The Careless Wish

No loose eyelash was safe around Carrie Strait. No fountain in her path was left penniless, and she had permanent claim on the Thanksgiving turkey wishbone. Wishing was a near-daily ritual for as long as Carrie could remember. As a child, her wishes were silly and materialistic, ranging from the newest toy to a pet unicorn. The wishing continued as she aged, but the suffocating weight of adulthood led to far more practical and desperate desires.

The weightiness of the birthday wish stayed consistent through her years of wishing. Carrie made countless frivolous wishes as the opportunities arose but paid far more reverence to the birthday wish. To her, it held the most power, so she saved her greatest wish for the moment she blew out her candles.

For the past 20 years, she cashed in her birthday wish on the same thing– to be free of her intense shyness. She’d been a shy child, but her parents assured her that it was a phase. To Carrie’s dismay, she settled into it, slowly backing away from society and shrinking into the quiet comfort of her own company.

Her shyness got worse with each passing birthday. Gone were the days of forced interaction at school. Her job was fully remote, so there was no risk of awkward break room talk. The more time she spent alone, the more terrifying meeting and talking to strangers became. Her body betrayed her in the few times she tried in recent years. Ordering from a chatty barista made her chest bloom with hives. Small talk with a stylist once made Carrie so nauseated that she ran out of the salon with foils still in her hair.

Which is why, on Carrie’s 31st birthday, she sat alone in her apartment with single candle in her red velvet cupcake and recited the familiar wish – to not fear strangers, to be less shy, to be different.

Prior to the cupcake, she’d managed to get in three mindless wishes throughout the day. She flipped a penny into a fountain, wishing for a raise at work. She hoped for clearer skin while blowing an eyelash that fell onto her nose. She even stumbled upon a four-leaf clover while pacing and fretting over what the next 10 years of her life would look like. She plucked it while wishing to see the future.

The next morning, Carrie stepped outside with an embarrassing glimmer of hope. It was her tradition to take a walk the morning after her birthday, using a neighborhood walk to test her shyness, hoping to find that her wish came true. If she had her usual physical reaction to a stranger offering a friendly wave, she knew it was another unsuccessful birthday.

Minutes into her walk, a woman balancing three bulging bags came out of a grocery store 50 yards ahead and headed in Carrie’s direction. The familiar geyser of sweat pooled in her palms and Carrie was humiliated by the crushing disappointment. She was still the same shy, sweaty Carrie, just one year older. Suddenly, a tingling started in her toes and rushed to her head. This was a new reaction, she thought. A gust of wind blew through her hair and her eyes slammed shut. When she opened them, she looked around and found herself seated in an empty movie theater. Before she had time to question what happened, the screen in front of her lit up with an image just like the one Carrie saw seconds earlier.

It showed the woman with the heavy bags walking out of the grocery store and towards Carrie. The image on the screen panned down to show the woman’s untied shoe. The woman tripped over the loose lace and sent her grocery bags flying.

Then, as quickly as Carrie was rushed into the movie theater, she was back on the sidewalk. She watched the woman getting closer, and just like she’d seen on the screen, the woman’s shoe was untied. Had Carrie seen this woman’s future? Was she meant to warn her of her fate? How could she warn her when Carrie couldn’t even look her in the eye?

The woman was only a couple feet away, and Carrie stood frozen in her own panic. She pointed at the woman’s shoe, hoping a silent warning would be enough. The woman looked at her strangely and started to ask Carrie what she was pointing at, but it was too late. The woman tripped over her shoelace, and her groceries went airborne. Blueberries rolled into the streets and eggs smashed onto the sidewalk. Instead of helping the woman, Carrie broke out into a run, weaving through the baby potatoes that had freed themselves from their packaging. She ran until her lungs begged her to stop, and she collapsed onto a park picnic table to catch her breath.

“What the hell was that,” Carrie muttered.

Perhaps all her time without social interaction finally caused her to lose grip with reality. Maybe her morning tea was laced with a hallucinogen. There was no logical explanation for what happened. She mentally retraced her last 24 hours, trying to identify anything that could have led to this bizarre occurrence. She ate her usual breakfast of oatmeal, she worked, she went for a walk…

“Oh no,” Carrie dropped her head into her hands, remembering the four-leaf clover. She wished to see the future, but this wasn’t what she meant. She’d wanted to see her future, not a stranger’s immediate future. Carrie thought back to her wish and cursed her lack of specifics. She knew the first rule of wish-making was using specific language. This wasn’t fair. If she’d known that she was going to be granted only one wish, she would have been more careful. Years full of unfulfilled wishes, and this is the one that finally came true? All the energy put into her birthday wishes, just to be overpowered by an innocuous little weed with an extra leaf.

Carrie looked around at the people in the park, couples walking hand-in-hand and friends chatting over coffee. She yearned for the ability to participate in mundane chatter. Instead, she was still as painfully shy as always and now saddled with a useless “superpower”. She felt even further from normal than yesterday.

In the midst of her wallowing, the tingling washed over Carrie again.

“Not again,” she closed her eyes and pleaded with whatever cruel higher power granted this wish.

The plea was ignored, and she was jostled through space and time and dropped back into the theater, looking at the same park she’d been in moments before. An older man came into focus, strolling the track that lined the park. A tennis ball from one of the courts sailed over the fence and whacked him squarely in the back of his head. Before Carrie could see what happened next, she was thrown back into reality. She spotted the older man from her vision across the park, by the tennis courts. Her mind raced as she deliberated her options. Should she run up to him and tell him to change course? Sit by and watch as the man gets walloped by a tennis ball? Scream across a park full of people for him to watch out? All options sounded about as appealing as licking a rusty spoon.

The pop of a tennis ball hitting a racquet got her attention, and she watched helplessly as the ball sailed over the fence. She opened her mouth to heed a warning, but only a small croak came out. The ball connected with his head, and a crowd of park goers swarmed to check on him. As the kind strangers helped the man, Carrie laid her head on the picnic table and sobbed.

She couldn’t handle being destined to a life of knowing what accidents and inconveniences would befall strangers right before they happened. Before, her shyness only negatively impacted her, but now, it was impacting others. She could have saved the woman’s groceries or protected the man, if only she’d been braver.

Carrie picked her head up off the table and dried her tears with her sleeve.

“This is a disaster,” she said under her breath.

“What’s a disaster?” a voice from behind her asked. Carrie’s back stiffened. Before she could turn around, the tingling returned. This time, she was relieved to momentarily escape real life. The relief was short-lived when the screen came to life.

Carrie cringed as an image of herself at the picnic table appeared. The Carrie on the screen was dressed in the same outfit she’d put on earlier that day, with deep crimson cheeks and darting eyes. From those tells, Carrie knew that someone must be trying to interact with her, but they were out of frame.

Watching her own inability to exist in the same space with someone filled Carrie with an unbridled rage. This plight of her incurable shyness was maddening. She’d tried so hard to fight against herself for years, ending each day bone-tired from braving small talk. She eventually gave up and gave in to who she was, now exclusively using wishes instead of trying to take action.

The screen went dark and Carrie was back in reality. She expected to see some minor disaster happen to her like in her prior visions – perhaps a bird pooping on her head or a dog leaping onto her lap. This time, the magical screen only showed her anxious face, which she supposed was disaster enough.

“Are you ok?” the voice behind her spoke again.

Carrie kept her focus forward but shook her head no.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

Another shake of her head.

“Can I sit with you?”

Carrie kept her head still. She silently willed the overly friendly stranger to leave. She figured that since she could inexplicably see the future, telepathy wasn’t a total pipe dream.

“I know you’re probably hoping I leave, but I can tell how distraught you are without even looking at your face. I wouldn’t feel right leaving you alone, so I’m going to sit on the other side of the table. You don’t have to talk to me, but you can if you’d like.”

An older woman with porcelain skin and soft green eyes sat down. Her black curly hair peeked out from the bottom of a neon yellow stocking cap, and a hot-pink scarf was wrapped around her neck. The thought of wearing anything so loud sent a chill up Carrie’s slumped spine.

Carrie tried to make eye contact and sputter out a greeting, but her face filled with flames, just as she’d seen in her vision.

“Oh doll, you’re working too hard. I said you didn’t have to say anything. Sometimes just having someone sit with you can make you feel better. I'm Ruth, by the way,” the woman said.

Carrie opened her mouth, but her throat constricted.

“I hope you don’t mind if I talk. I’ve been told I’m a bit of a chatterbox. I know it can be annoying, but I just can’t help myself. I’ve tried to pipe down, but I just go right back to babbling.”

Carrie marveled at the ease with which Ruth vocalized her every thought. She luxuriated in the idea of being labeled too talkative.

Ruth was off to the races, like someone put a quarter in her back and wound her up. She moved through talking about the weather, the new grocery store opening around the block and the particularly aggressive squirrel terrorizing her backyard, all without any response from Carrie.

The tingle in her toes returned, but Carrie wanted to stay and watch this master at work. The powers that be had other plans, and she was snatched back to the theater.

The screen showed Ruth at the same picnic table, now in a lime green track suit. This appeared to be the first of Carrie’s visions that extended past the next few moments. Ruth was chatting away as the image zoomed out. There, across from Ruth, sat Carrie, also in a different outfit. She was nodding along while picking her thumbnail. She didn’t look to contribute much, if anything, to the conversation, but she didn’t appear to be drenched in nervous sweat or covered in hives either. Seeing herself sitting with a stranger and not vibrating with nerves was completely unfamiliar to Carrie. Was it possible that she and Ruth would meet again? The screen went blank and Carrie blinked, once again sitting across from Ruth and her neon yellow hat.

“Oh dear, you’ve got an eyelash right there,” Ruth said, motioning to Carrie’s cheek.

Carrie reached her hand up to her cheek and plucked the loose eyelash. She looked at it and took a deep breath. Now wasn’t the time for more wishes, she thought, flicking the eyelash off her finger. She squeezed her eyes shut and acted before her brain could stop her.

“Would you like to meet me here next weekend?” Carrie blurted out.

“Why, yes I would,” Ruth replied with a smile. “I think I see a future where you and I could be friends.”