Just as she punched numbers into her cellphone to call someone, she heard someone downstairs.
Who could that be? she thought. Jon and Zoe already left for school.
She walked downstairs and was shocked to see her mother.
"Jane? Honey, what are you doing here? Don't you have school?"
Jane could only stare. Her mom had been dead for over five years.
"Jane? Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
I think I just have, Jane thought. Her mother wasn't even old. Instead, she was how Jane remembered her when she was growing up, except for the fact that she was now wearing more contemorary clothes. Actually, they were the clothes that Jane usually wore.
"I'm leaving soon. I just need to get something from ... uh ... my room."
Jane went back upstairs and into Jon's bedroom. That's when she noticed that it was different. Not too different, otherwise she would have noticed it when she was in there before. But it did look like a girl's room. Her room.
She brought out the wishing rock and made another wish. One that she had a horrible feeling she knew the answer to. She wished to know what happened to Jon and Zoe and the rest of her family. The answer was that Jon and Zoe no longer existed, because she wasn't married to her husband. She wasn't old enough to marry someone. She was still in high school!
She became younger, but she didn't travel back in time. It was still present day. So, she was going through high school now, instead of back in the 1960's. And her mom and dad were still alive, now looking forty years younger, but dressing like people dress now. She noticed that all the furniture in the house, as well as the electronics, were modern. They had an HDTV and DVD player, a CD stereo, and a computer with Windows XP. Jane also noticed that she had a PlayStation 3 in her bedroom. She was never really into video games, but of course video games didn't exist when she grew up.
The whole situation was surreal. She was growing up all over again, except that it was 2007, not 1967.
As much as she liked the idea of doing it all over again, she realized that Jon and Zoe would never exist now, at all. The man that was her husband would be forty years older than her, if he was even still alive. She felt so bad that with just a careless wish she had erased her family from existence.
"Jane! What's keeping you so long?" her mom yelled up to her, breaking her out of her thoughts. "School's gonna be starting soon."
"I'm coming!" she yelled back down. But first she had to get dressed. She couldn't go to school in what she was wearing.
