Mikey finished her day at school pretty much without incident, but Erica seemed to have latched onto her like a remora, and there didn't seem to be a nice way to shake her off. Was it just that she was jealous of Mikey's "cool" new body? Or did it have something to do with she'd seemed almost a bit protective of her when they first met? Mikey didn't know.
Whatever the case, it looked like Erica was planning on being a fixture in her life for the foreseeable future. She wasn't really sure what she thought of that, but...well, when word got around about who she was, would any of her old friends still like her? Erica at least knew and liked Mikey the demon-girl instead of Mikey the human boy, even if she was a little overly enthusiastic about it.
On that subject, the bus had stopped and so had Erica's stream of verbage. Mikey looked up to see her standing up and hoisting her backpack. "Well," she said, "this is my stop. I'll see you tomorrow!"
Mikey watched her skip down the aisle. She was a strange girl, and kind of annoying, but...at least she was friendly.
Jon was beginning to get worried. She'd manage to talk her mom into giving her a ride back to school, but while she'd left a few semi-important things in her locker (which at least provided an excuse for the drive,) the stone wasn't there. And if it was in her room, she'd missed it in both her search that morning and sweep #2 after they got back from school. It had to be around here somewhere; it couldn't have just disappeared!
Or could it? Jon sat back on her bed to think, or at least came as close to sitting as was possible for a naga. Now that she thought about it, she couldn't actually remember having had it after she and Karyn had made that wish yesterday. And that was a wish with obviously big implications; suppose it had somehow changed history such that Jon no longer received the stone?
She was wondering how that could've happened when her mom poked her head in the doorway. "Just so you know," she said, "I got a call from your grandpa today, and he's going to coming over for dinner on Friday, so don't make any plans."
"Grandpa Vern?" Jon asked. "Aren't he and Grandma Rita usually in New Mexico this time of year?"
"No, dear, Grandpa Morty. And it's actually Nevada this year, but don't ask me why."
Jon gasped. "Grandpa...? But isn't he..."
Her mother smiled. "Oh, he was pretty under the weather for a while, but you know what they say about werewolf constitution. I just wish that could've been passed on to you kids; then you might not've come down with...nah, best not to dwell on that. No changing what's already past."
As her mother left, Jon's mind reeled. Her grandpa wasn't dead? Or wasn't pretending to be dead? Then did he have the stone? But that meant that the stone really could have serious, non-cosmetic impacts on history, and if he was a werewolf, would that have changed anything else? Supposing he wasn't even an archeologist anymore? Would the stone just be sitting in some ruin in Peru?
She didn't know, and there was only one way to find out. She'd just have to ask him on Friday.
Late that night, Erica sat in bed, thinking. She supposed it made sense for Michelle to be upset about becoming a girl; she probably wouldn't like being turned into a boy, after all. But what was so bad about it? And even stranger, what did she not like about her new species!? Demons were one of the rarest changes there was, and so very cool!
Back when she was younger she'd read all about the subject, and one thing had really struck her was how rare the cool stuff was. It seemed like the cooler the form, the less likely you were to get it. All the cat-people and fox-people stuff was really common, but when you got to something neat like driders or harpies, it suddenly got less common, and by the time you got up to angels or demons it barely happened to anybody! How was that fair?
Erica knew that everybody thought she was weird for wanting a change, but she didn't care; there were so many cool things she could wind up being that she couldn't even decided which one she'd most like to be. But then she gotten older, and all the books said that pretty much everybody contracted the disease and changed or didn't change by age eight. She'd held out hope for a while after that, but after four years she'd kind of given up. It was just a dream, now.
Or was it? After all, Michelle was about the same age as her, and she'd changed! Erica knew it was still unlikely, but maybe, just maybe, it could still be possible. She drifted off to sleep thinking about what she'd like to become the most.
