It took Jon a second to realize he was looking at Zoe. She still had a few Gothic touches visible -- a black choker around her neck, several small silver hoops through each ear, a black shirt with a lacy collar and cuffs, makeup a bit on the heavy and dark part of the spectrum -- but on the whole, she was projecting an image of elegance and refinement. Maybe even beauty, if it were possible for Jon to have such opinions about his younger sister...
"Earth to Jon," she said.
"Huh?" Jon noticed Zoe's fingernails, long with white tips -- she'd obviously had a manicure recently.
"What could you get used to?"
"Uh...nothing," Jon finally answered. "Just talking to myself."
Zoe raised an eyebrow, but only said, "Adolfo's off tonight. Do you have plans? I was thinking about ordering a pizza."
Jon could only assume from the context that Adolfo was a cook. "What about Mom?"
Zoe's eyebrow went back up. "Uh, unless you know something I don't, she won't be back from the retreat for a week."
"Oh, yeah." Jon smiled nervously.
"So...pepperoni on half, veggie on the other?"
"Yeah."
She'd pulled a phone book off one of the shelves in the den. "I can never remember Guido's phone number," she explained. "I should probably just save it in here." She punched a number into her cell phone, and as she held it to one ear, she shoved the book back into place with her other hand.
As Zoe talked to the pizza place, Jon scanned the shelves -- the den seemed better stocked than some video stores. And then he happened to notice the phone book Zoe had just put back.
"Madisonville," it said on the spine in black letters. That wasn't right.
He dug his wallet out of his pants pocket and flipped to his driver's license. He must have been concentrating too hard on the name and the street address before. Same state and ZIP code, but the city was "Madisonville." He quickly riffled through the card slots -- a couple of credit cards he hadn't had before, but also a business card from Hans's European Car Service, Main Street, Madisonville.
"What are you doing?" asked Zoe. "I told 'em to put it on our tab."
"What? Oh." It took Jon a second to realize that Zoe thought he was getting money out of his wallet. He shoved it back into his pants. "Uh, I'll be in my room. Let me know when the pizza gets here."
"Sure."
In a bit of a daze, Jon slowly ascended the wide, slightly curved staircase to the second floor. He guessed at what room was his, and turned out to be correct.
It was the bedroom of his dreams. King-size bed. Leather sofa and recliner facing a flat-screen TV that was hooked up to a Wii and an Xbox 360. Desk holding a top-of-the-line PC and two monitors. Framed artistically photographed nude women on the wall -- that's what surprised him the most.
He lay down on the bed, facing the ceiling. Absent-mindedly, he took the wishing rock out of his pants pocket and started tossing it gently in the air as thoughts raced through his head.
"Sarah's acting a lot nicer. Zoe's acting like a normal human being, maybe even above-normal. I apparently have a girlfriend, which may or may not be Karyn. I apparently have a European car. Mom's out of town -- that could be the downside to all this, that she's never around. But anyway, it seems like we're freakin' rich."
He stopped the tossing and looked at the rock lying in the palm of his right hand. "You must have seriously changed reality to get this town named after us," he said in the rock's direction. "It'd be nice to avoid any seriously nasty surprises. I wish I knew more about what's different."
The rock glowed, and Jon felt himself being forced to look away momentarily.
