Maybe luck was on their side. Jon and his mom were back to normal after one try, when just about anything could have happened to mess them up worse; he could even have ended up as his mom! He shuddered at the thought; looking like anything but the beautiful thirty-something woman he appeared to be was almost too much to think about! She, on the other hand, appeared to be a sixteen-year-old boy, which was the age he actually was, oddly enough.
It was truly a trick of fate, but he wouldn't have had it any other way. Just the way the other boys looked at him when he ended up growing about twice as quickly as they did, and in a radically different fashion, made him giggle! The fifteen-year-olds in the freshman locker room had been so lucky to have a gorgeous thirty-year-old woman showering with them... at least, what looked like one! He giggled at these thoughts when he stepped back into the transporter after his mom had already disappeared; no point in tempting fate again!
The welcome he received at school was very odd indeed. He had had to explain everything to each of his teachers as he came into class, and even then they seemed wary around him, looking at him almost with pity. Perish the thought! He couldn't have been happier with the pair of birth defects he and his mother had, which made them appear probably as the other should have been.
When lunchtime came, the weird looks hadn't ceased, and Karyn didn't even seem to recognize him when he called her over to their usual lunch table. "Mrs. Madison!" The greeting she gave him would have been puzzling if they hadn't gone over this joke many times before. He gave the standard response, giggling. "No, that would be my mother."
She stared at him for a moment, leaning forward almost suggestively until he gave her a discrete reminder. "Jon??" He nodded, wondering what was wrong with Karyn. "Are you okay, Karyn? You know I've always been like this. Just because everyone else thinks mom is MY son doesn't mean you shouldn't know any better. Did you hit your head?"
Karyn just watched Jon's expression with an odd expression on her face, cycling from complete confusion to understanding to sadness with a speed any bipolar would be proud of. "You can't be serious... you had a transporter accident with your mom, didn't you? I've heard about this. Two people switch bodies and their minds get scrambled so they think it's always been that way. Oh, Jon..."
Now it was Jon's turn to be confused. He took a moment to think it through and tried to explain the situation to her, looking around quickly to see if anyone may have been listening in. "No, we just switched our lower halves, and then we got really lucky and got switched back to normal. I was afraid we'd end up as each other, but it was better than staying half and half like some kind of freak!"
"And being a sixteen-year-old male who looks like a thirty-five-year-old woman isn't freaky?" Karyn raised her eyebrow, wondering how Jon would handle this reasoning. To her surprise, his eyes started tearing up, and he rushed out of the cafeteria, almost tripping and falling in his heels several times, making a tiny "click-clack" with each stride. She ran after him, and barely managed to spot him running into the boys' bathroom right outside. "Jon! That's the boys' bathroom!"
She heard a strangled yell from inside, apparently made in between sobs. "I AM a boy, Karyn! Why are you so mean today?! I'm not a freak! Just go away!" Karyn was about to do just that when she heard him say "I wish", and strained her ears to hear...
