She didn't go to class after that; she was already way late, and on top of that she was mortified, physically drained, addle-brained, emotionally wrung-out, sore in places she hadn't even had three days ago... Instead, she got up, wandered in a daze out to the back lawn, and spent the rest of the period staring into space and doing her best to think of absolutely nothing.
She was still there when Karyn found her at lunchtime. "There you are," she said; "I didn't see you in the cafeteria." She set her tray down on the grass and looked her over. "Hey, you're a mess. You okay, Joni?"
She stared up at her friend, made to answer, then thought back over all that'd happened and turned crimson again. How did you even explain this...!? It was crazy, beyond comprehension; and it was embarrassing as hell and she did not want to talk about it; but if she couldn't confide in her best friend... She sighed wearily, bit her lip, and screwed up her courage. "I, uh...um, I...Karyn, I laid eggs this morning."
Karyn looked at her curiously, and blinked. "Well, I mean, you were about d-" Then her eyes widened. "Omigod, no, you were a boy, weren't you...? Omigod."
Joni stared at her, boggling over her reaction. "Karyn...women don't lay eggs...!"
"Well, not most of us," Karyn said, shaking her head, "but I don't think it's a bad thing that girls like you are-wait, wait, is THAT not normal!? Holy shit...!"
She groaned. "So it is 'normal' in this reality? Gahh, Nadine thought the same thing..."
"Nadine? She catch you at it?" Karyn frowned thoughtfully, as she tucked into her lunch. "Oh, I'd heard she was..."
"She gave me this whole 'supportive' spiel," Joni said, rubbing at her tender abdomen, "about being proud of how we're made, and, and how it's normal to want to be a...a mother..."
"Yeah, she would," Karyn chuckled. "And it figures she'd peg you for the type; you've got total mom energy. I always figured it was why Zoe and Michelle looked up to you."
"Wha-!? N-n-no I don't...!" Joni blinked. "...Do I...?" She felt herself somehow get even redder as she thought back on it. "I, uh...when I felt it, uh, against me, a-and when she was talking about it...th-there were all these weird feelings like, like there was some part of me that wanted..."
She felt herself getting ready to cry again, and Karyn set her tray aside and hugged her. "I guess it's all strange and new for you, isn't it?" she said. "But, well, it's normal for girls to feel that way, sometimes; like, not all of us actually want to make it a life goal, but most of us at least think about it sometimes. And, well, Joni's had an interest in that stuff since we were kids."
But I haven't, she thought, as Karyn comforted her; she'd been Jon, and while she'd sorta thought about maybe having a family one day, she certainly hadn't imagined being the mother...! She felt all weird and confused again, wondering where the line was between them, and whether there'd be a line anymore, if things kept up like this...
Karyn shook her head. "God, it's so weird to think about. I mean, I remember your first clutch...!"
"You do...?" she said, more or less on auto-pilot, and not really thinking about whether she actually wanted to hear this.
Her best friend nodded. "It was at my house, actually. We were having a sleepover, and we got so caught up in a movie that...well, you didn't notice 'til it was too late. You, uh, laid them right there on the living-room floor."
Joni cringed, mortified, but Karyn laughed fondly at the memory. "Mom was at her wits' end; I didn't know that was a thing, so I couldn't shut up about it, and all the while she was trying to comfort you like she had any idea what you'd been through. She thought of it like childbirth, so she wasn't sure if you'd be traumatized, and she tried to give 'the talk' without all the gory details about the facts of life for viviparous women..." She shook her head slowly. "And for like the next month she was constantly thanking her lucky stars that it'd happened while Dad was off on a business trip."
"That wasn't the end of it, either," she continued, with a chuckle. "See, I hadn't gotten 'the talk' yet, and Mom was too embarrassed to bring it up afterward, so I got all confused and thought that's how it worked for all girls. That didn't get sorted out 'til months later, when Aunt Connie told us Jason was on the way, and I asked what color the egg was and if it'd be pink for a girl. We were at a family gathering, so they kinda laughed it off and told me that most women actually have the baby grow inside them, and then Mom sat me down with the full lecture later."
"Really?" Joni said, confused. "Had it, uh, just never come up before...?"
"Well, most of my cousins're older'n me," Karyn said, digging back into her lunch. "Mom's the youngest of her family, and Dad's an only child. I'd seen pregnant women before, but I think that was the first time a lady I knew was having a baby, at least when I was old enough to remember. After you started laying, I just figured grown-up women must lay grown-up-sized eggs, and that's why they got like that." She shrugged. "What can I say, kids get funny ideas when they haven't learned how stuff works yet."
Joni winced as her brain insisted on visualizing a mental image she'd never even begun to imagine she'd have context for. "God," she murmured, "it's so bizarre to hear you talk like this is normal..."
"Right back at'cha," Karyn said. "I mean, it's not the norm, but this is literally the first thing they talk about in women's health class. I don't even know where to start, thinking of a world where it's not the case." She shook her head. "Like, your reality couldn'tve had the whole moral panic where the bluehairs acted like offering sex-ed classes in school was gonna lead to rampant teen cowbirding, could it? Wild."
"'Teen...?'" She trailed off, shaking her head. "Ugh. Just thinking about it...I've never been so embarrassed."
"If it makes you feel any better," Karyn said, "it's not like it's any less unpleasant for the rest of us. Hell, at least for you it's over and done with. Us viviparous girls have to deal with it for days." She shrugged. "Honestly, I think that's why some women get all bitchy about it. Well, that and just plain bullying."
"It really doesn't," she groaned, her cheeks burning. "I mean, maybe this is 'normal' for you, but...God, I feel like livestock."
Karyn put an arm around her shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze. "C'mon, that's no way to talk about yourself! Bad enough for people like Tiffany to use slurs like 'hen' - you sure don't need to internalize it."
"No, I-" Joni stared at her; trying to see the world from this perspective made her brain hurt. "I mean literally, Karyn! Until...this, it was something that happened to farm animals, not people. Like, it's not that I think of Nadine that way, but-" She winced, not having really thought of Nadine in this context at all until the mental image suddenly flashed across her brain. "Ugh," she said, tearing up for real now, "it's just all so friggin' wrong..."
Karyn shushed her and hugged her again. "I guess it must seem strange," she said. "But trust me, there's nothing wrong or bad about how you're made, even if it feels weird to you. And even if this isn't 'normal...' I mean, if all women were placental in your reality, that's still a world where facing gross, uncomfortable biological reality on a regular basis because Mother Nature said so is just part of being a girl." She frowned. "Wow, I s'pose you never did have to sit through the childbirth videos in women's health class, did you?"
With a sniffle, Joni shook her head. She felt so overwhelmed with what she'd been through, embarrassed and weirded-out and emotionally shaken...but then, Karyn probably wasn't wrong. She'd obviously never had any direct experience with it, but she hadn't lived this long with a surly teenage sister without gaining at least a vague awareness of what women had to deal with on a regular basis; and while she'd been too young to remember it when Zoe came along, she did notice some of what her mother went through while she was pregnant with Mikey...
(Wait, wait. In this reality, Michelle would've...her mom must've...!? She shook her head and tried not to think about it.)
Her best friend chuckled grimly. "Believe me, you are so lucky you don't have a cervix - and that's on top of what we have to deal with during 'that time of the month.' Some of us'd trade places in a heartbeat, if it were possible." She thought about it for a moment. "Wait, it would be with the stone, wouldn't it...?"
Joni gave her a slightly queasy stare. "You...you want this...!?" After what she'd just been through, it seemed impossible to wrap her head around; but she had to admit she had no basis for comparison here.
Karyn turned a little red. "Well, I meant more in general," she said, "but...honestly, I'd be lying if I said the thought hadn't crossed my mind sometimes. I think a lot of us probably wonder about it, but it'd be seen as 'weird' to come out and say it, y'know?" She glanced around the yard. "I guess it probably sounds even weirder to you than most, but..."
"...Well, it made a big impression on me, when we were kids," she said. "I might've filled out sooner, even without...whatever the hell that dumb wish did to my past, but you beat me to that milestone, and I was right there for it; plus, you were a big sis, and I was an only child. Sometimes it felt like you were the mature one..."
"The mature one...?" Joni frowned, trying to wrap her head around it. Sure, she'd gotten saddled with responsibility here and there, as the elder brother, but he'd mostly kept to himself. Zoe was just too different to get close to, and she'd latched onto Karyn instead, 'til adolescence hit; he and Mikey got each other more, but there was more of a gap between them, so he'd been hitting his own prickly-junior-higher phase right around the time his little brother was old enough to start trying to act older...
Were the siblings' bonds that much stronger, in this reality? Things were certainly awkward with Zoe the other day. But Karyn remembered differently, and somehow that was all tied up in her mind with the fact that Joni had...well, had started on the road to womanhood earlier. Was that really a thing, with girls? She sure as hell didn't remember her male peers suddenly becoming mature when puberty hit; if anything, it was just the opposite. Was there something about the onset of the female reproductive cycle that, what, triggered the development of "mom energy...?"
"I, I mean...if anything I'd think you're the mature one," she murmured, half to herself. "There's all this stuff you know about that I have no clue on - and you can just roll with the idea that I'm someone else and still treat me like the friend you knew, but I can't even figure out how to feel about that..."
Karyn looked surprised for a moment; then she chuckled softly and gently squeezed her shoulder. "I guess so, huh? But to judge by your memories, 'John,' you were the reason I picked up a lot of that stuff in the first place, Joni. So I guess we're both looking up to some facet of each other that's half someone else...except you're kinda both halves...?" She shook her head and smiled. "This wishing stuff's hella complicated, isn't it?"
She stared back in surprise; was that the first time this version of Karyn had addressed her by her old name? Er, his own name? She couldn't recall. But "kinda both halves?" If only it were even that clear. "Yeah, it is," she sighed, wondering (not for the first time) if she was truly Jon in Joni's body, or if she was really a Joni who remembered being Jon. "Still, at least to you this is all normal..."
"Yeah, I can't argue that," Karyn said, placing a supportive hand on her shoulder. "I guess we won't have 'girl lessons' today; you've already had The Big One. But for a quick sub-lesson: when Mother Nature's being a bitch, normal is taking the time you need to recuperate." She smiled sympathetically, and pulled her into another hug. "Go home 'n get some rest, girl; I'll tell the teachers for you."
After everything that'd happened, Joni couldn't even bring herself to protest. She nodded, hugged Karyn back, and went to the bus stop, brooding the whole way home as she thought about what she'd been through, what it meant for her, how she felt about that, and what in the name of all heaven and earth she was supposed to do about it.
Her head was still spinning when she got off the bus and trudged up the block to the Madison house. The physical exhaustion had long since worn off, and the soreness was gradually fading, but the thought that she was seemingly built to take it now did nothing at all to help her emotional state, let alone blot out the memory. More than anything, she wanted to just un-know everything she'd experienced and learned today; she probably could, with the stone, but messing with her own memories was not a good idea, especially in a reality where the "real" her wasn't who she remembered being.
She found her mom seated at the kitchen table, sketching intricate geometric designs on a sheet of graph paper; the smell of baking filled the air, there was a package of frozen meat thawing on the counter, and she could hear the washing machine churning away in the laundry room. For a moment she just watched, thinking for the first time in...she didn't know how long...about just how many plates her mother kept spinning on a daily basis. Granted, it was probably easier now that she and her sisters were old enough to more or less look after themselves, and it must help that her dad made enough to support them on a single income; still, how did the woman do it?
She watched, studying the face, framed by slowly-graying hair in slight disarray, adorned by wire-rimmed spectacles...the one that hers resembled, with a couple extra decades carved into it. Twenty...what, eight? years of smiles, frowns, laughter, sighs, worries, contentment, life that'd elapsed before she'd even come into the world...
While she was turning that over in her mind, the older woman glanced up in surprise. "Joni? You're home early - everything okay?"
Joni wasn't sure how to begin answering that one; her unplanned sojourn into an unfamiliar frame of reference had turned first into a massive ethical dilemma and existential crisis, and then into a full-blown freakshow, and she was being asked if she was okay!? But her mom didn't know about the first part, and must think the second was as totally "normal" as Karyn had...she sighed. "I, uh...wasn't feeling well."
Mrs. Madison nodded knowingly, got up, and pulled her daughter into a hug. "I wondered," she said. "Honey, it's okay to call out if you know you're about due. Noone worth bothering over is going to think any less of you for it."
If she knew...! Joni just barely managed to suppress a snort. If she'd known what was gonna happen, she could've avoided that insanity entirely, as simple as wishing for it - but how was she supposed to anticipate something that hadn't even been possible in her old reality!? She wouldn'tve guessed that, any more than she'd have expected to sprout a second head overnight - and it wasn't like there'd been any visible indication that she was different in more ways than just being a girl...
But of course she couldn't say that, not unless she wanted to loop Mom in on the whole truth. "I know," she sighed.
Her mother smiled gently and patted her on the back. "Well, no real harm in it, I suppose; but I'm glad you're letting yourself rest. Believe me, once you have kids of your own, you'll develop a whole new appreciation for the value of a quiet afternoon nap." She grinned. "Though if I may say so, a hot cup of cocoa wouldn't go amiss, either...oh, better make it two."
Joni's brain had gone into tumble-dry again at kids of your own, so the process of making cocoa was a welcome distraction. She went to the fridge, glancing idly over the dry-erase calendar on the door. They used it to keep track of everyone's schedules (a habit Mom had ingrained in them from way back,) but there were some entries in a format she wasn't familiar with, with their initials and what looked like tally marks: Z. /// this week, R. // last Saturday... Shaking her head, she ducked inside for the milk; there was a mixing bowl full of something-or-other chilling on the top shelf, but she didn't pay it any mind.
She poured up a couple mugs and popped them in the microwave, then went to the pantry for the cocoa. "So, um, about Friday...?" she said, glancing back at the calendar and noticing something with her name on it. That was tomorrow, wasn't it? She couldn't remember having anything planned; was this something new, something specific to "Joni?"
"Oh, er, yes..." Mrs. Madison sighed, returning to her sketches. "Sorry, honey, but we can't spare the car; Zoe's due for her OB/GYN and that was the only time they could squeeze us in, and your dad's helping the Munsons move a sideboard, so he's going to need the van. I did talk to the Kravitzes, and Peter said he'd be happy to drive you back afterward; we can drop you off on the way to Zoe's appointment." She smiled. "It's wonderful that you're willing to do this, Joni; I know first-hand how hard it can be to line up a sitter..."
It took her a minute to properly parse that; she could've asked, but she worried it'd seem weird to admit that she didn't know. Was "Joni" doing babysitting gigs, then? Guh, that was such a teen-girl thing...well, okay, she had fond memories of a couple older neighbor boys that used to look after them when she and Zoe were kids, but still. And the thought of dealing with small children while she was trying to wrap her brain around all the rest of this...? Well, she could clear it off her schedule easily enough, once she had a chance to use the stone. Heck, she could even be thoughtful about it, and set them up with someone qualified...
For a minute, neither of them said anything; her mother kept working at her project. Then something flashed across Joni's brain. "Oh," she said, as the microwave pinged, "Karyn's mom said to tell you thanks." She couldn't remember for what, exactly; with as much new information and/or sheer insanity as she'd absorbed in the last fifty-four hours, her mind was a total jumble.
Her mother chuckled, and gave a self-satisfied little smirk. "She's always welcome, of course," she said proudly, her eyes twinkling. Then the timer on the oven beeped, and she got up to tend to it.
Joni glanced over at her mother, as she mixed up the cocoa. "Pie crust?" she said, watching her take it from the oven and set it out to cool.
Mrs. Madison nodded, smiling nostalgically. "Bit of a special occasion, but I promised Michelle she could be the one to tell. You take that on up to your sister, honey."
She'd assumed the other mug was for her mom, but Joni figured it was all the same to her. And whatever the "special occasion," the part she looked forward to was the leftover pie crust, which they'd long since taken to divvying into strips of glorious flaky pastry, sprinkled liberally with cinnamon and sugar. Though she did wonder, with a glance back at the counter, what sort of pie involved bacon.
