A wish for me.  All I wanted was a wish for me.  All these people, they were wishing on lucky pennies and candles and stars, but they only ever wished for themselves.  Who would be left to wish for me?  I have no hands, so I can’t throw pennies.  I have no breath, so I can’t blow out candles.  And the stars?  I gave up on them a long time ago. My only hope now rested in others, which was a far-fetched dream to say the least.  I could hear their thoughts, the pennies dropped, the candles died, and the stars came out.

     “I wish she would come back home to me.”
     “I wish for a new iPad.”
     “I wish for an A next semester.”

How trivial these wishes sounded to me.  The people all wished for themselves, but no one ever wished for me.  I know it made me as bad as them, to want something so much, but it was my singular desire.  It only makes sense that after spending so much time watching them, I became somewhat like them too. 
     

I was the girl in the shadows, watching, listening, lonely.  I heard everyone, yet no one heard me.  Their voices reverberated inside my head, a deafening soundtrack of hopes and dreams.  Sometimes I heard the same people twice, but their wishes were never the same.  Their old hopes were thrown out like last year’s shoes to make way for a shiny new dream.  One afternoon, while absentmindedly listening to a middle-aged woman drone on to the penny in her hand about her woes, I thought I heard someone speaking directly to me.  I pulled myself out of the middle-aged woman’s mind just in time to see a small girl retreating from the fountain on her father’s shoulders.  The echo of her wish hung in the air like a wisp of smoke.
     

“I wish she could be happy.”
     

I began to linger by fountains, birthday parties, and starry clearings, hoping for another small glimpse of human selflessness.  I thought I had seen it that day, but I had no proof.  Sometimes, when you want something badly enough, you can imagine it into a false reality.  I needed to know.  The fountains and parties were quickly dismissed.  People wished on pennies for an end to whatever unimportant matters were troubling them, as if they could drown their troubles in the cold waters. They wished on fiery candles for the material possessions that could so easily be destroyed by the same fire that they wished on.  The clearings in the woods where the stars first appeared were different.  There, I would rest among the trees and watch as people’s souls came out with the stars.  It was there that I felt closest to seeing the good in people.  It was there that I felt closest to being alive. 
     

One evening, as the first stars appeared, a father and his young daughter entered the clearing.  I stepped out from the trees just a little to better see them.  The father pointed up at the stars.  I heard him wishing.  I had never heard a grown person wish without doubt or cynicism.  It was, however, the daughter’s wish that captivated my attention.  I recognized her voice.
     

“I wish she could be happy,” she said.
   

 “Who?” asked the father.
     

“The girl in the trees.”  The father smiled, but not dismissively.  They both looked in my direction and I let myself be visible, if only for an instant.
     

“I really wish she could be happy, Daddy,” repeated the girl.
     

“Me too,” said her father.  And for the first time, I was.  Someone had made a real wish.  She had made a wish for me.