felt helped gave them a small sense of control in a time where they had none. The last child who had occupied the room was really into dinosaurs-something that showed from the crudely painted mural of a normal day in the Cretaceous period. Meg remembered helping with that particular project. It was fun, even though she was criticized for adding a mastodon to the scene. So she was now aware of the fact that the mastodon was not a dinosaur but a prehistoric mammal. And that it didn't even exist in the Triassic period. She was informed of all this by a seven-year-old girl. Bruce pretended to cower from the Tyrannosaurus Rex painted on the wall, even if the carnivore was in pastel pink, as that had been the girl's favorite color. The coloring only added humor to Bruce's acting. Tony chuckled softly at this. Meg did a quick look around to make sure that she had not missed anything when setting up the room. In preparation, the room had been vacuumed and dusted thoroughly, as well as new sheets fitted on the bed. A fluffy quilt completed the comfortable setting. All seemed well enough to Meg. "Where's Bruce going to sleep?" Tony asked. Meg paused to think about how to answer that question. She hadn't considered sleeping quarters for an imaginary friend. "How does Bruce like camping?" she asked afterwards. "Because I have a sleeping bag he can use if he doesn't mind." "Sounds good to me," Bruce said. "Bruce says its fine," Tony relayed to Meg. "I think the sleeping bag is in the closet in the hall." Meg had meant to get the sleeping bag herself but Tony dashed off to look for it himself. She decided to start on the unpacking while he looked through the closet. There wasn't much to look through. Tony did not own much-mainly a collection of old and slightly threadbare clothes, some sketch pads, and some pencils. At the bottom of the bag, she found something slightly out of place. It was a book. The title read Friends Indeed in bright red lettering and the cover was colorful and obviously kid-friendly-children with big smiles on their faces and odd-looking creatures on it. Picking it out of the bag, she discovered it was a fairly thin book. It was very much a young children's book. Why a thirteen-year old would have a book that was geared for an age group far younger than himself was a mystery to Meg. She would have to ask Tony about it. She moved to place the book on the bedside desk. A loose page in the book slid out of place and onto the floor. She quickly bent down to pick it up. The text on the page itself was eye-catching. It was printed in royal purple in a style that suggested it was scrawled on parchment paper long ago. Meg couldn't help but read a bit of it. What she read struck her as odd, and she found herself reading it aloud in a way to that would reassure her she was indeed reading these exact words. "Cross your heart and now you take from your mind a thought to make. Hold, think it over twice. Then what you wish for will come to light." It was an odd bit of writing for a children's book, Meg felt. If she didn't know better, she would think the passage was a spell of some kind. The rest of the book seemed normal enough for a children's book, and gave no sign of any deeper meaning she should be worried about. "Strange," she mumbled to herself.
Chapter Three "HEY. DON'T KNOCK it. It works," Bruce commented aloud, though he knew Meg would not hear a word he said. Though if that was true, why did Meg suddenly look to his direction with wide eyes and let out a surprised gasp? The book dropped from her hands a moment after the gasp. The fear in her eyes quickly turned to anger. "Who the hell are you? And how did you get in here?" Bruce gazed around the room a couple of times to look for the person Meg was talking to. It then dawned on him that she was staring straight at him. He felt an odd sensation as he was used to people looking through him. "You can see me?" he asked. "Of course I see you! Now get