I have so many wishes, I could springboard into a pool of them and not sink anywhere near the bottom. I want to rewind time. I want to repeat the last two weeks of December on a loop. I want to go back to Christmas at midnight and live inside that moment, building castles and kingdoms in it, and to never have Hall taken away. I want to not feel like I’ve got a beehive inside me, a restless swarm, whenever I’m not in the spotlight or whenever I’m in the spotlight but it isn’t for good reasons. I want to live a hundred different lifetimes and see who I might have been in each of them, and I want Hall to be able to taste every flavor of coffee creamer, and I want all of my siblings’ dreams to come true. I want for everyone I know and love to be marvelously content, always. But I’ve already cast my wishes; I’ve cast hundreds of them.

All I can think about is the whirlwind force that is Hall, and how much he’s changed my life. How much I admire him, how much I want to be like him. If I’m going to be like Hall, then there’s only one way to respond to a once-in-a-lifetime chance like this. “Can I grant somebody else’s greatest wish?”

I jump back at the sound that emits from the speakers, a click followed by an ethereal and exceptionally loud Ahhhhhh. “Rare achievement unlocked,” a clear new voice resounds in monotone. “Paying it forward.”

“That’s new,” the operator remarks, sounding almost interested. “I’ve never had someone donate their wish before.”

I’m feeling weak by this point. “Yeah, well. I figure I’ve already had my turn.”

“Noble.” She’s back on her sass. “To whom am I paying your wish forward, then?”

“Hall. I want for Hall’s greatest wish to be granted. He deserves it.” I swallow. “He’s just, this absolutely amazing person, with the most dazzling smile conceivable and adorable sweaters he knits himself, and he deserves the best, anything he wants.” If he wants to roam among the dinosaurs, he should get to. If he wants to be flattened and digitalized as a Peanuts character to live inside the world of A Charlie Brown Christmas, then so be it. Even if I never see him again, it lights me up with the best feeling in the universe to know that for once, I’m going to turn the tables and be the one to make his dreams come true.

The operator has no patience for my sentimentality. “A wish that’s been paid forward operates at a higher frequency, with fewer regulations. The last time this happened, the quokka was invented.”

“Wait. How loose with the regulations are we talking here? Last I checked, there were tons of restrictions on what a holiday spirit could and could not do.”

“Do, yes. But we’re talking about receiving, by another subset of magic with its own power and rules. The New Year’s Resolution laws and licensing are a different beast entirely, which most fail to appreciate. I can’t tell you how many holiday spirits only bother to learn about the laws of their own preferred holidays. It’s all in the legislation! I don’t know why everyone who calls in here is so unfamiliar with the legislation: it’s only eighty thousand pages, and you’re human, so it’s not like you have anything better to do. What, do you need to watch another episode of Storage Wars?”