"I have an idea," Karyn said a bit tentatively.
"Uh oh, that's dangerous." Jon replied playfully.
"Oh, shush. It's been two weeks now and we've been discussing that stone but not doing anything. I came up with something last night."
"Ok, I'll bite."
Jon was at once a bit skeptical as well as amused. Karyn had come up with lots of different ideas over the past two weeks, ever since he'd let her in on the power of the stone. He found some reason to shoot each idea down however, finding a flaw or an inconvenience that was a dealbreaker.
Some of her ideas were kind of neat, wishing for magic devices so they wouldn't have to use the stone and risk making something permanent, wishing for super powers, even wishing for knowledge of winning lottery numbers. A few of the ideas were definitely worth re-visiting after some careful thought; winning lottery numbers for example. Jon was just afraid of all of the stories of genies playing tricks or poorly worded wishes coming true and getting arrested for theft of several hundred million bucks, or finding out that the winning lottery numbers were published in some newspaper and several hundred million people shared in the jackpot at a dollar each.
He also loved the idea of giving themselves power over members of the opposite sex like in Love Potion Number 9 with Sandra Bullock, but shot it down since they both agreed they would probably end up having sex with each other. Maybe after some thought to wording it so they don't affect each other or something...
"Well, I've always wondered what it would be like to be a guy," she started. "And I bet you've wondered the same thing at least once."
"Um, no, I know what it's like to be a guy," he hedged. He knew what she meant, but didn't want to admit anything of the sort.
"You know what I mean, dumbass."
She began to talk with her hands, clearly liking the idea a lot. Jon decided to listen to whatever she was going to propose without interrupting her, though he was already thinking that she could never turn herself into a guy since she'd still have long blonde hair and big breasts, thanks to her wish a couple weeks earlier.
"So, I can't just wish to be a guy, obviously," she gestured down at her chest, "and we're best friends, so I thought we could figure out a way to swap our minds instead. Your mind would be in my body, and you'd be able to live my life for a day or two while I lived yours."
Jon didn't immediately answer her, instead mulling it over. The truth was that he liked the idea, but he already saw some possible snags.
"Well," he started, trying to be diplomatic. "Assuming we get the logistics down and don't end up permanently becoming each other, wouldn't that be kind of like having sex?"
"No." Her answer was automatic as her hand went up, as if she had given thought to this argument already. "I mean, it would be intimate, yeah, but it wouldn't be like sex. It would be private, and we would just, you know, hang out like we are now and stuff."
"So, you want to get intimate with me?" Jon waggled his eyebrows at Karyn and she laughed and smacked him with his pillow.
"Is that all you guys ever think about? See? That's one of the things I want to find out. If we swap minds, then I know how much I want to have sex at any given moment, so if I suddenly want to have sex all the time, then I'll know you guys aren't just pigs."
There was so much wrong with that logic that Jon didn't know where to begin. So instead he just held up a finger and said, "Um..."
"Look, think of it like a vacation, but from yourself! We could even make it so that we can act like each other so no one will even suspect anything is wrong. I thought up the wording and everything."
"You just want to stick me with big boobs, don't you?"
"Damn, you saw right through me, didn't you?" She tilted her head and stuck out her tongue. Then Karyn straightened up and her face got serious. "I think it would be fun. And I thought of a kind of challenge, too."
Great, a challenge. She might as well have called it a dare. Jon didn't like wussing out on dares.
"Remember that body-part-swapping ray-gun we thought of yesterday? We could wish for one that swaps minds. Like we said, it's function is to swap things, so the swap wouldn't be permanent or the gun wouldn't be able to swap things again. Then, we just make a wish to be able to act like the person we appear to be and voila!"
"So, where's the challenge?"
"Well, for the first part of the week, we can act like each other and learn stuff about each other."
"Wait, a week?" Jon wasn't sure he liked that part.
"Yeah, well wait a minute. Listen. So for six days we live as each other. You go to my classes and I go to yours, you live at my house and I live at yours. We learn."
"Yeah, but a week?"
"And then on the morning of the seventh day, next Sunday, we make a gun that takes away our ability to just act like each other so we have to rely on what we learned. Whoever makes the bigger fool of themselves loses."
"A week?"
"Oh my god, are you scared to be me for a week?"
sigh So yeah, Jon could totally relate to Marty McFly. He made up his mind right then and there to do it, just to prove he wasn't a chicken. When she put her hands on her ribs and flapped her elbows like chicken wings, that was just overkill.
"Nope, I'm not scared. Let's do it!"
She actually squealed in delight and pulled a folded up piece of paper out of her purse. "Here, this is the wording I thought up."
She handed it to Jon and he read over it very critically. He started to have second thoughts, but his internal monologue started ticking off reasons to go along with it:
- It's only a week
- It will make Karyn happy, look how excited she is
- You get to look at a naked GIRL whenever you want
- This wording is pretty well thought out
And the one that clinched it:
- It's not like I want to be a girl permanently, but I would like to have it easy for a change...
He spent another few minutes reading and re-reading her wording while she just watched him in tense anticipation. He started to speak a few times, putting voice to an objection he thought up, only to stop before finishing the first word because her wording addressed the objection already and made it a non-issue. After a few minutes he started imagining what it would be like and couldn't concentrate on reading anymore. He sat down on the bed next to Karyn to hide the erection he was also starting to sport. He handed her the paper.
"Here, you read it then, you're more familiar with the wording so your not as likely to slip up the wording." She positively beamed at him.
A minute later, after retrieving it from its hiding place, Jon handed the stone to Karyn. She closed her eyes and took several cleansing breaths. Then she opened her eyes, made sure she had the stone in her hand and began reading the paper.
"I wish for a magic, ray-gun to appear on the bed next to me that will swap two willing people's minds regardless of whether they've been swapped before or not."
When they could look, they both saw a green, plastic, toy gun, the kind that you can buy from a carnival that has a spinning light and wooOOP woooOOP sounds when you pull the trigger. Karyn picked it up and examined it for a minute while Jon thought about what was coming.
"I wish to know everything about how to operate this gun," Karyn said after a minute. Then she put the paper down on the bed and extended the stone to Jon. "Here, hold this." She grinned when he took it and then pointed the gun at him and fired.
The world suddenly blacked out for both of them, except for a tiny, pin-hole of reality that was pulling their consciousness. In the dream-like way that things are sometimes really little and really big at the same time, they moved sluggishly at the speed of light through those tiny pin-holes. A world of thoughts bombarded them momentarily, tasting like they passed each other on this strange journey, and when reality came back into full view Jon was sitting on the bed with a ray gun in his hand. And he had breasts.
He noticed this when he looked down. And then he looked up and saw Jon. Grinning from ear to ear. "Oh. My. God." The excitement was overwhelming and Jon felt as though he would burst. "This is fucking cool!" he said in Karyn's alto voice a bit more loudly than he had meant. Strange sensations from all over his, or rather Karyn's body were registering, and he couldn't decide which was the weirdest.
"Ok, part two," said Karyn in Jon's tenor. It sounded so strange hearing it as someone else entirely. And then Karyn said, "I wish that you and I would act like the people we appear to be for the next six days." It sounded like she was about to say more, but then she inhaled and Jon had to look away from her.
The sinking feeling in the pit of Jon's new stomach almost made him want to throw up.
Jon assembled his thoughts, but before he could figure out exactly what he wanted to say, he said, "That's not what I wrote, Jon." This took him by complete surprise. He hadn't meant to say anything yet, and he called Karyn 'Jon'.
Karyn quickly put the stone in its box and closed the lid. "Oh shit," he said. "Um, I feel strange. What about you?"
Jon wanted to say that she should take the stone back out and make another wish quickly, but instead said out loud, "I feel a little nervous."
"Well," Karyn said in Jon's voice, "I think I know how you felt when you wished for big boobs and long blonde hair. I think we should not do anything else with it until this wish ends. At least I put a time-limit on it."
Jon was stunned. His body started to move on its own and he stood up. "What do you think it did?" He tried to sit back down but found that Karyn's body wasn't responding.
Like a sudden electric shock he understood what was happening. He was acting like he was actually Karyn. Because of that wish, he would do whatever Karyn would do in the situation. He was acting like he actually was Karyn. Worse, he would NOT do or say anything that Karyn wouldn't. He confirmed this when he was unable to start explaining his observation to Karyn.
He could still think for himself, but otherwise was a passenger in Karyn's body.
And it dawned on him that Karyn was in the same situation. She would act as though she was Jon, completely unable to control his body. Nothing more than a passenger. For the next six days.
He wanted to scream, but Karyn wouldn't right now. He wanted to tell Karyn that he knew what was happening, but Karyn wouldn't say any such thing right now. He wanted to throw up, and his body's auto-pilot said, "I think I should get home, I'm not feeling very well."
He panicked when Karyn said, "Yeah, ok. This was a bust, but we can figure something out next weekend."
He grabbed Karyn's purse and said, "I'll call you later, k?" before walking out of his room and down the stairs to leave the house. He passed his mom on the way out and said, "Bye, Mrs. Madison," and then walked outside, closing the front door behind him.
The feeling of Karyn's body encasing him was still strange as he began walking to her house. The feeling of helplessness grew with every step as he got farther and farther from his home, Karyn, and the stone. His only hope of fixing this. He made it to her house before the terror of possibly being stuck as a passenger in Karyn's body forever hit him.
