I was about to approach him, possibly to grab him by the collar and force him to tell me what I wanted to know, when I heard my door open loudly. I turned around to see my older sister Jill looking at me.
"You coming down to dinner Nat?" she asked, "We started eating already and mom wanted me to make sure you were alright and... um..." I followed her line of sight toward my bed, wondering how I was going to explain this...
I realized, looking over at the place on my bed that he'd been sitting, that I might not have to. He was gone, and there wasn't the slightest sign that he'd been there a moment ago. Maybe he hadn't. Maybe I was going crazy... Not a possibility that enjoyed considering, but how much did I really know about the rock? The answer was not much. Grandpa had been awfully vague about the specifics in his letter, and I began to wonder what he'd left out. All of this went through my mind in a fraction of a second as I turned back toward Jill.
She had a rather perplexed expression on her face, and appeared to be staring at the bed a little too intently. I gave her a questioning look, and when she finally got around to noticing it, her attention was diverted back to me.
"You okay?" I asked, trying my best to act like this was just another ordinary day in the Gibson household. It wasn't an easy ruse to undertake.
She slowly shook her head and looked back at me. "Fine," she told me, "I'm fine, I just thought I... It looked like..." She shook her head a little more forcefully, and forced a determined look. Jill had never been one to show weakness and I was happy to see that this hadn't changed with my wish. "Anyway, like I was saying, we've started eating and mom was wondering if you were okay," she paused, looking at me almost intently as she'd been looking at the empty spot on the bed.
I began to panic, chancing a quick glance toward the rock, still sitting on my blanket, and wondering if I was going to have to make a grab for it. Possible damage control wishes started floating through my mind.
"Are you okay Nat?" She asked, sisterly concern radiating from her.
Nat. Well, at least that narrowed down what my name might be. Probably Natasha, or Natalie.
"I'm fine," I told her, "Nothing wrong at all." I could feel my heart beating rapidly against my chest. I hadn't completely changed my life just to have it fall apart within five minutes.
"You sure?" She asked, looking closer, "Maybe you're coming down with something. You look a little flush."
I tried very hard to keep from blushing. I knew full well why I looked flush, and I really didn't need her knowing too. "I feel fine," I told her. "Let mom know I'll be down in just a minute... I have to go to the bathroom first," I threw out there.
She nodded, casting one more curious look at me, and then closing the door behind her as she made her way back down stairs. I immediately collapsed onto the bed and spent the next moment or so letting my body tremble as much as it wanted to. It had, after all earned it.
Guardian, I thought, picking the rock up and scrutinizing every detail. What the hell did that make him? And, more importantly, what did he know about my grandfather?
I held the rock tightly and decided to chance a quick wish. "I wish to know who the man in my room a moment ago was." I waited, and strangely nothing happened. There was no warmth, no flash of light. Is it broken? I wondered, looking down at it. "I wish," I began again, "To know exactly what he meant by Guardian."
Still nothing. I started to worry. What if it was broken, or spent? Did it have a limit. My wish had changed a lot. Had I used it up?
Holding the rock in one hand, I held my other hand up, looking at the fingers. "I wish my fingernails had pink nail polish." The stone warmed, there was the familiar flash of light, and when it was over, my fingernails were a glossy hot pink.
"Nice," I whispered, staring at them, before I remembered what was going on. So, the rock couldn't tell me anything about him. Hadn't he said something, now that I tried to recall, about existing outside of the rock's influence? Maybe that was why I couldn't make a wish that related to him.
Or, maybe I'd imagined it. It had felt incredibly real, but... Were there side effects? I suddenly wondered. What if I'd been having some kind of mental breakdown? After all, he'd been gone when Jill walked in. A large part of me wanted to call Karyn and talk to her about this, but no. I'd resolved to wait until I saw her at school tomorrow. Besides, if I were being honest, I was a little worried about what my initial wish might have done to our friendship, and if the effect had been negative, I really didn't want to worry about it until tomorrow.
So, okay, I'm a little bit of a coward. Sue me.
I set the rock back down on the bed. If I waited much longer, my family was going to start to think something was really up, and more than anything, after the wish I'd made, I wanted to try and experience a normal evening with them, find out what I my life as a girl had been like up until now.
After a moment, when I was certain the mysterious man wasn't going to return, I decided to go down to dinner. As I left my room, my thoughts continued to drift back to him and how he'd made me feel. All of those thoughts drifted away though as I stepped out into the kitchen to face my family in my new guise...
