Jon drove away, beaming beet red from being called MOM in front of all his former friends and feeling very unsettled by Biff’s glaring, locked on gaze. It wasn’t like the usual dismissive, sneering sort of judgment that used to accompany his bullying. He wasn’t sizing him up like usual, gears turning behind his eyes as he locked onto the target for his imagined fun. No, there was only pure venom behind his sneers this time, like he was looking straight through Sandra and was looking at the boy inside the middle aged woman with complete disgust. It could be his own insecurities finding a familiar foe to hang all his self-doubt and contempt with his new form on, but either way it did seem like another loose end from Zoe’s wish because a deep, unsettling in his gut seemed to be telling Jon Biff knew something more. He’d need to recruit Zoe for this though, hopefully use her new status as a cheerleader to get the inside track on any info about the football guys and lay his mind at ease. He’d ask her after she apologized, of course.
At least for now, on his midweek day off, the music was blaring in a car of his very own, Jon was free and feeling it. Even those nagging little Sandra-isms seemed to have taken a break for a bit to let him enjoy the beautiful, spring day. Jon resolved to do something fun, something carefree, something to help him reset and try and enjoy some of the good this new situation afforded him. Finally, with a little time to himself, maybe he could find something to help him start feeling like Jon again.
It was about a half hour later and Jon was sitting outside his and Karyn’s favorite bakery with a blueberry muffin and iced coffee (lotta cream, lotta of sugar, just like The Wolf would have it!) while downloading some audio-books of his favorite fantasy novels using Sandra’s free credits. The cafe wasn’t too familiar, only frequenting it when needing a neutral site for group projects or as a last ditch effort to cram before exams, but it was still a place he knew as Jon and could fade into the wallpaper at. Because as much as Jon wanted to use Sandra’s money to stock up and tear through a whole list of comics, there was no way he was chancing running into one of Sandra’s acquaintances and having to put up the facade again.
No, this was nice, this was peaceful. I can get some fresh air, people watch, pop in my headphones and figure out what happens to Amard de Roge now that he’s pulled off the King’s Heist and has the gem of...
A chunk of blueberry muffin fell directly out of Jon’s mouth and onto the table as the full gravity of what he had filed away earlier, now froze him in fear.
Song of Blood and STONE. BLUEberry muffin… How did I already forget about the freaking blue stone?! Even when Zoe’s stupid time limit might be up, who knows if this stone even works the same way in this universe? What if it doesn’t even grant wishes? I might be having to deal with cashier’s calling me ma’am for a lot longer if I don’t figure out something. At least with the red stone, grandpa left me a note! And why, at that, did he leave me the most powerful object in the universe and only a handful of scribbles to go with it! How irresponsible is that! I mean, no wonder I’m in this situation! Ugh, if only he left more information, if only I had more of grandpa’s stuff to go through, maybe I could figure out if I’m screwed or not.
And with a spark of eureka, jettisoned by adrenaline, Jon remembered a text chain he spotted while scrolling through Sandra’s phone earlier. He quickly started typing and began to finish off a conversation Sandra had started with his mother.
Jon groaned, feeling so weird referring to his mother that way. But it almost seemed intentionally left there by Sandra, saved in a draft, as she was literally handing him the opening line on how to navigate this new dynamic with his mother.
Actually, no, sissy was just too much. Too feminine. Too weirdly familiar and gushy for someone he still considered his mother. He couldn’t do it. It was like admitting they were equals, that they understood the same struggle. They weren’t peers. She was a grown woman, a mother who had been through childbirth, who worked and ran a household on her own. And Jon was… Compared to her… Woefully inadequate. An impostor. Scrolling up past all sorts of shared photos, inside jokes, and emojis, he found an adequate, not too terribly grating of a replacement.
BACKSPACE BACKSPACE BACKSPACE
The breakup? Jon really hoped it would be about some terrible show the two had in common and not something more directly involving him.
