Friday morning, and Jon was wearing another of his sister’s skirts. This one had a red checkered pattern and finding it in Zoe’s closet was a bit of a chore, since she had so much black. To be fair, It was getting less compliments than the black goth skirt, but it still worked well.
Jon was not prepared for his conversation with Karyn. She was gushing about cheer practice, which was nowhere on Jon’s bingo card. It was in fact on his anti-bingo card, his list of things he never expected to happen in a thousand years. Especially when it was Sarah leading the team. Jon had heard great things about Tiffany and her willingness to teach new things. Admittedly, it was locker room talk that he’d never repeat to anyone, but hearing that people loved cheer practice was not unusual. Karyn, though? She had ranted about things like sexism, and "personality masquerading as sport.” So hearing her talk about how much fun it was to do a short synchronized routine was shocking. Karyn could be wrong, apparently, which was something that Jon was clever enough to never say out loud.
The day passed by simply enough. Just another school day. Nothing really stood out until the end of the day. Jon was standing by Karyn’s locker, and they were talking about their plans for the weekend. Sarah heard a snippet of it as she approached. But why would Sarah care about a Minecraft megabuild? She probably wouldn’t even know what it was.
“Jon, how do you get your homework done on the weekends when your mom forces you to do those strange method acting role plays all of Saturday and Sunday?”
Everything froze for a second, including the jingle of Sarah’s charm bracelet. When things resumed, someone who was very astute would be able to see there was a “J” missing from her bracelet that had probably been there before, right? Or had there always been just the one?
“It’s tough.” He answered sheepishly. “Some weekends are actually pretty normal and we just have to dress strangely. Other weeks, I have to do as much as I can Friday nights.
It was general public knowledge at the school that Jon’s mother, Linda, seemed to go crazy on the weekends. Occasionally, people would tease details from Jon. Like how he had spent a weekend forced to swap lives with his sister, which is why he seemed so comfortable in a skirt these days. There were also strange rumors about many of them being animals, or inanimate objects, which were ridiculous, but had never been actually denied by Jon or Zoe.
But Sarah wasn’t done with her questions yet. “And how does your mom get everyone in your house to play along with it so perfectly?”
Freeze. It was none, by the way. The number of Js on her charm bracelet was definitely zero and had always been zero.
Jon’s answer was cagey. “She’s… very persuasive sometimes.” And that seemed to be all he had to say about it. Sarah looked disappointed, but shrugged and patted him on the shoulder.
“Well, I hope your weekend is fun and relaxing and all that. As much as it can be.” She turned to Karyn. “You ready for cheer practice?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be there. I’ll just see Jon off first.”
Sarah beamed at her. “Of course! Giving your boyfriend a memorable goodbye is part of being a good cheerleader. Take your time.” She winked and turned precisely around, smiling at the protests of Jon and Karyn about their supposed relationship.
--
Jon watched Sarah walk away from them. Karyn’s protests about him not being her boyfriend hurt a bit, although he couldn’t put a finger on why, exactly. Nothing had really changed, as far as he knew. He was feeling more relief that Sarah had stopped her questioning. This stupid stone. It was too useful to lock away, but it had done crazy things to his life, and he’d only had it two days. Mom had just made a simple comment in the family group text about how they had used to play games like house and pretend for hours. And a casual slip of the tongue on his part. “I wish we could play like that all weekend too.”
It was supposed to be just a simple hyperbole, while affirming his mother’s nostalgic desires. Sure, it had been fun to pretend to be dinosaurs and all of that when Zoe and Mikey were young. But he didn’t mean for it to happen! But the stone just happened to be in his hand, and now each weekend, there was some sort of event that his mom now threw each weekend.
And yet his stupidity didn’t stop there, because why would it? Zoe had been complaining about them, in her gothy way, about how it ate up all of the weekend, and how people made fun of her for some of it. Not even the embarrassing stuff, she had said in the group text. It was just the idea that she was a goth at school, but on the weekends, she gave up the aesthetic for whatever Mom had planned. Which was, like, the opposite of the rebellious vibe she was going for.
Jon had his own reservations about the weekend, of course, but Zoe’s complaints made this feel immediately like every other family gathering that they’d ever had, where it was just Zoe complaining the whole time. …And another wish slipped out. “I wish people would just go along with whatever Mom has planned for her weekends and get into character without complaint.”
And the stone did its weird not-quite-a-flash-but-maybe? thing that it did. And now, when Mom mentioned that this weekend, the plan was for Mikey to be a single adult with her, Jon, and Zoe being his pet dogs, well, somehow, he couldn’t even think about saying no or finding a way out of it. He just thanked her for letting him know so he could get his homework done.
He had told Karyn about the wishes. People had rumors of the other parts, but Karyn was in his inner circle. Of course, she had thought that his weekends being taken up with Mom’s weird pretend games were normal. She’d even participated a few times that she remembered. It was a little strange to think about it from the outside, but when you were in the middle of it, you just went along with it, no matter what it was.
Jon and Karyn said their goodbyes, although after Sarah’s comment, a fist bump seemed lacking somehow. And Jon began to walk home, and Karyn went to get changed.
