“Nice? I bowled three games with him!”
She gave me an approving nod. “Good for you.” Then she added, “So, was it? A date?”
“Course not. I was real clear. Friends only.” I felt my cheeks turn red. “Could we get down to business?”
A little smile played on Jura’s lips, but she took her place before the computer and signed us in to Cornucopio. “Okay. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
She frowned at the screen.
“Ho-ho-ho-ly Christmas,” was what she finally said.
“What? What?”
She turned the screen my way and tapped on it. It read, Welcome, Wish to End Hunger. You have 74 new messages.
We clicked. We read. We clicked again and read some more. They were—every single one of ’em—real wish requests. Folks wrote us from as far away as Russia and as close as Ardenville, Georgia. We heard from tiny efforts operating out of garages and mega-outfits that were working to feed continents.
Dear Wish to End Hunger, one message began. We know your posting is probably a prank, but after hundreds of layoffs in our community, we’re not too proud to hope for a little magic.
Dear WTEH, said another. We’ve got plenty of non-perishable food, but no way to deliver it to remote mountain families. If we don’t get truck repairs and volunteers fast, people are going to starve this winter. If there is anything you can do, magic or otherwise, PLEASE HELP.
That one was fairly worrying, but the next message tore me up something awful.
It said, Last month in our village, three children and one elder died of hunger. If we do not have help, we expect at least fifteen others will die before the year’s end.
My knees threatened to buckle. Four people dead of hunger! Three of ’em kids like me! And an elder who could have been somebody’s gram, as precious as my own and loved just as fiercely.
And there were so many more.
“I don’t think I made enough biscuits last night,” I said softly.
Jura gaped. “This is . . . wow. This is intense.”
That afternoon, Jura and I picked out our first eight wishes—because that’s how many biscuits I had made. Then I whispered to the bread, staying faithful to the wishers’ requests—after all, they knew what they needed far better than I ever could.
With sixty-six wishes remaining, I brought a bucket that night, rather than a cup, to hold all the starlight. The stars obliged and filled it to the brim. Thanks to Dilly’s flour, I had more than enough fixin’s, but it was nearly daybust before I finished baking all that dough.
Jura met me at my house on Monday morning. From there, we went to the post office, where a little pre-planning—by which I mean a biscuit held back for a certain purpose—paid off.
“There’s just no way I can give you free boxes and postage,” Postmaster Marion said, her face squinched with regret. “I’d get in terrible trouble. I wish I could help you.”
Did somebody say wish?
“Miss Marion, have you eaten breakfast yet?” I asked.
“Why, now that you mention it, I’ve been so busy since the truck came in, I haven’t had a chance.”
Jura pulled a biscuit from her purse and wafted it under Marion’s nose. “Have you heard about Genuine’s dee-licious biscuits?”
“I might have,” Marion admitted. “Is that . . . one of ’em?”
I whispered Marion’s wish to the biscuit and offered it to her. Two minutes after her last mouthful, the phone rang. Marion answered it.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said to the caller. “Yes, ma’am. I surely will, ma’am. You, too. Goodbye.” She hung up the phone.
“You already know what I’m going to say, don’t you?” Marion asked.
“We got our boxes and stamps,” I replied.
“Headquarters wants all the postmasters to choose a local charity and cover their shipping costs, postage, boxes—everything down to the last scrap of packing tape. Some new public affairs campaign.” Marion gave her head a shake. “Looks like I choose you two.”
Some butt-waggling victory dancing followed, but not too much. We had important biscuits to ship.
At homeroom, Jura showed up at my desk with a stack of papers printed off the school computer. Forty-three new wish requests.
Another twenty-six came in before lunch.
There were eighty, total, by the time the last bell rang. I was in for another sleepless night.
That evening, Gram watched from the kitchen table as I darted between the raindrops, bringing in my second bucket of starlight.
“My goodness, Gen. You starting a factory operation?” She picked up a rolling pin and started kneading flour.
“Something like that,” I replied, surly with weariness.
“Anything I should know about?”
I shrugged.
I could tell she was aiming for a more satisfying reply. When I didn’t offer one, she only said, “Hope they don’t go bad before you use ’em all. Though the magic might keep ’em fresh. Even after all these years, I still don’t know what all that starlight’s capable of.”
Surely I should have told her about Wish to End Hunger right then, but with last night’s lack of sleep and the promise of a long night in front of me, it just seemed easier to hold off.
“There’s peach cider, if you want some,” I mumbled instead. “Mister Cortez brought it in trade for a wish that he could get rid of a tune that’s been stuck in his head.”
“And did he?”
“About six seconds after he ate his wish biscuit.”
Gram’s voice seemed a little far away as she said, “That’s real fine.”
After a time, she added, “Gen?”
I didn’t take my eyes off my work, but said, “Yeah, Gram?”
There came a long pause.
“It can wait. You’re busy.”
Gram turned in around nine that night, but I was still making biscuits long past two. I was so dog-tired as I staggered from the kitchen that I accidentally knocked the miracle flour off the counter, sending a huge puff of it into the air and all across the floor. It took me another thirty minutes to clean up the mess I’d made.