Because of their encounter with Sarah, Karyn and Jon were one of the last few groups of pupils to enter the gym, where the assembly was being held. As such, there were only a few empty spaces left. Jon spotted a small space towards the front and made his way towards it, assuming that Karyn would be joining him.
He was wrong however, as once he sat down, Karyn was nowhere near him. He looked around, trying to find her and to his dismay, he eventually spotted her sitting behind Sarah and her fellow cheerleaders. They didn’t look too happy to see her, either, but Karyn seemed to be acting rather stubbornly, demanding that she sat with them.
Before any further drama occured between the two rivals, Jon noticed the principal walking to the front, where a small stand with a microphone had been set up. Principal Casey cleared his throat and called for everyone’s attention.
“Ahem. Now… I’m sure that you are all wondering why we’ve called you here.” He glanced behind him to where Nurse Oakley and the other members of staff were standing. Nurse Oakley nodded and the principal continued.
“We’ve been getting lots of reports today of people acting rather strangely followed by searing headaches, the latter of which Miss Oakley has been dealing with all morning. Now, we’re not quite sure exactly how this has happened, and so far, it only seems to be affecting the student body, but both incidents are actually related.”
There was a collective gasp amongst the audience, and a few students started muttering to each other, but Principal Casey raised a hand to motion for silence.
“It has come to our attention that the headaches only appear when the person has been confronted about their new behaviour. We have observed that the person who is acting...ahem... stranger than usual seems to think that their new behaviour is normal, and when asked about it, that’s when the headaches kick in.
“I have been on the phone to a friend of mine who is a professor in behavioural science, and she is suggesting that, until we find a cure for this, that we all accept our friends new behaviour as normal and treat them as such.”
Jon’s jaw dropped as he listened. So this was the cause of his wish? People were acting strangely and in order to avoid them getting any headaches, they now had to act like the changes were normal? What kind of wish was that?
Jon looked around and noticed that the rest of the school were talking over each other as Principal Casey tried to calm everybody down. He looked over towards Karyn and saw that she was chatting excitedly over the shoulders of Sarah and Tiffany who didn’t seem too thrilled at the idea that they now had to treat her as one of their friends.
As he watched, he noticed that someone from their regular group was missing, Melissa Smith. He supposed that Karyn was taking her place and so he looked around to see if he could spot her and eventually he did, but what he saw surprised him.
Melissa Smith was sitting at the back of the hall and she was wearing glasses! Glasses on Melissa Smith! Briefly, Jon wondered how that worked, but then she noticed who she was sitting with. Melissa had placed herself amongst the nerds of the school—a social class that she would never have associated herself with before all of this.
Jon shook his head. He needed to get home and find his stone before things got way too out of hand.
