Hey guys! I'm really excited to be starting this new story. It was inspired by the scene in Cress where she thinks she is going to die without ever being kissed, and I came up with a story where Cress is a cancer patient wishing to meet her favorite celebrity. I honestly don't know what my update schedule is going to look like since I'm working on another story, Commonwealth High, but I'll try to write as much as quickly as possible. As always, thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Whenever possible I used accurate medical information, but I am not an expert. You can correct me if you want, but I'm not going to change anything unless it is hugely, blatantly wrong.

CRESS

Cress had always thought of herself as somewhat of a miracle.

First of all, she was in the bottom 1% of sixteen-year-old girls for height. If she ever met her parents, she was going to slap them in the face for passing down stubborn little chromosomes that refused to let her grow taller - directly after punching them for abandoning her as a baby.

Second of all, she was a genius. Not in a good way. Her skills and smarts had earned her infinitely more bullies than friends. That was not hyperbole. Amount of bullies: too many to count. Amount of friends: exactly zero. Her math teacher had told her that the answer to any equation where you divide by zero was actually undefined, but Cress preferred to think about it as an infinity. At least that was a number.

Third of all, she was a survivor. The caretakers at Shell Orphanage had told Cress that she was the tiniest baby they had ever seen - barely four pounds, a result of being born prematurely after a rough pregnancy. But Baby Cress had fought through and somehow survived - yet sixteen years later, here she was in a hospital bed again. Surely one brush with death was enough for one person's life, right?

She was done with being a miracle.

Was it really too much to wish for a normal life? Cress pictured a celestial being up there - someone like a capital-G God or the Fates from Greek mythology or whatever - moving human figures around on the plane of the world, just like that dumb board game Life. A roll of the dice - oh look, Cress has leukemia! A draw of a card - oh no, she's relapsed! And let's make her an orphaned outcast midget too, just for fun!

Ninety percent. Ninety out of one hundred teenagers with acute myeloid leukemia successfully eradicated the disease after a few rounds of chemo - maybe even one. Of course, Cress was in the ten percent.

Her doctors and therapists often spewed out all sorts of crap about Cress being special and gifted and, they emphasized this, lucky to be alive. And she did appreciate her life, she truly did. She just wanted so much more. There had to be more to life than this lonely, empty state of numbness she had remained in for the past few years.

She had decided that she wasn't envious of people who had everything she didn't. She was obsessed with movie stars - particularly a certain Carswell Thorne - but she wasn't jealous of their lives, perfect as they seemed. She wasn't hopeful for a better life, either. She was wishful.

A hope is something that might happen. A wish is something that is impossible.

Cress thought back to that fateful day three weeks ago, the day of the scan. She had known what the results would be. The headaches and fatigue and bruising were exactly the same as the symptoms she'd had when she was first diagnosed, four years ago. It wasn't a surprise to anyone, really. Cress's doctor, Jacin Clay, had warned her that her leukemia was especially aggressive and she might relapse. But in a way, it was worse to know that something bad was going to happen than if you went into it oblivious. Because you think you're prepared but then the truth hits you smack in the face and you can't hold yourself together and pretend everything is okay anymore...

At least she hadn't had a screaming fit like her caretaker, Sybil. She had flown into a rage at the doctors, telling them that she didn't have any more money for treatment and they had clearly messed up when fixing Crescent Moon and why was this happening to them and how it was so unfair. Cress got the feeling that she wasn't mad at the doctors, she was mad at Cress for being the source of all her problems.

The curse on Sybil Mira's perfect life. A broken girl.

There is nothing sadder than a hospital playground.

When deserted, it is symbolic of the mere pleasures of childhood taken away by illness or injury. When full, it is symbolic of children trying to be normal, but still irrevocably separate from the normal kids who play at parks, not hospitals.

Cress had been to a lot of treatment centers. Specialists, oncologists, surgeons, pediatricians - everyone from all over the country. But no facility was gloomier than the one she spent most of her time in, Artemisia Hospital.

Most hospitals looked welcoming and happy but were actually prisons. Artemisia Hospital looked like a prison and was a prison. It wasn't just the imposing structure of white stone and glass or the lack of color in the entire building. It was the people. Every doctor and nurse and researcher was creepily perfect as if their only job criteria was to be pretty. For the lack of emotion Cress saw on their faces, they might've been human-shaped androids. Artemisia was considered a "top-notch center for medicine and research," and she was grateful for her treatment, but all the people were just so...cold.

She did like her doctor, though. Dr. Jacin Clay was always nice to her, though not overly affectionate. His gruff sense of humor and dry sarcasm was what had really endeared Cress to him.

While pondering all this, she made her way down to the playground. It was always deserted, which was nice. Cress wasn't a people person. Or a playground person. She just liked to come down here for a quiet afternoon of thinking in solitude. Normally she was too tired to leave her bed, but today she felt rejuvenated, more active than usual. Apparently her blood cell counts were going up, which meant Cress would leave the hospital soon.

She sat down on the swings, idly twirling the chains. Only one round of chemotherapy had gone by, but it was amazing how she had already slipped back into the monotonous routine of four years ago. It was like a recovered memory - buried deep under the surface until you just barely brush against it, and then it pops right back up.

The exhaustion. The countless doses of medicine. The waiting and hoping and praying for the treatment to work, but at the same time not having much hope. Being in a hospital took a toll on you mentally, not just physically. She had barely survived last time, and that was when she was full of childish hope and expectations for life. Cress had fought because she had assumed that life would get better eventually.

But now she had gotten a bitter taste of the real world, bitterer than the black coffee Sybil drank. Expectations faded and dreams receded. Life wasn't a fairy tale.

Now that she had lost the only anchor to the future, her only reason to keep fighting, Cress was scared. How was she supposed to get through this again?

THORNE

Another deal for a movie had come through, and Thorne already knew that he would take it.

The thing about doing something you hate for a long time is that after a while, you don't even fight it anymore. You simply don't have the will. He wondered if this was what it felt like to drown - you know the surface is only a few feet away, you can reach it if you just kick a little harder. But it's so much easier to let the waves wash over you. It's so much easier to give up.

Wow, way to go with the deep thinking, Thorne, he mused to himself. Looks like I've been watching too many TV shows.

He had started this journey young and anticipative - expecting Hollywood to be the fairy-tale world everyone imagined it as. At first, it was. Thorne, at just thirteen years old, had stolen the hearts of girls all over the world. People were asking him for autographs. He loved being recognized at malls and at school. It was the so-called "American dream."

But nothing could have prepared him for the harsh realities behind the veneer of enchantment. Thorne had charmed his way to stardom, seeing it as just another way to make money. A big-shot role to earn him lots of fans, maybe a few commercials, and then he was out. He had plans, after all. Ambitions cherished since childhood. Several involving a plane and an adventure.

As he got older, the directors and older actors stopped treating him like a prince. His work hours were endless. He had almost no time to sleep, much less keep up with his schoolwork and social media profiles. The people on set were harsh about criticizing his performance. He was forced to work out constantly to stay in shape since directors would cut his pay if he gained as little as a pound. He made friends who betrayed him and used him. Years of manipulation and judgment had damaged his self-esteem and ability to stand up for himself. Fans would never believe him if he said that. To them, Thorne seemed like the very personification of confidence. Some people even called him arrogant, though he had no idea why. But that was all a misconception.

It wasn't just about the toxic environment of Hollywood. Most of Thorne's co-stars were genuinely good people. Shallow, yes, but kind. They were the ones who donated to charity and were always nice to fans. And then there was Thorne, notorious for being involved in scandals. Anyone who had known him as a child would tell you all about his troublemaking past of cheating and trickery. I'm not the right person to be a star, he wanted to scream, but his voice was gone. I'm not as perfect as you think. Thorne was done with trying to be the person everyone thought he was.

Thorne wanted out. But the media refused to let him go from this never-ending cycle. Every time a deal came through, he would think, This is it. This is the last time. Yet he never found the strength to leave.

Raking his fingers through his hair, he sighed, replaying his conversation with his agent in his head. The part they were offering was Prince Eugene, in a remake of the fairy tale Rapunzel. The part involved singing. Thorne flinched, already imagining the brutal voice lessons yet to come.

Sure, he loved the fame. He had even come to love acting. He was just tired of it.

But it's really not too bad, he told himself. You're making money. You're famous. This is what you always wanted. At this point, things were never going to change. It was time to get used to it.

Both of them made a wish that night.

Cress wished to the stars from the rooftop balcony of the hospital. She was breaking the rules being up there, but she wanted to see the sky.

Thorne wished to the ocean from the patio of his million-dollar beach condo in LA. He had just accepted the deal for his next movie.

They didn't know it, but they both wished for the same thing.

They both desired the same thing: a normal life. But that was impossible.

So they wished for the next best thing.

A friend.

They were asteroids shooting through the galaxy. They were stones being tossed among the waves. Constantly buffeted by outward forces, barely clinging to their lives -

Naturally, fate pulled them in different directions.

A megastar and a dying girl.

Galaxies apart. Light-years away.

But as Cress proved, miracles can happen.