Jon sighed contentedly. For the first time in what felt like a very long time, he and Karyn had been granted a moment of peace and quiet. They were downtown, which Jon would have expected to be a mess. Surprisingly, though, the streets were quiet and clear, and the people walking the sidewalk seemed remarkably relaxed. Blanketed in the rosy light of sunset, this part of town felt almost untouched by the events of the day. Perhaps it was because they were walking past the police station, and city hall was just a short distance up the road; maybe the proximity to the sources of power and authority and safety in town had a stabilizing, even a reassuring effect on this part of town. Or perhaps things were simply beginning to quiet down at last. In any case, Jon was glad for the quiet... it felt like he and Karyn were walking through an island of calm in the midst of a turbulent sea.
He felt a warm arm wrap around his back. Looking down at the waist of his beige pantsuit, Jon saw a feminine hand around his waist; and looking to his side, he saw Karyn--who looked surprisingly attractive in her neat black men's business suit--beaming at him. Karyn looked... well, she looked ecstatic. Jon had been somewhat hard-pressed for the last couple of hours to keep Karyn's hands off him when he had jumped into women; it was like Karyn, having finally come out, was all in a rush to express her sexuality. It was all very confusing to Jon, and so he had tried to keep her in check; right now, though, he found that he didn't really mind having her arm around his waist.
To the outside world, they would have looked like a nice heterosexual couple, albeit with their genders reversed. Karyn must have gotten a kick out of that. Jon had gotten a glance of himself in a shop window a couple of minutes ago... he looked like a professional-looking woman in her forties, while Karyn was a man in his fifties, his hair just beginning to pick up its first signs of grey. They were a handsome couple... and being these two people in particular just contributed to the refinement, the quiet peacefulness of this jump.
Walking in the opposite direction, a pleasant look on his own face, Jon saw a police officer dressed in full uniform. At first Jon took the man to be one of the lucky few who hadn't been switched; but then he saw the form-fitting cut of the man's slacks, and the makeup on his face, and the earrings in his ears, and he knew that this man looked like a woman to everyone else. The man seemed comfortable enough in his new skin; perhaps he, too, felt the good vibes Jon was feeling. The man smiled at Jon and Karyn and tipped his cap politely as they passed.
Swept up by the feeling of the moment, by his undying affection for his best friend in the world--for the girl he was beginning to believe, for the first time in years, might be more than a friend--Jon put an arm around Karyn's waist and leaned contentedly into her shoulder. For a moment, the world felt perfect.
But suddenly, the quiet moment was shattered by the roar of gunfire.
Jon and Karyn stopped in their tracks and looked at each other in shock. Then, without a word to each other, they both took off in the direction of the guinshot. The echoes of the shot were still reverberating through the air, beating from the narrow confines of the alley next to the police station. Karyn sprinted around the corner into the alley, and Jon followed as quickly as he could in his high heels.
The alley was dark; the orange glow of the evening hung low on the horizon, forsaking this place and making it difficult to see what they were running into. As they reached the midpoint of the alley, though, Jon took in a horrible scene. A middle-aged man lay dead on the ground, dressed in a cheerleading uniform, his lifeless face broken by a gunshot wound and rapidly gushing blood. Above the man, Jon saw a girl he recognized as Amy Johnson, one of his school's cheerleaders.
Amy looked... diffrerent than when Jon had last seen her. She had cut her hair into a short men's cut and dyed it dark, and she had grown a goatee. She was several inches taller, too, and a bit more muscular, and her breasts almost seemed to have shrunk; her chest looked flat in her thin pink dress. She hadn't shaved her legs, and it looked like she had hair on her arms and chest now. Once upon a time, Amy had been a very pretty redhead; now, though, she looked terrible... almost like a man. A man in his forties, no less, and one who had lived pretty roughly. But Jon had no doubt this was Amy Johnson; even with all the changes to her body, Jon would have recognized her anywhere.
Amy kicked the man at her feet with the toes of her high-heeled sandal and spat on him, and then she dropped the gun she held in her hand--still smoking--into her purse. Jon wondered what on earth he had just missed. Amy clearly hadn't killed this man herself, but she definitely wasn't happy with him.
"Oh my God," said the police officer Jon had seen on the street, rushing past Jon and kneeling down over the man on the ground. "I know this person. This is Alec Bartlett... he's a cop." The police officer studied the body, then looked up at Amy. "Miss, I'm Ted Stark... city police. Did you see who killed this man?"
"Wasn't me," Amy said. Her voice had changed, too... it was a deep baritone growl now, one that sounded like it had been damaged by years of cigarette smoke.
"No, I know it wasn't you," Ted Stark said, getting to his feet. "I don't suspect you for a second. But you must have seen who did it. I even saw you with the killer's gun."
Amy rolled her eyes and pulled something from her purse... and when Jon saw it, his mouth went dry. It looked like his wishing stone. He would have recognized it anywhere. If it wasn't his stone, it was an incredibly good likeness. Holding it in her masculine hands, Amy said, "I wish these people would let me just walk away without asking any more questions."
Suddenly Jon felt himself looking away for a second. When he could look back at Amy, she was walking away from them down the alley. Even though Jon had a dozen questions for her right now, he felt compelled to let her go. Jon didn't have any doubt now: that stone Amy had in her hands was his wishing stone.
Jon didn't know how Amy could possibly have gotten his wishing stone. She certainly hadn't stolen it from him; even if Jon had believed Amy was capable of stealing--and he didn't--she wouldn't have known about the stone, wouldn't have had access to his house. No, it must have gotten to her hands in some other way. Maybe she'd found it, or bought it, or maybe someone had given it to her. Or maybe this was another stone entirely?
In any case, Jon knew now that Amy Johnson had a wishing stone... and that changed everything. Amy had in her hands the power to stop the switches, to set everything right again. Jon had almost given up hope of finding his wishing stone and fixing the town's mess. Now... now he had hope. Jon couldn't follow her now to get the stone from her; Amy's wish had made certain of that. He was going to have to track her down later, at his first opportunity.
Before he could plan his next move, though, there was a bright flash of light, and he found himself tugged away into another life.
