The Dead Girl's Wish Wheel

1 Seven days after Sadie Mercer jumped from the high school roof, an anonymous link appeared on the student community board: The Wish Wheel. At first, everyone assumed it was a morbid, tasteless prank. Then Logan, our senior class president, quietly spun it and landed on Future. The very next afternoon, he received a full-ride early acceptance letter from Columbia. Once the news tore through the hallways, all hesitation evaporated. Nobody cared about bad omens anymore. Brody, the varsity linebacker who terrorized the freshman wing, spun Fortune, and his parents hit a five-million-dollar state lottery jackpot that same night. Even Harper—Sadie’s former lab partner, who had spent four years being mocked for weighing over two hundred pounds—spun Beauty. She woke up the following morning drastically, impossibly thin, walking into school looking like she belonged on a runway. With every impossible prayer granted, the senior class descended into a frenzy. Everyone clawed for their turn at the screen. Then Paige decided she wanted to spin. She told me she didn't want Ivy League prestige or a sudden fortune. She didn't want cheekbones or a smaller waist. She only wanted her mother, whose terminal liver failure had placed her in hospice care, to wake up healthy. I snatched her phone right out of her hands. "Give it back, Natalie!" Paige’s voice cracked, tears brimming in her bloodshot eyes. "The palliative team said she has a week left. Maybe less." "We don't know where this site came from," I said, holding the screen against my chest. "We don't know what's hosting it." "Three people already got what they asked for!" she screamed, drawing every set of eyes in the homeroom toward us. "Logan is going to Columbia. Brody’s family is rich. Harper looks like a model. What more proof do you need?" "I just need you to wait. Just a couple of days." "Wait for what? For her heart to stop?" The classroom fell dead silent. Harper leaned against the front desk, crossing her slender arms and letting out a sharp, mocking laugh. "Look at you, Natalie. Her mother is literally dying in a hospital bed, and you're still playing Nancy Drew." She shook her head, tossing her newly styled hair. "Must be nice having two healthy parents at home. What happens to anyone else’s family doesn't matter, right? Not as long as you get to pretend you're the only person in this school who understood Sadie Mercer." I looked at her coldly. "I'm telling her to be cautious." "Cautious of what? A miracle?" Harper sneered. "Or are you just waiting for her mom to flatline so you can wrap your arms around Paige and whisper, I told you so?" A chorus of cruel, nervous chuckles rippled through the desks. Logan tapped his pen on the podium, his voice carrying that polished, political authority he always wore. "Alright, Natalie, that’s enough. Three wishes came true. Those are empirical facts. If you don't have the power to save Paige’s mom, the least you can do is stop standing in the way of her saving herself." I stared right into his eyes. "Sadie’s old handle posted that link, Logan." "So what?" He shrugged, perfectly unbothered. "If she set this up before she died, it means she made peace with us. She wanted to leave something good behind. It was just high school drama, Natalie. She overreacted. Does that mean the rest of us have to carry the cross for the rest of our lives?" Harper smirked behind her manicured hand. "Some people are desperate for Sadie to hate us. Because if everyone else is a villain, Natalie gets to be the sole saint." "She’s probably just jealous," someone muttered from the back row. "If Paige’s mom gets better, Paige won't need to lean on her every single day. Natalie won't have a sidekick to pity anymore." I watched Paige’s face drain of color, the doubt hardening into something bitter and cold. "Natalie," Paige whispered, her voice shaking. "Is that really what you think?" "Do you honestly believe that?" I asked, my heart aching. "Then why won't you let me have this?" I gripped the phone tightly. "Because something is wrong. None of this makes sense." "Your gut feeling?" Paige’s tone turned icy. "You want me to gamble my mother’s life on your intuition? You were the only one attached to Sadie at the hip. God knows what you two actually talked about behind closed doors." I froze. Paige chewed her lip, looking around the room as if searching for validation, before meeting my gaze again. "The whole class talked about her, sure, but jumping off the roof over school gossip never made sense. You spent every single day with her. And now you’re fighting tooth and nail to keep us from touching the one thing she left behind... What are you hiding, Natalie?" A suffocating silence dropped over the room. The air shifted instantly. Harper let out an exaggerated gasp, widening her eyes. "Of course. When Sadie was alive, she shut everyone out except you. Now that she’s gone, you're terrified she might have forgiven the rest of us. What if the person who actually drove her over the edge has been playing the martyr the whole time?" My knuckles went white, trembling with rage. "Do any of you have any shame left?" Logan stepped between us, swiftly wrenching the phone from my grip and handing it back to Paige. "Why get so defensive if your hands are clean?" Paige clutched the device to her chest, looking at me with eyes completely devoid of the warmth we had shared for years. "If anything happens to my mom, Natalie... I will never forgive you." As soon as she unlocked her screen, the web page refreshed on its own. The digital wheel began spinning rapidly without a touch. The entire class surged forward, crowding around Paige’s desk. The glowing pointer flickered past Wealth, Prestige, and Romance, gradually slowing down with a digital click until it settled squarely on: Health. A collective cheer erupted. "Look at that! Sadie came back to fix things!" "She literally gave Paige exactly what she needed!" In the center of the display, a pulsing red button materialized: [CLAIM WISH] Paige’s thumb hovered over the glass, shaking violently. I lunged forward, slamming my palm over the screen to black it out. "Don't press it, Paige! Don't do it!" She shoved me back with shocking force. "Get away from me!" "Think about it!" I shouted, breathless. "Why did the wheel spin itself? Who is running the server? We don't know the cost!" Harper rolled her eyes so hard it looked painful. "Oh, I'm sorry, does saving a dying woman require a peer-reviewed research paper first? Sadie is dead, and you're still dissecting her intentions. No wonder she only had you as a friend. She was probably sick to death of you." I clenched my fists. "Shut your mouth, Harper." "Did I hit a nerve?" Harper stepped into my personal space, lowering her voice so only the front rows could hear. "You kept telling everyone you were protecting her. But when she climbed up to that ledge, she didn't call you, did she? She didn't leave you a note. Did she really want to die, or did someone keep whispering in her ear that there was no way out?" I slapped her pointing finger away. Harper instantly recoiled, clutching her hand and blinking back theatrical tears. "Look! She's getting violent because she's guilty!" Logan stepped in front of me, cutting off my path. "Drop the act, Natalie. We all bought your loyal-best-friend routine for months. But nobody who genuinely loved someone would try to sabotage the final kindness they left behind. You keep calling this wheel a trap because you're terrified the truth will come out—that she hated you most of all." Murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd. "She’s totally projecting." "She used Sadie’s tragedy to make herself look like an angel." "And now Sadie’s gifts are exposing her." Paige stared at me, the last trace of hesitation vanishing from her posture. "Step aside, Natalie." "Paige, please—" "Don't say my name!" she cried, her voice cracking. "I was an idiot to believe you. You told me the whole school was tormenting her, so I followed your lead and cut everyone off. But I never saw the worst of it myself. I only ever heard it from you." A cold dread settled deep in my stomach. "You saw the locker. You saw what they wrote in permanent marker across her desk." "A few stupid words on wood?" Harper chimed in instantly. "For all we know, she wrote that garbage herself just to get your sympathy." Laughter bounced off the walls. I tried to reach for the phone again, but four girls locked shoulders, forming a solid wall between Paige and me. They didn't hit me; they simply leaned their weight in unison, shoving me back toward the supply closets. "Keep her out of this." "Let Paige have her miracle." A guy in the front row took the phone from Paige’s trembling hands, smiling gently. "Hands shaking too much? I got you." Paige nodded through her tears. "No!" I threw my shoulder against the human barrier, trying to break through. The boy's thumb tapped the glass. Ding. A digital chime echoed crisply from the speakers. [Wish Claimed Successfully.] Paige covered her mouth, a breathless, sobbing laugh escaping her throat. "It went through... My mom is going to live." The entire room surrounded her in an avalanche of hugs and congratulations. I stood outside the circle, utterly isolated, a cold nausea churning in the pit of my stomach. Harper glanced back over her shoulder, offering me a triumphant smirk. "Wipe that miserable look off your face, Natalie. To anyone walking in right now, they’d think your own mother just died." During lunch, Paige’s phone rang with an unknown hospital number. She put it on speaker, and the lead physician’s bewildered, ecstatic voice resonated through the quiet room. Her mother had suddenly regained consciousness. Her vitals had stabilized; the acute hepatic inflammation was retreating at a speed that baffled the entire medical board. Paige sobbed into the receiver, asking the doctor to repeat the lab numbers three times. When she finally hung up, the classroom erupted into utter pandemonium. "It really worked!" "Sadie is an angel!" "I guess somebody here doesn't have anything to say now, huh?" I stood near the door, my certainty faltering for the briefest second. Could I really be wrong? Was it possible that Sadie, in some inexplicable way, had found peace and wanted to leave behind pure grace? The thought vanished as quickly as it came. A girl who had been systematically destroyed for months did not return from the grave as a benevolent fairy godmother. An anonymous web script didn't bend the laws of biology without an architect. "I'm glad your mom is recovering, Paige," I said quietly, looking across the room at her. "I really am. But please, keep her medical charts on file. Don't touch that site again until we know what this is." The glow vanished from Paige’s face. "You're still waiting for her to relapse, aren't you?" "That isn't what I said." "Then why can't you just admit that Sadie gave us a gift?" Logan scoffed, crossing his arms. "Because if she admits that, her entire identity crumbles. If Sadie didn't hate us, it means we never drove her to anything. It means the only toxic person in her life was the girl who claimed to be her savior." Harper pulled out her phone, aiming the camera directly at my face. "Apologize to Paige, Natalie. And then apologize to Sadie." I put my hand up, blocking the lens. "I have nothing to apologize for." "You almost cost a woman her life!" "I tried to protect Paige from an unknown danger!" "It’s not a danger, it’s Sadie’s blessing!" Logan snapped. I looked around at their self-righteous, gleaming faces. When Sadie was alive, they called her a slut. They whispered behind their hands when she walked down the hall and slid crude, degrading notes into her textbook. Now that her digital ghost had handed them Ivy League admissions, lottery tickets, and clear skin, she was suddenly their beloved saint. How dare they demand I apologize to her memory. "I'm not apologizing to anyone," I said. Paige unclasped the silver braided friendship bracelet I had given her for her sixteenth birthday and let it drop onto the floor between us. "Then we have nothing left to talk about," she said, her voice completely dead. "Anyone who looks disappointed by my mother’s survival doesn't belong in my life." By three o'clock that afternoon, a heavily edited video of the morning confrontation was circulating through every class group chat and social thread. The clip started right when I grabbed Paige’s phone, cutting out everything before it, framed with the caption: The girl who really drove Sadie to the edge is now trying to kill Paige’s mom. The retaliation began the next morning. When I arrived at school, my desk was gone. I found it shoved into the second-floor girls' restroom, wedged beside the trash bin. My backpack had been dumped into the janitor's mop sink, soaking my notebooks in gray, chemical water. My spare hoodie had been slashed across the back with a black marker: MURDERER. I hauled the heavy desk back into the classroom myself. The moment I set it down, three boys picked it up and carried it right back out while the rest of the room watched in amused silence. When I tried to block the door, Harper stood in front of me with her camera rolling. "Don't touch me," she mocked. "I wouldn't want to end up like Sadie." "This is textbook harassment," I said, looking at Logan. Logan frowned, adjusting his backpack strap with casual indifference. "Careful with the buzzwords, Natalie. We're just holding you accountable for Sadie." Paige sat at her desk, staring straight ahead, her voice cold and level. "You know what you did to her, Natalie. Deep down, you know." Over the next forty-eight hours, the Wish Wheel became the center of the school's universe. One by one, the remaining seniors spun. A shy boy received a confession text from his long-time crush. A failing student scored in the ninety-ninth percentile on his standardized test. A girl whose parents had been in the middle of a bitter divorce came to school crying tears of joy because they had suddenly called off the lawyers. Every single wish manifested with terrifying precision. The class became completely intoxicated by the power, utterly convinced that Sadie had forgiven them all. And with that conviction came absolute certainty that I was the lone pariah, the liar who deserved to be purged. They moved my seat to the back corner next to the metal recycling bin. Someone smeared industrial glue across my chair. My student ID card was snapped in half and left on the cafeteria floor. Every morning, a new message was carved or scribbled into my workspace: Why haven't you jumped yet? I fought back every way I knew how. I tore down the slanderous printouts they taped to the hallway lockers. When someone dumped iced coffee over my notes, I threw the wet cup straight back into their lap. I meticulously saved every screenshot, every group chat leak, and every video posted to the student forum onto a secure external drive. But there were forty-six of them. I could deflect one blow, but I couldn't stop forty-six pairs of hands working in unison. On Friday afternoon, after the final bell rang, they cornered me. Three girls grabbed my arms and dragged me down the dim hallway into the very restroom where Sadie had once been trapped. Someone pinned my wrists against the stall door while another snatched my phone from my pocket. Harper stepped forward, holding her screen inches from my face. The Wish Wheel was glowing brightly. "You're the only one left in the entire senior class who hasn't spun," Harper said, smiling with cruel satisfaction. "Spin it once, Natalie. Prove to everyone that you have nothing to hide." I leaned my back against the metal partition, staring at her with utter contempt. "What is that supposed to prove?" "Sadie rewards the innocent," Harper said smoothly. "You've been dodging this because you know she won't give you anything. You know she's waiting to punish you." Paige stood just outside the stall, watching with folded arms. "Stop hiding, Natalie. If your conscience is clear, why did you try so hard to stop me? Were you hoping that if my mom died, nobody would ever find out what you did?" I looked at Paige, the last remnant of our childhood friendship turning to ash in my chest. "You know what I did for Sadie, Paige. You were there." "All I know is that you were the last person to speak to her on the roof," Paige said, averting her eyes. "We all said stupid things, but she didn't jump until she met with you. Can you swear under oath that you didn't push her over the edge?" The rest of the crowd pressed in closer. "Make her spin!" "Justice for Sadie!" "If Sadie rejects her, she’s the killer!" Hands clamped onto my shoulders. Harper grabbed my right index finger, forcefully dragging it toward the glass. I thrashed against the cold tile, scraping my knuckles against the rough concrete wall as I fought to pull my hand back. "Stop struggling!" Harper hissed. "Everyone else spun and we're all fine! What are you so terrified of?" That was the question that had haunted me for days. Why was the wheel only handing out miracles? Why had Sadie targeted the entire class instead of just the ringleaders? If this was truly a machine designed for pure benevolence, why did it require every single person to take part? What was it preparing to extract from them? In the blur of the struggle, a memory flashed violently in my mind: Sadie, curled on this exact floor three months ago, hugging her soaked canvas bag, shivering uncontrollably after they had dumped buckets of mop water over the stall. I had pried the lock open that day. And Sadie had looked up at me with completely shattered eyes, asking: Natalie, if enough people repeat a lie, does it automatically become the truth? I had told her no a thousand times. But the next day, she went to the roof anyway. And now, here they were, using Sadie's name as an excuse to re-enact the exact same brutality, completely blind to the irony. They had never cared about justice. They only cared about maintaining the illusion that they were righteous. I closed my eyes, asking silently in the dark of my mind: Sadie... did you feel this helpless? Surrounded by people who convinced themselves that your suffering was just a game? "Press it!" Harper shrieked, wrenching my finger forward. My fingertip was a millimeter from the screen. Just as the skin was about to make contact— Chime. Every single phone in the room buzzed in unison, a synchronized, piercing tone that cut through the humidity of the restroom. The wheel on Harper's screen froze. The vibrant colors drained away, replaced by sharp, stark black text: [All 46 Class Wishes Have Been Claimed.] [Now, please select your method of repayment.]