Thanks to Jessica and Mrs. Hector, Dr. Medford let Makenna off clean, but he sent her home with her report card and told her that perhaps her condition would be better next week and she would be back to normal.

When a confused Michelle, Makenna's mother, came to pick her up, Dr. Medford explained what had happened and about her report card, on which her highest grade was a 67, which was in her English class. Of course, Makenna failed her report card again. Dr. Medford also explained to Mrs. Delling that Makenna had one last chance to bring her grades up, or she would be attending summer school.

Makenna didn't care. The entire time Dr. Medford gave his lecture, she played with her nails and took selfies. That resulted in a heated lecture Mrs. Delling gave her on the way home. She punished her daughter by taking away her phone for two weeks and telling her she would not attend ballet lessons until she got her life together and her grades went up to the mid-80s. Now, that angered Makenna.

She tried protesting, but Mrs. Delling said, "It's too late, Makenna. You have broken the Circle of Trust, and until those grades go up and we figure out your condition, you will not be attending ballet lessons."

After those lines, Makenna was silent the rest of the way home. When they got home—they still lived in the two-story house on Seabrook Island's Jenkins Point—Mrs. Delling ordered Makenna to her room and told her to start hitting the books. They would discuss the situation with Mr. Delling when he got home.

Makenna rolled her eyes, "Yes, your Majesty," and stormed to her room.

Now that she and Caleb were no longer little kids, they no longer shared a room. They each had their own room now, but both rooms were still on the house's second story.

Makenna's room was very girly. Every time someone entered it, perfume invaded their nostrils. Sometimes, the smell was so strong that people choked a little.

The room had four walls; every wall was painted pink, and there was a large window in the back with blue curtains. Looking out the window, people could see the Gator Pond, the pond beside the house that Makenna and Caleb used to pretend was Mermaid Lagoon.

Makenna's bed was in the middle of the room, propped against her back wall, and the window and a pink nightstand were directly beside it. The bed's bedspread was blue with white stripes, similar to the top she wore, and her pillow was white. A fluffy white rug rested on the wooden floor, and Makenna's white closet was beside the doorway.

When she returned to her room after her wonderful short school day, Makenna tossed her book bag onto the floor and kicked off her shoes. She grabbed some sky-blue nail polish and tuned her radio, which rested on her nightstand, to My 102.5, her favorite radio station. Then she plopped down on her bed and studied her blue fingernails. She shook her head. This was too weird.

Makenna soon said, "No," and unscrewed the cap of her nail polish. "I can't have this. It's unacceptable." Holding out her right hand, she took the brush out of the nail polish and took a deep breath. She brought her hand to her face and started to paint over her nails. She sighed as, gradually, the nail color changed from blue to sky-blue.

When she finally finished her first hand, she smiled and admired her work, but she lost her smile when the sky-blue nail polish suddenly dissolved into her nails and was replaced by blue nails again.

Makenna gasped. "Oh no! Not again!" She was so fed up with all this weirdness! First, it was her ears, and now her nails. What was Makenna supposed to do?

She thought about it for a bit. Then, she got it! Leaping up from her bed, she hurried to her and Caleb's bathroom and disappeared inside. After a bit, she rushed back out. She held a few cotton balls in one hand, and in the other, she had a bottle of nail polish remover.

Makenna leaped back onto her bed and opened the bottle of nail polish remover. She wet a cotton ball and closed the bottle again. Then, she focused on her blue nails and rubbed the remover on them, hoping the color would disappear, but it didn't. No matter how hard Makenna tried, she could not get her nails to return to their standard color. She spent an entire hour trying to remove the blue, but it was a waste of her time, and she also used up all the nail polish remover.

When the bottle was finally empty, Makenna yelled when she saw nothing except the remover on the cotton ball. Angry, she threw the bottle and cotton ball on the floor and watched her nails change from blue to red.

Makenna took deep breaths. Eventually, when she calmed herself, her nails changed back to blue. Focusing on her feet, a light bulb appeared above Makenna's head. She knew what to do. Instead of painting her fingernails, she would paint her toenails. Perfect! Now, there was an idea.

Exhaling, Makenna removed her blue, over-the-knee socks and tossed them onto the floor. Then she reached for her sky-blue nail polish again and sighed as she removed the brush.

When Makenna was ready to start painting, she brought the brush to her toenails but froze when she saw they were also blue, just like her fingernails. "No!" she shouted. "Not you guys, too!" She tried painting over her toenails, but just like her fingernails, the polish dissolved back into them, and only the blue was shown.

While Makenna sat there, her toenails and fingernails changed to red, and her other ear, which wasn't pointy, became pointy. Now, Makenna officially had two pointy ears, but she was unaware because she didn't feel her other ear change. Right now, she was too focused on her fingernails and toenails and the fact that she would probably never paint her nails again. She loved painting her nails. In just one week, she lost everything important: her ballet lessons, her joy of painting her nails, etc.

Sniffing, Makenna's nails changed to a darker shade of blue, and she put her hands behind her head and flopped down on her pillows. She couldn't hold it in any longer.

Makenna sobbed and shouted, "Mom! Mom, please! I need you!"

Michelle was heading toward the living room downstairs but stopped at the base of the stairs when she heard Makenna. Gasping, she asked, "Makenna?" and started to jog up the stairs.

"Mom!" Makenna yelled. "Hurry!"

Her mother sped up her pace. Finally reaching the second story of the house, she approached Makenna's door and turned the knob, opening it. She stepped into Makenna's room. At the sight of her daughter crying on her bed, she asked, "Makenna, what's wrong?"

"My condition!" Makenna frightfully said. "It's getting worse!" She peered down at her shaking hands and watched as black mixed in with the blue.

Mrs. Delling gasped and asked, "Worse? What do you mean 'worse'?" She rushed to Makenna's bed and sat down, resting her left palm on the bedsheet.

Makenna spilled her guts. As she sobbed, she shuddered and said, "Mo-Mom, my-my nai-nails! And my-my ears! I-I'm tur-turning into a-a fre-freak!"

"Makenna," Mrs. Delling said calmly, "calm down." She reached out to hug her daughter, but Makenna held out her hands.

"No, don't touch me!"

"Calm down," repeated Mrs. Delling. She studied her daughter's flushed face and noticed she was sweating slightly. "Makenna," she said, "you look like you may be feeling a bit under the weather."

Now that she mentioned it, Makenna did feel a little sick. She was exhausted. She didn't want to study and paint her nails; she wanted to sleep.

Sighing, Michelle added, "We won't deal with that report card today. I want you to rest, and I will call the doctor."

"No!" Makenna protested. She didn't like the d-o-c-t-o-r. "Do-don't call the doctor, Mo-Mom! Please! I-I'm fine!"

"No, you're not, Makenna," Mrs. Delling said. "There is something wrong with you. I don't know what it is, but I'm sure the doctor can help."

"No, Mom!" Makenna shouted. "You can't bring the doctor in! You don't understand! Nobody can get close to me!"

"Makenna, please," said Michelle, "I just want to help you. I don't want to see my fourteen-year-old child scared and ill. Now, calm down."

She reached out to hug her daughter again, but Makenna shouted, "Mom, no! Get back!" and held her left palm out to her mother. A ball of blue light appeared in it. Her necklace pendant gradually turned red again, but Makenna attacked her instead. She released the ball of light, hitting Mrs. Delling straight in the chest.

She yelled as she was thrown back and landed on Makenna's fluffy, white rug.

"I'm sorry, Mom!" Makenna said, and her nails returned to blue, "but I had no choice! You can't get near me!"

Mrs. Delling sat up on the rug and shook her head. "I'm going to call the doctor." She jumped to her feet, and Makenna groaned as she watched her sprint out of the room and slam the door behind her.

She reached for her forehead, shook her head, and said, "Oh, I really don't feel all that great." Closing her eyes, Makenna plopped down on her pillow. The second her head touched it, her world went black. Believe it or not, she slept for the rest of the day. Nothing could wake her up. Not even a nuclear bomb.

As Makenna slept, she dreamed. She dreamed that she was resting on her back in a meadow on a beautiful, sunny day, and hovering over her, staring down at her face, was another young teenage girl; she seemed to be maybe thirteen years old, a little younger than Makenna. She was a beautiful girl with long, curly, blonde hair and stunning blue eyes, similar to Makenna's. The girl looked slightly like her, except her hair was blonde, not brown.

She chuckled and said, "Come with me, Makenna." Chuckling again, she jogged past Makenna and headed up a hill.

From where she rested, Makenna sat and smiled at the girl, who was now on top of the hill, waving at her. "Hurry up, Makenna!"

"Okay, okay!" Makenna said. She stood and jogged up the hill, approaching the girl.

She said, "I'm happy you're here, Makenna. I've been lonely ever since my older sister went to study in America."

"America?" Makenna asked. "Aren't we in America?"

The girl chuckled and closed her eyes. "No, silly, we're in the United Kingdom."

"United Kingdom?" asked Makenna, but then she said, "Oh," for she saw that the girl had an accent.

The girl nodded and opened her eyes. "We'll be sailing to America soon, though, because we're visiting my sister. Now, come on! The ocean is just over this hill!"

"Huh?" Makenna asked. "The ocean?" She peered over the hill and gasped. The girl was right. The ocean was just over the hill, directly before her. The sun glistened on the water.

Under her breath, Makenna said, "Whoa." She slid down the hill and joined the mysterious girl on the beach.

Together, they walked down it, and the mysterious girl said, "I love walking on the beach. When my sister returns from America, I hope to start a routine. I hope we'll walk on the beach early every day. Although"—she sighed—"rumors speak of a war coming, and I'm afraid my sister won't be able to leave America until it's over."

"You really love your sister, don't you?" asked Makenna.

"Yeah," spoke the girl. "I've made plans that on the fourth night of the voyage, I will sprint to the ship's bow and announce up at the star-filled sky, 'Don't worry, Annika, your little sister is on her way home! I won't let anything stand in my way! Not even a rumor of war!' I can picture it now."

"Wow," Makenna said, "so Annika's the name of your sister?"

"Yes, Makenna," said the mysterious girl, "and she is amazing." She playfully jogged into the ocean and started to twirl. As she twirled, she said, "I love the ocean."

Makenna cleared her throat. "And," she said, "what is your name?"

"My name?" asked the girl. She stopped twirling and focused her attention on Makenna. "My name is—"

However, just before she finished, storm clouds covered the sky, and Makenna found herself and the mysterious girl floating freely in the ocean during a typhoon.

Waves crashed onto the two girls, and Makenna could hear the mysterious girl yelling, "Makenna, help!"

Makenna gasped and peered into the sky. She gasped again. It had suddenly turned into nighttime.

Makenna turned her head and called, "Kid?" since she didn't know the girl's name. She gasped for the third time when she saw that coming toward her and the mysterious girl was the silhouette of an enormous ship. The ship's foghorn blew.

Yelling, Makenna shouted, "Swim!" at the mysterious girl.

They started to, but the area surrounding her, the mysterious girl, and the approaching ship grew pitch black. The only source of light came from the ship.

Makenna heard the mysterious girl yelling and called for her again. "Kid?"

The silhouetted ship started to pass her, and a wave pulled her away from it and underwater. Quickly coming to the surface, Makenna again yelled, "Kid?" and then she gasped when suddenly, the night was interrupted by a loud scraping sound, and another wave pulled her underwater.

Underwater, Makenna heard the familiar, "Help! Mommy! Daddy!" she heard when she was seven. The voice sounded like the mysterious girl she met. Oh no, Makenna had to help her! It was not good, whatever just happened.

She tried to swim toward the ship and the mysterious girl, but the current pulled her away. "No!" Makenna shouted, holding out her hand. "Come back! Come back!"

The current kept pulling her.

Right after Makenna yelled, a large silhouette of a man who seemed to be half man and half octopus appeared before her. In a booming voice, he said, "Yes, Makenna Delling," and his eye sockets glowed blue. "Come with me." He reached out and grabbed Makenna by the arms.

She tried to break free and shouted, "Let go!" Next, she yelled for the ship. "Come back! Come back!" Then, she heard it—the familiar sound of iron breaking. A black figure appeared out of nowhere and started to sink toward her.

Screaming, Makenna closed her eyes and cried, "Help!"

The figure kept sinking toward her.

In reality, out of the dream, it was nighttime on Seabrook Island, and Makenna thrashed in her sleep. "Come back! Come back, please!" Her necklace pendant glowed brightly.

Blue magic outlined Makenna, and lightning shot out of her open hand and crashed into her wall, leaving a hole behind.

Dropping her hand, Makenna held it up to her face. Suddenly, she transformed into a fairy—a real fairy. She grew tiny, sky-blue wings, and her outfit changed.

After the split second was over, her wings vanished, and she transformed back into her blue and white, striped top and denim pants. However, she was still asleep and outlined by blue magic.