Karyn suddenly realized that dogs can't understand wishes. So the wish that Jon become female wasn't really one that Jon heard. And if you don't hear the wish you think the wish result is reality. No wonder Jon thought he was a girl.
"I don't know what you were thinking, though," said Jamie. "You turned me into a dog and back into a human. You can't reverse wishes. I don't even know how you did that!"
"Oh, it's easy," replied Karyn. She carefully put the stone in her pocket before explaining--it wouldn't do to make an accidental wish. "If I say 'I wish, um, Sarah was a dog,' that can mean two things. It can be the word you use to say things that didn't happen..."
"You mean the 'subjunctive'?" asked Jamie.
"Right, the subjunctive. First I say 'I wish Sarah was a dog', and that's a subjunctive, so she becomes a dog. Then I say 'I wish Sarah was human' and it reinterprets the first wish so that 'was' is just past tense. Now she's human but the first wish is still true because at some time in the past she still was a dog."
"You mean we can reverse any wish at all?" asked Jamie.
"Exactly! As long as we say 'was,' or 'had,' or something like that, we can reverse any wish! Except I think we have to know what we're doing. You used 'was' with the tree branch wish and you couldn't reverse that."
She stuck her hand into her pocket and took out the stone again. "Which reminds me. I wish I had my regular hair and breasts from before my first wish."
Karyn suddenly turned back to her normal self. "I wish I was a blonde." Her hair turned blonde, even though she still had her regular hair in the past. "I wish I had my regular hair again." And it changed back, because she still was a blonde once. "See?"
"That's great!" said Jamie. "But you know that was pretty risky. What would you have done if it didn't work? I could be stuck as a dog, or the opposite sex, or something."
"I'd have figured something out," said Karyn. She handed Jamie the stone back.
Jamie looked at the stone. Now that they had figured out the proper way to use the stone, they could do a lot more things with it.
Meanwhile, Karyn wondered, out of curiosity--just what was the new female Jamie like? Obviously she was a lot like Jon, still friends with Karyn and all that--but there would have to be some differences. She wondered what they were. "Jamie?" asked Karyn.
"Yeah?"
"I'd like to try something. Could you do me a favor?"
"Sure."
"Okay, can you tell me about your day? Your whole day at home and at school, don't leave anything out. Well, if it's a really big secret, sure, leave it out, but you know what I mean. I want to know what your whole day was like. I'll explain after that."
"I don't really understand, but sure," replied Jamie, as she explained what her day was like in the new history. "I got up this morning at 7:15 and...."
