I Wished

Zahara didn’t remember when she found ‘the book’. It was a long time ago. But she remembered she had found it one summer in the town library, a place she visited often because school was closed, and her best friend was away on vacation. Everyone else in her family had the unfortunate habit of going to work.

Zahara, who did not yet share this habit, spent her days wandering between shelves, checking out books she would stack beside her bed and read until the sun disappeared and the streetlights flickered on.

The librarian was a woman named Mrs. Huxley, though Zahara first called her Mrs. Huski, which is what happens when you are seven years old and the world insists on containing too many consonants. Mrs. Huxley did not correct her, and so the name stayed, clinging to her like dust to old books.

Mrs. Huxley had worked in the library for over thirty years. She had once been married, and then very quickly not been married at all, which is a polite way of saying her husband died. After that, she devoted herself to books, and then to the people who read them, which is often how adults survive sadness—by lending it structure.

While the fearsome look Mrs. Huxley had given Zahara, the first time she exclaimed, “Excuse me, I want to read a book about dragons and princesses”, frightened her, later on she found Mrs. Huxley a comforting presence whenever she entered the library doors.

On a random day, as any other, when one does not expect to make miraculous discoveries, Zahara discovered a closed compartment containing a cloth-bound book that did not belong anywhere else. She believed she had found a treasure, which was both correct and deeply unfortunate.

The writing inside the book made no sense—not because it was difficult, but because the letters were unfamiliar, as if they belonged to a language that had decided not to introduce itself.

Zahara took the book home anyway because children are very good at keeping secrets and very bad at understanding consequences.

She discovered the book’s unusual properties by accident. She wrote, "I wish piano class were cancelled today," and her wish came true. Then she wished for pizza, and pizza arrived. Then she wished to avoid the dentist, and the dentist’s pipes burst.

At this point, a sensible child would have been suspicious. Zahara was not a sensible child. So she tried it again, this time with intent. She didn’t want to go to her grandmother’s house for a holiday, and so her grandmother won a free trip and cancelled the family gathering.

She wrote often and at great length. In case the book needed context, she introduced her family to it. She told it all: trivial wishes, grand wishes, happy wishes, lonely wishes. To Zahara, the book was not an object. It was a companion, which is another way of saying she trusted it completely.

She went on and on, wish after wish, some were rather uninteresting, ‘I wish I didn’t have any summer homework’, or ‘I wish I could watch my favorite TV channel all day’, others were more ambitious, ‘I wish I could be a princess for a day’, some were happy ‘I wish for sunshine all day every day’, some were rather melancholy ‘I wish I had a friend by my side forever.’

On June 30th, shortly before her twelfth birthday, the book failed her.

Zahara had encountered a biological inconvenience known as a period, which many societies insist on celebrating even though it mostly involves confusion, discomfort, and stained clothing.

‘I hate being a girl, I wish I didn’t have periods.’ Zahara wrote, crying and hoping her wish came true.

Unfortunately, it didn’t. It didn’t change the fact that Zahara was the first girl among her friends to get her period, and suddenly she felt as if something tragic had befallen her. Her world turned gray, and for unknown reasons, she felt ashamed of her body.

The book, which had previously been very cooperative (and her source of comfort), remained silent. She threw it under her bed and did not look at it again for years.

By fifteen, she had gotten used to having a period. In fact, as the first girl in her class, she had become a ‘mentor’ of sorts, helping her friends who experienced this event for the first time.

As Zahara grew older, she read less, spending her summers with family and friends instead. She and the other girls talked about boys, TV shows, celebrities, and fashion, but no longer of princess, castles, unicorns, or magical books.

One day, Zahara took a different turn on the way home and, by chance, passed by the town library. It seemed to Zahara that the building in the last few years had grown old. The brownish columns, covered in dust and grime, seemed as if weeping. The ivy, wilted and hanging across the archway, resembled wrinkles on a sad, weary countenance. To a dark and cold entryway, the door creaked like worn-out knees and slowly opened.

Zahara found the library mostly unchanged. Upstairs, the wooden shelves with glass doors still held many books, though the area was vacant.

When Zahara used to visit as a child, the upstairs section was strictly prohibited to children, and it was only for students and other adults. Zahara longed to go up there and see what it was like; her principal goal in life was to grow up, walk in one day, and ask Mrs. Huxley for a library card that had “STUDENT” stamped on it.

Who was to know that the library would not wait for Zahara to grow up?

The entryway spanned into a large corridor-like room with black and white checkered floors. Upstairs was the adult section and downstairs the children's section. To the left of the door stood a small antique table with a red cord phone on top.

Zahara remembered the phone used to ring often, and Mrs. Huxley would pick up the phone and write something on a yellow notepad next to the phone. The notepad was missing, and someone had unplugged the phone.

The large, crystalline chandeliers hung above, unlit and appearing ready to be extinguished. Somehow, the building felt lonely and sorrowful; Zahara wasn’t sure if a building could feel like that, but to her it did.

Slowly, she descended the stairs to the ground floor. The open reading room, which was always the same, covered by huge wooden square desks with uncomfortable wooden chairs, was gone. Someone had pushed them aside to the edge of the room, stacking the chairs on top of each other, where they collected spiderwebs. In front of her, the same wooden shelves as upstairs with glass doors stood empty.

Zahara approached slowly, looked into one open shelf, and traced her finger across the dust layer gathered. She imagined that she was a little girl again and that her hand reached out to one of the books stacked there, not knowing what she would discover, but it would be alright because Mrs. Huxley had told her the books contained princess and prince fairy tales.

She turned to her left, where a small glass-enclosed office stood; Mrs. Huxley’s office. The office wasn't empty, but several boxes contained books and trinkets. Zahara entered the office half expecting Msr. Huxley’s sweet rose perfume to greet her, but there was no one.

On the left wall inside the office, Zahara noticed a pinboard filled with photographs. The photographs were of various people here in the library: students, old people, children, reading, doing group projects, drawing up presentations for school, doing homework, doing story time, playing chess, and all kinds of fun activities.

Zahara counted herself in 16 of those photographs; in one, she was standing in front of the shelves, which stood behind her now empty, with a small hand on her chin, contemplating which book to pick. In another one, she was sitting down at one of the enormous desks, reading a book, and at one of them, she was trying to peek upstairs ‌to see what the other sector of the library looked like.

A voice behind her cleared its throat.

“What are you doing back here?”

Zahara turned. A woman stood near the doorway, holding a clipboard against her chest.

“I—sorry,” Zahara said. “I used to come here a lot. When I was a kid. I just… passed by and wanted to see if it was the same.”

The woman nodded, glancing around the room. “Well, it’s not.”

“I can see that,” Zahara said. “What’s happening? Why is everything empty?”

“They’re closing this building,” the woman said. “It’s being torn down next month.”

“Oh,” Zahara said. “But the library—”

“It’ll still exist,” the woman interrupted. “Sort of. They’re moving it into a small office in the town hall. Mostly archives. Hardly anyone comes here anymore.”

“And this place?” Zahara asked.

The woman shrugged. “A KCP. Faster traffic. Better business. Plus, people love fast food.”

Zahara frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It does to them,” the woman said, already making a note on her clipboard.

Them?

Zahara hesitated, then asked, “Is Mrs. Huxley okay with this?”

The woman looked up. “Mrs. Huxley?”

“Yes. The librarian. She’s been here forever.”

“Oh,” the woman said. “No. She passed away. A couple of months ago.”

“Oh,” Zahara repeated.

The woman shifted her weight. “If you’re done looking around, I’ll need to lock this section.”

Zahara nodded once, still in disbelief, and stepped back from the photographs.

***

She ran home, heart pounding with grief and a strange kind of guilt, the kind that arrives when you realize something important has ended and you weren’t paying attention. She hadn’t known. She hadn’t said goodbye.

The world, Zahara decided, was deeply unfair. Grown-ups, who were supposed to take care of things, weren’t fixing anything. Where were the people who remembered? Where were the people who cared?

And then she remembered the book.

She searched every drawer, shelf, bag, and secret place in the house, overturning objects and memories alike, until she found it on her little brother’s shelf, wedged between a comic book and a toy robot that didn’t work properly unless you shook it.

She opened the book and wrote:

“I wish the library stayed open forever.”

“I wish they hadn’t opened a KCP.”

“I wish Mrs. Huxley never died.”

She wrote them again. And again. And again. Until her fingers ached, her nails cracked, and her handwriting turned crooked. Then she fell asleep with the book pressed to her chest, as if holding it tightly might convince the universe to listen. The next morning, Zahara dressed quickly and ran to the library.

The closed sign was still there. So was the demolition notice, taped firmly to the door. The world, it seemed, had other plans.

***

She walked home slowly, as if carrying something heavy that no one could see. Her parents noticed, of course. They asked questions in gentle voices. She didn’t know how to explain that she was mourning‌ a building that she would never step foot in again. Of course, there would be other libraries, but none like the one where she found Mrs. Huxley and her magic book.

That afternoon, she opened the book one more time. She stared at the pages, still covered in the loops and swirls of an unreadable language. She pressed her forehead to them, as though it might whisper something to her. Something that would fix it all. But the pages were quiet. The book was quiet. As if it, too, was mourning. She wrote one final sentence: "I wish I could have one more day there. Just one." Nothing changed. She walked to her closet, opened an old box, and gently set the book inside, under faded drawings, a plastic tiara, and her library card with the child’s sticker still peeling off.

Now, Zahara has grown. She walks past the KCP, holding a coffee instead of a story, and feels a pang, and she remembers the library and the books inside, and the upstairs she never got to see.

When she does, a twinge of nostalgia overcomes her, and she goes home and scours the internet and archives, trying to find a picture of what the library looked like inside, to see if she remembered the checkered floors correctly, the cord telephone in the corner, and the golden chandeliers on the ceiling.