The Wishing Game

As Lucy gets off the boat, a man is there waiting and asks for her bag. She quickly realizes that she isn’t properly dressed for Portland weather, and the man gives her his coat. Lucy realizes that the man is Hugo Reese and marvels at how much he’s changed from when she knew him as a young teen. She remembers how Jack told her as a child that she could come back as Thurl the raven’s butler when she was older. Hugo admonished him, prophetically claiming that he’d get someone killed by making such promises. Jack, however, told him to always be quiet when someone’s heart was breaking, as Lucy’s was then.

In the present, Lucy asks Hugo if he remembers her. He does. She tells him she’s sorry for how she acted when she was 13 and that she knows now she could’ve caused a lot of trouble for Jack and his career by showing up at his house. Hugo tells her it’s Jack who should be apologizing to her and leads her to the house.

As Hugo guides Lucy to the house, he thinks about the four contestants: Andre, Melanie, Dustin, and Lucy. All of them ran away from home as children, but only Lucy apologized for imposing on Jack. He notes that Lucy has grown into a pretty woman as he takes her through the house. They discuss the eccentric things Jack has amassed over the years, and Lucy takes special note of the island’s map, which describes places as times on a clock. She and Hugo recall how he taught her how to draw when she was a child, the difficulties of living on the island for Hugo, and his worry for Jack, who is getting old and slowing down. When he takes her to the library, where she’ll meet Jack and the other contestants, he tells her not to worry since someone like him won one of Jack’s contests before, and that’s how he became Jack’s illustrator. He submitted art he’d made for his brother, Davey, at Davey’s insistence. Hugo tells her that his brother died some time ago and, before leaving, asks her if she knows the name of the man who drove her to the boat. As she enters the library, he wishes her luck.

Lucy meets the other contestants and quickly realizes that they’ve done their research on her. Before long, the door opens again, and Hugo enters. Grudgingly, he tells them Jack’s first riddle: The game will begin at six o’ clock. When Andre quickly figures out that six o’clock refers to an area of the island and not the time, Hugo gives them a clue: to follow the smoke and watch their feet. Lucy smells smoke first and leads them to the beach, where a feast of camp food awaits them. Jack emerges from the shadows and welcomes them back to Clock Island. He tells them that they were invited because although writing the books changed his life, reading them changed theirs. He tells them how he remembers each of their visits as children. He looks at them as a proud father might and embraces them all one by one. Then, he tells them that they’ll have the chance to be like one of his characters and encounter challenges to have their wish come true.

After dinner, Jack begins to explain the inner workings of the contest. Hugo brings in Ms. Hyde, Jack’s lawyer, and she makes every contestant sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA). She explains that if no one wins the contest, full rights will revert to the publishing house that handles Jack’s books, Lion House Books. Jack then explains that to win the manuscript, the contestants must win several games during their stay. The winner of a game earns two points, while the person placing second earns one point. The last game of the contest will be worth a total of five points, and to win the book, someone must earn a total of 10 points. If they win the book, the publishing house has offered to buy it from the winner for a six-figure sum, which Lucy finds very enticing. Jack warns that the contestants will encounter challenges along the way, much like in his books, but that the challenges will be worth no points. Failure to meet these challenges, however, disqualifies a contestant. Jack then gives them a riddle to solve as their first game.

The contestants are all taken aback by Jack’s riddle and can’t make sense of it. They ask Jack for hints, and at every turn, he gives more examples that follow the structure of the original riddle, e.g., “Coffee can pass [through the door], but not tea” (126). While the other contestants grow frustrated, Lucy figures out that all the words allowed through the door have doubled letters, like “Picasso” or “book.” She tells Jacks that sheep can go through the door but lambs can’t, and he approves of her answer. She’s allowed to leave, and as Hugo escorts her out of the library, she explains how she made sense of the riddle. He takes her to the Ocean Room, and she’s awed by the many thematically appropriate decorations and paintings. Lucy and Hugo discuss how Christopher and Davey both had an attachment to ocean-related topics, Christopher for sharks and Davey for the Titanic. She gives Hugo a scarf as he’s leaving and texts Christopher’s foster mother, Mrs. Bailey, asking her to tell Christopher that she’s winning for the time being. As she prepares for bed, she imagines calling him to say that she’s won the whole competition.

After the other contestants give up, Hugo goes to find Jack and chides him for the games he’s playing with the contestants. Hugo admits that he’s been trying to work on the cover for the manuscript Jack has offered as a prize and asks for direction. He also mentions that people other than Jack’s publisher are circling and hoping to influence the contestants and then buy the rights to the book when one of them wins. Jack, however, has faith that the contestants will make the right choice. In addition, he tells Hugo that he knows he’s been wanting to leave the island for a while because, like a son might resent his father, Hugo is embittered with Jack for needing his care and presence. Hugo doesn’t agree and says he’s simply angry that the world would leave Jack alone in his aging years given that he has committed his life to making the world a better place for children.

Someone leaves a note at Lucy’s bedroom door to meet at the City of Second Hand. Quietly, she ventures out of the house and follows the path into the forest, soon discovering that the City of Second Hand and its train station are unfinished and withering away. When she enters the stall of the Storm Seller, she finds Richard Markham, an attorney, waiting for her. He reveals that he has done some investigating into her life when he mentions Sean Parrish, Lucy’s ex-boyfriend. He tells her that his client wants to keep the book for themselves and never make copies for others to read. He wants to make an agreement with Lucy should she win the book, but despite the large sum he offers, she refuses and tells him to leave.

Hugo is walking toward his cottage when he sees Lucy enter the forest. He follows her, and as he comes to the Storm Seller’s stall, Lucy emerges, looking shaken. She explains what transpired with Richard Markham, and Hugo resolves to tell Jack to hire more security. Hugo takes her back to the house, and on the way, Lucy asks what the City of Second Hand is meant to be. Hugo explains that Jack intended it to be a park for patients of Portland’s children’s hospital but didn’t finish it because of a rough patch. Lucy explains how she reached out to Jack as a child because her sister was sick and bound to the children’s hospital. As they continue to talk and arrive at the subject of selling the book, Hugo insinuates that Lucy is being materialistic by counting on the book’s sale. She explains why money is so important to her and calls him a spoiled brat for not realizing that money is a determining factor in many people’s happiness. She smacks him in the chest with Richard Markham’s business card, implying that she wouldn’t sell the book to a person who wanted it only for themselves.

The next day, Lucy meets the other contestants for breakfast, and they reveal that Richard Markham visited them too. When Jack enters, he assures them that he has taken more precautionary measures for their safety and then gives them instructions on how to begin the next game: finding the King of Clock Island. As the contestants work together, Lucy figures out that Jack means Hugo’s painting of the book by the same name. The painting directs them to the picnic spot in the One O’Clock area.

In his cottage, Hugo is painting. He had dreams of his brother the previous night, and that morning he was inspired to reproduce some elements of them. As he paints, he thinks of his childhood with Davey and how he misses him. He remembers how he scavenged for a new book for his brother to read because he’d read the same book for weeks, which is how Hugo found the Clock Island books. He berates himself for his behavior with Lucy the previous night, knowing that he should have listened to her reasoning before judging her. Then, he sees Lucy outside his window, and she’s being followed by one of the other contestants, Dustin. Hugo cracks open the window to hear them and learns that Dustin is pressuring Lucy to work together and cheat to win the contest. Lucy adamantly refuses, knowing that it will get her disqualified. When Dustin eventually insults her and calls her stupid, Hugo intervenes and chases him away.

Lucy apologizes for calling Hugo a spoiled brat, but he refuses to accept her apology since he believes he deserved it. He walks her back to the house. She thanks him for stepping in to protect her and asks about his relationship with Jack. He explains that while rumors abound about them because Jack is gay, he sees Jack as a father figure who helped him overcome his self-destructive tendencies after Davey died. Although many had wanted Jack to fire Hugo, Jack stood by him, and Hugo eventually realized that he couldn’t disappoint him any further and got himself together again. As he and Lucy discuss the unhappiness of being an artist, Jack finds them. Hugo tells Jack about Dustin’s behavior, and Jack arranges to have Dustin sent home.

Lucy finds a pair of new boots at her door from Hugo, and she finds herself having burgeoning feelings for him. After a few text messages, Theresa calls her, and Lucy describes her encounters with Hugo. Theresa enthusiastically encourages Lucy to pursue Hugo, which embarrasses her, but she feels more settled after the conversation. She meets Jack, Ms. Hyde, Andre, and Melanie at the picnic tables for their game: this time, a scavenger hunt. The list of items is cryptic, they seem impossible to acquire, and Jack gives only one clue, a quote from Søren Kierkegaard: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards” (169). Lucy is stumped and grows frantic as she tries to understand the hidden logic. She treks through the forest, remembering how Andre seemed to understand what was being asked of them. She thinks about the hint and tries to read it in different ways until she finally finds the secret code embedded in the list—the last letter of each item on the list spells that the first to find Jack wins.

Lucy rushes back to the house, noticing that Andre, too, is sprinting for it. When they reach it, they search different rooms until, finally, Lucy arrives in the living room, only to find that Melanie is already there with Jack. The text then speeds past the next few games, and by the penultimate game, Lucy is tied with Andre at five points, while Melanie is in the lead with six. Although it’s stressful and arduous, Lucy and the other contestants find fun in all the kid-like games Jack has them play. While they rest in the library, Jack announces that tomorrow they, like all characters in his book, will need to face their fears. However, as Andre points out, they’re no longer children, and their fears have grown in scope and magnitude. When Andre then asks Jack if he has faced his own fears, he gives them another riddle, about two men stuck on an island who blame the water for the loss of a wife and the death of a daughter, though neither is married or is a father. Jack leaves, and Lucy looks to Hugo, who says that he won’t tell them the story unless they guess it first, since he’s the other man in the riddle. Andre and Melanie haven’t a clue how to solve the riddle, but Lucy does.