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bad for a while, and I was so angry that the ice started to come back. I got rid of it myself, though, you see.”
    The girl was surprised. “Yourself? But with what?” The girl didn’t see any sharp sticks around. The boy looked sad.
    “I used this,” he said, and put his hand weakly up to the necklace that she had made him. The stone was shattered in half. “It broke,” he said needlessly.
    “That doesn’t matter at all!” said the girl. “How is your heart? May I see?”
    The boy nodded and the girl moved his shirt and peered at his heart. It was beating a little weaker than usual, and it seemed larger. The ice was nowhere to be seen. The girl touched it with her finger, and it was very warm. She smiled.
    “I think that maybe you don’t have to worry about the ice coming back,” she said. The boy looked pleased for a bit. He didn’t seem to notice when the stars hopped off of the girl’s wrist and swarmed around his neck.
    “So did you see the wishing stars?” he asked.
    “Yes!” said the girl. “I was hoping to find you, and I was pleased when I saw them! I wouldn’t have found you otherwise, you know.”
    “Yes, I thought that you would see them. What are they doing? Hey, wait a minute!” The boy noticed that the little stars had taken the shattered stone out of the necklace and had tossed it out of the nest. The boy tried to grab it, but it slipped through the hole in his hand. One of the stars said something to him quite firmly, and the boy quieted.
    “What did it say?” asked the girl.
    “It chastised me, and told me to let them finish. Stars, even baby ones, can be quite firm, you know.”
    The stars continued to swarm around his neck, and when they had finished, the boy had something new and whole hanging from the silver chain. It was a large white pearl.
    “Where did this come from?” he asked.
    “Well, um...”
    The girl didn’t really want to say, but the stars hopped all over each other to tell the story. The girl was very embarrassed, and looked at her hands.
    “I think,” said the boy, “that this makes me very happy.” They both looked down at his heart, which was swelling bigger and bigger. The boy put his hand over it. So did the girl.
    It was a beautiful feeling. It didn’t hurt at all.

 
    UNTIED

    The crazy man outside of my office window had been threatening to jump for at least two and a half hours. His ex-wife had remarried, he said. She had moved on. Her new husband was a doctor. Said doctor had written a novel. He worked closely with Operation Smile, Habitats for Humanity, and picketed for women’s rights. He knitted sweaters for cold, underprivileged children.
    “How could he do all that if he’s a doctor ?” I shouted, kneeling on my desk so I could hang my head out of the window. The crazy man paused. He thought. He allowed that maybe his wife— ex -wife—had allowed a few half-truths to surface, in order to make the new doctor-husband seem extra stellar. This seemed to perk the crazy man up some. “Maybe he’s just a really lousy doctor,” I said, and the crazy man smiled big.
    “I like you!” he declared, and then he whistled cheerily for the next half hour. A little disappointed, I sat back at my desk to work.
    It was impossible. The crazy man was distracting. He wore a horrible, flesh colored tie that did absolutely nothing for his blond hair and rosy coloring. It snapped in the wind like a pirate’s flag. It pranced around his neck, pressing its face against my window and nya-nya-nyaed at me like an ill-mannered school boy. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. It noticed this, and began to undulate around, running its tongue over its lips and wagging its eyebrows suggestively.
    I climbed back up on my desk, knocking my folder to the ground in my haste.
    “Your tie,” I yelled.
    “What?” He jumped about a foot; not a good thing to do out on a window ledge fourteen stories over Manhattan.
    “Your tie ,” I practically screamed. The tie