Michelle was just guessing this would work. But it was worth a try.
"I wish Michelle Gibson - the girl riding the pink Honda scooter - would know everything about this stone, and what it's done."
The wish was granted - not to Michelle, but to a passing motorist. But it worked anyway. Michelle almost crashed her scooter as knowledge of her true history -- and a whole bunch of others' true histories - washed over her.
"I was some weird little boy? Zoe and her friend were skinny Goths? That boy was my brother Jon and he got turned into my sister? Everyone else got rich instead of me or their friend Zelda? Biff is now KARYN's boyfriend?"
This, combined with the knowledge that this was the Random Stone (which granted wishes to random people within 50 feet of the stone as if they'd been the ones who made the wish), and that last wish had only worked because she phrased it in such a way that anyone else wishing it would still affect her, was just too much. She needed to find a place where she could rest and take all this in.
She soon came in sight of a nearby strip mall. The shopping center had a grocery store, a pharmacy, a pizza place, a restaurant, a hair salon, a coffee and donuts shop, and a bank. She pulled in to the parking lot, and rushed into the pizza place, hoping Karyn wouldn't arrive in time to see which place she entered.
Karyn, for her part, was exhausted from trying to chase after a girl riding a scooter on foot. She only barely kept Michelle in sight most of the time. Her legs ached as she had to slow down to catch her breath.
She had lost sight of Michelle, but she had arrived at the strip mall. She noticed Michelle's scooter in the parking lot. That meant Michelle was nearby, but where?
Michelle, meanwhile, was in the pizza place. She sat down at a table, trying to come to grips with all she had learned.
For starters, her whole life as she knew it hadn't been real until this past hour. She remembered her childhood as a little girl, being the youngest of the Gibson sisters, and she remembered her first day of high school and meeting Sarah McMillan and making friends with her. She liked being Sarah's protege, and the possible new head cheerleader when Sarah graduated. But she knew now that this new reality was less than an hour old.
She didn't know how to react, how to feel. But thinking about how Athena's wish for Melissa and Jessica to get fat had rebounded on Athena and Zoe did make her laugh out loud for a little bit, and that calmed her down a little.
What's done was done. Wishes couldn't be flat out undone, but she could make some more wishes. But she wasn't sure what to do. She didn't know who to be mad at, and who to help.
And there was the fact that Karyn was still after her. For now, though, she still had the Random Stone, and she knew how it worked.
