The Necklace

8: Man Hunt

"Wake up Ellie! We're home!" Sienne says as I jolt awake.

"Already?" I say.

"Yup. Your face looks a lot better now, I can barely tell where the patches were. Maybe you just were allergic to something?"

"What?" I say feeling my now smooth skin.

I then begin to notice that nothing hurts anymore. My head feels fine. My stomach isn't upset anymore. I look in the car's rear view mirror and see that my face looks nearly back to normal. The whites of my eyes are no longer tinted, I'm not pale, and I even look less gaunt than before.

I grab my bag from the car and say goodbyes to Carter and Kelly before heading inside with Sienne. When we get in, I immediately put my bags to the side and head to the bathroom to check myself out.

I pull out our scale and weigh myself to see that the 15 lbs I had lost has almost completely returned. I look in the mirror and I'm basically back to normal. My attention then gets called to my neck. The necklace is draped around my neck, back to the gold coloring it had from Friday night. A lump in my throat begins to form as I try to make sense of what happened the past few days. No matter how I try to explain everything away, nothing makes sense.

I call Sienne to the bathroom and go over everything that's happened again.

"Am I crazy for even considering that the prank was not a prank and something weird is going on?" I ask.

"Um kind of" She replies.

"But how much of this can be explained away by a prank? What about the psychic? What about the fact that the necklace only changes color when it's on me? What about that dream with Calvin?"

I could see the concern grow in Sienne's eyes as I continued to list all of the things that don't add up.

"I think you need to talk to Jesse. He obviously knows something about what's going on and you know he knows Calvin." She says.

"He keeps leaving me on read!" I say, frustrated.

"Well besides Calvin, he's the only one that has the answers you seek. Just blow up his phone until he responds"

I decide she's right and I attempt to call Jesse. No answer. I try again. No answer. I try again. Straight to voice mail. Fuck.

"He turned his phone off!" I tell Sienne.

"Guess he doesn't want to talk to you. I admit that all of this is really weird. Maybe you could go to his house if you really need to see him, I'm sure he's there." She says.

"That's a good idea, I'll go tomorrow morning. I won't tell him though, in case he actually is avoiding me."

I begin to get ready for bed, brushing my teeth and washing my face when an idea comes to me. If it really is the necklace causing the problem, if I take it off tonight, I should be sick tomorrow, right? I unclasp the necklace and put it on my nightstand before going to bed.

The next morning I'm woken up by the blaring of my alarm clock. From the moment I open my eyes I'm met with a ringing in my ears and a headache. I sit up and begin to feel nauseous as well. The necklace still sits on my nightstand, but it's returned to the silver color it had when I first got it. Could this thing really be making me sick?

I take the necklace off the nightstand and clasp it around my neck, looking down to watch as the metal slowly begins to turn from cool silver to a warm gold. The ringing in my ears immediately stops. I get up and no longer feel nauseous. My head also begins to feel better. The nearly instantaneous relief of symptoms shocks me to my core as the prospect of my potential new reality begins to sink in.