by Liz Kessler
I scrabbled around under the sheets for my stone. Yes — it was there!
Had it brought me back home again?
“Mom, pinch me,” I said.
Mom laughed. “I’ll get you some breakfast,” she said. “Hurry up, now. You don’t want to be late on your first day back.”
The same words.
The instant Mom left, I leaped out of bed and ran to my mirror.
Yes! I was myself again. I was thirteen-year-old Emily! I pinched my arm. Ow! It hurt! It hurt! I was back in the present day.
I had never felt relief like it. Even if I did have to live the day all over again. Right now, I didn’t care. I was me again. I wasn’t in that awful future world. That was all that mattered.
I had the quickest shower ever and went to join Mom for breakfast.
Poached egg, sausages, bacon, and a crispy hash brown. I couldn’t help staring. It was the third time she’d made this breakfast for me.
Mom saw me looking. “Back to school treat,” she said with a smile. Just like last time. And the time before that.
“Thanks, Mom.” I looked at the food on my plate and smiled.
“Come on, love. Eat up. You’ll be late.”
I dug into my breakfast. I managed to eat about half of it this time. It was delicious — but I was in a hurry to get away and see Mandy.
“I think I’m done,” I said.
Mom leaned over to kiss my cheek. “OK, chicken,” she said. “Leave the rest by the sink and I’ll give it to your dad. He never turns down a hearty breakfast.”
Even though I knew she was going to say it, the words still made me smile. Anything that proved I had undone that awful wish could only be a good thing.
I thought of the wishing stone. I still had one more wish. The thought of things going wrong again made my insides turn cold.
I thought of Dad instead. He was still here! They were still together. They hadn’t divorced, she wasn’t living with Mr. Beeston, and they didn’t have to settle for a monthly meeting in the darkest night by a raging river.
Mom got up from her seat, pulled her bathrobe around her, and went to the fridge.
I jumped up and followed her into the galley. I knew what she was about to say, and I decided to get it in first. “How about I take some fruit with me?” I suggested.
Mom took my plate from me. “That’s just what I was about to say.”
I laughed. “Great minds think alike,” I said, before going to the bathroom to brush my teeth and finish getting ready for school.
Mom came out onto the deck in her bathrobe. “Have a good day at school, darling,” she said, giving me a quick kiss.
I paused for a moment. Where was Dad? Wasn’t this the point where he showed up? My insides curdled. What had happened to him? Had something gone wrong, after all? What if he was hurt? What if I never saw him again? What if —?
“Hey, little ’un. Today’s the day!”
“Dad!”
Dad swam around the back of the boat and wiped a strand of hair off his face. “It’ll be wonderful. I’m sure.”
“It will,” I said, grinning at him. Then I crouched down and threw my arms around his neck.
Dad laughed. “What’s that for?” he asked.
“Just because,” I said. Then I blew them both a kiss, threw my bag over my shoulder, and made my way up the jetty.
I walked to school as though I were floating on a cloud. The relief of being myself again was enough to keep the smile on my face.
Not that it lasted long.
By the time I reached school, the reality of my life had sunk back in.
Sure, I wasn’t thirty-three-year-old Emily Windsnap living in some kind of horrific nightmare future. And no, I wasn’t the mayor of Brightport with a town full of problems and no idea how to solve them. And yeah, my parents were still together.
But I was still me.
Which meant I was still sitting here alone with an empty chair beside me and no one to talk to while the rest of the class chattered and gossiped and laughed all around me.
“Come on, now, eighth-graders. Let’s settle down, shall we?”
Mrs. Porter shuffled papers around on her desk while the class ignored her — again.
How many times would I have to live through this? Was this my life now? Was I destined to go through the same thing, over and over again? Survive a miserable first day back at school and then be projected into a nightmare vision of the future. Was that it, now? Was that going to be my life: the same thing on a loop, repeating itself over and over again forever?
I guessed I’d have to live through it at least one more time. The stone still had one more wish waiting for me. Why did that thought make me shudder? Shouldn’t magical wishes make you happy?
I gazed ahead of me, staring at nothing. My mind was as empty as Aaron’s seat on my right. I couldn’t even bring myself to unpack my books or try to look busy.
Even when Mandy came in, pulled out the chair on my left, shoved her bag under the table, and sat down, I didn’t flinch. I didn’t look at her. I didn’t want to see the scorn on her face, or watch her gossiping with Julie. I couldn’t go through it again.
Except . . . she wasn’t gossiping with Julie. She wasn’t talking — to anyone. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. She looked as lost and blank as I did.
What was going on? This was the part when she was supposed to make a big show of what a great best friend Julie was. But she wasn’t doing that. She wasn’t doing anything at all.
The pebbles. The stones from Millie. Had they worked? Had Mandy —
“Come on, guys. Enough’s enough,” Mrs. Porter said, just loud enough to be heard over the din. Eventually, everyone hushed.
“Thank you,” she said calmly. “OK, come on. Let’s use our homeroom time catch up. I’m going to call on you one by one to tell us your favorite thing from winter break. And I hope you all had a more interesting time than I did!”
I looked down at my desk, willing Mrs. Porter to ignore me, willing myself to turn invisible. My head was filled with only one thought: Did Mandy’s pebble bring her back from the future too?
I was vaguely aware of the other kids sharing their favorite things. Sherry Daniels told us about going fishing with her dad. Tammy Bayfield shared how she’d enjoyed her mom’s company. Aiden Harris put his hand up.
“My dad took me for a ride in the dump truck,” he said. “We drove to the harbor together and looked out at sea. Dad wanted to see a dolphin. He’s lived by the sea all his life and never seen one. He says it’s his biggest dream. We didn’t see any dolphins, but I still had a great day hanging out with my dad.”
“Succinct as always, Aiden,” Mrs. Porter said once again.
My insides turned cold and hardened. I wanted to jump up and scream at him. I wanted to tell everyone what he’d done, or what he was going to do, or . . .
Or what? He hadn’t done anything yet — and in this version of events, maybe he never would.
“Emily?” Mrs. Porter was asking.
My mind was blank. I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times, waiting for Mandy to nudge Julie and laugh at me. She didn’t.
She was definitely different. I didn’t want to get my hopes up. And I couldn’t exactly ask her, “Hey, did you, by any chance, go forward into a world where you were twenty years older and you’d lost everything — but then found out you were back to your normal self when you woke up this morning?”
No, I didn’t think that would go down well. But I had to find out somehow.
“Do you have anything to share with us, Emily?” Mrs. Porter asked.
I had an idea. “I went to the river with my parents,” I said, my voice quivering as I spoke.
Mrs. Porter paused for a moment, as if she were waiting for me to continue.
I glanced quickly at Mandy, then back at the teacher. “And my two best friends came too,” I added. “It was really nice to hang out with them. It felt like we hadn’t done
it for years.”
My heart was banging like an engine on a tugboat.
“That’s lovely, Emily. Thank you,” Mrs. Porter said gently. “Now, who have I missed?”
Mandy put her hand up.
I held my breath.
Please don’t let her brag about wonderful Julie and their fantastic friendship.
“Yes, Mandy. Tell us your favorite thing from the holidays,” Mrs. Porter said.
Mandy didn’t speak. She cleared her throat. Opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
“I’m waiting,” Mrs. Porter said. Everyone in the class was turning to look at her.
What was going on?
Then Mandy finally found her voice. “I was given a present,” she said. “It’s not much, but it means a lot to me.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled something out. Her hand was closed around it.
“Well, what is it?” Mrs. Porter asked. “I’m sure we’re all dying to know.”
Mandy gave me a quick glance. Then she swallowed. And then she opened her hand. “It’s this,” she said. Ignoring the sniggers around her at what she was holding out to the class, she said, “It’s called a friendship pebble.”
Mrs. Porter had moved on. She was telling us about the changes to the schedule and letting us know about the new English teacher.
I barely registered her words. I barely listened.
All I could think was, Mandy still had the friendship pebble. And she made a point of mentioning it.
Could it mean what I thought it meant? It had too. Surely, it did. I barely let myself hope, in case I was wrong. All I knew for sure was that I had to get Mandy alone. We had to talk.
When Mrs. Porter looked at her watch and said, “Well, that’s all we have time for today,” and everyone leaped up from their seats to file out of the room, I held back in the hope that Mandy would do the same and we could talk.
Julie got in there first. “Sit with me in English class?” she asked.
“Um. Yeah. Sure,” Mandy replied.
Julie was practically glued to Mandy’s side as we filed out of the room.
I went off to English class on my own.
“OK, guys, I know it’s the first day back, and we haven’t met before, but it’s still school and this is my class, and I would like you all to listen.” Mr. Goode, the new English teacher leaned back on his desk as he waited for the class to hush.
“Thank you,” he said after a couple of minutes. “Now, today, we are going to talk about a parable. Who knows what a parable is?”
A few kids put their hands up. As Mr. Goode picked one of them to answer, I felt inside my pocket for my stone. Even now, even after everything it had put me through, I still craved the touch of its warm, smooth surface.
I’d picked the wrong pocket, though. Instead of the stone, my hand closed around something small and angular. For a moment, I couldn’t remember what it was.
I pulled the object out of my pocket to look at it.
“Today’s parable is about six men . . .” Mr. Goode began.
I looked down at the object in my hand.
“. . . and an elephant.”
What?
I closed my fingers around the elephant in my hand as Mr. Goode’s voice filtered into my mind, fighting its way past a jumbled mass of thoughts.
“The six men had never seen an elephant. Then, one day, it was reported that an elephant had come to their town. They were blindfolded, and each one, in turn, was asked to tell the others what an elephant was.”
His voice was soothing, and I found myself listening more closely as I turned the elephant over in my hand. Its sides were smooth and cool. Its trunk was pointy and sharp.
“The first man put his hand on the elephant’s side and declared that an elephant was like a wall,” Mr. Goode went on. “The second man felt his tusk and told the first man that he was wrong and that an elephant was like a spear.”
I leaned forward, listening more intently.
“The third man felt the elephant’s trunk and said they were both wrong and that an elephant was like a giant snake. The fourth grasped a leg and announced that an elephant was like a tree.”
Clutching the elephant in my hand, I focused on Mr. Goode’s words so hard it was as if the rest of the classroom had disappeared.
“The fifth man was tall. He reached up to the elephant’s ear and said an elephant was like a fan. And then the sixth man clutched the elephant’s tail. ‘You are all wrong,’ the sixth man said. ‘An elephant is like a rope.’ The men argued at length, until someone came to them and told them to remove their blindfolds. When they did, they realized that each of them had been wrong — and each of them had been right.”
Mr. Goode stopped speaking. He smiled gently as he looked around the room. “Now, can anyone tell me what this story is saying?” he asked.
I didn’t even realize my hand had gone up.
“Yes . . . ?” he said, looking at me questioningly.
“Emily,” I said.
“Emily, what do you think the parable is telling us?”
I tried to get my voice to work. Nothing came out.
Most of the class was staring at me. “Want me to ask someone else?” Mr. Goode asked.
I shook my head and cleared my throat. Then I answered.
“It’s about truth,” I said carefully. “How, like, there isn’t just one version of it. Or, like, one part on its own isn’t enough. One person’s truth is only part of the story.”
As I spoke, I felt bolts of electricity run through my body. I was almost shaking as I added, “If you only listen to one side, you won’t get the full picture and you can’t please everybody. You can only do that when you put everybody’s truths together.”
Even as I said the words, I hardly registered them. It was as if they came out of my mouth without me even knowing what I was saying.
Mr. Goode was beaming at me. “Beautifully put, Emily. Well done,” he said. “One philosopher put it like this: ‘No single truth is ever a complete truth on its own. It is only when we combine all our truths that we have a picture full enough to be reliable.’ I’d say your version is as good as that, if not better. Now, let’s think about this . . .”
As he kept talking, asking questions, assigning us a writing prompt, I was only half there. Probably not even half there. Maybe ten percent of me was in the classroom. The rest of me was in my thoughts, in my head, in the realization that had slammed into me like a ten-ton truck.
I’d made two wishes. I’d seen two futures. Both times, I’d solved a problem for one side and made things worse for the other.
I was like a blindfolded man trying to describe an elephant by feeling its tail — and getting it wrong every time. The only way to get it right was if we all removed our blindfolds and figured it out together.
I had to find a way to get Mandy away from Julie.
Class was almost finished, so I would have to be quick.
I tore a piece of paper out of my notebook and scribbled on it.
Meet me during break? In the schoolyard.
Then I folded it in half and wrote “Mandy” on the front. She was sitting in the row behind me, two desks to the left. I waited till Mr. Goode had turned to write something on the board, then I leaned back in my chair, gave the note to Harry Smithfield, who was sitting behind me, and pointed at Mandy.
“Pass it on,” I whispered.
He took the paper from me, glanced at it, and nodded.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the note make its way to Mandy. She took it from Hailey Morgan, who was sitting next to her.
Please don’t reject me. Please don’t ignore me. Please don’t scowl.
I watched Mandy open the note, find my eyes, and give me a quick nod.
Yes!
Feeling slightly calmer, I turned back around to face the front, just as Mr. Goode finished writing on the board.
I didn’t really register anything else that happened in English class. T
he only thing that was going through my mind was the memory of when Mandy met up with me in the first version of this day, and I had a silent hope:
Please don’t let it turn out like it did that time.
We stood huddled together, in the schoolyard. I was fully expecting Mandy to sneer at me and ask me coldly what I wanted. She’d done it twice already.
But she didn’t react like that this time. Instead, she looked at me with wide, frightened eyes and didn’t say anything at all.
“Are you OK?” I asked carefully.
Mandy quickly shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’m not OK at all.” Then she paused, and asked just as carefully, “Are you?”
I shrugged. “Kind of.”
“Do you know why I’m not OK?” Mandy asked.
I nodded. “I think so.”
“Tell me.”
I remembered what happened to me the last time I’d tried to tell her. The scorn and anger. The disbelief. Could I risk that again? Did I have any other choice?
“What you said in class earlier,” I began. “About your favorite thing over winter break . . .”
“What about it?” Mandy asked. She bit her bottom lip while she waited for me to reply.
I took a breath. Then I spoke quickly. “I gave you that pebble,” I said. “We got swept up by the river, then we swam to Rainbow Rocks with Shona. It happened yesterday.” I paused for a second. Then, with my heart hammering like a train, I added, “Or twenty years in the future.” I held my breath and waited for Mandy to reply.
She stared at me for a moment. I readied myself for the onslaught, for the scorn and laughter, for her to tell me to get lost and stop being ridiculous.
None of it happened.
Mandy glanced around and leaned in closer. “So it was real?” she asked in a whisper. “All of it. It all really, truly happened?”
I nodded and let my breath out.
“I thought it was a nightmare,” Mandy said, looking at the ground. “I woke up with a jolt this morning. Before I opened my eyes, I could feel it — I was in another world. It was horrible, awful. I thought I was still in the dream. I tried to force myself awake. Then I opened my eyes and the world was gone — the dream was over. I was in my bedroom at home. I’ve never felt so relieved to wake up in my own bed!”