And vaguely remembering how the medallion worked, she put it on, and took out a bundle from the box. It was a pair of slippers, carefully wrapped up as if they were dangerous to leave out in the open, yet someone didn't want to just get rid of them. Joy unwrapped the pair of slippers and touched the medallion to them. She had last worn the slippers when she was Scott, with her own mind, in her mother's body, just a few seconds away from giving birth.
She started out as one person without any merging this time, so it didn't work in a strange way trying to unmerge her. It just worked normally, which meant that she began to transform into the person who had last worn the slippers.
One of Joy's friends spotted her and said "I see you, Joy! You were behind the closet!" She then looked at Joy's body, just beginning to grow, and said "You look sick."
"I... I can't... I have to get to the bathroom... Of course! Get me Mommy! And stay away from me because I'm sick!"
Joy's mother Susan was in the bedroom with her father watching TV but they came as fast as they could when they heard something had happened to Joy. They instantly knew what had happened, of course, when they saw Joy growing and trying to remove her clothes. They knew what was in the box and what it had done. Joy's mother said to Joy's friends, "You'd better all go home, now. I have to speak to Joy."
"All right, Mrs. Watson. Will Joy be okay? She told me to stay away because she was sick so I didn't see if she got sicker."
"She'll be okay, but she may be grounded for a long time....:
"What are you up to, young lady?" said Susan. ""That medallion is powerful magic. You're a version of me! You're having a baby by magic! And you can't ever ever tell anyone that it's magic. I taught you that magic isn't real but I have a secret--it is!"
"You messed up, Mom," said Joy, now in the throes of childbirth. "And help me get to where I can give birth safely. Call Aunt Sharon if you have to."
"I 'messed up'? You called me 'Mom', not 'Mommy'?"
"I'm Scott, Mom. The real Scott. That whole thing I tried eight years ago didn't work like you thought. I had separated from the baby, but in the wrong body. The 'Scott' that never recovered was the baby's mind in my body. I was in the baby's body. And I didn't have the coordination to speak, and when you're a baby it's hard to think, so I forgot everything."
"That's terrible. So what brought your memory back?"
"The medallion, Mom. It's one of the rules of the medallion. When we looked it up online there was one rule that people kept forgetting about. The medallion can do stronger mental changes than normal if there is a prompt from an outside force. If this was just a random body I wouldn't get much of its memories. But if this was a body I actually had before, and its memories are my own memories, I'm just getting back something that is naturally mine anyway. That's something about the situation outside the medallion itself, and it made it much easier for the medallion to do a mental transformation."
"I'm glad you're back, Scott. I'm so sorry about that mistake but we couldn't know..."
Twelve hours later, the medallion was ready again. The new baby was in Scott's old crib dug up from the basement. Scott's mother said "I'm sorry about this, but you have to stay Joy," and handed her body the medallion and Joy's dress,
"I know how the medallion works," said Scott. "I'm just like me at a younger age and a girl. I don't need my own clothes to change back. I just need a 16 year old guy's clothes that nobody ever wore and I'll be back to myself."
"Don't you see? Scott died seven years ago. He can't just reappear. And if he did he'd be 24 years old and you can't pass for 24 either. You certainly can't go back to your old life since the people you knew would also be around that age. And Joy does have an identity, and she can't just disappear or people will wonder if she was kidnapped or killed. So you have to be 8 year old Joy."
"And the baby? We know better than to try to get rid of the baby. Remember last time?"
"You weren't aware of this since you were a child for so long and it didn't register, but we changed our identities as soon as Scott's body died. Because we looked for the oldest clothes of ours we could find and the medallion made us twenty years younger. We figured that if we were going to be twenty years younger and also have a newborn baby, our own identities would be a problem. You know, it's easier to change your identity than you think if you know people who you can give twenty years of extra life to. People will do almost anything for that, even change some records and make it stick. So we're the Watsons, not the Dewhursts."
"Then you can say the baby is yours and your new identities are young enough that it makes sense."
"Although the baby's actually still yours."
"I can't be an 8 year old mother. If I'm Joy I have to be his sister, even if I tell him the truth someday. Assuming he stays a 'he'."
"You have to be Joy," said Susan. "Even if it's hard to pretend. But I'll always listen if you have some other idea...."
"I can't think of anything... Mommy. No, I'm old enough that I can switch to 'Mom' anyway. I can't think of anything, Mom." Scott/Susan put on the medallion and touched it to Joy's. She felt herself shrinking and Joy was soon back.
