It was a doggishly hot August day. Rachel blew the hair out of her face as she cleared the plates from the empty table. After clearing the table she found they had left her only a nickle. For a moment she was angry. She had worked really hard to give those people good service, and all they had left her was a damn nickle. She shook off the anger as she took the dirty dishes back to the kitchen. It was her last table of the day and she wasn't going to let it bother her.

It was a pretty long walk home after an eight hour shift on her feet. Rachel didn't mind it so much because there were many quirky little shops along the street and she could window shop. There was one shop that she would stop and look into the window wistfully. It was a used electronics store. In that store was a computer that she wanted deperately. She was so tired of writing on her old electric typewriter. She'd been saving all summer long for that computer. Paying on it a little every week. She only owed one hundred more dollars on it and it would be hers. She might even have enough to buy it this week depending how much the electric bill was.

Her parents thought she was crazy. She didn't get a nice safe job after college. Like a teaching job, anything with some stability. Instead she lived in a tiny third floor apartment in the city with only a window air conditioner, and no view at all. She was a waitress nights and weekends so she could spend her days writing. She wanted to be a published writer more than anything in the world. She had listened to her heart and her Grandmother and went for her dreams.

Before her Grandmother had gotten really sick they had gone to lunch just the two of them. Rachel was a senior in highschool at the time, and her Grandmother wanted to know what she planned to do with herself after highschool. She wanted to know what Rachel's dreams for her life were and how she planned to accomplish them. After some hesitation Rachel poured out her truest wish to be a writer. That she wanted to major in English and become a writer of novels. Her Grandmother made her promise that she would go for her dreams no matter what anyone said. Her Grandmother said that if wishes were nickels she would be a rich woman and she didn't want her granddaughter to feel that way when she was her age. It was a promise Rachel kept even against her parents hopes and dreams for her. She figured if she failed at writing she could always become a teacher later, but this was a chance she just had to take. So she moved into the artsy end of downtown and procceeded to write her first novel. It was slow going on her old electric typewriter, she kept misplacing pages and getting them out of order. A wordproccessor would be much faster.

She got home and checked the mail. There it was the dreaded electric bill. She closed her eyes as she opened it. It was only sixty three dollars. Much less than she had budgeted for. She nearly jumped for joy. She went to her money box and began counting. When she was done she was five cents short of getting her computer. Until she remembered that sorry little nickle in her back pocket. She thought of her Grandmother and she pulled that wish out of her back pocket with a smile. She packed up her money and proceeded down the street to get the computer she had been dreaming of for so long. As she walked into the store she thought, "Sometimes wishes and nickels are one in the same."