Jon feigned food poisoning, and spent the next class period in the nurse's office. While he wasn't sure what was going on, he didn't want to rock the boat too much. If he remembered one reality, and Karyn remembered another, what if she wanted to keep hers? Jon's mind immediately turned to the wishing stone waiting for him in his bedroom, and how he could get back to it as quickly as possible.
It took another half an hour negotiating with the school nurse, then ten minutes to call his mom and get permission to sign himself out early, and another half an hour of walking before Jon stepped into his home, but any time saved was worth it.
Unfortunately for Jon, the middle school let out an hour earlier than the high school. And Gina Malucci had a car and didn't need to walk home. And while Jon wasn't aware of it, he was technically on a race against the clock, as Gina retreated into her own bedroom a full five minutes before Jon arrived home, and took out the wishing stone which she suddenly remembered owning. If Jon had a magic stone, it stood to reason that Gina would be more like Jon if she had one, as well.
Gina's problems were different from Jon's, however. In the back of her mind, she was still ruminating over the conversation she'd had with her mother that morning. Being an 18 year-old sixth grader should have been a huge embarrassment, but nobody seemed to care, and it did feel natural for Gina to be in that class. But that problem was secondary in the moment, as Gina opened the wooden box that contained her wishing stone.
"I really want to see Mikey succeed, but he's turning into such a little horn-dog," she sighed as, a few blocks away, Jon turned the knob to open his bedroom door. "I just wish," Gina began at the same moment that Jon sat down at his desk and opened a drawer, "that he didn't think of me as a sex object," Jon opened a small box and pondered as he held the reddish stone withing, "and instead that he saw me as an older sister."
Gina blinked, and for a moment when she opened her eyes, there was nothing to see. Like reality was lagging slightly. As though she had turned her TV on, and she could see the backlight in the screen go on, but the UI hadn't loaded yet and it was just a blank screen.
Then reality snapped back into place, and Gina was sitting down holding her wishing stone once again. But now she was sitting at a computer desk instead of on her bed. And the bedroom itself seemed unfamiliar. Was this a boy's bedroom? What had Gina's wish done?
She placed the stone down on the desk and scanned the room, then looked down at herself. She hadn't physically changed, at least not in the last few minutes. But why was she here? Why had her wish brought her to this particular bedroom?
She could hear the front door open, and snuck her way out of the bedroom and down the stairs.
"Gina!" Mikey closed the door behind him as he put down his bookbag. "What are you doing here? Usually I get home first!"
Gina just stood there in shock. What was Mikey doing here? Was this a part of her wish?
The boy was unfazed by Gina's surprise, and just ran up to her, wrapping his arms around her waist in as tight a hug as his young body could manage. "Don't tell Zoe I said this," he referred to the middle Gibson sibling, "but you're the best big sister in the entire world."
Meanwhile, Jon Malucci sat on his bed, pondering his wishing stone, trying to figure out what he could do about the fact that he was 18 years old, but somehow still in the 6th grade.
