"Well, it's about time you got here," Karyn said impatiently, watching Jon approach her. "I've been waiting for almost twenty minutes."
"Twenty minutes? Why'd you get here so early?" Jon asked.
"For the stone. Duh. I wanted to use it again. I was thinking of wishes all last night." She paused. "You did bring it, didn't you?"
"Of course, it's right here," he said, pulling it out of his pocket and showing her.
"Oh god. Jon, what happened to it?" Karyn asked, staring at the stone.
"What? What do you mean?" he asked. He brought the stone closer to his eyes. How did he not notice this before? There were two small divots in the stone, as if small pieces of it had splintered off.
"The stone didn't look like that yesterday," Karyn said. "What did you do to it?"
"Nothing," Jon said. "I didn't do anything to it." It was kind of a half lie, though. He remembered dropping the stone on his way to school, but surely an impact like that couldn't have caused this. Could it? He shook his head. "I think I should make a wish, to see what happened."
"Do you think that's wise?" Karyn asked. "For all you know, it may be broken."
She had a point. But he still needed to know what was going on.
Meanwhile, on her way to school with Zoe, Athena was ...
