After about ten minutes of running, Jon and Karyn finally reached Jon's house. He ran inside and grabbed the keys to his grandfather's car, and headed back outside. He took a deep breath and looked around.
"Something wrong?" Karyn asked.
"Just...this seemed to easy. Why hasn't she tried to stop us yet?" Jon asked, shaking the keys around in his hand.
"Why question it, Jon?" Karyn asked. "We got here, and we haven't been changed."
"Yeah, I suppose that's..." Jon paused and looked at Karyn.
"What? What is it?" Karyn asked, beginning to get worried.
"If she had changed us, we wouldn't know." Jon said. "Because we can't hear her wishes."
"Are you trying to say she changed us, Jon?" Karyn asked.
"No. That's the weird part. I...know we haven't been." Jon said. "I'm assuming you do too."
Karyn nodded. "So, what do you think that means?"
"She may be excluding us from the new reality, making sure we remember." Jon said. He was about to say something else when his cell phone made a dinging noise, notifying him that he had a text message.
He pulled out his phone and looked at the screen. It was from his friend, Tim.
"Hey Jon. Ur sister and her friends are doin some fuked up stuff here. They even changed th school. Every 1 is freakin out. Where r u?"
Ordinarily, Jon would have commented on Tim's typing, but the full gravity of the situation sunk in.
"I think she may have wished everyone would remember the original reality." Jon said. "Which makes sense, given how she acted back there. What's the point of having the power to change everything, if no one notices your changes?"
"This isn't good, Jon." Karyn said. "We need to get out of here. If we don't..." Karyn paused and then her eyes widened. "Oh my God, I just realized. We forgot about our families. Your mom, Mikey, my parents. We need to get them too, or Athena could..."
Karyn didn't finish her thought. She didn't really need to. Neither fully knew what Athena was capable of, but they were sure it was nothing good. But, to go all over town to get their families would take a while, perhaps too long.
Jon could hope Zoe was still involved in all this madness, and had some kind of pull over Athena. Enough pull that she could get her to leave their families alone. He could throw caution to the wind and try to liberate all of them too, or just make a break for it now, and come back for them.
