I remember trying to reach Karyn over the phone only to end up speaking to her mom. I remember trying really hard to stay up, waiting for her to call me back. I remember climbing into my bed thinking I'd read a comic book until she does. I remember thinking that the pillow looks extremely alluring.
I don't remember my eyes closing as my head hit the mattress.
Our family table was suspended in an infinitely large dining room. The casserole dish in the middle of the table was almost empty. I looked down on my plate - it was full of some kind of stew. I felt kinda hungry but something, I wasn't sure what, was stopping me from eating it. It was some kind of nagging thought at the back of my mind, making me feel like unless I resist the temptation to eat the warm food in front of me, some closer unspecified negative consequences will follow.
"Honey, please eat your food" my mom's voice interrupted my thoughts. I looked up at her to see she wasn't addressing me.
"But I want chips!" Mickey protested.
"There's no chips." mom pointed out calmly to the rebelling the 11 year old, "Don't you want to grow big and strong like your daddy?" Her classic argument.
"Yes mom," Mickey responded resigned taking a small heap of stew on his spoon. "I want to be big and strong and taller than Sarah McMillan!"
"Huh?" I thought "Sarah McMillan? Why would Mickey mention..."
"Yeah, little bro" Zoe just joined the conversation. Up to this point I didn't even realize she was there with us. "You know what you'd call someone half foot shorter than her! Short-stuff! Half-pint! Shorty!"
I was really confused by the conversation happening in front of me. How on earth was Sarah McMillan relevant at all to Mickey's growth aspirations?!
Meanwhile Zoe continued with her adjectives, each stated louder and more... mockingly.
"Munchkin! Midget! ARM REST! SQUIRT!"
The nicknames resonated in my head, each making me feel worse and worse, until I could no longer put up with what was happening. "SHUT UP!" I screamed on top of my lungs, standing from the table, fists clenched, eyes shut.
Zoe's voice was gone. I relaxed my hands and opened my eyes. There was no more dining table in front of me. Instead I was in my parents bedroom.
"David, does my butt look big in those pants?"
I turned around to where the voice was coming from. By an open wardrobe stood my mom. She was wearing only a white bra and a pair of jeans, the stretchy, women's kind. She was twisting around, trying to see her behind from a number of angles in the mirror hung on the wardrobe's door.
"Honey, you know I always think you look beautiful." my dad was sat on the side of their bed, buttoning up his shirt. Were they going somewhere?
"It is too big." my mom sighed putting a hand on each buttock and squeezing gently. "I need a diet."
Was my moms butt actually large? I didn't think so. It was just, well, you know... feminine. I never understood why women always were so critical about the size of their behinds. Don't they realize that even if their butts were bigger, most men would find them more attractive, not less?
I turned around after hearing the door to their room open.
"Mom, my butt is too big!" It was my sister Zoe. For some reason she wore just her panties and one of those silly goth corsets she bought a couple years ago. "None of my dresses fit me well!"
That also was nonsense. Her thighs were pale and wide but definitely not oversized. Their size was nothing more than attractive feminine 'plushness'.
"Jon, why is my butt so big?" I turned once again only to see my parents' bedroom turn into the school yard. Both my mom and dad were nowhere to be seen, only Karyn. She was half-turned my direction, holding her buttocks in her hands.
She wore her usual worn-out jeans and baggy green sweater. It seemed like her chest was down to her pre-wish size, although her hair was blonde instead of her usual red. Out of the three complaining women she also probably had the least real reason for being unhappy with her supposedly fat butt.
I thought to myself that I'll never ever understand why women can be so self-conscious about the size of their behinds. Instead, couldn't they just acknowle that what they see as too big, probably makes them more attractive in the eyes of the men?
Karyn let go of her butt and faced me.
"At least my ass is not as fat as Roxanne's."
"Huh? Roxanne?" I thought. I didn't know anyone in our school who went by that name. And yet something about it seemed familiar...
"But even despite that and the fact that McMillan is a total bitch" she continued bitterly "every guy in the school spends half his life dribbling down her cleavage because she has red hair and big tits."
She stared at me like if she expected me to say something but my mind was blank. Finally she extended her hand showing me the magic stone resting in her palm.
"God," she said firmly. "I wish I had her long red hair and big boobs and maybe then I'd get some of the attention."
She stared me right in the eye as her very much not-accidental wish turn her hair brilliant coppery red and her green sweater bulged out filled with feminine flesh.
At the same time with my peripheral vision I saw dense fog approaching us. All it took was a few seconds before it swallowed up both me and Karyn and the last thing I saw was her eyes. They looked sad for some reason.
Karyn's face slowly gave way to plain darkness as I realized I was laying down in a soft, warm bed, with my eyes shut and my brain full of morning grogginess.
Ahead of me was a morning like none of the ones I experienced in the past.
