Dammit, thought Jane. How could her mother do this to her? She was a boy, and now she had been changed into a girl for the crime of owning porn mags, and needing to be 'taught a lesson' and that she needed to treat the female body with 'respect'.
She had been so stupid as to let her mother find out about the stone and get it.
But then, her mother had been stupid too. She had taken the stone, and told Jon not to use it. But she had forgotten to enforce that with wishes.
Jane knew what to do. A few days later, when her mother wasn't at home, she ran to the closet and got out a hammer. Rushing to her mother's room, she took the hammer to her jewelry box and pounded it until the top was smashed to bits.
Then Jane took out the stone and wished for the jewelry box to be whole again. She now had her stone back, and was ready.
"First, I wish that nobody could take the stone from me against my will, or get me to give them the stone by threatening me."
"Second, I wish that Mom can't hurt me, transform me, or even touch me against my will, either by herself or with help."
Then Jane put on a DVD and waited.
Halfway through, her mother came home. She opened the door, holding a sack of groceries, and was shocked. "Jane! You promised you were going to leave that stone alone! And you disobeyed me!"
"I'm sorry, Mom," said Jane, "you're already contradicting yourself. It was an order, not a promise. But let me tell you what happened, from my point of view."
"If you don't hand me that stone, you're grounded for the rest of the five weeks."
"Unless you un-ground me, Mom, I can't give you the stone. I wished that I can't give anyone the stone if they threaten me. You threatened me. The magic keeps me from giving the stone to you unless you un-ground me. Now sit down."
"No child of mine is going to...."
"I wish you'd sit down, listen to me, and pay attention for real to what I'm going to say!" Jane walked into the living room, turned off the TV and DVD player, and waited for her mother to sit down on the couch.
"Now, as I was saying." Jane normally didn't talk back to her mother much, but these were extreme circumstances. "You punish me in a lot of ways when I do something wrong. A lot of it is taking things away. Taking away privileges, taking away allowance... But this. You took away my very identity. My life. As a punishment for... what? You couldn't make the charge stick when you accused me of not respecting women. So in the end I get separated from my life for the next five weeks for... having some porn mags. Say, how would you like being a lesbian for a while?"
Since Jane had asked her a question, she could reply, but she didn't really answer. "You would never dare...."
"Why not, Mom? That's what you did to me. You changed my life, changed my sexual orientation, forced me to live a lie and hoped it would last five weeks... for basically nothing. You haven't even figured out what it means to make me a girl for a month. The bras and the periods are the least part of it. Just for the past couple of days, I've had to decline dates from an imaginary boyfriend who I never really dated before, I had friends who I never really knew and enemies who were really friends, I was on the cheerleading squad without knowing how to do anything, I completely messed up the school play because I didn't know any of my lines. Even Aunt Janet started to lecture me about putting on too much makeup on the day you changed me, when the only reason I had too much makeup on is that you wished me to be that way. Go ahead, answer that."
"That's part of being a girl."
"No, Mom. Being part of being anyone is facing the consequences of your own actions, not facing the consequences of actions you wished on someone. And it definitely doesn't mean recruiting other people to harm someone else against their will. Did you ask my friends if they wanted to be brainwashed into becoming my enemies just to teach me a lesson?"
"No, Jane. I didn't. But you were going to use the stone yourself. I know you'd have done something similar."
"Maybe I would have. But maybe I'd have thought better at the last moment, or maybe I'd have taken precautions? And another thing. The stone's mine. I own it. Grandpa gave it to me. He could have given it to you, but he didn't, and from the way you acted after a minute with it, I can see why. Go ahead, explain that one."
"I'm your mother, Jane. I raise you. Grandpa doesn't. It's my job to see that you use things responsibly, even if you own them. If Grandpa left you a car, and I didn't think you should drive yet, would I have to give it to you?"
"You're a grownup, Mom. You have experience with cars. You can make better judgments about them than me. You don't have any experience with wishing stones. Adults and teenagers are the same with wishing stones. Besides, even if you didn't let me have a car, you certainly wouldn't use that car against me, like you did the rock. I'm through talking. Say what you want."
"How can you treat me like this after all I've done for you?"
"After all you've done to me, you mean? No child ever deserved anything like this. Congratulations, you've just invented a new method of child abuse. But I'm not going to let myself become your victim. Now, I wish that when I snap my fingers, I'm going to fall unconscious until it's time for me to become a boy again. I also wish that the stone will disappear and reappear when I change back, and that when I change back I will be healthy and the new reality won't include any history of having fallen unconscious.
Jane snapped her fingers, fell unconscious, and woke up.
She experienced no passage of time. But she was Jon again, and things were subtly different--the trees visible through the window, the time of day, the smells from the kitchen, etc. Nearly five weeks had passed. His mother was standing nearby, crying.
"There you are, Mom," he said. "Of course you knew in your heart I'd be okay. But still, I was in a hospital bed for a month, criticially injured. You had to watch over me and go to the hospital knowing that I had done that to myself just because it was the only way to escape what you had done to me. And now you can't even talk about it to anyone. I think I've done enough, but I hope you learned your lesson."
"Hope I learned my lesson? That's it. You're grounded for a month and you're..."
"No, I'm not, even if I need to wish it away. I don't think you get it, Mom. What you did to me was wrong. As wrong as beating me senseless would be, as wrong as chopping off my hand would be, as wrong as forcing me to crossdress for a month without magic would be. Now, I think I'm going to go to my room and call Karyn, then wish up some of the TV shows I missed in the last month. Goodnight, Mom."
