The siren of an ambulance cut through the night behind them as Diamond and Karyn continued their brisk pace away from the school.
"Where to now?" Karyn eventually asked. "Before Sarah sends someone to arrest me, I mean."
"Your house should be fine," Diamond offered.
"My mom might have a problem with me bringing a boy back to my house this late," Karyn paused.
Diamond sighed. "Right now, I'm a girl, not a boy. And even if I was, we're not dating, either. Your mom might just view it as a sleepover."
Karyn stopped and stared. "What?"
Diamond gestured back in the direction of the school. "Kaitlyn accidentally made it so I'm dating Matt, right alongside her." She twisted her face a bit. "He's probably wondering where I am and if I'm ok, actually."
Karyn absorbed this information - right, I had seen that in the notebook, I forgot about that one - then nodded, took Diamond's arm, and continued swiftly walking back to her house. "Let's get inside so we can talk about this."
The lights were still on when she got home. Her mom had given her space for when she got back, just in case she was still upset (although would she even know why I was upset anymore? This magic is getting really confusing), and so Karyn was able to bring Diamond right up to her room without them needing to both be seen. Karyn simply shouted down to her mom that she was back and was just going to go to bed early.
"Ok, honey, I'm here if you need me," her mom offered from the other room.
Karyn closed the door and turned to see Diamond (no, that's Jon, it's Jon) sitting on her bed. Slowly, Diamond just crumpled in on herself, all the copied confidence and swagger and enthusiasm just melting away as she began to openly sob.
"Hey," she said softly. Karyn stood there for a second, then sat down and held Diamond in her arms. She tried to hold together Diamond, tried to use a hug to keep her in one piece. Diamond was shaking uncontrollably, all the stress of the overwhelming, personally-redefining events of the afternoon, held in for so long by a person fighting for their identity and eventually being smothered by their new self, now being released in a wave of tears.
"I can't go back anymore, Karyn," Diamond struggled to get the words out. "I'm stuck."
"It's ok, Jon," she whispered.
"That isn't my name anymore. I don't even have the same last name as my family anymore! Am I even part of that family now? And ... and ... and I look like this," Diamond persisted.
"You're not your name, Jon. You're not your appearance," Karyn offered.
"I am my mind, though, Karyn, and she fucked with my head! I fucked with my own head!" Diamond shook in her arms. "And I'm stuck like this!"
Karyn paused. "Jon... you're not stuck. You just have... a different baseline now."
Diamond's sobbing began to slow.
"Remember how we fixed your nails? Tiffany gave you her nails, and then I overwrote it? We just need to do that, again, as many times as you need." Karyn kissed her on the top of the head. "We can take all weekend, all month to get it right. Repeated small adjustments, or big ones, whatever you need. We reshape you from controlled copying. You won't be perfectly the same, and you and I will see the differences, but it will be a you that you chose. I promise."
"Are you sure?" Diamond's voice was quiet.
"Let me show you." Karyn took Diamond's face in her hands and held her gaze, a small loving smile that she hoped represented the years of friendship they already had and all the possibilities that their budding relationship might enable moving forward. "Jon, you need to have just started dating me today, and not be dating anyone else." She leaned over and kissed Diamond gently on the forehead. "Here, copy off me."
She pulled Diamond in close with a firm, reassuring hug, as glowing strands wove out of her arms, encircling Diamond, and then fading as they were absorbed in.
Diamond paused, eyes unfocused, and then a slow steady grin broke out on her face. "Kaitlyn's voice is gone. That's... nice." She locked eyes on Karyn. "... I totally missed our date tonight, didn't I?"
Karyn laughed, and Diamond leaned across, catching Karyn's lips with her own, sweet and tender. And the euphoria that Karyn had experienced earlier that day after their first kisses trickled back to the surface again, all warm and tingling.
She reached for the notebook and opened it - and there, on the top of the next page, was the latest copy that she'd just give Diamond. It was possible to fix Jon. They were just starting from a different scratch.
Diamond leaned back. "We need to do something about Sarah, though. Not just fix her face so her lawyers don't come after you, but also to fix it so she can't mess with us anymore."
"We really should make it so no one can mess with you, actually," Karyn paused. "We can't block people from saying the word "need" around you for the rest of your life, though."
"No," Diamond admitted. "We can't stop the copying from happening."
An idea struck Karyn. "But who says the copying has to occur right away? What if..." her hands flew to the notebook. "What if we make it so we can delay the copying for, I don't know, maybe up to a week before it kicks in? Maybe we make it so the copying doesn't happen until a week passes, unless you or I give it permission to kick in earlier?" She held up the notebook. "So we gain more control over it. And we can just sit down like this, let all the bad copying hit at once in a space like, away from the rest of the world, just you and me, and just spend a few minutes crossing them out until they're gone like they were barely ever there?"
Diamond stared, and relief washed over her. "That is genius. Yes. You solved it. Thank you."
Karyn reached into her bag, and pulled out the wishing stone. "So we just need to make a careful wish fixing the timing, with the caveat to allow early copying if we want. And then use the stone to get Sarah off our backs."
"Fix her mouth and fix her too," Diamond muttered.
"Then we'll spend the whole weekend together, fixing your baseline, okay?" Karyn squeezed Diamond's arm.
Diamond smiled. "You really are the best friend possible, aren't you?" She closed her eyes, and let the tension and stress slowly dissipate. "So what do we wish for to stop Sarah?"
Karyn grinned, placing the rock on the bed between them. "I have a few ideas."
