Jon woke up the next morning before his alarm went off. He couldn't wait to see Karyn with a beard. He got dressed and went downstairs where his mother was making breakfast. "Mom, what -" Jon paused when his mother turned around. She had a neatly trimmed mustache.
"What's wrong, Jon?" she asked.
Just then, Zoe also came down the stairs. Jon thought he saw stubble on her jaw and over her lips. She needed a shave.
Jon was at a loss for words. "Um ..."
"What're you starting at?" growled a half-asleep Zoe.
"Uh ..." Jon noticed that Zoe's arm was hairier. "Nothing," he lied. He turned on the TV and saw Ann Curry on the Today show with a black mustache, surrounded by women with varying degrees of facial hair. A bleached blonde had ... a bleached beard. A commercial followed promoting the latest in women's beard care.
"What have I done?" said Jon to himself.
"What'd you say, dear?" asked his hirsute mother. Jon noticed that her legs were as hairy as his, if not more so.
"Never mind." Jon realized that if Karyn were to accept her beard as normal, all females would also be capable of growing beards. Apparently males and females had the same hair growth patterns. Jon spotted some bald and balding women in the Today audience after the commercial break ended. I made them bald, thought Jon. What if they knew I had taken their hair away? No, wait, Grandpa said the stone only has a range of several miles. But somehow the magic is altering the images on TV so that it conforms to our hairier little cross-section of reality. Whew. I hadn't messed up the whole world. But I have changed my town. Which women here are bald or going bald? Which girls at school shave? Which ones grow mustaches and beards? Those thoughts raced through Jon's head as he munched on bacon. He couldn't wait to get out of the house and see the other effects of his wish.
