"Hey!" Karyn protested. "Give that back!"
Jon stared at him, incredulity mixed with amusement on her face. "Are you serious?" she said. "Look, first off, it's mine to begin with, and second, you haven't exactly given me a lot of reason to trust you with it. If you weren't my best friend, I wouldn't even be giving you the benefit of the doubt here." She noted Karyn tensing up. "Seriously," she said, shoving the stone in her pocket and leaving one hand clasped around it, "don't try anything. You're the one that's gone too far, here. And you might be a little taller than me, but I think we can both tell whose host got more exercise outside the wrist."
Karyn flushed bright red. "First thing after class," he muttered through clenched teeth.
Jon grinned. "'Course. We might have serious problems to address, what with all the careless wishing going on. In the meantime, try to see things from 'the other side of the fence!' It might do you some good!" She could see Karyn fuming as he turned to go, and she turned the other way, nearly skipping her way back to class.
She wondered why exactly she was in such a good mood. Obviously, it had been a bit cathartic to see Karyn stuck with a somewhat more awkward change than hers, and to throw back her own words at her. But she'd been actually pretty consistently amused since she realized that Karyn wasn't going to get anything like what she thought she was going to get out of this, and...well, just now, she'd been downright spunky towards him. She wondered if there wasn't some kind of personality bleed-through.
That thought stopped her for a moment, as she thought uncomfortably back to the idea that their hosts might actually be present in the background and watching strangers drive their bodies, but she dismissed it; if that were true, why would she be getting good moods and assertive feelings from Maddie and not discomfort or terror? No, more likely it was something else, if it wasn't all just her imagination.
Maybe it had to do with her being in Maddie's brain? The idea that she could retain her own memories and identity but have her behavior be affected by the brain she was inhabiting was a bit of a mind-bender, but she supposed that if well-worn neural pathways could go so far as to affect how she crossed her arms, it wasn't inconceivable that they could affect the flow of her emotional or mental state. She wondered how far that might extend, and if she'd remember these feelings differently when she was back in her own body...
But anyway, she was kind of glad for it. Not that the situation wasn't strange and disquieting, but it was good to have a fall-back that left her holding her own despite the weirdness; she wasn't going to end up bullied and dominated by some guy like in the stories Karyn had talked about! No petty, over-powered author self-insert was going to ruin her life, not while she had anything to say about it - and certainly not while she had the stone, which she gave a little squeeze for comfort.
She just...she hoped Karyn was only being pig-headed about this stupid "teaching a lesson" idea; it made her uncomfortable to think that her best friend of so many years might've just gone mad with power. If he had...well, what could she do then? She could use the stone to fix it, of course, but would that be right? It didn't feel like it would, but then, she'd just be setting Karyn back to how Karyn used to be...oh, she didn't know! She hoped it didn't come to that.
Jon was a little amused when she reached the classroom and realized that she'd been too caught up in these thoughts to be distracted from letting her body do the walking.
Class was pretty much unremarkable, though not uninteresting. Jon sat, listened to the lecture, glanced around the room, and tried to at least do Maddie the courtesy of taking notes on what she was missing - in keeping with her no-frills mannerisms, she found that she wrote in print rather than cursive, though the letters were generally well-formed and flowed pleasantly; she wasn't sloppy. By the end of the class, she was actually feeling rather refreshed and ready to tackle whatever awaited them at home.
She met Karyn outside the study room they'd talked in. He looked a bit harried, and she cocked an eyebrow at him. "Aigh!" he stammered, as he entered the room. "They...augh! The boys...they're not that much taller, but it's like they don't even see me! I mean, it's not just the occasional jackasses elbowing past me now! It's like being in a pen with a buncha damn bison!"
Jon nodded. "Told you. Maybe you'll learn a valuable lesson out of this." Karyn gave her a death glare. "So," she said. "Ready to see what our hosts may or may not be up to?"
"Yes," Karyn said. "I was ready half an hour ago. I just hope you're right about this kid..."
Jon nodded. "I don't know what I hope," she said. "But if they are there, then we have to figure out how to explain to them that they'll have to live as us for the rest of the week..." She reached into her pocket and grabbed the stone.
"I wish," she said, "that for the two of us, the door out of this room will act as the first in a tunnel of portals leading us home a mile at a stride, over safe ground." She flung open the door to see a slightly dizzying series of doorways stretching through disparate locations into the distance. She wondered how far it would be. Probably some seventeen hundred to two thousand miles to cover, as the crow flies, and two or three feet in a stride - no, less than three, now - so maybe a mile?
She took off at a brisk walk, motioning for Karyn to follow her. "No fair!" he said. "How come you're the one used to physical activity, dammit? Couldn't you just wish us up an airplane or something?"
Jon giggled. "And spoil a good walk? Besides, then we'd have to worry about getting detected. Nobody cares about pedestrians, much less when they don't even exist in one place for more than about a second. C'mon!"
