The next morning, Jon woke up, showered, and got dressed as though everything was normal. He wanted to believe that everything was still normal, that his wish for something interesting had somehow been a dud. But something felt off.
As he turned to leave his bedroom, he heard a shuffling, like a movement of fabric, but when he turned around to look, nothing seemed out of place. His bedroom window was open, but maybe he'd opened it himself without thinking.
Jon shrugged, closed the window, and left for school.
"I've been getting weird feelings this morning," Karyn told him when the two met up. "Almost like someone's been watching me from inside my house. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
Jon just wanted to play dumb about his stupid wish, and said he didn't know what it could be. And they talked as they walked, and things began to feel normal. Then Karyn looked up: "That's a weird-looking bird."
Jon followed Karyn's gaze. She was right, that was a weird-looking bird. High up in the sky, too far away to fully make out. But the outline was wrong, somehow. Black wings flapping almost more like a bat's than a bird's, but slower.
"Huh," Jon and Karyn dismissed the bird and kept on walking.
Until Jon saw another strange bird. This one was brown, and seemed to almost glide across the sky, but not in any way that Jon had seen a bird do before. "Is that a condor?" Jon asked.
"Not in this part of the country, it isn't," Karyn replied.
The closer they got to the school, the more of these birds they saw. Each one differently-shaped, each one moving differently to the last. Each one too far away to fully make out.
Soon they could spot four or five in the sky at the same time, spaced out irregularly. "Are you sure you don't know anything?" Karyn asked her friend. Jon shrugged the question off.
When they arrived at school, there was a great chatter among their fellow students, who were gathered in a clump in the grassy area between the school and the sports field, all looking up. All talking about those strange birds.
A whole flock of them was circling over the school building. Different shapes and sizes, different flying patterns. But somehow all coordinated.
"Hey, look at that one! It's diving!" Tom Welles, the second-string running back, broke out of the crowd to get a closer look, his letterman jacket flashing red and white in the early morning sunlight.
He was right, one of the birds had broken off from the formation and was descending. Gasps arose among the crowd of students. "It's pink!" someone shouted. "Is it a flamingo?" someone else asked. "it's not a fucking flamingo," came a reply.
"It's a vest!" Monica Tobin gasped. "It's a puffer vest!"
Jon squinted. It was a puffer vest, and it was dive-bombing the school.
"Jon?" Karyn nudged him. He ignore it.
Down, down the pink puffer vest dove, gaining speed, gaining momentum.
"What did you do, Jon?" there was a warning in Karyn's voice now.
"I didn't do... this, whatever it is," Jon finally replied.
The puffer vest shifted its trajectory, just slightly, no longer straight down. It was seemingly coming straight for the crowd of students.
"I didn't ask you what you didn't do," Karyn pressed, "I asked you what you did."
Like a unit, the crowd of students began slowly backing away, as if to make room for the flying puffer vest. Everyone moved, except for Tom, who just stared at it in shock.
"I accidentally made a wish. It wasn't specific. But I don't know why it would do this," Jon finally admitted.
And it was in that moment that the puffer vest slammed into Tom Welles's chest, almost knocking him off of his feet.
A unified cry came from the roughly-assembled students, as Tom flailed, grabbing at the vest like one might grab at a spider's web after walking into it. But the pink garment clung to him like static. He whacked at his own chest, to no effect, and the force was so great that his arm came clean out of his jacket sleeve. Another swing from his other arm, and the jacket flew right off him entirely. He spun around, grabbing at himself in a panic, and then he stopped.
He turned around.
Over his boot cut jeans, over his white T-shirt, Tom Welles was now wearing a pink puffer vest.
