Jon grit his teeth and tried to think. Linda or Zoe. It was just two choices. How hard it could be to choose between one of two choices?
.......
Okay, how the fuck was he supposed to choose between these two choices? This was stupid! This was a trolley problem where you have to move one of the tied-down group to the other track before you throw the lever! There was no choice he could make here that was the right choice! Stupid Stone! Why do this!?
Jon tried taking a deep breath. Didn't really help, but he did it anyway.
Let's start over. No matter what he chose, he was almost certainly going to develop uncomfortable, inappropriate feelings for one of his family members. But, what if they didn't return those feelings? Jon could imagine neither his Mom nor Zoe appreciating any advances from him, ever. He and Zoe had a... pugnacious relationship at the best of times, and while Mom loved him, she would never and could never love him like that. Even if he had no shame at all regarding incest or toxic family dynamics or anything, there was absolutely zero nonmagical chance that any sexual thing could ever happen between them, right?
...Unless the Stone did something to their minds too. Jon nearly gagged, and put that out of mind for now.
So, no sex. Right. Not from him, nuh uh, never! But... maybe they wouldn't mind it from some other special someone?
Jon's thoughts turned to his Mom. On the one hand, the years hadn't been kind to her. Maaaaaybe the wish would give her some amount of her youth back? All that stress and weariness, and those first few gray hairs... the Stone could see fit to take all that away, and give her a stronger back instead. Right? Or it could give her the back pain only boobs from adolescent fantasy could cause. The so-called "Mom Bod" wasn't exactly the picture of health, with all that excess fat in curvy places, now was it? And come to think of it, it was attention from a man that caused her all that stress in the first place! Attention from a man he used to call "Dad" but now mostly called "Roger". Zoe wasn't the only one who'd come out more cynical and mistrustful at the other side of all that; for better or worse, Mom was a woman of her own making now, hardened by a hard life, and she'd never remarried. She and her angry rebellious teen had more in common than either would admit, he realized.
... Would she remarry if she had the chance, though? If, due to her new looks, she met the one? Or would the lusts of irresponsibly horny men turn her even more abrasive than Zoe? Jon didn't like where his thoughts were going, either way.
Instead, he wondered about Zoe. Honestly, that was the option he was leaning more towards, for no reason other than that it was just more predictable. She hadn't ever been divorced, she hadn't even been old enough to date for all that long. If the stone was rewriting reality, then maybe changing Zoe would affect things more simply? He'd just have to get used to being uncomfortably horny for his sister, horny enough to put even more strain on their already rough relationship and push her distant troubled sister further away, and Zoe herself would just have to get used to people like Sarah bullying her even more viciously for her looks, and hope that when she got a boyfriend it wouldn't be some creep like Roger, who absolutely would ruin her life for the sake of his dick...
Jon blinked, and when he found he was blinking back tears it surprised him. No. No, he wasn't going to cry. Not now. He had a choice to make, and he had to make it the right way. So he stopped thinking about it a moment, and just... breathed.
.......
His phone dinged again.
5 minutes left! Hurry it up, Jon!
What? Five Minutes!? Had he really just been sitting here and thinking about what to do for ten whole minutes!?
This wasn't working, Jon needed to do something different. He was making too many assumptions about how the wish would affect their lives, assuming too much about what Mom and Zoe actually wanted. He needed something more direct: He really need to just ask them.
"Hey, uh, Zoe? Random question."
"Hm?" She looked up from her phone. "What's up?"
It wasn't until just then that Jon realized he had no idea how to phrase it. "Do you, uh... ever wanna be prettier?" he tried, uncertainly.
Zoe shot him a look. "The fuck kinda dumbass question is that?" was what she actually said, but Jon knew Zoe's language well enough to translate it to English as "Maybe. Why do you ask?"
"Well, lemme explain..." Jon said, while screwing his face up in the attempt to think of a way to not explain the unbelievable reality of things. "Earlier today... after school..." he began, "I was talking to Karyn, right? And she made a comment that struck me as kinda weird, right, about wanting to be blonde and busty like the head cheerleader."
Zoe looked even more confused. "Karyn's already blonde, though, isn't she? And pretty busty too."
Jon immediately realized his mistake. "No!" he blurted, and then realized he made a second mistake. "Well, yes, but, I mean, she wasn't... Gah, you know what, it doesn't matter, lemme start over."
"I KNEW IT!" Zoe exclaimed suddenly. "It totally was Karyn you were texting earlier!"
"What? No it wasn't!"
"Was too! You're totally trying to ask me how to sweet-talk her right now!" The look on Zoe's face was a wicked combination of triumphant smirk and sly grin. "And before you ask, yes, I DO think she's totally out of your league!"
And just like that, Jon was inches away from being well and truly pissed off. "Karyn has NOTHING to do with this, you little gremlin! How did you get all of that from 'Do you wanna be prettier' anyway?" he demanded.
"I dunno, but judging from the look on your face, it seems like I'm right and you know it, huh?" She stuck her tongue out at him, face all satisfaction.
There was then a forceful collision between the face and the palm of one Jon Gibson. After some temple rubbing, he restarted with "Look, Zoe, are you gonna answer the freakin' question or not? This is important, okay!?"
Zoe's eyes sparkled in mischief. "Oooo, it's important, eh? Well, sure, I'll answer, if you provide the details!"
"What details?"
"You and Karyn! After school, you were talking together! Did you get an embarrassing boner for her?"
Jon recoiled in disgust. "NO!"
"Did you ask her, or did she ask you?"
"What?"
"Out?"
"NO! I told you, Zoe, Karyn has nothing to do with this!"
"Kids." It was their Mom. Apparently she was done with the washing up for now. "What's going on?" The patient yet menacing tone was one mothers have mastered across generations.
"I just tried to ask Zoe a question and now she's teasing me like crazy about it!" Jon explained quickly.
"It wasn't just any question, Mom!" Zoe came back with, full of excitement and devoid of fear. "Jon's got a crush on Karyn and he's asking me how to talk to girls!"
"Karyn. Has nothing. TO DO WITH THIS!" Jon roared at her.
"Both of you, stop." Their mother commanded. "There is no reason at all to fight over this. Now, Jon, what was your question?"
Jon took a deep breath. Now was the time to really make something up. "Okay, look. After school today, Karyn and I were hanging out-..."
"Zoe. Don't interrupt." Zoe's mouth closed. Linda nodded at Jon to keep going.
"Just hanging out," Jon continued with a glare at Zoe, "when Sarah walked by. Sarah and all her oglers; she's the Head Cheerleader, you know, wearing something showy and low cut, and all these guys are following her around and openly staring at her and so on. Karyn and I and are talking, and she's talking down on those sorts of guys, right? Thinks they're shallow losers and stuff, grovelling at Sarah's feet just because she's pretty, yadda yadda yadda. But, the thing that sticks out to me as funny, the comment I remember in particular, is that in almost the same breath she also said something to the effect of Man, I wanna be pretty and popular like Sarah is." The stone was still in Jon's pocket; he was careful to avoid the W word.
"I... don't get it," Jon explained. "I didn't call Karyn out on it then, but it's been bugging me: how could she be so disgusted with the sort of creeps that someone like Sarah attracts, and yet at the same time be longing for the attention and approval of those creeps? I'm guessing it's just a girl thing, to want to be wanted by people you don't want, but I don't really, y'know, get it. So I thought I'd ask you and Zoe if you felt the same way? And like, if there were some magic spell, that could make you really really attractive, e-even to, uh," Me... "to people you really don't want attraction from, would you do it anyway?"
Silence fell.
There was a moment of heavy anticipation, where Jon dared to hope he could have the wish decided for him, and he scarcely breathed. And finally, Zoe said this: "Yeah, not buyin' it."
"Zoe, c'mon!" Jon snapped at her. "That was the whole story! What exactly are you NoT bUyInG?"
"You're hiding something," Zoe accused. "That's NOT the whole story, I can tell! And let's be real here, you've been making bedroom eyes at Karyn for forever now, so I was thinking you'd finally grown the spine to go ask Will They or Won't They to her!"
"Zoe, don't talk to your brother that way!" Linda scolded. "If Jon has a crush on Karyn, or doesn't, that's his business, not yours."
"You never say that about me and my friends!" Zoe complained. "If I hang out with anyone you don't approve of, it's an uproar!"
"I can't say I like your tone, young lady," Linda menaced, putting her hands on her hips, "and to be clear, I understand wanting the best for your brother and his choice of friends much like I want the best for you and yours. But Jon is clearly not comfortable sharing that with us yet, understand?"
"What if I weren't comfortable sharing it with you?"
"I am your mother, young lady!"
Jon sighed heavily, already tuning out the growing argument. This was going about as poorly as it could have gone; he shouldn't have wasted his time trying to make something up. At this point, Jon figured his best remaining option was to just show them the app, tell them what was going on, and hope for the best, so he pulled out his phone and opened up to the ever-so-irksome Would You Rather? question.
In 0:19, if you haven't made a decision, you'll get both.
Jon shot up ramrod straight. How long had he been talking for!? Fuck, he had forgotten about the time limit, and now it was almost up! Jon still wasn't anywhere close to a decision! He was about to panic; with seconds left on the clock he decided to shut his eyes and just pick something randomly, certainly that'd be better than both, right!?
Seconds passed. He opened his eyes to look down at his phone.
Nice try, but letting Lady Luck choose for you isn't the same as making a decision, is it? The buttons had moved out of the way of his fingers and had not been pressed. In 0:05, if you haven't made a decision, you'll get both.
Jon's jaw dropped. For the last critical seconds, he just stood there in shock.
