The Wish Makers Book One
Shawn McGuire
YA Fantasy
June 15, 2014
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Everyone has a dark side. Mandy’s just moved in with her.
The last time sixteen-year-old Mandy Matteo broke a rule, her sister died. Since that day she has done only what is expected of her, but life as a goody-goody has made Mandy so boring her friends have all but abandoned her. And she’s given up on ever getting Ethan, the boy she’s liked forever, to notice her. Desperate, Mandy makes a wish to simply be happy.
Her wish is granted and happiness arrives in the form of Lexi, her childhood imaginary friend come to life. Magical wishes have conditions though: Once started, the wish cannot be altered or stopped. And once Mandy is truly content with her life again, Lexi must go back to where she came from. But Lexi loves being alive and she’ll do whatever it takes to stay that way.
Excerpt
Chapter One
Mandy
It had been twelve years since
I’d broken a rule. I found that life flowed along more easily if I didn’t rock
the boat. Expectations were understood and outcomes predictable. Tonight was
going to be different though. Tonight I’d step out of my carefully controlled
comfort zone. If I wanted to have any friends at all, it was my only choice.
I’d promised
Brooke and Crissy I’d go to the party tonight, even though it wasn’t my kind of
thing and they knew it. But I really wanted the three of us to be together and
this was what they agreed on. Besides, if I didn’t go I’d spend my sixteenth
birthday alone.
Things weren’t
going as planned though. Brooke had promised to pick me up at seven-thirty. At
ten minutes to eight I’d received a text saying her brother had taken her car
and she’d gotten a ride from someone else. So there I was, ready and willing
and no way to get to the party.
Well, there was
one way. My birthday present from my uncle, an old Ford Escape he’d been fixing
up for months, was waiting in the barn for me. There was the minor detail that
I didn’t have my license yet, but my road test was scheduled for tomorrow
morning and I knew I’d pass. So what the heck, I was already stepping out of my
box, what was one more step?
Brooke was supposed
to bring me her silver sequined miniskirt so I was back at the
I-have-nothing-to-wear stage. The whole time I stood there staring into my
closet, an invisible Jiminy Cricket sat on my shoulder reminding me that I was
breaking a rule. You know what happens when you break a
rule.
“Yeah, yeah,” I
said, flicking Jiminy to the floor, “civilizations collapse and planets
implode. Alert the media, Mandy Matteo is about to break a rule.” But the room
spun a little and my stomach flipped as those words came out of my mouth. I
looked down to see if Jiminy was still there. He wasn’t, of course, so I called
out, “It’s just one party. Mom won’t be home ’til Sunday. No one will ever know
I took the Escape.”
Finally dressed
in something other than sweats, I grabbed the “sweet sixteen” key ring from the
rack by the front door, ran out to the barn, and hopped in the car. At the end
of the driveway I paused, waiting for a sign that planets were in fact
imploding. With my luck, the first party I ever went to would get busted. But
no space debris fell out of the sky to block my path. My phone didn’t ring with
Mama intuitively calling to ask what I was up to. No voice from above told me
to turn away from the dark side I was about to cross into. So I pulled onto the
county highway and headed for town.
Shawn
McGuire started writing after seeing the first Star Wars movie (that’s
episode IV) as a kid: she couldn’t wait for the next one so wrote her
own episodes. Sadly, those notebooks are long lost, but her desire to
write is as strong now as it was then. She grew up in the beautiful Mississippi
River town of Winona, Minnesota, the small town that inspired the
setting for Sticks and Stones and the upcoming Break My Bones. After
graduating college she moved to the Milwaukee area of Wisconsin (Go
Pack Go!) where she lived for many years. She and her family now call
Colorado home and when not writing or reading, Shawn enjoys cooking
and baking, crafts, interior decorating, and spending time hiking and
camping in the spectacular Rocky Mountains.Author Links:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3231214.Shawn_McGuire
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