"I wish I always keep a stash of different clothes here at your house so I wouldn't have to go home to change."
A literal twitch of an eye later, Karyn set the stone back down on my nightstand. She stood, and started looking around my room. "I wonder where I keep it?"
A brief search revealed that my bottom dresser drawer and about an eighth of my closet space was full of Karyn's clothes. It was odd having her clothes in my room, but I could imagine the convenience. She seemed to have enough clothes here to prepare for anything, which was kind of cool.
Karyn grabbed some clothes and headed for the bathroom to change. In keeping with our old middle-school skating tradition, we wore matching t-shirts and jeans.
Moments later, Karyn and I were walking to the skating rink. "I can't wait to see how it looks now! I haven't seen the inside in years. Do you think it's as cool as I remember?"
"I doubt it," I replied. "Remember when we went to Discovery Place last year? We thought it would be as awesome as it used to be, and it sucked."
"Oh yeah! That giant eyeball was cool as hell back then! Now, it's just crap," she replied.
Sadly, I was right. We immediately noticed that the parking lot was riddled with cracks and potholes, and the walls were dingy and stained. It looked as though the building had been abandoned, except for the lights.
Once we paid the bored girl at the ticket window, we stepped inside to find the interior wasn't much better. Half the blacklights on the back wall were flickering, the carpet all over the walls and floor was threadbare, and the snack bar had been closed down for health violations. Vending machines served all of the food and drinks available.
There were perhaps a dozen other skaters, mostly Mikey's age, scattered here and there. We headed to the skate rental counter and traded our shoes for skates. I ended up trading in three pair before finding a pair of skates that rolled smoothly. Karyn managed to only trade once.
We rolled off the carpet and onto the smooth concrete surface, only to find that smooth didn't really apply. There were cracks and potholes here, too. Karyn and I skated two laps before crashing into each other after she tripped on a crack.
"Damn," I sighed, rubbing my bruised shoulder. "This place has really gone to shit."
"I know, right?" Karyn replied, as she limped to a seat. "Should we use the stone? Maybe spruce the place up a bit?"
I thought about it while sitting down. I pulled the rock from my pocket and held it. "Safety first," I snickered, and made a simple wish. "I wish," I declared, "that Karyn and I would always instantly heal from any injuries whenever we're at this skating rink."
The world flickered, and my shoulder was fine. "I made sure we had an out on that one," I told Karyn. "I came close to wishing we always heal instantly. Imagine if either of us ever needed an operation. Could have been pretty bad."
"Now, what should we do about this place?" I asked.
