Wish I May, Wish I Might

Chapter 20

"What?" I repeated again as I stayed an arm's length away from Annabelle. "What did you just say?"

Annabelle looked bewildered. Her expression as if I had just slapped her. "I said," she looked around to make sure no one was close enough to hear us. "I said what if we got rid of our wishes. Like we wished for them to go away."

"That's what I thought you said." I shook my head. "Why would you suggest that?"

"Because maybe we can do it!" Annabelle was smiling like she'd just solved all the problems that had been plaguing us. "Maybe we just make one more wish, and then we go back to being just normal people."

"Why would you ever want to do that?"

Annabelle stared at me. I knew she couldn't believe what I was saying. I couldn't believe what she was saying either, so the feeling was mutual. She shook her head quickly and grabbed my wrist tightly, completely unlike the gentle way she had been holding my hand when we went into the dance area. I followed her lead out of the hot tent and into the cold desert night. The tents and stands were being taken down, and we followed the trail of people going to their vehicles. Silently, we got back into our truck, with Annabelle driving and me on the other side. We didn't talk until we were out onto the open highway.

"You want to get rid of our abilities," I said as an opening.

"Of course I do!" she said, not looking away from the dark road.

"Why?"

"Because everything bad that's happened to us is because of our wishes. If it weren't for our wishes, Shay and Tucker would both be alive. That girl on the softball team that broke her leg would never have let that happen to you. You wouldn't be hiding from the police."

"Yeah, but as much bad stuff as that all is, our wishes can still do good things!" I protested. "We can give to the poor so many things. We can heal sick and injured people. I healed Annie with a wish!"

"And I'm happy you did that!" Annabelle cried, finally looking at me. "But I don't understand how that makes up for all the bad things that did happen and could happen again!"

"Nothing bad is going to happen again. We know better now."

"And what happens when you're wrong and something does happen?"

A strange, uncomfortable pressure started building in my throat, and I wondered if I was about to start crying for some reason. "I can't just give this up!" I said. "Everything about me now is based on my wishes. The good, the bad, and the ugly, it's all a part of the wishes. I know you don't think anything out there chose us to be able to make these wishes, but I do, and I'm not throwing that away. I can help so many people with these wishes as long as I don't get caught."

Annabelle scoffed. "How can someone who cares about others so much be so damn selfish at the same time?"

"So now I'm selfish because I want to keep something that someone gave to me?" The pressure on my throat was becoming tighter, and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.

"No one gave you anything!" Annabelle screamed, and I noticed the speedometer on the truck was reading almost a hundred miles an hour. We couldn't argue like this while we were driving. We needed to calm down until we got back to Valleytown.

"Annabelle," I wheezed. It was suddenly getting harder to breathe.

"I just can't believe that after everything, with all the things you've been seeing and the nightmares you've been having that you wouldn't want to get rid of the wishes as soon as you could."

There was a vice around my windpipe. It wasn't letting any air in. I was choking. "Belle!" I choked out, and finally, she noticed something was wrong. Something was definitely wrong. I raised my hands to my throat and that's when I noticed what the wrong thing was: this wasn't a panic attack. This wasn't me choking on something. There are hands around my neck. Someone was strangling me, the same way something had strangled Tucker.