When he’d look out his window at night, he would start with one. One star. And the boy would make a wish on it, and the wish would be her name.
“At the sound of her name, a second star would appear. And then he’d wish her name again, and the stars would double into four. And four became eight, and eight became sixteen, and so on, in the greatest mathematical equation the universe had ever seen. And by the time an hour had passed, the sky would be filled with so many stars that it would wake his neighbors. People wondered who’d turned on the floodlights.
“The boy did. By thinking about the girl.”