"'You got a tattoo' is my time travel password."
"Okay," replied Zoe. "I was hoping you'd say that. Just to prove that wasn't a lucky guess. You know, you're 16, I'm 15. If I really got a tattoo 2 years ago, that would be a 13 year old getting one without the permission of her parents. That's not very likely."
"Yeah," said Jon. "But I messed up when we did it. The whole point of a time travel password is to prove your own identity to yourself. If someone appears from nowhere and says 'I'm you from the future', you can ask them for the password. If we tell each other the password, that defeats the purpose."
"Well, you didn't tell anyone other than me, right?"
"Right. It didn't matter at the time. It was a fun thing to do. Nobody really thinks that their self from the future is going to appear. And they didn't. I never expected to use it for this. By the way, can I borrow some paper?"
"Sure... Jon. It's right over there." She pointed to her desk.
Jon tore off a sheet of looseleaf paper, got a pen from her new-old pants pocket, and began writing down some words.
Zoe glanced at them. "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away," they read. "What?" she said.
"Star Wars," replied Jon. "Oh, what's it for? I didn't try to write anything since I became a girl until now. I had to check. My handwriting is the same. I bet you my fingerprints are the same too, and Mom still has the missing child fingerprints from back when I was 5. Can you help me, Zoe?"
"What with, sis?" She grinned.
"I'm not anyone's sister, and I mean with Mom and Dad. I need to convince them who I am."
Jon couldn't help but worry. It may be harder to convince his parents. Her parents, now. And did Zoe really believe her, even after all of that, or was she just humoring this insane girl?
Jon ran downstairs to the living room, where her parents were sitting, and yelled "Mom, Dad, it's me! Jon! Something happened. I turned into a girl."
Jon's mother frowned. "Who are you? Zoe? No, you're not Zoe. You're not dressed like her, and..."
"It's me, Mom," said Jon. I got this bracelet from Grandpa. It was covered with magic runes. It was a sex change spell."
"She's telling the truth," said Zoe, walking down the stairs. "It's Jon. She knows things Jon knows and she has Jon's handwriting. She says you can check her fingerprints." This raised Jon's spirits a bit--she had managed to convince Zoe after all.
"Like we'd waste our time doing that," said Jon's dad. "Who are you? Some second cousin we never met who managed to copy Jon's hairstyle off of his facebook page?"
"Yeah," said Jon. "I'm a cousin. My name is Jessica Gibson." She stuck her hand into her pocket and got out her wallet, with her learner's permit for driving. She tore off a piece of the paper in her hand and wrote her signature on it, then handed both to her father."
He looked at them and said "What's this, Jessica?"
"It was a joke," replied Jon. "My name isn't Jessica. And this is my license. Permit, anyway. It doesn't prove anything but do you really think Jon would give it away to someone? And that paper has my signature. It matches the one on the license. Maybe we can do fingerprints next."
"I'll wait," said Zoe.
"That permit belongs to Jon." said Jon's father. "When Jon gets back I'm going to warn him about giving away things like that for use in pranks."
"Will you figure it out?" exclaimed Jon. "Jon isn't going to get home. I'm Jon. I'm already here. Something weird and bizarre just happened to me and you're not being any help at all."
"What, you want me to think you're Jon because you can copy some of his expressions?"
"What?"
"Weird and bizarre. I keep telling Jon that's redundant."
"Dad, will you just check my fingerprints, please?"
"I don't know how to check fingerprints."
"It's easy, get some ink and a piece of paper."
Zoe added "Look, Dad, I don't know how to prove this but even if you think she's pulling a prank, could you at least check the fingerprints?"
He whispered something to Jon's mother and said "Fine."
Jon was even more worried. Just like the first time she had tried the handwriting, she didn't really know it was going to come up the same, after all. Still, she put his thumb on his dad's ink pad and then on a piece of paper. The first time it was too dark, but the second time the print came out fine. After doing the rest of her hand, she compared it to the prints she had gotten as a child for the missing children program. They had never been used back then, but when his father compared them, his eyes nearly popped out. "How did you do that?" he asked.
Jon sighed. "I'm Jon. Do we want to do dental records next? Every cop show uses those. And you just took me to the dentist last month."
"Fine. You look an awful lot like Jon as a girl. You have Jon's signature, and his fingerprints, and his private possessions, and you're in this house, and you obviously said something that convinced Zoe. So it's at least a little believable. Could you go over just what happened?"
Jon explained the story. "... and I still have the bracelet. It's probably five thousand dollars worth of gold. Want me to get it?"
"Sure," said his father.
A quick trip upstairs and Jon returned with the bracelet. It must have weighed a pound. Jon put it down on the living room table with a hard "clank". His father picked it up, and looked it over, then handed it to his mother. "Did this really do that to you?" asked his mother.
"Yeah. Mom. And it's just a piece of metal now. Look, I don't know any more about this than you do. I just hope there's some way to turn back, if it isn't just temporary. And can you call the school and tell them I'm home sick? I'm not going to school like this."
