She paused. "I stopped then, to figure things out. And Mom came home, and she calls me Michelle, as if I've been like this all along." She took a breath, trying to calm herself. "And everyone else calls me Mickey instead of Mikey. They don't remember me having a sister named Zoe."
"Well, where is Zoe?"
"I don't know," she said. "I couldn't get answers out of the stone, so I wished that this magic 8 ball I had would be able to give me answers, and I made sure to wish that it would be JUST mine, and every magic 8 ball wouldn't start being magic."
That was pretty clever. "What did it say?"
"It can only answer simple questions. It's a magic 8 ball, not a person."
"We'll figure this out, Mikey," Jon promised. He wasn't so sure.
The girl sniffled. She hadn't told him the half of it. "I...I'm going to go clean up," she said, heading up to the bathroom to wash her face and try to compose herself. That left Jon to think.
As he was thinking, two things happened. One, a cat crossed his path, and the doorbell rang. Jon's family didn't own a cat. Or maybe they did now.
He headed toward the door, scared, but trying to be brave. His little brother...umm...sister...whatever needed him to be.
