But things weren't quite as bleak. At least as far as swapping went. The whole reason that Jon couldn't use the rock to fix the problem was that the rock had been in his pocket and had swapped out with the body.
He had his rock, now. The answer was a wish away.
"I wish that Mom won't hear any wishes I make today, including this one. I wish that swapping reverses normally even if you only have a piece of a picture or a damaged picture. I wish that the stone stays with me if I swap. And... I wish that Mom won't touch me tonight."
All right, several wishes away. "Mom," he said... "I think we'd better start taping that magazine together."
"What? Jon! You mean you can? Will it work? Your dad won't find himself full of horrible wounds because we had to tape it together?"
"I think so," said Jon. "But you know, I can't believe you'd do this to me."
"I've done nothing to you!" she exclaimed, still sobbing a bit. "If you had treated women with respect none of this would have happened...." She grabbed a handful of paper strips from the shredder and tried laying them out on a sheet. They didn't seem very connected with each other, and now came the laborious process of trying to fit them together in some kind of way.
"You've done plenty!" yelled Jon. "You started by punishing me! God, what a crappy mother I have..."
"Don't you dare talk to me like that. Nobody has loved you more than..."
"It's twisted! You have no right to force me to go to school as a girl. What is this, some kind of porn flick plot? You're my Mom! That means a parent! Why can't you act like a parent?"
She seemed about to do something. Maybe she would have slapped Jon. But she didn't. The stone was a wonderful equalizer, thought Jon. Instead, she could only speak back, not even understanding why she hadn't laid a hand on Jon. "You did that to yourself. You need to learn that actions have consequences. It's for your own good. Now help me put these pictures together."
"I'm not finished. If I sneaked outside at night, would you have forced me to sleep in the park? If I was taking drugs, would you have forced me to take an overdose?"
"That's dangerous. I'd never make you do anything dangerous."
"If I was masturbating, would you have forced sex on me? That isn't dangerous."
"Of course not."
"Because there are things no parent should ever do to their son under any circumstances. Ever. It's my body. It belongs to me. You have no right to alter it, or force me to alter it."
"You did it to your Dad."
"I did it for a couple of minutes, as a desperate attempt to avoid being mistreated by you, not to humiliate him in public."
"You have to learn that being a woman isn't humiliation. It's all about respect, and you don't respect women. I'm your mother. You need to respect me, and people like me. I bet you don't even respect Karyn. I caught you staring at her big breasts last month..."
Which needless to say was before she had breasts of that size at all. But there was one thing, Jon realized as he gave up arguing and tried to piece together pieces of the magazine: He had wondered why his grandfather had decided that he would get the stone. Why did he skip a generation? Why not just give it to his daughter, Jon's mother? Jon would never wonder that again.
