"So I'm Karyn's mom?"
The other Jon shook his head. "Yes. No. You're untold thousands of things. You've fractured reality and remade it. You're Lisa Black, you're several Asian exchange students, you're girls living in slums, you're goths, you're dead, you're an alternate dimension version of you and there's no such thing as alternate dimensions, you are your mother's twin sister and her only daughter, you're a witch, you're a god, you're a goddess--" He paused, his lip flap shaking slightly as he spoke. When he resumed, he was clearly trying to explain something he'd understood so long, he had no idea how to describe it.
"In the main timeline, Sarah McMillan somehow heard you wish and stole the rock. You managed to get it back before she could make any wishes, but you were so scared by the entire turn of events that you wished the stone would disappear until college, and you'd forget about it. Sensible enough, I suppose.
"When you got the stone back in the spring of 2007, your senior year in college, you -- we -- regretted giving it up for so long. Dad had died of cancer and Mom had been crippled in a wreck. Zoe had become hooked on drugs and Mike -- Mikey -- was in a bad way. We spent weeks thinking about how to go back and fix all of that and eventually wished to undo the wish that had taken the stone and our memory."
"But wishes can't be--"
"--undone, yes. But we sort of succeeded, or so it seemed. We were back in 2000 all over again just before Sarah stole the stone. And that's when reality started to, I dunno, peel into layers and strips. Sometimes Sarah got the stone and used it -- actually, a lot of times that happened. You became her younger sister, you became her servant, you became her tool, you became a total bystander. It depended on each Sarah's whim.
"Sometimes Mikey got the stone. Sometimes Zoe did. Sometimes Mom did. Sometimes you used it on your own. Sometimes Karyn did. Sometimes totally random people from high school or elsewhere got it. You lived Magic School Bus if you can believe it. Sometimes the stone manifested as an old man in a bathrobe with a mobile store in a strip mall with weird magical items.
"Everything was fine until in one reality, nothing happened that interested us much. And here we are."
"OHMIGOD I'M SO HAPPY FOR YOU!" Karyn yelled, hugging Victoria tight.
"Careful," her friend laughed. "My stomach is kinda fragile right now."
"How far along are you?" Karyn found herself thinking of this very topic a great deal these days and was absolutely riveted.
"Ten weeks," the brunette responded with a smile. "We wanted to wait a bit to make sure everything was going well."
"What's it like?"
Victoria's eyes seemed to glow a bit, the deep black shimmering and drawing in Karyn's attention. "It's the best feeling in the world," she said, as the words impressed themselves in Karyn's thoughts with force and permanence.
**"Hey, Mom! Dad and Joseph are chatting, I thought I'd help you make dinner!"
"Wonderful, dear. Come over and see this."
Karyn walked to her mother's side to see a pendant, a crystalline chain with a perfectly clear stone hanging from it, in her mother's hand. "What" she started, and then thought ended. Her mother was speaking, and she was speaking the absolute truth because that's what mothers do, and Karyn was learning truths she'd never known, but now had always known.**
Obviously she's happy, Karyn thought. It's the best feeling in the world. Her hand went unconsciously to her own belly.
