Jon looked up at the posters of singers hung up on his walls, at the feminine clothing peeking out from his closet, at the makeup vanity sitting in the corner.
It wasn't just that he was 18 and still in middle school. Everything about his life was incongruous. But it felt so normal. Jon could remember buying each poster. He recalled his excitement when his mom finally got him his own vanity. He could remember wearing all of the clothes in his closet.
But intellectually, when he thought about the logic of things, it didn't make sense that a boy would live in a room decorated like this. He even had women's underwear, for crying out loud!
Suddenly this took priority. Jon could figure out why he was in middle school later, something was very off about his room. He looked down at himself: the clothes he was wearing were normal boy clothes. But it seemed this was the only such outfit he owned. Why was that, and why did he happen to be wearing his only masculine outfit, right as he started questioning his bedroom?
Meanwhile, Gina had extricated herself from Mikey's grasp and retreated back to "her" bedroom, or at least the one she had suddenly found herself in, and was having similar thoughts to Jon. If she was now Mikey's older sister, and if this was her bedroom, then why was it so masculine?
Like, it wasn't a jock's bedroom or anything, but everything was in dark colors, and there was a bookshelf full of science fiction novels, and a Call of Duty poster on the wall. The clothes in the closet were boy clothes, the desk was utilitarian. None of this made sense. Why had her wish brought her into Mikey's family, but left her with a bedroom that was so much not the bedroom of an older sister?
Unknowingly, both Jon and Gina gripped their respective wishing stones at the same time. Neither knew that a second stone had manifested itself due to Mikey's wish, and even more than that, neither knew that the stone was not, itself, the direct grantor of wishes: it was merely a conduit. Both Gina's and Jon's stones were identical conduits that tapped into the same wish-granting power. Like two computers connecting to the same internet server.
As long as the two didn't make any wishes at the exact same moment, both stones would work exactly as either of them would expect it to.
But in that moment, the both of them happened to each make a wish at the exact same time.
"I wish my bedroom fit me better," Jon stated.
"I wish everything in this bedroom was a bit girlier," Gina declared.
And the two commands instantaneously entered their respective stones, and bounced up to the magical wish-granting server that connected them both. But when the wishes bounced back down, they ended up with the wrong stone.
When Gina blinked, it was like a photoshop filter had been applied to the room around her. The layout was all still the same, but the blanket on the bed was now the same purple as her old room. The poster on the wall was the same Taylor Swift poster she remembered. The bookshelf became a vanity. The clothes in the closet were her clothes. And Gina didn't question it, because while the wish that had been granted to her was to make the room fit her better, the effect of it happened to also make everything in the bedroom a bit girlier.
On Jon's end, however, his purple blanket shifted to pink. And the posters of singers on his wall became posters of My Little Pony. And the clothes in his closet became even more colorful. Even the clothes that he was wearing had changed into a more feminine cut of jeans with racerback tank top.
Overall, everything in the room, including Jon, looked a bit girlier than it had before. And, to Jon's eye, more childish.
From Jon's perspective, he had wished for his bedroom to fit him better and then his bedroom had become more childish.
Was that a sign? Did that have bearings on Jon's other dilemma? The one of being 18, but still in 6th grade? If his room had to become childish to fit him, maybe he was supposed to be a child.
Jon inhaled through his nose and gave a hard stare of concentration to the vanity that was even then transforming into a plastic bucket full of dolls. He wasn't going to question it, this was clearly what he was supposed to do.
"I wish," Jon said, "that I was twelve years old, like a 6th-grader should be."
