If you were my daughter, the numbers would look very different.
Words spoken to you in a week?
100,000 (mostly about what a rotten monster I have to deal with daily).
Minutes spent together in a week?
Somewhere between 840 and 1,000. That averages out to three to four hours a day. It would be that many minutes because I would give you a harpoon and a flamethrower, and you and I would fight side by side every day to keep the editor monster out of my house. It’s thirsty work, I’m telling you. I go through pots of tea every day. I could use a sidekick. My current one is not pulling his weight, and you can tell him I said that.
I’m afraid the monster in the corner has almost chewed through the ropes. I wish I could do more for you than tell you how sorry I am for what a terrible thing your parents have done to you. You are clearly a brave child and intelligent, and even if they don’t see that, I do. And my opinion counts more than theirs does, as I am rich and very famous. That’s a little joke there. Well, not really. I am rich and famous, but that’s not why my opinion counts for more. The real reason is that I know things other people do not know. Mystic secrets and hidden knowledge, the sort of stuff men in fedoras kill and die for. And the runes and tarot cards and the raven that lives in my writing room all tell me the same thing about you: Lucy Hart, you are goingto be fine. You are going to be even better than fine. You are going to be loved like you deserve to be loved. And you are going to have a very magical life (if you want it; feel free to say no, as magic always comes with a price).
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.
I’m listening.
Your Friend,
Jack Masterson
P.S. Oh God, he’s loose again. SOMEONE BRING ME THE HOLY WATER AND THE CRUCIFIX!
“That’s a joke,” Lucy told Christopher. “He was joking that his monster editor was a vampire. You have to use holy water and crucifixes to keep vampires away.”
She thought Christopher would ask her about the monster or say something about how funny and weird Mr. Masterson’s letter to her was. Instead, he put his arms around her neck and rested his chin on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry your parents didn’t want you,” he said.
Lucy smiled. She wasn’t about to cry, not over them. They didn’t deserve it.
“I’m not,” she said, returning his hug with a squish.
“You aren’t?”
“If they’d wanted me, I wouldn’t be here with you,” she said. “Maybe I’d still be living in Maine. And…if they wanted me, I would never have run away. And because I did run away, I know the answer to the riddle.”
“What is it?” Christopher whispered.
“I’m getting there.”
After Lucy had read that letter from Mr. Masterson a few hundredtimes, she decided she liked his numbers better than hers. And didn’t he say he needed a new sidekick?
In her technology class at school, she’d learned how to use the internet to find places and how to get there. So Lucy packed her clothes and all the money she’d saved from babysitting and doing chores for her grandmother—$379. She would take a bus to Portland’s ferry terminal. Then she’d ask an adult which ferry went to Clock Island. Someone would probably tell her just to show off that they knew where a famous person lived and how to get there. In the Clock Island books, adults were constantly underestimating kids. Maybe someone would tell her.
And the funniest thing is…they did.
“They told you?” Christopher asked.
“I asked the ticket lady. She just told me,” Lucy said. “She said I couldn’t get off at Clock Island. It only stopped there for mail delivery, but I could take pictures. But when the ferry got to the dock, and the mailman got off, as soon as his back was turned, I got off too. Just like that.”
For all her planning and plotting and thinking of everything that could happen, everything that could go wrong, it was actually pretty easy to get to Clock Island. It was like Jack Masterson was just a regular person. You wanted to know where a normal person lived, you asked someone who knew. And if you wanted to go to their house, you just went there. Lucy puzzled over how easy it was as she walked up from the beach to a stone path sloping upward toward what felt like the peak of a hill. Where were the electric fences? Where were the bodyguards? Did people not know how famous and important Jack Masterson was?
And then there it was—the house on Clock Island. No doubt in her mind. It was enormous, spooky, white with black shutters, ivy climbing the sides…Yes, this wasThe House.
She knew nothing about houses as a kid except there were rich people houses and normal people houses. And this was undoubtedly a rich person’s house.
As an adult, she’d figured out that the house was a grand Victorian, the house of someone too rich and a little bit wacky. Turrets and towers and stained-glass windows, oh my.
