"I was a good boy, Karyn, I promise." Jon said, sitting across from Karyn the next day at school. They were in an empty classroom, Jon wearing a dorky Pinocchio costume, and Karyn in pink hair and ragdoll costume. They still weren't sure how her hair color changed, but both had mostly forgotten that. Both were sitting on top of desks facing each other in a room that for the next ten minutes didn't exist.
Karyn smiled, "Jon, I'm not dumb. The first time we talk about my mom in years is also the day she comes back? No, that's more than coincidence."
"I'm telling you, I didn't make a wish."
"Liar. But thank you."
"Do you see my nose growing here?" Jon continued to feign innocence. The two were silent for a bit, and Jon looked his best friend over. She wasn't revealing much cleavage or skin at all, and yet she looked more attractive than she ever had.
"You know what the worst part of Sheryl was?" Jon shook his head, "She saw herself as mom 2.0. She wanted to raise me all over again; tried to get me into ballet or cheerleading or something. Didn't think sculpture was good enough for me. If she was just a nice woman who I could talk to about girl stuff, she would have been great. But she wanted to be Mom."
The two fell into solemn silence once again, and Jon worked up the courage to stand up and walk up to Karyn, who looked up to him expectantly.
"Are you going to kiss me, Jon-boy?" She smiled.
"I think so." Jon replied, bending down for his kiss. Karyn replied in kind and wrapped her arms around Jon.
When they pulled back, neither could help from smiling uncontrollably. "Hey, when do I get my dollhouse, Jon?"
"You really want that?"
Karyn hopped off the desk and giggled, "Why not? We've got a magical stone. Why shouldn't we do magical things with it?"
Jon grinned and kissed his friend, and sometime in the middle of it, the door reappeared, and Sarah McMillian was the first to walk in.
"Eww."
--
"Wait!" yelled Jon. "If you spare me... and it's easy to do, you just need to make a wish, I promise I'll never wish on the stone again."
"I can guarantee you won't wish on the stone again."
"You can't, though, find Karyn without me."
"You monster. What did you do to my girl?"
"You'll never know," Jon bluffed, "unless you heal me."
--
Across town, Karyn paced throughout the house. It was her fault. All of it. She saw the rage in Anna's eyes. She knew that she had a gun for protection. And now Jon was gone. Without Jon, Karyn was stuck; only six inches tall and made of cloth; stuck in a toy house with a wind-up Sarah McMillian.
Little did she know that as she looked out the window of the doll's house across the expanse of her room, Anna was making a wish that would decide Jon's fate . . .
