"Nat?" A hand shakes me, and I groan what I'm pretty sure is a request for five more minutes. "Naaat! Come on, you promised we'd try out the stone!"
My eyes shoot open and I turn to see Rachel; she backs up quickly, eyes wide. "Whoa, girl! Calm down. Don't go crazy on me. I've got a wish I want to make. If you still trust me after my last one," she says, blushing and pulling a lock of blonde hair.
I nod and sit up. "Sure, that's fine." Slowly, I turn to look at her again, and she stares back at me with an odd expression on her face.
"I know you wanted to make a wish too," she says quietly. "I thought Karyn was a pretty cool girl, for what it's worth. You know, when she wasn't being emo, or..."
There's nothing to say, so I just nod, reaching over for my purse on the table by my bed and extracting the stone from it. Should I? Every word in a wish has a chance to be twisted. Best to keep it simple, I guess.
"I wish Karyn and all the people she... killed were alive," I murmur, feeling the stone grow warm after a couple of seconds, then quickly cool down again. "What's wrong?"
Rachel leans forward, concerned. "Nat, what's wrong?" I shake my head, speaking again to the stone clasped in my hands.
"I wish to know how my previous wish didn't work completely." A rush of information enters my head, settling and sorting itself out. One piece in particular stands out. Karyn couldn't be brought back to life. My breath catches in my throat, and I feel the stone being pulled from my hand.
"Natalie! You have to come with me, now," Malcolm says, and his hand wraps itself around mine tightly. Just as I look up at him, my vision dissolves into a swirling mass of colors and ephemeral, half-formed shapes. Slowly the colors settle, and the shapes become slightly more real.
