Wishbone

Elliot Finch had spent four years at Bramble & Co. without leaving so much as a fingerprint on the place.

He was the sort of man whose name you forgot between syllables. He wore neutral ties, neutral shoes, carried a neutral smile that never quite reached his eyes. He was always in early, always last to leave, and yet when he held open the door, people walked through him like a smudge on glass.

If you asked around, they’d say Elliot was nice. Reliable. A good sport.

Which is to say: invisible.

So, on the day the break room whiteboard announced the “Annual Prosperity Lottery,” Elliot didn’t expect anything. He poured his burnt coffee, nibbled his dry muffin, and watched the others cluster around the sign-up sheet like pigeons fighting over a stale crust. They called it a joke, a silly office tradition — but everyone leaned in a little closer when they thought the HR lady wasn’t looking.

It was Janet from Payroll who leaned across the coffee station and said, too brightly, “You should enter, Elliot! Who knows? Maybe this is your year!” She smiled with all her teeth, but not her eyes.

So, Elliot did. He scribbled his name at the bottom, smudged in between five other signatures that seemed to tremble with hope or dread — it was hard to tell which. He didn’t believe in luck. But he did believe, a little, in wanting.

Two days later, they gathered in the break room for stale donuts and forced applause. His name came out of the rust-speckled raffle drum like a bad magic trick. There was polite clapping — just a hair too eager — and someone produced a small, black velvet box as if they’d been waiting.

Inside sat the Wishbone.

It was smaller than he expected. Gold-plated, dull with age, nestled in velvet like a dead insect on display.

“Speech!” someone crowed. The room laughed. Elliot laughed too, awkward and warm, already dizzy with the possibility of something.

Janet pressed the box into his hands. “Don’t forget,” she said, close enough that he could smell her lavender perfume. “You have to make your three wishes. Right now. Tradition’s tradition.”

He looked at the tiny, ugly charm. Everyone leaned in. Their eyes glittered like wet stones.

Three wishes. Just three. Then, maybe, he wouldn’t be invisible anymore.

So Elliot cleared his throat, shut his eyes, and whispered his heart’s small, secret prayers into the brittle gold crack of the Wishbone — oblivious to the way the room exhaled when he was done.

The first wish came true on a Wednesday.

“I wish people would notice me.”

“I wish I could move up.”

“I wish Tom Bragley would just get out of my way.”

Tom Bragley, Senior Accounts — the man who flicked pastry flakes at interns and called Elliot Ethan three years running. Tom, who laughed too loud and always got the last slice of pizza at Friday meetings. Tom, who sat right where Elliot wanted to be.

On Wednesday, Tom didn’t come in.

On Thursday, the rumor was all over the office before HR could hush it: Tom was dead. Shot on the subway platform at Canal Street. Wrong place, wrong time, they said. A robbery gone sideways — a wallet tossed, a watch missing, a bullet in the gut.

They said it was tragic. Unbelievable.

Except Elliot did believe it. Because by Monday, Tom’s glass office was being cleared out, and Elliot’s manager was quietly nudging him forward. Temporary fill-in, of course, they said, pressing a hand to his back like they were helping him step into a grave. You know the accounts. You’re the natural choice.

Elliot told himself it wasn’t his fault. He told himself it was the city, bad timing, a fluke of the universe.

He repeated it in the dark of his apartment that night while the Wishbone sat politely on his nightstand — where he knew he hadn’t left it.

He stared at it until dawn. He didn’t sleep.

By the time the second wish bled through, Elliot had learned the bone’s appetite wasn’t picky.

The regional sales head’s scandal wasn’t just numbers in the wrong column — it was federal agents at his front door at 3 a.m., children crying as they dragged him out in cuffs. His mugshot was everywhere. Elliot’s name rose up the shortlist before the ink on the indictment dried.

People did notice him now. They nodded. They smiled, teeth tight. They never turned their backs on him in the break room.

He tried to burn the Wishbone. He wrapped it in old pay stubs, doused it in lighter fluid on his tiny apartment balcony. Watched it curl in the flames, smelled the acrid sting of burning metal.

The next morning, it was waiting for him in his top desk drawer, perched on a stack of promotion paperwork. Its gold glint was fresh and unscarred.

Trust me, read the note in Janet’s careful cursive.

He didn’t trust Janet. He didn’t trust any of them.

The third wish, though — that one terrified him most.

He’d wished to be noticed. Now they all noticed. Every whisper felt like a knife scraping bone. Eyes followed him down the hall like stray dogs waiting for scraps.

In the reflection of the break room fridge, he could see them behind him — the ones who’d clapped when he made his wishes. They watched him with that same brittle grin. They weren’t afraid of him.

They were relieved. Relieved it was him now.

He tried to warn them. When the new lottery sheet went up, Elliot lingered by the break room door. He tore it down once — Janet printed a new one.

He told the new hires: It’s not luck. It’s a trap. Don’t sign. They laughed, wide-eyed, the same way he had. Desperate for something. Anything.

They didn’t believe him. Why would they? He was proof it worked.

He couldn’t unsee the pattern now: a wish whispered, a disaster shuffled into someone else’s deck. The people who gathered around him now looked at him like he was radioactive. They patted his shoulder, asked how he was sleeping. They laughed too hard at his jokes. They never sat too close.

Sometimes he’d catch them watching him from the break room door. A quiet, hungry little huddle. A few would nod. A few just smiled — that same tight, thin smile he saw in the mirror more and more.

Elliot wasn’t sleeping much. He had a few close calls. He almost stepped in front of a bus because his mind was elsewhere. Someone yanked him back. On the sidewalk, his heart racing, he felt the Wishbone in his pocket.

How had it gotten there? He’d left it in his desk drawer at work.

The last time the bone saved him, it was a stroke. He felt it clawing at his brain at his desk — vision swimming, jaw slack. He fell sideways. There were footsteps. A hand on his shoulder.

And then he woke up in the break room, alone, head pounding. The Wishbone lay in his open palm, warm and pulsing like a second heart.

He knew then what it wanted. He knew what they wanted too — the quiet ring of eyes around him, watching, waiting. The club didn’t need to say a word.

So when the intern stepped in — fresh tie, hungry smile — Elliot felt something in him break. A piece of him that still wanted to believe he was good.

He pressed the velvet box into the kid’s trembling hands.

“Congratulations,” Elliot rasped. His voice felt like rust and regret. The kid’s eyes shone so bright.

“Trust me,” Elliot said, and the lie cut his tongue raw on the way out. He smiled anyway, teeth too big for his mouth, soul too small to stop it.

“Trust me. You’ll love it.”