Thank you once again to my faithful reviewers!! It has amazed me how much you guys seem to like this story! Who would've thought? Hope this chapter adds another twist, of sorts.

This was too much. This day was too much.

My life had already been turned upside down, and it was happening again. However, instead of righting itself like any philosopher or geometry freak would predict, it had simply turned onto a different side, an alternate facet. Not only was my old life over, but the shreds of what I had known and counted as lasting were now flying in some void far away from here.

Okay, so maybe I'm overreacting a bit. But after just seeing my only real human acquaintance (and possibly, friend) knock the guy she had loved so perseveringly and passionately to the ground, one would think that a little overreaction was justified. Besides that, my slow human brain still failed to comprehend the fact that my life had been saved by one other than Cameron.

Talk about a disturbing reality. Let me remind you of whom I am talking about: Cameron, the fellow former Earth-watcher, the guardian angel of Oliver, the only one there when I had fallen to my present state. For some reason completely unknown to me, he had always been there, or at least for the most memorable (and tragic) moments of my existence. He had always been at my side, picking the most inopportune times to break through the thoughts and dreams that the others had always used to classify me as different. Other than me, only he had wondered what it would have been like to be human, though both of us had known that, if given the chance, we would always stay angelic. And yet, I had changed, and he was there all the same, steady and unchanging. He had always provided that irritating logic I almost never wanted to hear.

Yet he had done something totally illogical. He had risked being seen and/or found out by the crowd on the beach just to save my frail life. It didn't make sense to me.

- - - - - - -

"Lilly? Um, what just happened? I didn't think that violence towards Oliver was very characteristic of you, but would you mind explaining?" I asked, begging for the seventh time for an explanation. I had been counting.

Lilly ignored me for the seventh time. This was becoming very frustrating. Any reason at all would have been welcome; if she told me that she had been trying to make Oliver's nose smaller, I would have been satisfied with that ridiculous answer.

"You're going to have to give me a reason sometime," I prodded in a final attempt for gratification.

Lilly spun around from the paperwork she had intently been filling out from my "accident," as it was being called. "Look, Mckaenna, why can't you just leave me alone? If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't be stuck in this freaking alternate nightmare with Miley acting like the biggest with of all time and a freaking Oliver look-a-like jerk with a freaking bloody nose! If it wasn't for you, I might have a chance at being happy for once!" So much for my one human friend.

As terrible as I felt about everything, I couldn't help feeling that Lilly was being a little irrational. After all, you would think that she would realize that it wasn't my choice to be here either. I was just as stuck as she was, and even more so now that I was mortal.

Without thinking, I muttered, "I wasn't the one who made the wish that got us here."

Lilly froze. Oh, crap.

Before I could react, she was lunging at me like an angry tiger attacking a small, annoying rat. Now I had an inkling of what Oliver had felt like. As her flailing arms landed random blows over my upper half, I threw my own up in defense. Her momentum had brought us both to the sand already stained with Oliver's blood. I struggled to gain an advantage over Lilly's raging reflexes, trying everything I could think of to dodge her blows. My hands clamped onto her shoulders, and I threw all my weight to the right, bringing Lilly crashing to the sand. Still holding her shoulders, I pushed my body weight down on her arms and legs. It was like trying to subdue a maddened bull after it has been prodded with spurs.

Lilly's eyes locked with mine, and an angry hiss issued from her lips. "I hate you, Mckaenna. I wish I had never met you. I wish you were dead, and that there was no God to ruin my life."

I let her go.

She couldn't have said that. This couldn't be happening. This couldn't be real.

And, taking the human way out, I ran away.