"I wish" said Jen's mother, "that none of the reality changes I just made existed any more and that everyone knows Jon as a guy again!"
Then she sniffled, looked up at Jen and said "Jon? My child? Are you you?"
Jon was confused. She was Jon again, in her mind. A little while ago he had been transformed into a girl. At the time she had remembered a life as a girl and thought it was natural, but now he remembered his real life as a boy and realized he had been transformed. She looked around. Even the girly things in her room were back to normal. A picture of her on the wall still showed her as male. Her clothes were now her normal male clothes and were a bit too big for her. "Mom? It's me..." she said.
"Jon, you remember being my Jon, right? I fixed that, right? You're not Jen?"
"Yes you did" said Jon. "I'm not Jen, but I'm still a girl. You can't do anything about that, not after your wish." Which wasn't completely true. With more experience making wishes, Jon or her mother could have thought of a way back. Any of a number of fixes having to do with body swaps, or transformation rays, or wishing that Jon was a girl only in the sense that his drivers license had a mistake listing him as one.
But they didn't have that experience.
"I'm sorry!" said Jon's mother. She put the stone down. "I'm never going to touch this thing again! Jon... you may be a girl, but at least you have your own mind and so does everyone else. You can leave your room now. And I'm really sorry!"
She walked out, still crying.
Jon picked up the stone and looked at it. "Karyn, what should I do?"
"I don't know... I wonder if it was better the other way. You may have been living a fake life, but you would have been happier."
"No!" exclaimed Jon. "Reality is reality! I might have been happer, but I'd have been living a lie! At least this way I can try to deal with it."
"So will everyone else," said Karyn. "Everyone's going to remember you as a boy. You'll have to tell the whole school that you're Jon and that you've been changed into a girl."
"It's going to be strange," said Jon. "I can't tell anyone about the stone, I'll have to say my sex just mysteriously changed. But I don't even know if anyone'll believe me. After all, who ever heard of someone changing sex overnight?"
"But you look exactly like you did as Jon except that you're a girl. Same blonde hair, same everything. People will have to believe you." Unknown to Karyn, Jon wasn't originally blonde, but everyone would still compare the blonde girl to their memories of a blonde boy, so that didn't matter.
"Well, yeah," said Jon, "but even if they believe me they might decide they don't care. They could treat me as a girl, ask for dates.... The coach will have to decide whether I should use the girl's locker room even though I was a guy yesterday. Everyone will suggest I use a girl's name now that I'm a girl. Sarah's going to tease me forever about changing sex. And I'm going to have periods...."
"The rock must look tempting now," said Karyn.
"Very tempting," said Jon. "But I'm going to be careful with it. I'm using it for one more thing and that's it for a long time. Unless it's a real emergency."
"Anything can seem like an emergency," said Karyn.
"No, I mean a real emergency. Like, if I tell the school nurse I'm Jon and she sends me to a mental hospital."
"All right... Look, Jon, you know I'll always support you whatever happens."
"I really appreciate that, Karyn," said Jon. "I hope I can make it through this. I can't stay a girl for the rest of my life."
"What was the one thing you were going to use it for?" asked Karyn.
"I wish," said Jon, "that without any changes in reality, all the clothes I own will fit my new body, but they'll only change size, not turn into dresses or skirts or anything like that, except that my underwear becomes girls' underwear."
Jon felt her jeans fit her body just like before... only it wasn't like before, since she and the jeans had both changed. Then she pocketed the stone--no sense risking an accidental wish.
"You're going to be the most tomboyish girl in the school," said Karyn.
"Maybe I am," replied Jon. "If I want to be girly I can always buy some clothes. I'm sure Mom would give me the money, but we'll deal with that as it comes. Now I'm going out...."
"What for?" asked Karyn.
"I need to get my hair cut. I want it to be the same length and style it was when I was a boy. I'm going to look just like I did before, except shorter and with breasts and hips."
"You're really going to be the most tomboyish girl in the school," said Karyn.
Jon got her haircut, and came back home. Eventually, that night, she went to sleep, her dreams more uneasy than normal because she worried what everyone at school would think of her.
The next morning went as usual--except that Jon had to put on a bra and panties. And then came the moment of truth--leaving for school. How would everyone react to being told that the girl who looked exactly like Jon really was Jon?
Well, she would soon find out.
