Jon rushed home, unlocked the door, and entered. He was met by his dad in the hallway, who greeted him and said "Oh, hello Jon. How did the experiment go?"
Jon wasn't quite sure how to respond. He didn't, after all, even remember agreeing to it, let alone talking it over with his parents, as it sounded like he must have. Best try to fake it. "It went... well, what you'd think. I'm a girl now. They gave me tests and everything. I just look like a guy."
He immediately regretted it because he didn't know if he really had explained the experiment to his parents or just said "I'm going to be in an experiment."
"You're a girl?"
"It's okay, Dad."
"My son's a GIRL?"
"I can show you if you want, Dad."
"You told me that they were probably going to paste the other way."
"It was true! They flipped a coin, if it had come up differently they would have pasted the other way."
"Fifty percent isn't 'probably'. I can't believe you did this, Jon! You realize you've got periods now? And if you ever want to have children you're going to be giving birth? Maybe you should start wearing dresses just so guys know you're a girl. If you keep wearing what you're wearing right now you're really a crossdresser, because you're a girl wearing guy's clothes."
"I am not, Dad. First of all, I might be able to be a guy after August. Second, girls can wear almost everything a guy wears anyway, so I'm not a crossdresser unless I'm wearing a tuxedo or something. Third, I don't literally mean that every single bit of me is female. Are you going to send me to my room now?"
"I'm not going to do anything to you, because you've done enough to yourself that you're never going to forget it."
"All right, Dad. Well, I'm going to my room." Jon waited just long enough that he could plausibly say he didn't think his dad was going to say anything else, and went straight to the stone. He was afraid it might have disappeared somehow, but of course it was right on his dresser.
"I wish I'm a complete guy." Nothing.
"I wish that the 'something interesting' that happened was something that didn't make me like I am now." Nothing. Wasn't the stone supposed to allow reinterpreting wishes?
"I wish I know why that didn't work." The stone obligingly let Jon know this one. Basically, he wished for something interesting, and let the stone pick the details. "Can't be wished away" is a detail, and the stone had decided to pick it. So he couldn't wish to change back. He couldn't even wish for something that was just close to changing back--for instance, he couldn't mind-control the scientists into wanting to reverse the experiment earlier.
Maybe there were some really indirect wishes he could make, but he didn't know any. In the meantime, Jon turned on the TV and tried to think of other things. But it was hard, because he felt strange every time an attractive person appeared on the screen....
