the path again and started to make a circuit around the island. She walked past the picnic tables again, then reached the Tide Pool at Two.
She stood on the gray stones, worn smooth by the endless comings and goings of the water, and looked deep into the glassy water, hoping to see something in there. Fish or algae or starfish or sea urchins…but she saw nothing. The ocean kept its secrets.
Secrets. Secrets. A fish with a secret. What could that possibly mean?
As Lucy walked along the beach toward Puffin Rock at Three O’Clock, she re-read her list.
A crying wolf
An assortment of octopi
A humble actor
A jar of nine-legged spiders
A fish with a secret
A loaf of cat
A doll condo
A shelf on an elf
A slice of Pi
A wheelbarrow for a fairy garden
A solid-black checkerboard
The bang from a drum
The wind under a kite
A shadow’s shadow
An origami salami
A chicken-fried Kentuckian
A ray of darkness
She wanted to scream but didn’t. Jack’s riddles were always obvious once you knew the answer. Hindsight was twenty-twenty. He did say that to them, right? So that had to mean something, didn’t it?
She pulled a pen from her coat pocket, counted with her finger, and read out every twentieth letter. M…A…She counted them all several times, including the numbers and then excluding the numbers. Nothing.
What else had Jack said?
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. A quote by Kierkegaard, the philosopher.
Understood backward?
All right, she tried reading the clues backward.
A crying wolf became flow gniyrc A.
That wasn’t it either.
Jack had also said that all writers knew that you couldn’t understand the beginning until you’ve read the end.
So she read the clues backward to front.
Darkness of ray a Kentuckian…
That wasn’t it.
She was about to give up when she decided to look at the last letter of each phrase. With her pen, she circled all the final letters, and instantly, she knew she was onto something.
A crying wolf—F
An assortment of octopi—I
A humble actor—R
A jar of nine-legged spiders—S
A fish with a secret—T
FIRST
Heart racing, blood pounding, Lucy circled all the last letters until she had the answer.
FIRST TO FIND ME WINS.
Chapter Nineteen
Lucy ran her guts out. While she walked everywhere and biked everywhere back home, she hadn’t done much running since leaving school. Now she was furious at herself for quitting 5Ks. Her legs and lungs were screaming at her after only a couple of minutes of hard sprinting.
But she kept on running, wouldn’t stop. She ran like kids run when the final bell rings on the last day of school before summer break. Jack was most likely in his writing room, so that’s where she was headed. If he wasn’t seated behind his desk…well, she’d worry about that once she got there.
She wasn’t even halfway back to the house when she had to stop to catch her breath. Leaning over, panting, stupidly grateful for the hiking boots Hugo had given her—no way could she have run in her old Converse sneakers—Lucy’s lungs burned as she gulped air. She could see the house in the distance.
She saw something else too. Someone was on the Five O’Clock Beach.
Andre. Andre was on the beach, unmistakable in his baseball cap and bright blue windbreaker.
And he was running.
Running toward the house.
Lucy took off as fast as she could, the soles of her new shoes echoing off the wooden boards of the walkway that ringed most of the island.
Andre was taller than her, bigger, faster, but she was closer. It was neck and neck as he ran up the beach, and she ran down it, the house just ahead five hundred yards, then four hundred…Lucy’s heart felt like it could burst from her chest. Three hundred yards…she wanted to throw up. Two hundred yards. She slipped on a loose board but caught herself before hitting the ground. Had those two seconds of delay cost her the win? She kept running. Andre was close, but so was she. Lucy ran up the cobblestone walkway to the front door with a last explosion of adrenaline and burst into the house. Andre was only a few steps behind her. Now she had to find Jack. Her best guess was the library. But Andre was heading up the stairs, maybe seeking out Jack in his office. Had he seen Jack up there in the window? Was she going to win the race only to lose by picking the wrong room?