That evening, the phone in my house rang.
"Jon, phone for you," my mom called upstairs to me. I picked up my room's phone.
"It's me, wish me over there," the voice on the phone said.
"Karyn, you do understand this phone number is the number for my whole house, and anyone else in my family could be listening in right now?"
"It's crazy your whole family has one landline and that's it. Then get a personal line just for you, or a cellphone."
"Oh, to go along with my solid gold underpants? How rich do you think my family is?"
"You literally have an unlimited source of wealth, if you just have the nerve to use it," Karyn reminded.
"I guess I do. But what if it goes wrong?"
"How could it go wrong?" Karyn asked.
"Well what if I wished for a bunch of money and then next thing I know the police burst through my door because the way it granted it was that I just robbed a bank, or I'm running a counterfeiting ring and they just tracked me down?"
"Ok so you have to be a little careful, but just specify it's not stolen or counterfeit."
"Actually Karyn. It has to be one or the other, no matter how powerful the stone is," I snapped. I'd been thinking about this. "If it makes money that didn't come from anywhere, it's counterfeit by definition. Even if it's a good fake. And if it did come from somewhere and it wasn't my money before, then it's stolen. Asking for it to not be stolen or counterfeit is like asking for a square with no corners. What would that even be?"
"Fine," Karyn huffed. "Except that you could wish to have earned it, or invented something"
"I don't want to undo the history of my own life, it's part of who I am. If I wish that I spent the last year inventing and marketing something, then what I originally spent the time on has been erased from history."
"Gold! You could wish for those solid gold underpants, and a truckload of bars, how about that!"
"That would kind of be stealing from everyone by making everyone else's gold worth a little bit less, gold is a useless metal, the only thing it's got going for it is that it's rare."
"Whatever. However you want to justify your high minded moral reason to be poor. I proved the need for caution but how much caution do you need? You can't spend your life afraid of getting out of bed in the morning. But just wish for me to be in your room. How could that possibly go wrong."
"Fine," I said, the sooner she's here talking to me directly the sooner I don't have to worry about anyone else listening in. I got the stone.
"I wish Karyn would be in my room," I said. I decided to make it present tense because I didn't want it somehow changing history so she was in my room. Actually that was already true, she was in my room many times.
I experienced an overwhelming need to close my eyes and then opened them again.
I quickly turned around, and desperately tried to hold in a laugh.
"Ok. I'll admit, I should have gotten you to wish me and my clothes into your room," Karyn said, little did I know, actually angry more than anything else that I had so decisively and without hesitation turned around. Didn't gawk for one more millisecond than I had to.
I tried to will my lungs not to want to laugh. I desperately wanted to wish the clothes she had just been wearing without delay. I just... couldn't... quite manage it. It didn't help that her new long blonde hair and big boobs were, maybe sexy but more than that, kind of a farce of her true self. It's kind of as if she had materialized in my room wearing a clown costume with clown makeup. Ok. Just barely enough under control.
"I wish," I paused, "the clothes she," I took a moment's break, "was just wearing would be, in my room too." I held my breath once more.
"I'm done, you can look now," Karyn said.
"Great," I said. I looked at Karyn. Yeah I don't want to have to get used to her new appearance. Kind of sexy or not, it's so wrong. Like an insult.
"Now what," I said.
"Now actually I've really got to use your bathroom," Karyn said.
"You should have taken care of that first, now we have to risk my family seeing you in the hall."
Karyn opened the door of my room.
"Aahh!!" she cried and fell backwards. It was if she had hit some sort of invisible wall, as if my door was still closed. "Ow ow ow!" she cried, clutching her nose.
"Knock knock," my mother said appearing in the open doorway.
"Uh, mom, I can explain, you see, the reason Karyn is in my, uh..." studying? The problem is, she didn't enter the house's front door. There was no way this didn't look bad...
"Did something happen to Karyn? Don't tell me you forgot and tried to leave the room again."
"What?" I asked.
Karyn, still clutching her nose, a trickle of blood visible between two fingers, got up.
"What were you thinking Karyn, you know you're stuck in there... let me get a bag of frozen peas for you to hold against your nose."
My mom disappeared downstairs.
Karyn then pressed her other hand into the space of the doorway. And like a mime, acted as if she was trapped in an invisible box. She kicked it next. Her foot hit an invisible wall or door. I walked through the doorway without resistance. I stood on the other side. Karyn pressed against the invisible barrier that was a barrier only to her.
"I think I see a possible problem with wishing you into my room," I said.
"Well wish me out of it!" Karyn cried in increasing fury.
"You know I can't do that. You could try it. But I think we know what's going to happen," I said.
"No... NO!" Karyn said, in increasing horror. "Where is it!"
"Right here," I said, tossing the stone.
Karyn tried to catch it. Unfortunately she forgot she couldn't pass through the doorway and her hand hit the invisible wall, and missed the stone that sailed through the air past her, landing a foot behind her.
She gritted her teeth in pain at her hand painfully jamming against the same invisible wall that had bloodied her nose, and picked up the stone. "I wish I could leave Jon's room," she said.
And the stone didn't activate. We felt no need to look away.
I think she's in my room to stay now.
