Karyn was dead. She was dead and it was my fault. I couldn't move my body anymore. All I could do was huddle up on the floor and cry
I wasn't sure how long I spent crying in the bathroom, but when I finally made my way out into the halls, there weren't any signs of life. As I made my way slowly through the building, taking one step at a time, the image of Karyn's body crumpling to the ground kept playing in my mind. Once or twice it threatened to overwhelm me and I nearly stumbled to the ground. For the entire walk, my legs had a kind of rubbery quality, and it felt like they might give out with each motion. Somehow though, I managed to make my way out into the cool, late afternoon air. On the horizon I could see the sky turning pink as the sun began its descent. Given the time of year, it was probably almost four o'clock. I shook my head.
I was slowly coming to grips with the fact that it had happened, and even starting to wrap my mind around the idea that I'd caused it somehow, but what I couldn't figure out, the one thread that kept eluding me, was why? What happened in her life to warp her so badly? Did I do something? I looked down at my purse. The rock inside held the answers, but I couldn't bring myself to use it. I wanted to know, but I wasn't sure it was worth the cost.
Feeling a slight chill, I looked down and found myself wishing I'd worn jeans and a long sleeve shirt instead of the same skirt and white blouse I'd wished up yesterday. Look at you! My mind screamed. You just watched Karyn kill five people and take her own life, and you can actually sit here and think about what you're wearing? Did that make me a bad person? As much as I wanted to understand what had happened, still convinced I could fix it, I also wanted to think about absolutely anything else in the world. I found that as my walk continued, my capacity for feeling of any kind was starting to dwindle.
I could feel myself going numb.
"You could have warned me," I said softly, "told me what was going to happen." I glanced over to see Malcolm walking by my side. I wasn't sure how I'd known he was there. I just kind of had.
"That's not why I'm here," he said quietly. His eyes were glued to the ground. I wasn't sure if it was because he couldn't bear to face me, or because he just didn't want to. There's a world of difference between the two...
"You cold bastard," I said, but there was no real malice, no real feeling of any kind in my tone. I was simply going through the motions. Without really thinking about it, I lit a cigarette as we walked.
"Maybe," Malcolm said, "but there were clues. When you were talking to your sister the other night for example. She told you she was surprised the school was opening up so soon after, I believe her words were, what happened last year." He paused. "And I did tell you that there were consequences that you weren't even aware of yet."
I shook my head. He was right. I could remember both of those instances now. "But why?" I asked. "What twisted her up like that. She wasn't anything like the Karyn I knew." I briefly thought about Biff, Sarah, Steve, Derrick, and Michelle. It was clear that I'd been friends with the first four. Fortunately, I hadn't wished to remember all of that, so as hard as it had been to watch them die, I hadn't felt the same sting I'd felt when Karyn had Who's being the cold bastard now? I shook my head, trying to dislodge the thoughts. "I mean, what happened to her?"
"You could ask the rock," Malcolm said, gesturing down toward my purse.
"I don't wanna," I said slowly.
He nodded. "It's funny," he said softly.
I stared, mouth agape. "How can you even say that?"
"Not that," he said. "I'm not that cold. No, I'm talking about you," I shook my head, continuing forward and sucking on the filter of my cigarette. "You spend all this time and energy proclaiming yourself Natalie, talking about how Jon doesn't exist, or at the very least how he's somebody completely different, but when it comes down to it, you're afraid of what Natalie might be. You refuse to ask the rock for the memories that would explain everything because you feel that if you don't remember it, if it isn't part of you then you didn't do it, that it was somebody else. In doing so, you cling to Jon."
I didn't have anything to say. *He's right. I cling to Jon to avoid blame If it was Natalie's fault this happened *
He shook his head, but his typical smug demeanor wasn't present. "Tell me Natalie, do you remember when Jon met Karyn? Do you remember what she was like?"
I thought back. It wasn't easy. My memories had become rather muddled as of late, but eventually it came to me. "She was shy," I said softly, remembering the young girl that she'd been. "She really didn't get on with others, but it was mostly because she didn't put herself out there. Even at the bus stop when other kids were messing around and having fun, she just kind of hung back there watching, like she wasn't part of it." Something akin to a smile almost crossed my lips.
Almost.
"Yes, and then she met you. It wasn't easy," Malcolm continued, "but you drew her out. You two started playing together, and hanging out, and suddenly she had a friend." There was a long pause. It was a turning point in young Karyn's life." He paused and tilted his head, "By the way, I don't know if you realize it, but you just spoke of yourself and Jon as though you were interchangeable." He smiled, "Definitely a step back in the right direction."
I didn't respond. I was liking Malcolm less and less each time I saw him.
I threw my butt in the street and kept walking, "So, what changed then. I know it had to be one of my wishes that did this, so which one was it?"
He continued to be cryptic. I continued to hate him.
"Think of life as a magnificent tapestry," he said. "If you start to pull on one of the threads, the entire thing begins to unravel." He looked at me, and there was a very serious look in his eyes. "Would it make you feel better if you knew that your life as Natalie was much happier for you? To know that you grew up feeling complete and whole, and you didn't have this constant nagging doubt and insecurity tugging at you? Would you feel better?"
I nodded slowly, but I didn't like where this was going.
"What if it turned out Jon, or Natalie if you prefer, that what was absolutely the best possible scenario for you, was the worst possible scenario for Karyn. What if I told you that the tapestry as it were, was set up so that for Karyn to be happy, you had to carry that misery with you. Or, on the opposite end, that for you to be happy, Karyn had to carry her misery?" He stopped for a moment, allowing this to sink in.
"My first wish," I whispered. "Karyn did this, went through this hell, because I was born a girl?" I stopped in my tracks.
He nodded.
After a moment, "So, because I was a girl instead of a boy, I never befriended her, never drew her out?"
"Life is seldom that easy," he said as we continued walking. I could see Jill's trailer park coming up. I'd already decided that I was going to go there again tonight. Home felt well, it felt too much like Jon's home. After last night, Jill's was most decidedly mine. There you go separating yourselves again.
"In fact," he went on, "You did meet, and just like before, you befriended her and drew her out. As you grew though, things began to change. You befriended Sarah and Rachel and their group and completely turned on Karyn. You sided with the popular girls, and Karyn took it extremely hard. Over time it got worse. They started calling her a freak, and you joined right in. She just decided that relationships with others were too painful. She fell back in on herself."
If I hadn't been numb before, that had done it.
I did do this. I killed her.
"But " I paused, trying to wrap my mind around a thought, "Couldn't I wish that Jon's Karyn were here, unchanged?"
He shook his head. "You weren't listening in the bathroom. When you make a wish with the rock, it merges your reality with another one that matches the criteria that you put forth. As much as that was a broken version of Karyn, it was a broken version that was laid over the previous Karyn when the merging occurred. That was Jon's Karyn as much as it was Natalie's."
I shook my head as we approached the trailer park. I lit another cigarette and kept on trying. "But I could wish she wasn't dead, right? Wish that things had gone differently for her. I can't change myself back, because I can't undo the merging and I'm still not sure I would if I could avoid it, but I could wish that her life had turned out different, couldn't I?"
"Be careful Natalie," he said softly. "It's not my job to advise you on your wishes, only to watch, but I choose to offer you the advice that sometimes the surest way to make a problem worse it by continuously trying to fix it."
"So, that was a yes right?" I asked, but when I looked around, he was gone. "Yeah, fuck you too," I whispered. I was getting really sick and tired of his constant vanishings. I could see my sister's trailer now, and I could see her sitting outside. For an instant, she seemed to notice the look on my face, but any concerns she might have had seemed to vanish as quickly as they appeared. Okay, that one wish is really starting to get on my nerves!
She smiled and waved. She was sitting on the front steps smoking a cigarette. I honestly wasn't sure what I was going to do next. This was all so much, and it was starting to overwhelm me. Try as I might, I couldn't even fake a smile in her direction. I just didn't have the ability. I wanted to feel bad, or angry, or just anything. Even my irritation at Malcolm's disappearance had been more force of habit than anything else. Instead, I walked right by her and stepped into the house
