"Crap," said Jon. "Mom, do you realize what you just did?"
"Watch your language, young man!" she replied.
"You made me a year younger and Zoe a year older!" replied Jon. "I think I know what that does, and none of us are going to like it very much."
"Excuse me. You are forgetting who's the parent around here."
"And," said Jon, "you're forgetting that you just found that book yesterday and you have no idea of how to use it. Think about it. We weren't exactly two years apart in age, down to the day. We were two years and two months apart in age. Now we're two months apart in age."
"So you're not twins. So I lied. It's still for your own good."
"No, it's not," said Jon. "If we're two months apart in age, the only way that could happen, without using ideas from Star Trek, is if we have different mothers. Either Dad cheated on you with someone else before he died, and one of us is a child from that, or one of us is adopted, or something like that." Needless to say, Jon hoped that he could at least use his magic stone to pick a possibility--even using an idea from sci fi if it was better than not being related to his family--but he could never be sure until he tried it.
"Why should this spell change the past at all?"
"Because that's what you meant to do, Mom. You didn't want me to just go to school and have people say 'hey, Jon shrunk', you wanted us to have to live as if this change was real all along. It had to have changed the past."
"Wait a minute," said Jon's mother, "that means that you..." Then, looking at Jon and Zoe, she noticed that something was different other than the age change....
