Like with most things, a good night's sleep helped Jon to clear his head, but he wasn't quite feeling better about anything.
He tried to ignore his mom's forearms, or her choice to wear baggy jeans and a Golden State Warriors tee. Tried to ignore the fact that his father's face looked a lot more clean-shaven than normal, or the red polish that was now on his fingernails, or the appreciative looks that his mom kept giving both of these new features. He tried to ignore the new, re-vamped look that Zoe was sporting, and thus ignored her when she turned her phone towards him at breakfast and said "hey, look at this video I found!"
Mikey was Jon's only real anchor of normalcy, but, as usual, he was off in his own little world.
Things didn't get better during the walk to school. Zoe usually took her own separate path, but today she followed Jon to where he and Karyn met up. And as soon as Karyn was within viewing distance, Zoe squealed.
"Karyn!" she cried, "Your makeup looks so good!"
Jon blinked. Squinted his eyes. There was something...
"I know, right? My mom taught me some new tricks. But look at you!"
Something was unsettling seeing the two of them together.
"Oh," Zoe fidgeted, a little uncomfortable with the complement, "yeah, my dad helped me."
It was the same face!
"It's so cool that your dad knows about makeup."
Zoe's makeup was all black-and-white, and Karyn's had a lot of color to it, but the lines were the same, the shading was the same. Somehow, features that looked different on each girl without makeup suddenly looked almost identical with it on.
"Well, my mom doesn't ever wear any, so it's nice. But wait, that's not what I wanted to talk to you about." Zoe collected herself, then pulled her phone from her backpack. "This is you, right? I'm not dreaming."
This drew Jon's attention. Karyn's expression lit up even more in the glow of the screen. "Yes! Yeah, my mom and I recorded that last night!"
"Recorded what?" Jon cut in.
"There's this dance meme going through Tik Tok," Zoe offered. "I tried to show you at breakfast. Karyn's incredible!"
Jon swiveled around, looking over Karyn's shoulder as the video re-played.
"We needed like twenty takes," Karyn demurred, "but it was fun."
This had to be an effect of one or a combination of the wishes that had been made yesterday, Jon told himself. He needed to say something, but he didn't want to talk about the stone in front of Zoe, so he sealed his lips as his best friend and his sister gushed over each other the rest of the way to school.
