They Granted Her 100 Wishes And Forgot I Was Dying Too novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The First Wish
Cora's ceremony starts the hundred days, the family forgets Seren's own hundred, and Seren files a claim of her own.
The cake said 100 in blue icing.
My sister cut the first slice while forty neighbors held up their phones.
Above her head floated the same number, pale and steady, where anyone on the street could read it.
I stood at the bottom of the lawn with a duffel bag and a folder, and nobody had seen me yet.
She had come across from another world as a baby, the day I was sent over there.
Now that world wanted her back, and the law gave her family a hundred days of wishes to grant her first.
It had let go of me at dawn.
A nurse had listened to my heart in the van and written one line in my folder: about a hundred days.
I read it twice on the walk up the road.
Then my mother turned with a plate in her hand and saw me.
"Seren."
The plate hit the grass.
"Oh, my baby. Seren."
She ran across the lawn in her good shoes, and every phone swung toward us.
She held me so hard that my duffel slid off my shoulder.
"You're freezing," she said, and she took off her cardigan and wrapped it around me.
The neighbors clapped, and somebody said, "Deborah, she has your chin."
My father came next.
He picked me up off the grass, set me down again, and wiped his face on his jacket sleeve.
"Kiddo," he said. "Look at you."
"Daniel, the sparklers," my mother called, and he laughed and wiped his eyes again.
I had practiced what to say all the way up the road.
"I have to tell you something first. I'm dying. The clinic says my heart is failing and I have about a hundred days."
My mother's hands tightened on my arms.
"Oh, sweetheart."
"It's all in here."
I held out the folder, and she took it gently and looked at the first page.
Her eyes filled.
"You've carried this by yourself the whole way," she said. "Let me carry it now."
She opened her handbag, put the folder inside, and snapped it shut.
"We'll sit down with it tomorrow, just the two of us. I promise. Tonight is Cora's night."
"After the ceremony," my father said. "We'll find you a specialist, kiddo. After."
"Tomorrow," my mother said again, and kissed my forehead.
It was so kind that I almost thanked her.
A young man with a Bureau lanyard was waiting by the cake table with a tablet in his hands.
"Tiernan Rhodes, Bureau of Returns," he said. "I'm the clerk. I log the wishes. Your intake sheet reached the house file an hour ago."
He looked down at the tablet.
Then he looked up at the number over Cora's head.
Then he looked at me, and he didn't say a word.
"First wish of the hundred," he said to the lawn. "Cora Fairclough, whenever you're ready."
Cora put the cake knife down and wiped her hands on her cardigan.
"I want my sister next to me at every meal," she said. "Starting now."
The whole lawn said, "Aww."
"Granted," my mother said, laughing through tears, and she steered me into the chair beside Cora's.
A woman in a visor leaned over to me. "Your sister has the whole town behind her, honey. Aren't you lucky."
Cora slid a cup of tea across the tablecloth to me.
It was cold.
"Drink that," she said. "You're pale."
"I'm fine."
"Okay," she said, and left the cup where it was.
She smiled at me, wide and easy, though we had never met.
Forty phones filmed my sister's wish, and a girl was already dancing with a sparkler on the lawn.
I had been home less than an hour, and my mother had told me tomorrow three times.
My mother stood behind my chair, her handbag on her arm, and said to the neighbors, "Isn't this the happiest day?"
I leaned back and said, quietly, "Mom, I said a hundred days."
"I know, baby." She patted my shoulder without looking down. "Tomorrow."
So I got up from the table.
Nobody stopped me. My father was busy lighting the sparklers.
I was at the gate when I heard footsteps on the gravel.
"You're missing the cake," Tiernan said.
"Is there a rule against leaving?"
"No. There's a form."
He held a pad of paper out to me. It had the Bureau's seal at the top.
"A Returned child whose days are on our books can file her own claim. A hundred wishes, same as your sister's, granted in front of me or a fine on the house."
"My days aren't on your books."
"They went on at the clinic an hour ago. A doctor wrote them there."
He gave me a pen.
The first line was blank.
I looked up the lawn at the cake, and the phones, and my mother's handbag.
I wrote: My mother reads my medical file out loud at breakfast, in front of the clerk.
Then I signed it: Seren Fairclough, day one.
Tiernan read the line twice and tore off my copy.
"Seven o'clock," he said. "One more thing. Your mother asked me by the cake table to leave your folder out of tonight's log."
"What did you say?"
"That I log what I'm shown."
Up the lawn, my mother laughed at something a neighbor said, and the handbag stayed on her arm.
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