The two friends arrived at school, an unfamiliar air of confidence surrounding Karyn as they parted ways. She was surprised at just how good her new hairstyle made her feel, but she couldn't deny it, waving a temporary goodbye to the friend who had caused her to feel this way.
Jon waved his own goodbye and approached his locker. There was a magnetic mirror stuck to the inside of his locker door now, and it only took a glimpse of Jon's reflection for a need to start building within him. His shaggy teenage look had always served him well, but today it felt... inadequate. He could do better than this.
Jon pulled a tub of hair gel from his locker and scooped a few fingerfulls into his hair, then swept it through with a comb. It wasn't nearly as involved as Karyn's earlier treatment, but it did the job. Jon smiled at his own reflection, now that it was neater. Cleaner. He'd never had a problem with his look before, but now that he knew he could do better, he felt that he should do better.
Not a single hair was out of place. Maybe this wish wouldn't be so bad, Jon thought to himself as he exchanged all the hair care products in his backpack for some textbooks from his locker.
First period was English, and as Jon sat in his usual chair he realized that, in all of his concern over the stone the previous night, he'd entirely forgotten to do the reading. Maybe Ms. Ramirez would just forget to ask questions about it today?
"Escuchame!" she shouted as soon as the bell rang. "Be honest with me, class, who did the reading last night?"
For a moment, Jon's heart sunk. But out of the corner of his eye, a few seats to his left, he saw Sarah McMillan raise her hand. Information flashed through Jon's mind. He had done the reading. He could remember the previous night flipping through the pages of "Little House on the Prairie" while curled up on a pink and white daybed by a window that overlooked a half-acre back garden and swimming pool.
Where had that vision come from? Jon knew he hadn't read the book, and he definitely didn't recognize the place where his memories told him he'd read it.
But his hand went up into the air nonetheless.
"Okay, Jon," Ms. Ramirez pointed to the boy's hand, "Digame, what motivated Doctor Gregory House to move to Kansas with a shrink ray?"
"Initially," Jon surprised himself with knowledge he hadn't had a moment before, "the move was so that he could detox from his vicodin addiction, but then he discovered that he had lupus and he'd recently read a paper that said lupus progresses more slowly in smaller bodies. So before his trip, he bought a shrink ray and he used it to make himself half his normal size once he arrived at his rental cottage."
As he spoke, the memory of reading those passages came back to him. Of his head resting on the wicker arm of the daybed. Of his nail-polished fingers turning each page. Of the hem of his sundress stroking his calves when he shifted position.
"Bueno! Now Sarah, what did Doctor House find when he arrived at the cottage?"
The class went on, seemingly as normal. But if there was ever a time when Ms. Ramirez asked a question that Jon didn't know the answer to, but he saw Sarah raising her hand, he found his hand reaching up into the air only a fraction of a second later. And with each question he answered, that little daybed overlooking that garden felt more and more familiar.
