*"Agreed," I nodded. "Now, there's every chance that we won't get it right on the first try, so I think we just need to be as vague as possible with our wishes in the beginning, leave ourselves room to adjust things." It sounded good anyway. I wondered if it could truly be that easy though. I looked up once more at the parting clouds. "Won't let'cha down Jonny."
"Did you say something?" Rachel asked, looking up at me.
"Just talking to myself," I told her. In a way, it was even true. "So, I've thought about where to begin, and then we're just going to have to take it from there and see what happens." I paused. "You ready?" I asked softly. The rock was back in my hand now. When she nodded, I clasped it tightly.*
Resurrection
"I wish that Karyn " I paused, phrases like that day and those people careened around my mind and I discarded them. I had to be broader, more general about this. I started over, placing each word carefully in its place, "I wish that Karyn hadn't killed anybody and that she hadn't killed herself." There was a bright flash of light, and I looked up at Rachel. "That was general enough right?" I'd almost said something along the lines of: I wish Karyn hadn't killed those students that day. I had to breath a small sigh of relief over the fact that I'd managed to dodge that bullet. In all probability, had I made a stupid mistake like that, she would have just shown up with her gun on a different day, or killed a different group of students.
"I think so," Rachel said softly. It was clear that she was a little on edge now that the wish had been made, and I could fully understand it. Thanks to the wish that she'd made the other night, she was as aware of what kind of trouble this rock had caused as I was. She nodded, and tried to replace the soft frown she was wearing with a more enthusiastic smile. Trying to appear a little more resolute now, she nodded, "No, I think that was good. If something did go wrong, I think we have some wiggle room."
"How are we gonna know what happened?" Rachel asked as we started walking again. She'd found the happy medium between over enthusiastic and cautiously nervous. "I mean, obviously the rock did something, but how do we know whether it did what we wanted or not?" I stopped, glanced down at my watch, realized we still had a little time left, and lit one more cigarette.
I smoke way too fucking much, I thought momentarily. Still, Rachel had a valid point and I knew there were a couple of ways to find out what we wanted to know.
"Well," I told her, bringing my slow, steady gait to a halt, "We can go to school and be surprised. Always a favorite," I added sarcastically. "Or we could use the stone to wish that we knew what it had done." I glanced nervously down at my purse. After the last couple of days, I wasn't really big on the idea or messing with my memories. On the other hand I've grown decidedly less fond of surprises as of late.
"Maybe we should make that wish," Rachel suggested. She must have seen the look on my face because her voice became even softer. Suddenly the breeze that had felt so good when I'd first stepped outside, felt a little on the chilly side. "I mean, I can understand why you wouldn't want to Nat, after everything you've been through, but," she paused, and took the cigarette out of my hand. I watched as she took a long drag. I'd forgotten that Rachel was one of those rare people who could smoke every once in a while without facing the addiction. Another thing I envied and hated about her. I knew though that she only did it when she was extremely nervous or worried. She took another lungful of smoke and handed it back to me. When she expelled, she seemed a little more composed and certain, "Is this really the kind of thing we wanna hear about on the grapevine?"
"No, you're right," I admitted. Rachel's always right, I thought smiling inwardly. It was nice to have somebody in my life that I could count on like that. I wondered if that was how Jon had felt about Karyn. That just made it that much more important to me that we find a way to set it right. I was going to save her, and I was going to do it for him. He'd earned at least that. "We need to know." I took the rock back out and held it in my hand. "I wish "
I can't do it! I can't mess with my mind anymore than I already have!
Sensing my reluctance, probably seeing the struggle playing out on my face, Rachel took the rock from me. "It's all right," she told me. "I'll do it. We'll keep it simple." She closed her hand around the rock and never broke eye contact with me as she made her wish. "I wish to know whether Karyn Black, Sarah McMillan, Derrick Thomas, Biff Meadows, and Michelle Walters are still alive." There was a flash of light, and for a moment she was wearing a blank look. It was the same look she'd had while her mind was being filled with information by the rock the other night.
A moment later, she looked up. There was a smile on her face when she looked at me. She nodded. "They're alive," she said, and she nearly dropped the stone. "I mean, I know what the rock's capable of, and I mean we saw it work " Her eyes were growing now, and I could see the gentle sparkle that told me tears were probably on the way. "I mean but I didn't think " Though she was starting to cry, her face held onto that smile, and she walked over and hugged me so tightly I almost dropped my cigarette. "They're alive Nat!" she practically shouted, and I could feel her body shake ever so slightly as she sobbed. "They're really alive!"
I smiled and patted the back of her head.
"You two should really get a room," I heard a familiar voice say behind me. I felt Rachel look up, and her reaction combined with the familiar sound of that voice told me all that I really needed to know.
"Sarah!" Rachel shouted. She pulled away from me and practically leapt at the other blond. I turned and caught the confused look on her face as Rachel wrapped herself tightly around our friend. "Sarah," she said softly again. "I've missed you so much." The only response I could give the confused and slightly put out looking girl was a lop sided grin. It was really all I could do to restrain myself too. I mean, with my own life and memories back, she'd been just as dead to me for just as long, as she had been to Rachel. I could almost feel my knees buckling beneath me, but I forced myself to remain upright.
"Okay," Sarah said carefully, as she peeled Rachel away. "I know I'm a couple days late getting back from vacation but what's with the sudden lez-fest here? Kinda creeping me out."
"Yeah, a guy might start to worry," I glanced over her shoulder and saw her boyfriend Steve Farber coming up behind her, a kind of bemused grin on his chiseled face. Okay, yeah, I had kind of a crush on Steve, but what girl didn't. He was Sarah's counterpart on the male side of things. Whereas Sarah was the girl that every guy in the school, well, almost every guy, I thought with a wicked grin, wanted to fuck, Steve was the guy we girls all wanted. He was tall and athletic, and I'd seen him shirtless after their practice; Sarah, Rachel, and I attended football practice pretty regularly after cheerleading was done for the day. Sarah was there to support her Mack-Daddy, but Rachel and I were both there for the free show.
Sweaty guys running around trying to knock each other to the ground Oh yeah, that was what it was all about. Wow, I thought, Slipping pretty quickly back into the more mundane aspects of life, aren't we? I smiled and looked back up just in time to see the next act of Rachel's one-girl production of: Let's Make Everybody Uncomfortable.
"Steve!" She shouted. "Oh god you're really here!" She detached herself from Sarah and lunged at Steve, wrapping her arms around him tightly. Sarah threw me a lop-sided look.
"Okay guys? What exactly did I miss?" She looked extremely confused and I had to work to keep myself from laughing out loud.
Finally, I managed to speak, "Rachel's just feeling extremely affectionate this morning, right Rache?"
"Well, maybe she can feel extremely affectionate all over somebody else's boyfriend," Sarah said, apparently shaking the whole thing off.
"Not complaining," Steve said slyly as Rachel finally pulled away.
"You wouldn't," Sarah said, reaching back and hitting him rather roughly on the shoulder. He made a show of it, even though we knew she wouldn't really hurt him.
"Ouch," he said, rubbing his shoulder more than he had any right. "Didn't realize pain was your thing babe."
"You wish," Sarah countered.
Now he was chuckling. The rest of us were grinning. Even Sarah was trying to hold back a playful smile. I supposed for Rachel and I things were just so Normal. It was nice and it was really hard not to get lost in it. I hadn't felt this good since the whole ordeal had began, and I really wanted it to go on forever
Not literally! my mind screamed. My frightened fingers recoiled from the rock that they'd been poised to grab. It was just that things had been so fucked up lately, and I knew we probably weren't quite done on that road, and I just want to enjoy this for a little while.
As Rachel composed herself, we all began to walk again, and Sarah flipped back into true Sarah mode. "So," she began. Sarah had this way of beginning a sentence, making it clear with that first word that what was to follow was extremely important, and everybody had better be ready to listen. I couldn't really fault her for that though. Rachel and I could be just as bad sometimes.
The curse of the popular, I thought.
"We went down to this really nice resort in the Bahamas, the most expensive one we could find of course, because, well you know my mother, and anyway there was this really hot room service guy," she looked back at Steve and stuck her tongue out.
Steve wrapped his fist around an imaginary arrow and slammed it into his heart. "You doth wound me," he whispered.
"He totally wanted me," Sarah continued as though he hadn't said anything, "but I was all like, yeah, right. He was cute, but he was like twenty-five or something like that, and there was just no way "
"And you're extremely loyal to your extremely manly boyfriend," Steve threw in.
"And he was totally hitting on me for, like the entire vacation. After a while it was just annoying "
Sarah's self-conducted conversation carried us the rest of the way to school. Steve chimed in one or two other times, probably just to remind us that he was there, but for the most part I was lost in Sarah's story. Partly because she spoke in such a way as to make it clear that a period had no place in her sentence structure. There wasn't a pause long enough, but she did slip the occasional metaphorical comma in. I nodded every once in a while. Apparently the power had gone out for four days because of some tropical storm, and they'd still had to pay full price for the accommodations. Her parents had fought it and God help me I was really interested. I remembered wondering how anybody could put up with drabble like this when I'd been merged with Jon, but now that he was gone, I was finding it really easy to slip back into my life style.
I didn't know whether to be relieved or worried
When we got to school, I separated myself and Rachel from the rest of the group. I noticed that the metal detectors and cameras were gone. That was definitely a good sign. "So," I said once Sarah and Steve had gone, "We know that they're okay, and apparently none the worse for the wear, but it can't be that easy. It never is with the rock. We need to be on the lookout for the others today: Derrick, Michelle, and Biff "
"And Karyn," Rachel added. She was still wearing a big grin. I knew how she felt, but I wasn't going to be overtaken by glee until we'd seen this through, till we knew that everything was okay.
"And Karyn," I confirmed. "Hopefully we'll have seen them by lunch, or learned something, so we'll meet up again then, all right?"
Rachel nodded, and I watched her walk into the building. Class was going to start soon. I took a long breath, and walked into the building, hoping that for once, things could just go the way that I wanted them to
