The Last Wish of Sasha Cade

Elijah leans over, reading the instructions. “Interesting.”

Just as I’d suspected, Sasha reserved the Wolf Pack room for our stay. The coolest and most expensive room option available, it has two queen beds and a “Wolf Den,” which is a cave built into the wall, with bunk beds made of treated logs inside. There’s a little platform you get to by ladder, and your own private TV mounted on the wall. It is a kids’ paradise, and Elijah’s jaw falls to the ground when he sees it.

I move into the main part of the room, dropping my suitcase at the foot of the queen bed nearest to the window. We’re ten floors high and have a beautiful view of the Dallas skyline. We’re also spending this entire weekend together. I swallow.

Elijah’s voice echoes from inside the man-made cave. “If you think I’m not sleeping on this kid-sized bunk bed, you’re wrong.”

Laughing, I go to the window and draw the drapes shut, darkening the room.

“Just wait until you see this,” I say, slipping into the cave with him. The light at the top of the cave is shaped like a moon — although why a moon would be inside a cave, I don’t know. I wiggle my eyebrows, my grin so big my cheeks hurt. “You ready for this?” I ask, hovering my fingers over the light switch, which is shaped like an inchworm.

Elijah nods, and I flip the lights.

The Wolf Den has a sound system rigged to the light. When it turns off, the sounds of a forest fill the space. The buzzing of bugs, a sweet song of a bird and the occasional wolf howling at the moon. Tiny dots in the walls light up like fireflies, disappearing the second you look at them.

Elijah exhales.

“It lasts for about an hour,” I say, turning the lights back on. “The perfect amount of time to fall asleep.”

“This was Sasha’s childhood,” he says, more like he’s talking to himself.

I nod. “I was lucky enough to come along. My parents could never afford something like this.”

Elijah shrugs off his backpack and tosses it on the top bunk. “So what was on the table?”

“Huh?” Ducking out of the cave, I notice a package on the table, a little white card with our names on it taped to the top.

Ripping it open, I find a letter from Sash

a and —

“A wand?” Elijah says, reaching into the box and pulling out a plastic wand painted in so much glitter nail polish you can barely see the brown of the original design.

“Not just any wand,” I say, unable to hold back my smile in the wake of all this nostalgia. “That is the wand.”

“Explain,” he says, aiming the wand at me like simply saying the word will compel me to answer. But that’s not how the magic works.

“I think Sasha probably will,” I say, opening the letter. Pulling in a deep breath, I read.

“‘Elijah, this would have been your childhood had we grown up together. This place is literally the place of dreams, screw what Disney says. Rocki’s favorite part was the water park and the arcade room, but Wizard’s Quest was mine. I want you to have fun this weekend, so I’m only leaving you one rule: play one last game of Wizard’s Quest for me, okay? I have bestowed my wand upon the two of you. It has fresh batteries and, of course, it’s still registered to my name so that my digital legacy will continue. Make me proud. I love you and miss you both … Sasha.’”

“Is this some kind of game?” Elijah asks, turning the plastic wand over in his hands.

“You have no idea,” I say. Reaching for the wand, I twist the handle to the right, making the tip of it light up purple as it starts a new game. The wand vibrates and a tinny voice sounds from a small speaker in the bottom.

“Do you have what it takes to complete a Wizard’s Quest, young warlock?”

There’s a spark of adventure in Elijah’s eyes, the same exact look I’ve seen so many times while in the presence of this wand.

“Come on,” I say, tapping his chest with the purple light. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Wizard’s Quest was ahead of its time back when Sasha and I were kids. State-of-the-art technology plus the genius of a bunch of MIT students who never quite grew out of role-playing games came together to create an interactive masterpiece. The game was installed in Black Bear Lodge nearly ten years ago, and I still remember the first year it appeared. I was wearing my iCarly one-piece bathing suit, towel around my shoulders, goggles hanging off my wrist, the scent of chlorine beckoning me from the water park. Sasha had grown too tall for her bathing suit; a problem we didn’t realize until it was time to go swimming. So Mrs. Cade took us down to the gift shop on the first floor to buy a new suit while Mr. Cade stayed in our hotel room, ordering room service breakfast and getting some work done remotely.

It was there, just outside the plastic foliage of the Black Bear gift shop, that Sasha saw a standing sign that was as tall as we were. Wizard’s Quest, a magical journey throughout the entire lodge. Set up in stairwells, hidden chambers accessible only through fairy doors, with evil witches disguised as waitresses in the lodge’s restaurant and the like, Wizard’s Quest had lights, sounds and flat-screen scoreboards all over the facility. All you needed were your wand (available for $14.99 in the gift shop), your wits and your imagination. On that particular vacation, we only spent one of our four days in the water park. The rest were dedicated to solving our quest.

“Sasha was the greatest warlock of our time,” I tell Elijah as we head to the Bear Cub Clubhouse. It’s not really a clubhouse, but more of a long hallway filled with shops and kiosks with fun kiddie stuff to do. There’s a build-your-own-bear-cub booth, face painting, jewelry making, hair beads and wraps, an ice cream shop and, of course, the candy booth. At the far end of the hallway of childhood wonder, Sasha’s one true talent awaits.