Hitomi froze. Joe had made his third wish, and it was a doozy -- he'd basically wished that her mere presence would cause people's wishes to be granted, with no restrictions or anything like that. Joe's first two wishes had changed her into a completely different person -- with a new gender, a new race, and who knows what else -- and had apparently put the planet Earth through a sexual revolution. And now anyone around her could make an inadvertent wish and completely screw things up unknowingly -- even Joe, she presumed.
"What's wrong?" asked Joe.
"I'm feeling tired all of a sudden," she claimed. "Could you drive me home?"
"Oh, but we were going to go out to dinner tonight, weren't we?" asked Joe.
"We still might," said Hitomi, managing a weak smile as she rummaged through her small bag, found a white T-shirt and put it on over her bikini top. "I'll just take a nap or something." She kept rummaging through the bag, but didn't find the wishing rock, and figured in this reality, she had left it at home, where she'd just asked Joe to take her, so maybe everything would work out. She already knew Joe's wishes were irreversible, but there had to be a way to use the rock to do /something/ about them, right?
Joe shrugged and rummaged through a bag for his own T-shirt and his keys. "Okay." Two seconds later, he ventured, "Was I too rough?"
"The sex was great!" snapped Hitomi. "Whoa, sorry. I'm just -- things are a little weird, and I'll talk about it with you later."
Hitomi insisted that Joe turn the radio up nice and loud in his car, figuring she had less to fear if Joe was discouraged from talking, and also figuring that even if there was a commercial with the magic words "I wish," or if the DJ let an "I wish" slip, the DJ or the commercial actors probably weren't "around here" for the purposes of the wish Joe had made.
And then a horrible feeling developed in the pit of her stomach. She had been transformed into a different person, and reality had obviously changed to accommodate her new identity, so wasn't it possible that she had a completely different home life? Well, it couldn't have been that different, since Joe was her boyfriend, so they probably still went to the same school. But she was clearly Japanese-American now -- had the wish changed her parents to be Japanese as well? Or had it given her entirely new parents? And what about her sister Zoe -- did she even exist anymore? Did she have a completely new set of siblings? What would she find when Joe pulled up to her house -- pulled up to /a/ house?
