...be the kind of girl Steve loves, I guess. He didn't want to answer, but he felt a strange compulsion to make a choice - one way or the other.
You guess?? came the reply, seconds later. Are you sure?
Jon thought for a moment. They both seemed like awful choices. But the thought of losing Karyn as a friend sounded much, much worse. And if this was the result of his stupid wish, he was going to need Karyn around.
Yes. Jon answered.
It will be done.
Jon braced himself for the change, anticipating pain, or wooziness, or something. Instead he felt... nothing. He opened his eyes and looked down, inspecting his clothes and body. Everything was still normal.
"Huh," he said to himself. Jon picked up his phone again to check the texts, but there was nothing there. The messages, and the shifting number they came from, were all gone - as if they'd been deleted from his phone.
Jon breathed a sigh of relief. He was starting to think it was all a fluke, until something caught the corner of his eye. He turned to look. Something was wrong with the bookshelf in his room. Mainly that it wasn't a bookshelf anymore. Instead, there was a large, white vanity table with a huge mirror sitting in its place.
He went over and looked at the table, which was covered in all manner of cosmetic products, makeup palettes, brushes, and other odd tools. Jon tried to think of what had been there before... he knew it had been a bookshelf, but none of the other details came to mind
How many books did he have? What kind? He knew he liked Sci-Fi and Fantasy books, but for some reason he couldn't remember any of the titles or plots of all the books he'd read over the years. Harry Potter maybe? That was the one about wizards, right? That sounded boring, though. Maybe the Twilight books? He knew the vampires and werewolves in the movies looked hot...
Wait a second... that wasn't right! He wasn't quite sure what was right, but that wasn't it. He looked over the vanity again and suddenly realized that he knew everything about it. Every brush, every palette, he knew exactly what everything was for and how to apply it. He knew the importance of contouring and blending, and which colors made sense for the season.
And then he knew why - Steve always dated pretty girls, girls who spent a lot of time on their appearance. And makeup was no exception. Whoever was doing this to him was doing it piece by piece. If they could replace all his knowledge about books with knowledge about makeup, what else could they do?!
He needed to talk to Karyn - maybe together they could come up with a solution. But first, he had to get his makeup on. His face felt naked without it, and he knew Steve wouldn't want him leaving the house looking anything but his prettiest. So he sat down and got to work, a flurry of brushes and powders and pigments.
