(This is likely to be a bit confusing since the former Jon now fully identifies as Karyn and uses that name, while the old Karyn in Jon's body also refers to herself as Karyn, but hopefully it will be clear from context who we're talking about.)
Later that evening, the girl who appeared to all the world to be Karyn Black was in a reflective mood. It was after dinner, and Sarah had gone home by now, leaving Karyn to her own devices. At the moment she was in her room, and drawing a little scene in her sketchbook as she let her mind wander. From the outside today wasn't that out of the ordinary for the redheaded girl; she'd gone to school, attended a drama club meeting, met up with her girlfriend afterward and went back to the Black house to watch a movie and have dinner with her mom, Alyssa. The two girlfriends often had dinner at one another's houses. However, today had a special significance for Karyn that none of her friends and family were aware of; from today onward, she'd have lived longer as Karyn Black than she had as Jon Gibson.
Don't get her wrong, she hadn't thought of herself as Jon in years. She felt like Karyn, preferred being Karyn, but it still felt like a milestone. At first she'd been so scared in confused, when she fond herself being pushed out of Alyssa's womb, screeching like any newborn girl as she was swaddled and handed to her new mother. It hadn't taken long for her to put it together though; the original Karyn's wish had sent her mind tumbling backwards in time to the day of her new birth, so that she could literally live Karyn's life.
And lived it she had. It didn't take long for her to start identifying as Karyn and treating her life as her own. It wasn't like she could have reversed it; Jon's grandfather would still have the stone, and even then wishes couldn't be easily reversed. Besides, after getting used to it, Karyn came to really love being Karyn Black, more than she ever had being Jon Gibson. A big part of that had come from the realization that she felt more natural as a girl than she had as a boy, but it was also a bit due to how incredible her new mother, Alyssa was. That much constant maternal affection was bound to warm anyone to the prospect of being the daughter who was the recipient of it.
"I really have no clue what the old Karyn was doing with her life," Karyn muttered, shaking her head. There were quite a few things about how her old friend, the original Karyn Black, had lived their shared life that seemed odd or even idiotic to Karyn. For one, why on earth she'd insisted on wearing shapeless or boyish clothes escaped the new Karyn. Sure she wasn't a model, but she liked to think she was growing into a quite beautiful young woman and liked to dress to reflect it. More baffling was how the original Karyn had ever let Sarah get away; she didn't know the exact circumstances of how the two fell out, but the new Karyn couldn't imagine losing the blonde. They'd been friends since preschool, and the new Karyn made a concerted effort to keep their friendship strong when they got to the time that the two originally split. It had worked so well that the two went from friends to girlfriends, and Karyn was honestly deliriously happy with that fact.
Maybe the biggest difference between new Karyn and old Karyn, was the social circles they ran in. New Karyn had a bit of a revelation when she realized a key difference between Karyn and Jon in the old world. Jon was one of the unpopular kids as a natural result of his general dweebishness and so on. The Old Karyn had been an unpopular kid purely by choice; she was pretty under that jumper, from a family nearly as well off as the McMillans after her mom's novels became best sellers, and surprisingly talented at both theatre and illustration. Old Karyn always could have been popular if she wanted to, and the new Karyn saw no reason why not. She wasn't obsessed with it by anymeans, hell even Sarah was less concerned with being popular in this timeline, but she didn't reject people just because they were. Really, in a way the original Karyn was a bit like Zoe, Karyn thought as she finished a line on her drawing of her cat Limerick. She was about to snap a picture of it to send to her friends when she saw she had a text from an unknown number that made her stomach drop.
JON-BOY, IS THIS YOU?
