Sarah gently shook Jon by the shoulder to wake him up as she shut off her car's engine. Jon didn't know what he was expecting, but he was somewhat surprised to find himself waking up in an underground parking garage. As his eyes drew back into focus, he saw a sign bolted to the concrete wall in front of him.
"This Space Reserved For: Princess"
"I'm Princess," Sarah explained just in case it wasn't clear.
"Where are we?" Jon asked.
"My dad's offices. McMillan Enterprises, HQ." This she said with a flair, as though she was an announcer introducing a TV show. Then her voice returned to normal. "I get my own parking space here, perks of being the CEO's daughter. And I also get full access to just about anything in the building." She unlocked the doors. "Come on, let's get you up to the medical wing."
Sarah lead Jon to an elevator and scanned a key fob along a wall panel before punching in the button for the 23rd floor. "Anything above 20th floor needs special authorization," she confided.
The ride was smooth and uneventful, with no stops along the way, and when the elevator doors opened, Jon was greeted with the most pristine white office he had ever seen.
"Dr. Ernez," Sarah took several steps towards a woman in a lab coat. "This is the boy I told you about over the phone." Sarah had called ahead while Jon was asleep.
The woman turned around with a warm smile, a slight Colombian accent tinging her words. "So this is the broken boy that you want me to fix?"
"Yeah. School nurse said he has bad bruising on his face and back, and he might have a cracked rib."
Jon just stood in shock, turning and taking in his surroundings as Sarah relayed more information to the doctor.
"You're a lucky boy, Jon," Dr. Ernez finally turned to him. "The equipment I'm going to use on you today is technically still experimental. It's all perfectly safe, but none of it can be put on the market until some paperwork gets filed. Today, you get to be a data point."
The rest of Karyn's day was not going quite so smoothly. It felt like every few minutes, she was flung from one reality to the other. She'd "wake up" mid-sentence, not knowing what the last word she'd said was, and then black out again just a few minutes later, mid-sentence once again.
And while reality was adjusting itself to circumstances pretty quickly, and while Real Karyn had essentially made friends with all of Other Karyn's friends anyway, sometimes one reality seemed to... influence the other.
Between 5th and 6th period, Karyn "woke up" and found herself staring disdainfully at another girl who was wearing a solid-colored hoodie.
"I don't understand how a girl can come to school in a rag like that, either." Tiffany's judgemental voice apparently continued the conversation she'd been having with Other Karyn for a moment before the new reality asserted itself, and her voice became kinder once again. "I mean, to each their own, I suppose."
But Karyn felt it still. She felt the remnants of the conversation, even if she couldn't remember the contents of it. And as she felt at the green leather of her jacket, deep inside she realized that she agreed with Tiffany's sentiment. The first part. And critically, not very much of the second.
But Karyn basically lived in plain hoodies, didn't she? Or at least, she had until that morning. That idea felt so alien to her all of a sudden. Hoodies were okay for around the house, but when you're in public you should dress nicer. Wearing a hoodie in public was something beneath Karyn. She was better than that.
All of these thoughts whirred through her head in a split second as she adjusted to being back in control of her own body. And Karyn realized that they were wrong thoughts, that they were not her thoughts. But nonetheless, she found that she believed them.
Other Karyn was continuing to change Real Karyn's reality, but now it was happening in ways that Karyn wasn't so happy with. But maybe, just maybe she could play an Uno Reverse card.
"Hey Tiffany," she said. "Let me tell you all of the things I love about Jon."
