One Small Wish: Day 6

Word Count: 36,070

Summary of Events:

Fancy got up early and enjoyed the fact that the whiteness of the snow caused it to look brighter outside, but then ended up thinking about dead people and so started making breakfast loudly to distract herself. Vaughan was woken up before his alarm went off by recalling the girl who'd made the wish to him as he was going to get changed out of his costume a week before . . . 

Excerpt of the Day:

"What are you going to do about it? . . .

 . . . He felt like the question being asked of him was the wrong one. The better question to ask was could he do anything about it?

But, in order to answer that question, another had to be asked: had she filled out the forms?

With her appearance being that of an unaccompanied child, he had his doubts, but it was probably still worth asking.

On the other hand, with her appearance being that of a child with means much more limited than that of most of the children who were brought through the front doors of the church by the campaign, it probably wasn't.

The target audience of the campaign was middle-class, which was about what TwoCities was smack dab in the middle of, being in the suburban outliers of Portland, not to mention its proximity to Beaverton — caused expressly by the growth of the two centres in the last sixty years, if not even more recently than that.

That girl probably hailed from a lot closer to St. Johns than TwoCities liked their contestants to be. Other contestants that had been driven to TwoCities from the St. Johns area would sometimes be allowed at least a visit, as he'd seen a few kids wearing more out of fashion clothes, but he was pretty sure it was their applications that he heard going through the paper shredder in the office every night as he left.

Something had to keep the field of contestants down, after all, they limited their prizes to only thirty five over the course of the month — one nightly prize each night, a weekly prize for each of the weeks leading up to Christmas, and then the three main prizewinners — and they didn't want kids who looked frumpy or had messy houses winning the prizes, they wanted immaculate, clean-cut images for the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages, much less the videos posted on the church's YouTube account.

All of that considered, Vaughan wondered if he should bother. He was pretty sure that if he approached the church, even if she'd filled out a form, with an endorsement for her to win the grand prize, he'd probably get turned down.

And then there were the further ramifications of granting that wish particularly: goodness knew there was probably at least a hundred kids in Portland — and most of them likely concentrated in St. Johns — that had the same wish. Would it be fair to grant only one?

Of course, how would he find out about the others anyways? He was lucky he knew there was even one kid in all of Portland who was likely to go without a Christmas dinner this year for reasons he couldn't begin to guess.

And even if he found every single other child in Portland who had the same sort of wish, the finances it would take to grant all of their wishes was probably not going to be given by the church."