We met each other's eyes as I stepped through the garage door.

Ashley blinked, but otherwise was as unmoving as a statue. I made a small smile. It didn't seem to comfort her. She turned away, and left the kitchen towards her room.

I sighed as Dad gripped my shoulder reassuringly.

"Well," I said, "at least she didn't scream or something."

"Don't worry," Mom said, "she'll adjust in time."

"I'm not upset about that," i said, "it's more the fact that there's all the people in the outside world who won't adjust - every time I go outside from now on, there'll be someone who hasn't seen... seen people like me."

I walked lazily over to the couch, and almost dropped down onto it, before remembering my tail, and carefully making sure to move it out of the way.

"Well," Dad said, "for good and for ill... people dealing with this aren't as scarce as you think."

I felt a chill, despite my blanket of fur. "Like... how many?"

"There were a lot of people around your age that contracted the cancer," Dad said hesitantly. "Some were lucky, and got a later iteration of the treatment... but this area was especially high in the number of early trials... the number of people in just your school... there could be a few hundred."

My eyes widened. I went to a large high school of several thousand - but a few hundred...

"I'm not sure whether I feel better or worse after hearing that."

"Well," Dad said, "you have people you can suffer with together. If you'll excuse me, I have been working on barely any sleep for days now, and I need a nap."

"Alright," I said.

It felt odd, hearing Dad talk so casually, walking to their room, after all that had happened. But my freaky mutation aside, I was then left to myself. I was left back to real life.

Even though Mom and Dad had specifically said they didn't want me to hole up in my room, I didn't feel comfortable out in the living room. I felt exposed, somehow.

When I walked into my room, I found surprisingly that Mom had cleaned it while I'd been at the lab - perhaps in an attempt to ward off stress. Predictably though, some things were not exactly where I would've put them.

As I was putting away some stuff in my closet, I found that like the pair of shorts I was wearing, the clothes in my closet had been made to accomodate my changes - a hole just above the seat of the pants. I felt silly as a pang of grief came over me. I was being reminded again and again of what had changed.

I did notice however, that this wasn't just some haphazard tear in my pants. No, the tail holes were actually carefully sewn, with proper seams - like the denim had been cut that way all along. I changed into one of these new pairs, and found that they did give more room for my tail, while not exposing too much.

There was a further discovery - I had two baseball caps, one of which from Yellowstone that I wore a lot - it now had cutouts in it. For my ears. I bit back the reaction to be appalled at my hat being defaced. I don't know how Mom had gotten this done - but she'd clearly had good intentions.

But then again, it was a silent reminder that my parents were operating under the assumption that this was not ending anytime soon.

I pulled on the cap, briefly wincing as it bent my ears, and I fiddled around with it. I actually was able to get my ears to move on their own, and finally pop through the holes. I looked in the mirror in my closet. Wearing a hat seemed to only draw further attention to my ears. Thinking about them then caused them to twitch in response.

I sighed. I hated the lack of control I felt that I had over my body. I had the thought cross my mind that it wasn't like people normally had fully conscious control over every little thing they did. Some people fiddled with things, other people did that thing where they vibrated their leg while sitting down. I just had a lot of those things to deal with. Despite this, I felt like the hat actually helped me look a bit better - a little bit more like myself. Taking it off still though, made my ears feel less cramped. Gosh I hated this.


I remained in my room throughout the rest of the day. It was winter after all. I did have to finally start working on my school stuff by making up assignments online. Here it seemed the cracks began to show. With all the news breaking, and my sudden need to be taken out of school... my teachers weren't stupid.

I was sure that my classmates weren't either. Particularly as a number of people - hundreds, as my Dad claimed, were suddenly stricken with these changes.

I had been avoiding it until now, and I finally dared to venture onto social media, and see what was going on in the area. It took a while of digging, but I soon found the first talk among my peers online about what was going on. Most people seemed to be speculating. Some gossiped about who had been "taken." Thankfully I was not mentioned as one of the prospects.

Something I did notice however was a message from someone - from Douglas.

>Look, I know what's going on dude. We need to talk.

He'd sent it yesterday. Sucking in a deep breath, and dialing, I made my first confrontation with the outside world.



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