Of course, the stone had a distance limitation. This meant that only those within Jon's neighborhood who wished upon a star would have their wish come true.
Later that night, young Billy Peterson was trying to do his math homework. The multiplication and division was proving to be very frustrating for him. He wished he didn't have to do his homework. He wished he didn't have to go to school. Each division problem seemed harder than the last, which made him all the more frustrated.
And then he heard the song coming from his little sister's room. It was a song from a very old Disney movie, which Disney never seemed to get tired of playing. And it gave him an idea.
Billy rushed to his window and gazed up at the stars. And then he recited that little poem he had first heard when he was...four? Five?
"Starlight, star bright, first star I've seen tonight
I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight"
Billy's mind was still filled with angry thoughts about the school, so his wish was "I wish a dinosaur would eat the school."
Billy knew that wishes upon stars didn't really come true. And he knew that dinosaurs were extinct, and even if they weren't, they didn't eat schools. But saying it out loud after reciting the poem did make him feel a little better.
Billy went back to his homework, not knowing that his wish was about to come true.
The magic behind the wish went to work right away. First off, there never had been a species of dinosaurs that ate schools. The wish would have to work its way around such things, and combine a species of dinosaur with a few extraterrestrial species. The wish began doing just that, creating a new creature that matched Billy's mental image of a dinosaur (a T-Rex), and also had the dietary preference of Billy's wish. Soon, just such a creature materialized in front of Hammond Elementary School.
The new species of T-Rex stared at the building in front of it. It sniffed and its powerful nostrils caught the aroma of pencils, textbooks, and erasers all mixed together. This scent was, to the dinosaur, very appetizing indeed.
The T-Rex moved in toward the school, and then began munching on the corner of the building. To the dinosaur, this school was the most delicious, most scrumptious sort of food imaginable. It began eating and chewing with even greater enthusiasm.
Inside, the school janitor was aroused from his nap. He heard strange noises coming from the front of the school. When he saw that the whole front left corner of the school was gone, being eaten by what appeared to be a refugee from Jurassic Park, he turned tail and ran out the school's back door, screaming in terror.
The T-Rex did not notice or care. All it cared about was its meal.
The next morning, the news was being broadcast throughout the neighborhood and beyond. It was the first thing every resident woke up to. Eyewitness accounts reported a Tyrannosaurus Rex devouring Hammond Elementary School. The T-Rex apparently was last seen heading off into the woods. Helicopters were due to arrive in the area to search for the dinosaur. No injuries had been reported, though the school's janitor was said to be traumatized.
When Billy Peterson heard the news, he couldn't believe it. His wish had actually come true. He didn't know whether to be shocked or delighted...
Meanwhile, Jon couldn't believe the news. It all seemed absurd. A school-eating dinosaur was just a kid's fantasy, one Jon himself gave up while still in the third grade. But there was the news showing a barren empty space where Hammond Elementary School used to be -- even the foundations of the building were gone. And, they claimed, eyewitness accounts of the school being eaten.
Jon didn't know whether to try making a wish on the stone, or just go about the rest of the day as if this strange occurence had not happened...
