Chapter 2

When Emily awoke, she was in a closet. A supply closet, to be more precise. She yawned and stretched her spastic limbs. Unfortunately, there wasn't much space in the cramped closet, and her stretching made quite a bit of noise as her arms and legs crashed into various mops and buckets. Fearfully silent, she waited for someone to discover the source of all the noise. But no one came. Finally, Emily got up the courage to peek out the small window in the closet door. What she saw amazed her.

There was her, walking in the halls-but wait, it couldn't be her...could it? The Emily Link walking in the hall had no crutch, and a long, confident stride, nothing like the limping, tripping walk the real Emily had. The Emily out in the hallway was a little bit taller, and had much longer hair. But most stunning of all, the Emily in the hallway was walking with Star and Paulina, laughing and talking like they were old friends.

"What the hell happened?" wondered the Emily in the supply closet. Her question was almost immediately answered by a beautiful, slim ghost with long black hair gliding through the wall and coming to rest next to Emily, floating a few inches above the dirty and slimy floor of the supply closet.

"Desiree!" Emily exclaimed, surprised and a bit suspicious, but not alarmed. Emily was used to ghosts. Not only was her best friend Danny half ghost-or a "halfa" as they sometimes called them, but she was half-ghost, too, and apparently had been since birth. She had figured out that she had ghost powers, but had trouble controlling them because of her disability. Then she met Danny and he taught her to have more control over her powers, and he made her special ghost crutches with voice-activated ghost powers built into the crutches. Emily used at least one of the ghost crutches most of the time. After all, you never knew when a ghost could show up. Like now, for instance.

"Why did you grant my wish? I didn't really mean it." Emily questioned, for she had put together the pieces of the puzzle by now. Desiree was the wishing ghost, and she went around granting people's wishes. Even, apparently, wishes that people didn't exactly mean to have granted...

Desiree shrugged. "I'm the wishing ghost. I heard your wish, I granted it." But something about the evil smile on Desiree's glowing face made Emily suspicious about the ghost's motives. But she was too worried and preoccupied to really dwell on it at the moment.

"So, I can just wish that I had CP again and you'll grant it?" Desiree smirked. There was something definitely evil about that smile.

"It doesn't exactly work that way." Emily arched her eyebrows, but couldn't hold the facial expression for very long. Her eyebrows returned to normal height.

"There's some things I want you to learn about your able-bodied self before you go back to the way things were." And without another word, Desiree took off through the wall again.

"Wait! Stop! I wasn't finished!" Emily yelled in anger and frustration. Try it. What have you got to lose? whispered a small voice in her head. For once, Emily actually listened to it.

"I wish...I had CP again?" she said tentatively, so that it came out more like a question than a statement. Nothing happened, and her foot was starting to fall asleep from being in the same cramped position for so long. Slowly, she used the doorknob as a lever to pull herself upright. Then, carefully, she turned the doorknob, and winced at the creaking sound it made. She glanced around for her crutch, and then realized that it wasn't there.

"Apparently Miss Desiree forgot to bring my crutch. Thanks a lot." Emily muttered sarcastically. Oh well. She'd have to make do. She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she crashed right into a nearby group of lockers, and had to cling to the locker handles to keep her balance. This wasn't unusual for Emily, but this time she panicked. How would she explain herself? How could she explain that she had gotten there by a wish? But no one seemed to notice. Everyone just walked passed her without a glance.

"Everyone would have noticed a crash of that magnitude. I know from experience." Emily said to herself. So that meant either everyone in this wish was deaf or more probably...

"I'm invisible!" Emily said as the realization hit her. Nobody could see her, nobody could hear her. She was totally free to do whatever she wanted. And what she wanted rounded a corner and was heading towards her.

Danny Fenton and Tucker Foley were laughing and talking as they headed towards her. Danny looked cute as ever in his usual red and white t-shirt. Tucker was prodding the screen of his PDA with a tiny stylus. This, at least, was as it should be, and it gave Emily a small bit of comfort to witness the things that were still the same. But where was Sam? Probably at a Veggie Lovers' meeting. Emily decided. She trailed Tucker and Danny to Danny's locker, where he proceeded to struggle with the combination lock. When he finally won the battle and got the lock open, Emily was shocked to see his locker shrouded in black and purple, and a photo of Sam nestled in the fabric, along with a single flower.

Something is very, very wrong here...Emily thought in shock. She watched closely as Tucker patted Danny on the shoulder gently.

"Come on, man. She wouldn't want you to have a breakdown every time you see her picture." Danny wiped away the tears that had been forming in his bright blue eyes.

"I know." he said, his voice trembling. "But I miss her so much. But then again, I guess being dead is better than all the suffering she had to go through before..." his voice trailed off and Tucker patted him awkwardly on the shoulder again.

Suffering? Emily thought in bewilderment. What...? But her thoughts were cut off by Tucker's voice.

"I know, man. We all know the pneumonia got the best of her. You don't have to say it." At first Emily didn't understand. But all of a sudden a stomach sinking swoop of realization hit her, and she nearly fell over again. No, she thought. No, please let me be wrong. Please, I'll do anything! But there was no changing the logical order of facts.

Emily had met Sam when she was in the hospital for a leg operation; and Sam was in the hospital for a serious case of pneumonia. Sam had gotten even more ill while Emily was having her surgery, and had been moved to the Intensive Care Unit. The doctors were sure that Sam wasn't going to live through the night. Emily had changed all that. Not only was Emily half-ghost, but she had also been given incredible healing powers by Isabelle-the healing ghost. She had used her healing powers-which at the time had only been used once before, and failed-to save Sam's life. But now that Emliy didn't have CP, she hadn't had the leg operation last year, and so she hadn't met Tucker and Sam and Danny and she hadn't...Emily shook her head vigorously to clear it of the confusing thoughts.

"Oh my god." she whispered quietly. Sam Manson was dead. And, in a roundabout way, Emily was the one who had killed her.

A/N: Well, I'm updating, even though I only got ONE review! C'mon people, where are ya! But I had a blast of inspiration and you can't ignore inspiration...REVIEW! Please!