"MAKE A WISH," Emery had said on my seventeenth birthday. "This could be your year."

And even after I had made fun of her for believing in wishes and fairytales, I eventually did make a wish.

"To whoever grants wishes," I said. "Perform a miracle and make the girl I've pined after for years, just once, look at me the way I look at her."

And that was it.

Because in the next month, and the month after that, things changed.