Jonnie got up and started walking towards the window.
"Never mind, Jonnie, it was nothing," said Karyn.
"I've seen those movies," she replied. "It's always something." There was more rustling and Jonnie broke into a sprint. She reached the window, looked out, and in the shadows outside was a crouching person trying to hide. "Jon, Karyn, we'd better go outside..."
Jonnie shoved the bug screen loose and tried to pull herself through the window, a rather clumsy effort which left her burying her breasts and face in a large pile of dark dirt. The spy quickly turned and ran away. Meanwhile, Jon and Karyn had left Jon's room and were making for the front door. By the time they got outside, the figure was already running away, but they could see, in the yellow light of the streetlights, that it was Sarah's clone.
"She was trying to listen to us," said Jon.
"Can you imagine what would happen if she found out?" said Karyn. "You two don't have your stone. It's not coming back until around this time tomorrow. If it was me, I'd make sure I wiped her memory as soon as I got the stone. Better yet, add it to your sheet."
Jonnie asked, "Your idea, the sheet with all the wishes?"
"Yeah. As soon as you know the magic stone's back, you just say 'I wish for everything on this piece of paper'. Joey's submissiveness wears off, Sarah forgets, you solve the problem you were worried about, and don't tell me it's the prom...."
"What I don't get," said Jon, "is why Sarah would bother listening in on us in the first place. I don't think we were important enough to her for that."
"Oh, come on," said Karyn. "There could be lots of reasons. Besides, every so often she just gets it through her head that she wants to make someone miserable."
The next day, Jon and Jonnie were in their room talking.
"It's almost time," said Jon, looking at his watch.
"Almost," said Jonnie. "I can't believe how much I missed the rock this week. We've become so dependent on it. But I guess half the problems we need it for wouldn't have happened without it in the first place." Unspoken was that Jonnie wouldn't even be here without the rock, even though everyone remembered the cloning machine.
There was a rustling sound outside the window again.
Jonnie yelled out "It's got to be her!" She ran to the window, and could spot a blonde girl crouching down. It was Sarah L. again. Jonnie yelled "Stop! I can see you, Sarah."
"Of course you can see me," she replied. "Bye!" Sarah L. got to her feet, turned, and ran, until Karyn appeared from her own hiding place around the corner. Karyn tackled her to the ground, the two landing in the same pile of dirt from the other night.
"Nice try," said Karyn. "Jon and Jonnie asked me to wait here just in case you try this trick again. Especially since their parents aren't around to interfere, they needed some help. Pretty soon it won't matter."
"Trick?" said a voice a lot like Sarah L.'s, as the original Sarah rolled out from her hiding place under a car in the driveway. "Get away from my sister," she said.
Jon and Jonnie pushed open the front door of the house and moved between Sarah and Karyn. "No, you get away from Karyn. She caught your clone spying on us. Explain that."
"It's easy," said Sarah. "Karyn's been bitchy for the last two months. At least to us. And for the same time Karyn's picture on the Internet showed the wrong hair and breasts. First Sarah figured there's two Karyn's and one's a clone."
"Stop confusing us with those names," demanded Karyn.
"My sister Sarah," continued Sarah. "You know very well who I'm talking about. It turned out that your family in the mountains thinks you were never a blonde. So we figured you must be fiddling with our minds."
"What kind of crazy bimbos are you?" replied Karyn. "First of all, you called my grandparents? Second, you think mind tampering is completely normal to explain some Internet thing?"
At this point Sarah looked honestly puzzled. "Of course it is, if you use your cloning machine to do it. We both know that when you make clones you can alter their minds. You could easily have made my sister think you were blonde when you weren't. I don't know how you did it to me."
"It's still crazy," said Karyn.
"Forget it," said Jon. "People think anything we use the cloning machine for is normal. And the cloning machine does do what she said, even if not on her. You can't convince her it isn't normal. It's my fault."
"It's our fault," said Jonnie. "Yes, we tampered with your minds, Sarah. Sarahs. Karyn isn't a blonde and her breasts are smaller. You just think she is. But it was an accident. Because we're doing... something else... and a side effect is that people's memories change. It's not done on purpose. Don't you think if we wanted to really meddle with your minds we'd use it for something more than making you think Karyn's a blonde?"
"I don't care!" yelled Sarah. "Think about what you're saying! You think it's okay? To alter another human being's mind? Even as a side effect of doing something else?"
"Yeah it's okay," said Karyn. "You've done far worse. You don't care about anyone else and you've, as you call it, altered minds just by manipulating people the old fashioned way. I still remember how you got Mr. Reynolds to be all nice to you just because you're a big-boobed blonde..."
"And you say we're crazy? Not only does that not mean we get A's on tests, it isn't even true. Just like me, you... Wait. Of course. That explains everything. You were bitchy for the last several years. You thought the teacher was favoring me because of my appearance. But when you changed things so that everyone remembers your long blonde hair, you erased the reason for you to be jealous of me, so as far as we knew you were normal until two months ago and you suddenly got bitchy out of the blue. But nothing else changed, because he wasn't doing that at all. It was all in your imagination."
"I'm tired of you doing this, Sarah..." said Karyn. "It doesn't matter because soon you won't remember any of this, and this time it will be on purpose."
"You asshole," said Sarah.
Sarah L. struggled with Karyn and elbowed her in the breasts; Karyn loosened her grip enough for her to escape.
But it was too late. Jonnie suddenly said "It's back!" She held up the magic stone and said "I wish Sarah and her sister are home." The two blondes vanished.
Then Jonnie walked up to the window, put the bug screen aside again, and reached in for the list of wishes on her and Jon's desk. She read them silently to be sure everything was right, and then said "I wish all the wishes on here would come true."
"I can't believe we got away with this," said Sarah L. "Plan A was 'come in today and take the stone'. Plan B depended on stuff working that we weren't sure about. A failed and B worked."
"Plan B almost failed too," said Sarah. "I can't believe they really thought you were going to sit outside the window all night."
"They didn't figure out I was just there to tape an MP3 player outside the window to record them talking. When we played it back later, it revealed everything about the stone. Once we knew the truth, I could go back after they were asleep and use this." She held up her Kim Possible invisible ink pen. "Lucky for us that the stone thinks that writing down invisible wishes still counts as writing down wishes. 'I wish the Sarahs' list of wishes comes true first....'"
