Jon looked around the room and found a purse hanging over the side of a chair, near where she had put her clothes. It still had all her things in it--or what Jon had thought would have been her things if she had really been a 'she'. The identification in it showed that her new name was Jana McMillan. Is that really a name, she wondered?
Jana heard some noises. Someone was apparently coming. Quickly she tried to put the stone in her pocket... except, of course, her dress didn't have any pockets. She hurriedly stashed it in the purse and waited.
One of the kidnappers opened the door, but there was a man with a gun some distance behind him. It seemed kidnappers knew better to act like they did in TV shows where they stand so close that the hero can knock them down before they have a chance to fire their gun. The closer kidnapper handed her a cell phone.
She picked it up and put it to her ear. "Hello? Is that you? Oh, god, are you all right. Jana?" They must have been close enough to their starting point to be well within the wish range.
The voice wasn't that familiar, but she replied "I'm okay. They didn't hurt me, they just made me wear some dress because they wanted to know if they could leave me here for days."
"It's me, it's Mom! Your dad and Sarah are all worried about this!"
The kidnapper snatched the phone and said into it "That's enough. You know she's alive. Now bring the money to this location...."
Jana had heard that many criminals weren't very smart. They hadn't heard of tracing cell phones. On the other hand, she had no idea if tracing a cell phone was as easy as it seemed on TV--the only experience she had with kidnapping was on TV, after all. In real life it was scary and interesting in the "may you live in interesting times" sort of way. Being a girl in the process was even worse. At least, she thought glumly, she wouldn't be embarrassed by wearing the dresses any more.
As the criminals shut and locked the door again, Jana rummaged through the purse for her magic stone. She didn't even know why she still had it--obviously, it's unlikely Sara's sister would inherit it from Jon's grandfather. Did it become something she found in an attic instead of inherited? She wanted to do something to fix this. But the problem was the first wish. Whatever she did, the scenario had to be interesting. How could she get out of this mess and still keep the situation interesting? Maybe she could just wish away the kidnappers and being a girl was enough by itself for the stone to call interesting. Still, there had to be a better idea. As her slim hand grasped the stone she thought about a wish....
