Once again, I was cold, and alone, and miserable.
Ghosts shouldn't feel cold. I guess it didn't actually bother me, but I still felt cold. And it was a deep chill that got inside my bones… if I'd still had any…
"I wish I wasn't dead anymore," I whispered for old times' sake, but it didn't make me feel any better. Loneliness was worse than the cold. I missed Cosmo and Wanda so much it made my head ache to think about it… I had never been so alone, not in my life, not since I got my fairies… if they were here, I could be having fun…. They could light a fire and get me a tent, or better yet they could whisk me away home so none of this had ever happened…
An idea struck me. "I wish I hadn't wished I was dead!" I cried hopefully, without any luck. "I wish everything was back to normal and no one remembered any of this?" I tried without much optimism. Not like any wishes could be granted without my fairies. I was beginning to understand why kids who lost their fairies had to forget all about them… could fairies even see ghosts? I couldn't see why not, but I wanted to know for sure, desperately. And without them, of course, I'd never know. If only they were here… Cosmo would help me figure out how to use this to get revenge on Vicky, while Wanda would make sure we didn't kill ourselves or reveal them in the process…
A shadow fell over me. Shivering from fear, I curled up on the ground. Ghosts shouldn't be afraid of the dark, either, but my traumatized imagination was hard at work, filling the dark shadows around me with vampires and anti-fairies and Vicky. Always Vicky. I couldn't stop seeing her throw me carelessly over the cliff. Good riddance, twerp! echoed endlessly in my mind. Then in a rush I'd remember everything else, the flamethrowers, the iron maidens, the hose, the rabid cats, and wonder why, why, why she would do this to me, why she didn't care I was dead, why she didn't care about anything. How could it make her happy to see kids suffer? It was so much easier to dismiss her as evil Icky with a V when I had a line of defense in the form of unlimited magical wishes, when there was something between her and me. Now there was nothing at all, less than nothing—she could no longer touch me, but she'd already done the worst thing she could possibly do to me… left me weak… made me wish I was dead… made me die, and made sure no one else would find out.
I remembered the ghost stories the other kids had told me, about kids who never came home from summer camp. Now I was one of them.
Who would tell Mom and Dad?
Tears pricked my eyes again, now when no one else could see. "I wanna go home…" I whimpered quietly. Revenge against Vicky could wait, if it meant I could go be with my parents again. With me not dead.
No one was anywhere near me, no one could hear me, so finally I let go and let myself sob, wail, cry over everything I'd lost, everyone who'd never see me again and everything I'd never get to do, the sheer idiocy of my death and the blind happiness that had been my life, the black hole that was Vicky's heart and the broken hearts of my parents, my godparents, my friends, love and hate and jealously and compassion and everything that would never touch me again. I cried like a little kid, and I cried like a kid who had to grow up too fast. I cried like… like I was facing my own death, not only facing it but waving at it and putting flowers on my own grave… Timmy Turner, 1994-2004, it'd say… and that made me cry harder, I'd never even get to grow up enough so that I wouldn't need my fairy godparents anymore—I was still only ten, and I still needed them, now more than ever, more than anything, and I'd never see them again and I'd spend eternity remembering them and how I'd never see them again…
Please, please, Cosmo, Wanda, come back, come back and grant me just this one wish to be alive again… I'll never ever make a stupid wish like that again, I promise… just as long as you come back to me, let me live, let me have my friends again, please… please…