Inspired by: The song 'Hello' by Adele, musing over German words and, of course, the lovely book by Betty Greene that made me write this. Enjoy and please review! Please? :)

Translation: I love you.

The night is silent.

I lift my head from my comfortable cavern of pillows and blankets to glance around the room. My roommate is asleep, snoring quite loudly, but I learned early on when I moved in to never to mention that she snores and never wake her up in the middle of the night.

The window on my side of the room is glowing from the moonlight. It's nice. During the day it shines with bright light from the sun and at night, it darkens and illuminates my bed with the cool calm light of the moon. Slowly I creep out of my bed, taking special care to avoid the creaking of my mattress. I pause my movement. Her snoring continues peacefully and I know that I succeeded in my stealth movements. I walk softly over to the window.

The stars are bright. It is a beautiful night. I just want to reach out and touch them. Bring them down to my level and fall in love with them, because they shine with wonder. I hesitantly held out my hand to the window. Did I dare open it? Maybe I could feel the breeze as well...

...but the sound of my roommate shifting around in her bed reminds me where I was and my hand falls down. The cost outweighed the reward unfortunately.

I should be sleeping, the school keeps a strict schedule of wake up times for the girls. But I don't want to sleep, because when I sleep, the dreams come. They are not bad, none are bad. Sometimes they are just filled with people I can no longer see again. Dreams that can't come true. Stars that I can't reach. That can be really disapointing to experience, over and over again.

I touch the ring that I always wear on my finger, I like to think it keeps me safe, like he is keeping me safe. Which is silly, of course, but I believe it. When I first came to this school, one of the girls spotted the ring and started joking with her friends about how they could pawn it off and be rich. I ignored them until she started to reach for it, I held my hand to my chest protectively and snarled, "Get away from it!" There was silence for a bit and the girl smirked at me and taunted, "Well, looks like the Nazi dog can bite, girls." I didn't have anything to say about that, so I turned around and left. It wasn't worth fighting a battle that couldn't be won.

As I gazed back out the window, I saw a flash of light that appeared and disapeared just as quickly. My mouth dropped and my mind raced.

A shooting star...

What did I want to wish for? I was a bit old, fifteen years old to be exact, to be wishing on a star. Would a wish even come true? I wondered to myself. Then words from Ruth came floating into my mind; Hon', if you believe in your wish, if you truly believe, then it might just happen. God sure will make it happen."

I gripped the edge of window and stared at the sky in thought.

I wish I was with Ruth and Sharon.

I wish for my mother's love and my father's pride.

I wish I could leave this horrid place.

I wish Anton was here.

I wish Anton was alive.

I wish he never died.

Those wishes could never come true, I knew that, so I made a decision. I closed my eyes and tilted my head to the stars.

Please, God, if you are there, and if Anton is there in Heaven, can you pass a message to him for me? Just one message.

I lifted up my hand to press my lips against the ring, the one thing I had that was part of him, something that was very precious to my heart.

I repeated the words that I had memorized a long time ago, because of that one time I had wanted to use them for my true friend.

Always and forever. Anton, ich liebe dich...