Jon and Karyn spent the rest of the day in a bit of a haze. Karyn was distracted by the changes to her body, her larger breasts and much longer hair seemed to jump out at her every time she made even the slightest move. Jon, for his part, was lost in thought weaving between trying to think of a way to get Karyn's body back to normal and the fact that no one even noticed she'd changed. So far, except for the fact that she really was getting a lot more attention, Jon hadn't noticed much of a change to her life. She still seemed to have all the same classes. No one seemed surprised at how she dressed or acted. She was just the busty, blonde quiet girl instead of the average, red-headed quiet girl now. Jon was fascinated by how reality just seemed to shift from one moment. It was one thing to make a tree limb blue, it was another to change a person's very body and have no one even notice.
Of course, Jon wasn't seeing the bigger picture. Karyn found that with her new physique she was actually more of a target to Sarah and her crowd. Apparently, in this new reality Sarah had courted Karyn heavily to join the cheerleaders and was furious that she had refused the offer. Between that and Biff, Sarah's boyfriend, and his crew of Steve 'The Stud' Farber and Moose Johnson leering at her and making frequent suggestions of how she could spice up her wardrobe or what she could do with them to loosen the stick in her ass it was a wonder she kept her cool all day. Finally, though, the end of the day came. Jon and Karyn met at their usual spot by the now blue-branched tree after the final bell.
"Your house, now," Karyn said. "We need to figure out how to fix this."
"Do you want to walk home or use the stone?"
"What do you think?"
Jon realized that she was in no mood to debate. He pulled her into a little used alcove near the entrance to the school and looked around to make sure no one was nearby or walking their way. He reached into his pocket and said, "I wish that Karyn Black and I were at my home in my bedroom."
At that moment, Sarah Macmillan happened to be looking over at them. She was too far away to hear Jon's wish, but she had thought up a few new zingers for Karyn and wanted to give them a whirl. She stood up and started to walk over towards Karyn and Jon when suddenly there was a slight flash of light that caused Sarah to look away for a second. When she looked away she pivoted to begin walking in the same direction as her gaze without missing a beat, finding herself at her locker. She opened it and grabbed the duffel bag with her cheer gear and headed to the gym. She was surprised she hadn't seen Karyn and that loser boy toy of hers after school. They always met out by that ridiculous tree so Sarah had camped there to wait and use a few of the new insults she'd thought up during last period. Oh well, there was always tomorrow.
Jon and Karyn blinked and found themselves standing in Jon's bedroom. He sat down at the battered office chair he'd inherited from his mother when she finally upgraded her's. Karyn curled up on Jon's bed.
"So?" she said.
"So what?"
"Have you thought of a way to fix this?" She motioned to her enlarged breasts and her hair.
"Well, wishes can't be undone, only modified and, quite frankly, I'd be scared of the consequences if we messed up. I mean, your wish was a combination of vague and specific traits. You said long, blonde hair and big boobs. I mean, we could adjust your breast size, but they would still have to be big. The same for your hair, we could adjust the shade somewhat, but it would still have to meet the definition of blonde, as well as be considered long. There are gradations, but I don't think we could ever get your body back to exactly the way it was."
"So I'm stuck like this? Sheesh, I feel so uncomfortable and my back is killing me."
Jon just stared as she arched her back to stretch it out. "Really? You don't really seem all that different to me," he said.
"What?" Karyn shrieked. "I practically look like a completely different person. And the way people look at me and treat me now is ridiculous. Sarah and her friends have magnified the insults by a factor of 10. Apparently I dissed Sarah somehow way back when we were freshmen by refusing her offer to join the cheerleading squad and that was some kind of unforgivable sin. I could almost deal with that, though, if I didn't have Biff and his cro-mags, Steve and Moose, hounding me every other second."
"When? I never saw anything," Jon said, concerned.
"Well, of course you wouldn't. It's not like they're coming up and touching me or, God forbid, trying to rape me. They're doing that shit that everyone says is just boys being boys, you know. Just bad enough to make me hate them but not enough that anyone would believe they're doing anything wrong if I told on them. There were a couple of times today I almost slugged Steve. He's actually the worst, somehow he knows just the right combination of innuendo and insult to get under my skin."
"Well, at least it's just words. Sticks and stones, you know," Jon said, not noticing the scowl flash across Karyn's face. "There is something we can try, but it's not something I would do without your permission first."
Karyn sat up and scooted to the edge of Jon's bed. "What?"
"Well, we could wish that you found your new appearance normal or something similar. I mean, not forget how you used to look or anything, just accept that this is your real body now."
"And by that you mean make me feel like my old body was wrong somehow?"
Jon looked down away from Karyn. "Yeah, I guess. I mean not wrong in the sense that you would hate that you used to look that way or that you would forget how it felt to be in that body, just that this new form would feel as comfortable and natural to you as the old one."
"Look, Jon, I understand, but that kind of change could have bigger implications, bigger ripples. I mean we're lucky changing my appearance didn't have a bigger impact on my life. If you change personality or perception that could have a much more drastic affect on who I am and the kind of life I lead. I know to you the changes to my overall life right now seem small, but they're fairly significant to me. I'm still me, though. Something like this could make me into someone completely different."
Jon sighed. "I know, that's why I wanted to talk about it first. I don't want to do something that makes us not friends anymore. Besides, I think there's a way we can test it."
"How?"
"Well," Jon said, "we put some sort of clause in the wish that causes it to undo itself somehow, like a time limit or a condition that has to be met. I tried it out in last period. I made my pen turn from blue ink to black ink for 30 seconds and it worked. The fascinating thing was because of the way I worded the wish only the ink in the pen changed, so everything I wrote while it had turned black stayed black even after the pen turned into a blue ink pen again."
"Oh, great, you're wanting me to try a temporary personality overhaul on the basis that you made your blue ink pen write with black ink for 30 seconds. Whoopee!" Karyn crashed onto her back on Jon's bed, feeling the annoying heaviness of her new assets as they shifted in her bra. She could feel Jon's gaze as it lifted up from the floor to watch the slight jiggle. She knew he was just trying to help, but he neither understood what it was like to be a woman nor what it was like to feel like his life wasn't his anymore. Then he surprised her.
"So we do the test on me," he said.
"What? Are you sure?" Karyn asked, rolling onto her side so she could look him in the eye.
"Well, yeah. I mean, first off, all I've done is wish for little stuff like the tree branch or changing the color of my pen's ink. I'm feeling the itch to try something big. Plus, it'll give me an appreciation of how you feel."
"If we do this, then I get to set the conditions for both your change as well as how you change back," Karyn said.
"Fair enough," Jon said. She sat back up on the bed and he tossed the stone to her.
Karyn caught and stood up. "My first condition is that I don't want you to hear the wish."
Before Jon could stop her, Karyn had crossed to the room to the door leading to the bathroom that connected Jon's room with his younger sister's room. "Karyn, wait!"
"No, if you really want to appreciate how I feel and how it would feel to have your entire life changed to something different then it needs to be changed to something you would never think of doing to yourself," Karyn said as she stepped into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She wasn't sure if Zoe, Jon's sister, was home, but she locked the door on the other side of the bathroom that led to her room as well. Then she sat down on the edge of the bath tub to think.
