I sat outside with my son. Everyone sat outside that night, it seemed, or leaned out their windows and over their balconies. You’d think we were all trying to escape from something sinister indoors, and maybe we were. Maybe that’s what we’ve been trying to do for millennia.

We’d dragged out two slatted chairs from the kitchen so we could lounge and stare up at the sky. Andrew wore his WWE cap and a shirt that was too baggy on him but that didn’t used to be. It wasn’t the way a twelve-year-old should be growing — he shouldn’t be deflating.

”It’s amazing,” Andrew said, and I said I agreed, although I was maybe the only person that night not looking up. I hadn’t seen him smile much recently. Not the genuine type — just the brave plastic type he wore because he didn’t like to see me sad. So I didn’t look up.

“What do you think their wish was, exactly?” he said. “Because, like, they didn’t have pollution back then, right?”

”Not really,” I said. “Maybe whisks of smoke curled up from their fires. I doubt there was much more than that.”

”So, what do you think it was? The exact words?’

I thought a while. Wondered, if I saw a sky like this, what I’d wish for. “Maybe this person had this very same view, thousands and thousands of years ago. And it blew their mind so much that they wished to share it with everyone. That we could all see the heavens as clearly as them.”

”That’s cool.”

”It’s selfless,” I said. “I think if it had been me, I’d have wished for only me to have seen the sky like this every night. I just wouldn’t have thought beyond that. But whoever that was, they wanted us all to share in the beauty.”

This was the second night we’d been able to see the night sky so clearly — even in a city as bright as this. The sky had cleared up yesterday evening, as if god’s hand had swept over the dirt and cleansed the air itself. Not even light could pollute it now.

”Remember,” Andrew said, “how you used to tell me dad was a star and watching down on us?”

I felt a sudden, guilty nausea. Andrew had been young and I’d mostly said it to soothe him. Maybe to soothe me, too. He hadn’t mentioned it in a couple of years. “You remember that, huh?”

“We’d be able to see him now.” Andrew peered up at the stars, eyes slowly roving, seemingly taking each one in and assessing the possibility. Except there were millions. “Maybe, you know, after… Maybe I’ll be up there sitting next to him.”

I told him not to say such things and turned away as I wiped my eyes. Told him he was going to be fine — that he was strong and going to make it. But the shirt was so big on him, and nothing yet had worked, and I’d kept none of my promises so far, so I think he knew better than to trust to my new ones.

After a while he said, ”Do you really think it was someone’s wish?”

”What else could it be?“ I replied. “No one can explain it.”

“I hope it was.”

Before we went indoors, I finally looked up at the sky. I knew a wish would take thousands of years to reach the wishing star — if it even existed — and I knew that it might never come true. It wasn’t a wish for me, or even for Andrew. We were on our own now. And I knew I wouldn’t be around to see a wish I made take shape. But one day I hoped that no other parent or child had to go through this, so I closed my eyes and wished.