"This can't be happening..." Jon said, staring into the empty box that, until some point in the last hour or so, had housed the wishing stone left to him by his grandfather. Potentially the most powerful object in the world, and he had managed to lose it.
"You're sure it was in there, right?" Karyn asked, sitting on his bed. "You didn't stick it anywhere else?"
"I'm sure. One hundred percent." Jon said. "So, that means...someone must have come in here and taken it."
"Well, there were no signs of breaking and entering, so if anyone did, it must have been your mom, or Mikey or Zoe." Karyn said, counting off the potential suspects on her fingers as she listed them.
"Couldn't be mom. She leaves for work way before we head to school. She was gone before I even came down for breakfast." Jon said. "So that leaves Mikey and Zoe. And neither of them have any real reason to have been in my room, so it could easily have been either of them."
"Well, Mikey's just a kid, so if he has it, he couldn't do much with it, right?" Karyn suggested, hoping it would lift Jon's spirits.
"Yeah, nothing. Except maybe wishing up a dinosaur, or super powers, or horrible robots, or it could get taken by some other kid, or..."
"Okay, okay. I get it." Karyn said. "I know the stone is dangerous, I was just trying to calm you down."
"Now's not a time I want to be calmed down." Jon said. "I'm gonna be on edge until I can find that thing."
"Well, like I said, Mikey having it is less likely to cause damage, so let's just head to school and see if Zoe has it. I can't really afford a detention or call to my parents..." Karyn said.
Jon begrudgingly nodded, stealing one last glance at the now empty box. He left his room, followed closely by Karyn, and headed to the front door. He picked up his back pack and made sure the door was locked. As soon as Karyn walked out, he followed, closing the door behind him.
The pair then headed toward their school once again, though this time with far less talking. They both worried about the missing stone, though Jon's worry was far more noticeable than Karyn's.
As they approached the school, Jon looked up and took pause. Karyn looked at him and was about to ask him what was wrong when she looked toward the school and saw what had caused him to stop.
"I...I think I know who took the stone." Karyn said. Jon would have replied with some witty remark, but the sight the pair was witnessing had him speechless.
The school had gone from a standard high school to something more likely to be seen in a Tim Burton movie. There were gargoyles decorating the roof, a number of tall, dark towers sticking into the sky, and a large, looming gate that replaced the front door, and those were just the immediately noticeable changes.
"They...changed the school." Jon said, still trying to fully grasp the situation.
"Yeah, that much is pretty obvious, Jon." Karyn said. "We need to find some way to..."
"Karyn. We both remember that they changed the school. We remember what it was like before." Jon said, turning to look his friend in the eyes.
Realization crept onto her face as she grasped what Jon was getting at. "So...they wished we would know."
Jon turned to look more closely at the school. He couldn't see anyone in the windows, though he did notice that there were now bars in each of the windows. He also noticed that there didn't seem to be any way in, or out.
"I don't think we should stay here..." Jon said. "We should head back to my house, plan something. They don't know we know they have the stone, so..."
"We don't, huh?" came a voice piercing the eerie calmness that had settled on the school grounds. Jon and Karyn looked at each other before looking up toward the roof of the school to see who was addressing them. Jon inhaled sharply as he saw the figure. It would have been one thing if it was his sister, standing atop the school with the stone in hand, but she was nowhere to be seen.
He glared up at the girl as the gravity of the situation fully sunk in. "Hello, Athena." he said.
"Hello, Jon. Looking for something?" Athena asked, smirking and holding up the stone.
