The Wish Factory

Prologue

Life really couldn't get any worse for Ryleigh Jameson as she looked through the bills spread out on the table. She glanced over at her mom who was nursing a beer and watching television. She felt herself well up with anger and then as quickly as it started, it faded. Ryleigh resented her mother, but at the same time couldn't be mad at her for everything she'd been through. Ryleigh, or Rye, as she preferred had graduated from high school with honors the previous summer and had a full scholarship to Yale, but she'd had to turn it down. No, she wasn't forced, but if she hadn't stayed home and gotten a job, her mother would have been homeless. Sarah Jameson was a cancer survivor on disability due to the loss of a limb to save her life. Rye's Dad hadn't been able to handle the situation when she was diagnosed and had split during her sophomore year of high school. So, yes, her mother received a monthly check, but it only covered a third of their expenses. It would cover half, but her mom had sunk into a deep depression and wasted half of her money on booze. All she did, all day, was sit in front of the television and watch talk shows. Rye, on the other hand, had two jobs to keep the lights on and food on the table. She finished writing the checks to the bills they could afford and stood up with them in her hand; she didn't trust her mom to take them to the post office. As she was walking towards the door, she glanced at her mom.

"I'm off to the book store, will you please try and eat actual food tonight? You're going to make yourself sick again. There are leftovers in the fridge or meals in the freezer that you can warm up." Her mothers glazed over eyes met hers and smiled softly.

"Sure baby, I'll eat, I promise. Be careful closing tonight; I don't know what I'd do without you." Rye didn't respond to that statement, she just turned and walked out after waving goodbye. When she got to her car, Rye caught a glimpse of what she looked like. Her usually vibrant strawberry blonde hair looked dull, and her eyes had dark circles under them. She was a slender girl standing at 5'7, and she'd recently lost too much weight. When you worked as much as she did and worried about how they were going to pay their electric bill, she didn't have much of an appetite. She did eat more than her mother though because she had to keep her strength up to work both jobs.

Rye liked her second job the best, but it didn't offer full-time hours. She was a shift leader at the local bookstore, and she only worked three nights a week. Her day job was working in a warehouse grabbing items that needed to be shipped to customers. It was extremely challenging work, and sometimes she thought it was too much for her, but she did it...she had to. She was only nineteen, and she felt like a thirty-year-old single mom. She went through her shift flawlessly, and she was so grateful that the following day was her day off from both jobs and she could recuperate before she had to do it again. At the end of the night, her coworkers were laughing together as they looked at the paper. It irritated her that they didn't pull their weight and expected her to do it all. She walked over to them and scowled.

"You haven't even started working on your go-backs. Put the paper down and get busy, I'm not going to be here all night because you don't want to do your job." The girls gave her a look of disdain and huffily put the paper down that they hadn't even bothered to purchase. The closest one to her, a seventeen-year-old cheerleader picked up her basket of unwanted books and rolled her eyes.

"Relax, Rye, geeze we were just laughing at an ad in the paper under wish fulfillment, I mean it's silly. We'll be quick; I don't see why you get so worked up over this throwaway job." Ryleigh shook her head as the girls walked to through the aisles, still giggling about what they'd read, or probably at her. She picked up the paper and started to fold it back when she saw the ad in question.

"Is your life going nowhere? Stuck in a never-ending cycle and can't seem to pull yourself out? We can help! Stop by The Wish Factory today for a complimentary wish! One lucky person will receive a wish of a lifetime, so stop by soon."

Rye stared at the ad for what seemed like forever, but eventually tore her eyes away and refolded the paper and put it back on the stack. She'd never heard of anything like that before. What the hell were a wish factory and a complimentary wish? It had to be a scam, and she wondered how many people had been drawn in by the idea of dreams. She continued to clean and face the store and ended up having to wait for the girls to finish because they were too busy gossiping. When she finally got home, her mother was passed out on the couch, bottles of beer littering the floor and empty pizza box next to her. Great, they were barely getting by, and she decides to order pizza when they had a house full of food. Feeling her angry tears forming behind her eyes, she walked over to the kitchen table and flopped down. When she looked up she froze, it was the strangest thing. On top of all the bills and invoices that she had set up was a copy of the paper, and it was turned to the very ad that had been nagging at her. Only, she hadn't bought the paper, and she was pretty sure her mother hadn't left the house.