Once Anne opened the box, the three girls were met with a blinding flash of light. They all instinctively looked away, and Marcy stumbled back, landing on her behind.
After Sasha blinked a few times, helped Marcy up, and let her eyes adjust to the dark again, she only had one thing to say.
"Wait… Mar-Mar… where's Anne?"
"I–I don't know! Maybe she… ran off?" Marcy replied, dusting herself off.
"Uuugh. Okay, I'll just call her."
No luck.
A few minutes later, a call came in from Mrs. Boonchuy.
"Oh! Hey Miss B. What's up?"
"Hi Sasha. Aran and I were wondering if you were with Anne? We got a call from St. James that she missed 6th period, and now she's not at her birthday party."
"Yeah… I might have had something to do with that."
"Ugh… I keep telling her, you're a bad influence. Just… tell her to come home, okay? We're all waiting on her."
"Well, she was just with us, but then Marbles pulled some lame prank on her and she ran off."
"Alright… tell me where you are and we'll help look for her."
So Sasha, Marcy, and the Boonchuys met up to look for Anne. But unfortunately, they didn't find her. It seemed the box had simply disintegrated her, as they couldn't find a single trace of where Anne went.
Over the following week, Sasha noticed that Marcy had gotten quieter. Usually, Marcy would be constantly going on about her latest video game obsession, but now you'd be lucky to hear a peep out of her at lunch.
The week after that, it got worse. Not only was Marcy silent at lunch, but she seemed to be avoiding Sasha, never seeming to have time to just unwind at the arcade. And apparently she was moving away?
On the last week of school, 2 days before she was supposed to leave, Marcy was slumped over the lunch table, occasionally scooping a couple grains of rice into her mouth with her fork. Sasha decided she couldn't take it anymore.
"Hey… is something wrong? You can tell me."
"I don't wanna… it'd just make you hate me…"
"Marbles. Something's bothering you. Spill it."
"Sasha… please…"
"Don't care. I wanna know."
She'd evidently pressed too hard, as this caused Marcy to pick up her still-pretty-full tray and go to the waste bins, hanging her head the whole way.
Later that evening, Sasha went to visit Marcy at her house. Or at least, who she assumed was Marcy under all those blankets.
"Hey–"
"Go away Sash," was all that was heard.
Sasha, undeterred, said what she needed to.
"Marcy… I'm sorry for what I said at lunch today. I'm just… worried, is all."
"You don't need to worry about me. I don't deserve it…" probably-Marcy replied.
This was a shock, but she regained her composure. "Well… so what if you don't. I'm your best friend, I'm gonna do it anyway."
"We're not best friends… not after what I did to your real best friend…"
"Wha—come on, that was not your fault! You couldn't have known what that music box would do!"
"Yeah I did… I saw it in a library book a couple hours earlier…" A head popped out, revealing that it was, in fact, Marcy Wu.
Sasha was briefly at a loss for words. "Then why did we make Anne open it, if you knew it would kill her?!"
"Oh no no no, nothing like that! It was supposed to take us to another world…" She started crying. "One where I didn't have to move away… and we could have fun together… frog, what was I thinking…"
Sasha didn't respond to this. She was busy trying to make sense of it.
"I mean… what… was I gonna have some fantasy adventure? Be some kind of artificer-rogue?" She practically choked on her tears. "I would've just… fallen down a bunch of stairs the minute we got there…"
"Oh… our…" Sasha started crying as well. "Our friendship was… everything to you."
Marcy just nodded. "I thought I could fix things… but instead, I only ruined it for you and Anne…"
Sasha thought about things for a moment, then started talking again.
"Look… it won't exactly be the same as it was before, but… maybe we could do Skype once a week?"
Marcy immediately got up and squeezed Sasha into a hug. "I'd like that… but… what about Anne…?"
Sasha smiled. "Don't worry. Leave that to me."
It had been a quiet night at the Thai Go. Quiet, up until a certain blonde stormed in with both tears and passion in her eyes.
"Your daughter's alive, Boonchuys. I swear to frog, mark my words, we're all gonna see Anne again!"
In that moment, On Boonchuy could have sworn that Sasha's eyes had been glowing pink. But, she supposed, she must have been imagining things.