The Wishing Game

The Wishing Game is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.Copyright © 2023 by Meg ShafferAll rights reserved.Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.BALLANTINE is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Shaffer, Meg, author.Title: The wishing game: a novel / Meg Shaffer.Description: First edition. | New York: Ballantine Group, [2023]Identifiers: LCCN 2022038749 (print) | LCCN 2022038750 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593598832 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593598849 (ebook)Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.Classification: LCC PS3618.E5726 W57 2023 (print) | LCC PS3618.E5726 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220830LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022038749LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022038750International Edition: ISBN 978-0-593-72410-1Ebook ISBN 9780593598849randomhousebooks.comBook design by Ralph Fowler, adapted for ebookMap by Olivia WalkerCompass and numerals licensed by ShutterstockClock illustrations by red_spruce / Adobe StockCover illustration: Holly OvendenCover design: Cassie Gonzalesep_prh_6.1_143667513_c0_r0 ContentsCoverTitle PageCopyrightMapProloguePart One: Make a WishChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixPart Two: Tick-Tock. Welcome to the Clock.Chapter SevenChapter EightChapter NinePart Three: Riddles and Games and Other Strange ThingsChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenPart Four: Face Your Fears, My DearsChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-oneChapter Twenty-twoChapter Twenty-threeChapter Twenty-fourChapter Twenty-fivePart Five: One Last Little QuestionChapter Twenty-sixChapter Twenty-sevenChapter Twenty-eightChapter Twenty-nineChapter ThirtyChapter Thirty-oneChapter Thirty-twoChapter Thirty-threeDedicationAcknowledgmentsThe Clock Island Adventures. Collect Them All!About the Author_143667513_ PROLOGUEMayEVERY NIGHT, HUGO WENT for a walk on the Five O’Clock Beach, but tonight was the first time in five years his wandering feet spelled out an SOS in the sand.He traced the letters carefully, drawing them large enough that they could be seen from space. Not that it mattered. The tide would wash the Five clean by dawn.It had been a bit of whimsy on Jack’s part naming it the Five O’Clock Beach. Destiny, Jack said of finding this little patch of Atlantic forest twenty-odd years ago. These ninety acres right off the coast of southern Maine formed a near-perfect circle. Jack Masterson, who’d created Clock Island on paper and in imaginations, could now build it in real life. In his living room, Jack kept a clock with the numbers marked by pictures of places on the island—the lighthouse at the twelve, the beach at the five, the guesthouse at the seven, the wishing well at the eight—which led to conversations like…Where are you going?Five O’Clock.When will you be back?By the lighthouse.Places were times. Times were places. Confusing at first. Then charming.Hugo found it neither confusing nor charming anymore. One could go mad living in a house like that. Maybe that’s what happened to Jack.Or maybe that’s what happened to Hugo.SOS.Save Our Sanity.The sand was so cold on his naked feet it felt wet. What day was it? May 14? May 15? He couldn’t say for sure, but he knew summer would be here soon. His fifth summer on Clock Island. Maybe, he thought, one summer too many. Or was it five summers too many?Hugo reminded himself he was just thirty-four years old, which meant—if he was doing his maths correctly (unlikely as painters weren’t known for their maths skills)—he’d spent almost 15 percent of his life on an island playing bloody nanny to a grown man.Could he leave? He’d been dreaming of leaving for years, but only the way a teenager dreams of running away from home. It was different now. Now he was making plans or at least making plans to make plans. Where would he even go? Back to London? His mum was there, but she was finally starting over—new husband, new stepdaughters, new happiness or something like it. He didn’t want to be in the way.All right, Amsterdam? No, he’d never get any work done there. Rome? Same story. Manhattan, then? Brooklyn? Or five miles away in Portland so he could keep an eye on Jack from a close but healthy distance?Could Hugo do it? Could he abandon his old friend here with no one left to help him tell one hour from the next, the lighthouse from the guesthouse?If only the old man would start writing again. Pick up a pen, a pencil, a typewriter, a stick to write in the sand…anything. Hugo would even take dictation if Jack asked him to—and he had offered.“Please, for the love of God, Charles Dickens, and Ray Bradbury,” he’d said to Jack as recently as yesterday, “write something. Anything. Wasting talent like yours is like burning a pile of money in front of a poorhouse. It’s cruel and it stinks.”They were the very words Jack had thrown into his face years ago back when Hugo was the one drinking his talent to death. They were just as sharp and true now as they were then. Millions of children out there, and former children, too, would weep with joy if Jack Masterson ever published a new book about Clock Island and the mysterious Master Mastermind who lived in the shadows and granted wishes to brave children. Jack’s publisher regularly sent boxes of fan mail to the house, thousands of children urging Jack to write again.SOS, those letters begged.Save Our Stories.But Jack had done nothing for five years but futz around in his garden, read a few pages of a book, take a long nap, drink too much wine at dinner, and fall into his nightmares by the time the little hand was on the Nine O’Clock Dock.Something had to change. Soon. At dinner tonight, Jack hadn’t made it to the bottom of his wine bottle as usual. He’d been quieter, which was either a good sign or a very bad one. And no bitter riddles either, not even Jack’s favorite…Two men on an island and both blame the waterfor the loss of a wife and the death of a daughterbut neither ever married, and neither’s a father.What is the secret of the girls and the water?Too much to hope that Jack was