A New Wish.

"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.