Jon got home and put off messing with the stone. He expected to get a phone call from Karyn soon enough. She would ask him to fix her mistake from earlier. It was probably doable in a number of ways, by specifying that she was wearing fake breasts and a wig for instance. But surprisingly, she never called. And then Jon realized she never would.
The day before:
So, a magic wish granting rock. His grandfather had left him with a silly practical joke. Oh well. He really aimed high with it too. It couldn't be something that was remotely believable that would have tricked Jon for a little bit, it had to be not just impossible, but fantastically impossible.
Suddenly Jon was overtaken by a searing pain. Heartburn. Was it the school lunch? He hadn't experienced this very often, it was just randomly for no particular reason. He rushed for his mom's medicine cabinet to look for one of those antacids, either the little calcium pills or pepto bismol or something. "Damn it I wish there was a bottle of tums here." he said out loud. He had unintentionally carried the stone with him as he had left the room in a hurry. And then the most astonishing thing happened. Suddenly out of thin air, appeared a small green-painted metal cylinder. It was not a modern bottle. It looked like a tin of some sort of product from 1950. "Tums for the tummy. In hyperacidity" he read on the tin. He opened it and consumed one of the pills within. Fortunately something like that even if it was an antique shouldn't have anything crazy like radium or DDT or arsenic in it or whatever crazy dangerous stuff they put into products in the old days, surely it was just calcium carbonate like the modern version would be. But he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth with the amount of pain he was in, over a matter of one pill like that. The pain soon went away.
He unfurled his hand. He was holding that rock. It couldn't be real, could it?
"I wish for a hundred... no, a thousand dollar bill to appear right here."
And lazily falling to the ground like a falling leaf was clearly a bill of money. He picked it up, and was amazed. It looked to be a significantly different design than modern bills. He had seen pictures of it, with its more symmetrical design. A thousand dollar bill. With Grover Cleveland on it. Series of 1934 it said. He looked on the back and it looked even stranger and more unlike the bills of today, as it was printed in bright orange ink. Honestly by modern standards it looked like it would be easy to counterfeit. No wonder they had stopped printing them, though of course in 1934 a thousand dollars would have been tens of thousands today. But anyway, a thousand dollar bill from 1934 had just appeared on command out of thin air when he asked for it.
"Ho Lee Shit" Jon said.
What the hell was this thing. What could it do? What couldn't it? Based on the letter from his grandfather, it was as powerful as god himself, if you believed in that stuff, except for being unable to undo earlier wishes and affect things beyond a few miles away. What a strange limitation, to be unable to affect things a few miles away.
A strange idea occurred to Jon. He might as well ask for it. What was the harm.
"I wish... for just the next day, for 24 hours, starting now, I would, have a childhood friend, a best friend from childhood, a girl no less, or so I would think, and everyone else. Karyn, from school, why not, the sky's the limit. I wish that for 24 hours, I would have a close best friends relationship with Karyn, and my memories and everyone else's memories would be changed for that 24 hours to make us think history had been this way, but after the 24 hours was up, everyone else would go back to normal and remember none of it, except I would remember what happened over that day, and also I wish anything wished during those 24 hours would be temporary and the effects would disappear at the end of the 24 hours."
Karyn, the only girl in school that was more obnoxious and snotty than that Sarah McMillan, would be his best friend since childhood, as far as he knew. Now that would be testing this thing. If it managed to do that, who knows what else it could do. Changing memories was one thing, but could it change history? Could it even bring back the dead? Well, in due time, he might test such things.
flashback over
Jon was sad. He remembered the last day entirely. While it was happening, he thought it was all real. Well, maybe it was real, during the day. Karyn really seemed like his friend. He did not expect it to affect him so, to be wrenched away! To lose such a thing, that was so fake and a day ago seemed so silly and not at all something anyone in his right mind would ever want. But he remembered that day. Things were back to normal, with him being friendless and a social outcast, as was expected of a guy with mild Asperger's syndrome. Well, maybe he could have it back. Wait, no, that was stupid, why would he want it back? It was so fake. If not for remembering that fake day, Karyn was not anyone he wanted to have anything to do with, just like Sarah. Why should he have a sentimental attachment to something so false and made up? If he wanted to have a friend, he could do better, so much better. He shouldn't want an artificial friendship with a nasty person. It was a silly notion for him to have a girl childhood friend anyway. Everyone knew "friendship" between a guy and a girl, especially a pretty girl, was impossible. Bros before hoes. Besides, Jon's impression was that Karyn was so toxic, maybe she hardly even counted as a person. And yet...
The next day, he went off to school, still depressed about what it seemed like he had and lost. And there was Karyn. She had small breasts and was ginger as originally. Indeed the wish she had made was erased from having happened. Wishes couldn't be undone, exactly, once they were made solidly, but since he had set their duration to be for the next day only, before she had made it, they were temporary in that way.
"Hi, Karyn, you probably don't know who I am, but I was just wondering..."
"I have a boyfriend," she said to him with contempt.
"Uh... well, no I wasn't about to ask you on a date, exactly, I was just, wondering, if you might want to be regular friends."
"Oh my god, get away from me, you creep. You're so gross."
"Uh huh," Jon said, not sure if there was any proper reply to this aside. It just seemed like such a waste. Such a pity. That everything that seemed to be established in that day had just evaporated.
"This loser giving you any trouble Karyn?" one of the football jocks said, eyeing Jon. Was that her actual boyfriend she mentioned, or one of her 'orbiters' as Jon thought of them? Who could say.
"I just wanted to ask something, that's all," Jon said. He walked off, leaving the two of them to say whatever 2 individuals like that said to each other.
Jon thought that was that. That it was over. It was an experiment that had been performed, and it was valuable data. He should wash his hands clean of Karyn. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. They never had anything between them to begin with. It was no loss.
The rest of the day went by unremarkably. Until it was time to go home. That was when some kind of shit hit some kind of fan. Was it a cosmic consequence of his original wish? A huge coincidence?
As Jon stepped off of school property to walk home, a SUV sped through the school zone at what must have been nearly 100 miles an hour.
"Jesus," Jon said. He hoped that fucker would get a ticket. Or lose his license. That doesn't even have anything to do with being in a school zone, he should go to jail just for driving through a residential area at that speed. In a big vehicle like that no less.
The other students got out of the way easily at least. Except for one. Karyn. She had been in the middle of a crosswalk and lost her footing as she tried to scramble to one side, and fell over. She got to her feet and tried to run. But there was no getting away. The SUV hit her at full speed. And she just exploded. It was horrifying. It was like a grenade made of blood, guts and shit. Viscera and blood was everywhere. The vehicle kept going and drove off. It was a hit and run. A bunch of kids started crying and screaming. Jon however was silent. "I'd say that's a good opportunity to test the possibility of resurrecting the dead," he said.
Jon did not wait around for the police to arrive and detain him as a witness. He had much, much better uses of his time than that. So he left for home in a run.
"Hi honey, how was your day at school," his mom said when he got there.
"It was fine," Jon said. He didn't want to tell her about what happened because that was a fruitless conversation at best.
He got into his room and got the stone and picked it up.
"All right stone. I wish, that Karyn would be... hmm." He put it down. Maybe he ought to be very, very careful with this. He didn't want her to come back as a zombie after all. And Karyn was not a nice or good person at all, but, if wishes couldn't be undone, he probably had one chance to get this right, and even if her life wasn't worth much, she was at least worth him taking a few moments to compose himself and word the wish correctly. He picked it up again. "I wish, that Karyn would be brought back to life, and health, and completely be restored, mentally, physically, to health."
Jon thought for a few more seconds. "Also I wish that no one else but me would even remember her being hit by the vehicle and dying, and all physical evidence of that having happened would go away, and that the dipshit driving the SUV would fucking spontaneously combust. There, now that's poetic justice. Kind of."
There was one little issue with the wishing Jon had just done. He wished Karyn to be completely restored. And then wished no one else would remember her being hit by the SUV and dying. Which meant that second wish couldn't apply to her, since it contradicted with her being completely restored. Actually, there were two little issues with the wishing Jon had just done.
Jon and his mom were just sitting down to dinner, when their doorbell rang.
Jon got the door. Imagine his surprise when Karyn was there.
"What. The FUCK."
"Ummmm," Jon said in confusion.
"WHAT THE FUCK!"
"Uhhhhh...." Jon said in further confusion.
"Did you wish me back to life?"
"Uh, well, um. Suppose I said yes?"
“Did that thing hit me in the first place because you wished for it too?”
“Oh absolutely not! I swear to you that was a coincidence. All I did was wish we would be best friends with shared experiences for one day with no one else remembering it at the end, and then wish you back to life the next day after you actually died. Shit I can see why you might think that after you were rude to me, but no I didn’t much care about that, and I had absolutely nothing to do with that thing hitting you. Oh also I wished for the guy driving the SUV to spontaneously combust. He just drove off after killing you by the way. I hope that isn’t a problem, but some people just deserve to die.”
"So yesterday, happened. And today. Happened. God DAMN it Jon. I, I remember EVERYTHING. I remember both lives. I remember dying. I remember FORGETTING that other life, being JUST one version, let's call it, popular Karyn, and now I REMEMBER it the other way again, except now I remember it both ways. I remember being your friend. Your BEST goddamn friend. For YEARS, and YEARS, I was not just your friend, we were soul mates, we freaking loved each other, albeit platonically, but like no one else I had anything with in either life. And I remember being someone completely different than this role I’m supposed to fit now. Is that gone? Was it all fake? Was that the real reality? Should I love you, or hate you for doing this to me? What even is this?!”
"Oh shit. I, kind of, wished for you to be, completely restored, I didn’t just want you coming back as a zombie or something after all. I guess, that, kind of, huh. Yeah, I guess that kind of makes sense. It also seems like it’s kind of in a gray area between whether it counts as undoing a wish or not, to wish for your memories to be altered for one day, and then to wish for them to be restored. Well, just pretend all that friend stuff never happened, because it didn't. That was a one-day experiment. That version of history never happened. It's not even a version of history, since it didn't happen, our memories were just altered to think it did, for one day. Just so you know, it’s currently only you that remembers the years and years, I only remember yesterday, so our fake friendship kind of means a lot more to you than to me I think, but if it’s really important to you, if it worked for you, I’m sure I could restore the fake memories over the years and years for me, if you really wanted to have the friendship based on the fake memories, that would kind of only be fair that I do that."
Karyn was speechless as she stood there with her mouth open.
"I guess, it's up to you, to decide what to do next. Do you want to be friends then? Do you want me to restore my own memories of that time we had together that actually never was? Or do you want to pretend it never happened. It's not even pretending. It was all fake, it literally never happened. Do you want to be mean, popular Karyn, or dank, tomboy Jon's friend Karyn, or a bit of both."
"thyu" Karyn mumbled.
"What?" Jon said back.
"Thank you," Karyn said, now crying.
"Whoa, hold on, no waterworks. I know, it's weird, but it's ok, we can just put this behind us. It was a silly experiment, but it's over now."
"You still brought me back to life. Don't I get to thank you for that?"
"Oh. Well, yeah, I guess that is kind of a thing isn't it. Kind of a big deal to you, the literal difference between being alive and dead. But it really wasn't a big deal to me, I just held that rock and wished you back to life. It was super easy, barely an inconvenience."
"So that's it? It's over then? We just go our separate ways and pretend none of that ever happened? I owe you. But then, what can I possibly give you, when you can literally have anything?"
"How about this. Do you want to come in for dinner with my mom? It's hardly a date, since my mom's going to be there, after all."
"Wow, who's this?" Jon's mom asked.
"This is Karyn from school."
"She's very pretty. Good job Jon."
Jon and Karyn looked away from each other, looking embarrassed.
Maybe it was a start of a friendship after all. A real one this time. Who could say.
