17. Good Mood (Patreon)

I wake up, and it hardly feels like I've slept at all. Because, y'know, I sort of haven't.

A quick limb check gets me out of bed sooner than usual. I know to expect six in my Earth body now, though I'm hoping to get up to ten. And isn’t that a weird thing to think? 'I sure hope I grow more horrific bug limbs!' In my defense, I've been waking up feeling like I don't have enough for my entire life, so the prospect of finally fixing that is undeniably exciting. Not exciting enough to make me not feel exhausted, though.

Sleep is important, and it serves multiple functions. Physical upkeep is an important one: the brain needs to reformat, clear out junk data, form more permanent connections, and do general maintenance tasks on itself and the body. Without sleep we eventually lose the physical ability to function. And luckily for me, I'm pretty sure my bodies are still doing all those things. When one brain rests, the other is awake. Easy enough.

My mind, however, is always awake. My continuity of consciousness gets a bit disoriented when I flip-flop between universes, but it never really gets a break. I really, really hope that's not going to start driving me crazy. I could definitely use a break.

No time for that, though. I sit up in bed, stretching my arms above my head and my budding extra limbs underneath my skin before finally flipping the covers back to examine my sheets. Sure enough, a lot of bloodstains are visible among the tears and claw marks. Old stains by the foot of the bed contrast much newer stains around hand-level, which I confirm as probably from the claws on my fingers once I unwrap their bloody bandages. They're fully grown now, the bony, half-inch long protrusions sharp and deadly. Unlike the curved talons of my feet, my hand-claws are relatively straight, the ends of my fingers naturally tapering down into an exoskeletal point after the bone emerges from the last knuckle. I hope I'm running out of transformations that involve me losing so much gosh dang blood all the time. It's a wonder I'm not critically anemic after this past week. Plus, it always makes a mess.

…Though perhaps I don't have to care about that anymore. I pick up the small waste bin just inside my door, put it next to my bed, and then focus. The magic I'd been practicing all day as a hyperspider comes to me easily, and the dried blood all over my bed and hands swiftly removes itself, gathering as a fine dust on top of the other bits of trash where it belongs.

Gosh that feels so satisfying to do, I can't help but grin a little. It's official: cleaning spell is best spell. I can do the same with the dried sweat in the sheets, with the lint, with every impurity and improperly present substance. I can't repair the many tears in the fabric, though I suspect there are probably Order spells which could. I don't seem to be able to use them, though. My magic is exclusively about cleaning, or more accurately it's about sorting. I spent pretty much all day after the fight with the starhydra getting a handle on it, and I think I have a pretty good idea how it works.

On paper, it seems like it's a really weak spell. It does nothing other than grab stuff and move it somewhere else, but its weight limit is super low and even if it does grab something it won't work unless that something is misplaced. It's not telekinesis: I can't grab and move anything manually, I can't choose the path the substance takes when it's being moved, I can't do any of that. I just target a substance, and then I target a place for that substance to go and that place has to result in… a superior state of organization, basically?

It's a little wibbly, and it's unclear how the 'superior state of organization' is determined. My best guesses are either that I'm subconsciously determining that through some method I haven't figured out how to trick, or the goddess just judges it for me. I hope it's the former for many, many reasons, though Teboho insists it's the latter. Either way, I can't do crazy stuff like 'cleaning' the entire mucus lining out of someone's eyeballs (though I can remove any excess discharge), and though I intend to check I'm probably not able to 'sort' the engine of a vehicle into its component parts. Mucus belongs in the eye, a car engine belongs in a car, and I can't convince myself (or the goddess) that there is a superior location or configuration for either. So really, the spell just seems best for cleaning.

I am completely, one hundred percent okay with this.

I like cleaning. One of my favorite things to do at work is to clean. I don't have the time or energy to clean much around the house anymore, but that used to be something I would do to relax. I'm way more comfortable in clean places than dirty ones, and now I can finally just turn any place into a clean place. With my gosh dang mind! It's the best!

I grin wider, and on a whim I open my mouth and shut my jaws with a resounding clack. It feels almost as satisfying as wiggling my new limbs, even as trapped under my skin as they still are. I guess I should check up on the rest of myself, now that I think about it. My claws finished growing in, so I'm probably due for some new horrific transformation that I'll need to scramble to conceal with increasingly-improbable excuses. See? I have pattern recognition. I know how this goes.

I strip down and start investigating myself, prodding my body in various places to look for any new changes. Surprisingly, there aren't really any. A bit more skin comes off of my right leg, so I pop that into my mouth and slurp it down, but other than that I seem more or less the same. Maybe I've hit a temporary equilibrium where my body is busy trying to finish growing its many changes-in-progress that I won't have anything new added today? That'd be a nice change of pace. Maybe I'll actually get some relaxation in.

Someone knocks on the door to my bedroom and it takes everything I have not to scream.

"Hannah?" my mother calls.

"Don't come in!" I shriek hurriedly, quickly jumping under the covers in case my words aren't heeded. I'm sure they will be, my mother doesn't ignore closed doors for no reason, but that doesn't stop me from immediately thinking of a dozen terrifying scenarios in which she walks in on me anyway. My heart is pounding out of my chest so hard I probably have more adrenaline in my body than I did after almost getting eaten by a monster.

"Calm down, honey," she sighs. "I'm just letting you know that your father tested positive for COVID."

Well that certainly doesn't help my anxiety at all.

"Is he okay?" I ask hurriedly.

"Oh, yes, he'll be fine," my mother dismisses. "His lungs are strong, I doubt it'll affect him worse than a cold. It's what he gets for sticking his nose so close to other people's open mouths all day."

That's… true. I can't help but be worried about him, of course. COVID is scary, but my dad's not that old and overall he's very healthy. I want to worry about him more, but in the back of my brain all I can really think about is how this gives me a great excuse to wear a mask around the house to hide my teeth.

"...Well, he is a dentist," I point out. "He doesn't have much choice in the matter."

"Details. Anyway, I'm just letting you know he's going to be home for the next couple weeks, and that I'm going in late today as well to cook everyone breakfast. Join us, would you? We've barely seen your face lately."

Aw, crapbaskets. There goes the only upside to the situation. Hiding my teeth is going to be a chore and a half when I'm eating. I don't want to eat with them. I don't want to be around them at all. What are they going to think of me when they find out? My thoughts on the manner feel pretty much identical to how I feel about coming out as gay, I suppose. Dad won't understand. I don't think he'll do anything bad but he'll still think I'm a freak in his mind. And mom will try to control it all, somehow. She's like me in that way, always needing things to be going according to plan, according to schedule. But only her schedule. Never anyone else's. She has to be in charge of everything she's involved in.

"Sorry mom, I've just been really busy lately," I mutter loudly enough to be heard through the door.

"I know," she answers fondly. "You've always been my busy little worker bee. But you're not too busy to eat a good breakfast before school, and you're going to make sure of that. Understand?"

"Yes, mama," I answer, feeling a metaphorical coffin close around me. I can't get out of this now.

"Good," she confirms, and then heads down the hall to give my brother the same ultimatum.

I peel myself out of bed for the second time, dread pooling in my belly. How am I going to get out of this? I mean, I guess I'm not going to get out of this. Skipping will put me in more trouble and make mom more likely to pay more attention to me, which will of course lead to more problems. Instead, my best bet is to try to learn how to eat with a mask on, and… honestly, that's a skill I'll probably need to cultivate anyway. The trial run is just going to be a little more high-stakes than I'd like, I guess.

I wait for my mom to head back downstairs and start cooking before getting out of my room and slipping into the shower. I'm tempted—very tempted—to just shower through the entire meal, but I know that won't work. It'll just result in my brother pounding on the door until I let him in. So I speed through my shower instead, not really having time to savor it as I think about my strategy for not letting my family see my teeth. Honestly, I'm lucky I haven't cut my own tongue off with these things, they're crazy sharp and way bigger than my old teeth. I wonder what my dad would think of them. He'd probably have a ninth-level freakout, honestly. He was always pretty invested in the quality of my old teeth. …Which I still have in a baggie in my backpack. I, uh, am not sure what to do with them. This whole teeth situation is so freaky.

At least they're fun. Clack.

There's no time to enjoy myself, though. I take a deep breath, drum my claws on the floor, then stick my little foam packing cubes on them to prevent them from cutting anything. I squeeze my transformed calf, still impressed with how solid it is without any apparent loss of touch, but then I get my thigh socks on and the mutations are covered up. Then I get my pants on, my bra on, my long-sleeved shirt on (just in case) and my gloves. Hopefully, my natural heat resistance will allow me to survive being overdressed for the humid spring day, but I'll be inside an air conditioned building the whole time so it shouldn't be unbearable either way.

I can do this. I get my mask on and head downstairs.

Our kitchen, dining room, and main living area are all more or less the same huge room, the difference between kitchen and dining room indicated only by a counter and the border between dining room and living room just being the swap from tile floor to carpet. Skillets crackle as my mother works to prepare a big breakfast, my father sprawled out on the living room couch, watching the news.

"There she is!" he announces, turning to grin at me as I walk into view. "How's my Hannahgator?"

"Doing good, dad," I lie. "How are you?"

"Oh, I'm fine," he grins, waving me off. "It'll take more than a deadly plague to put your old man down. I've just gotta stay cooped up inside so I don't spread it to anyone else, is all."

"Stay inside and rest," my mother insists. "And don't get any of the rest of us sick! That couch is the quarantine zone now, Hannah, stay away from it."

"Can do," I confirm.

"Now come on, sit down!" my mom presses, motioning to the chairs at the counter. "Tell me how your week has been!"

"Uh…" I mumble, not quite sure what sort of lie to tell. "It hasn't really been all that eventful. Just work and more work."

"Has your stream thing been going well?" she asks. "With your games?"

With my games. What does that even mean? I swear, she's aggressively ignorant about everything I actually care about. She can't even say 'stream' without putting 'thing' after it, or something similar.

"It's been going fairly okay," I admit. "The numbers are slowly crawling up, so I guess I'm doing something right."

"I still can't believe people sit around and watch you play those things," my mother comments idly, seeming genuinely dumbfounded. Not… offensive or anything. Not accusing me of something. And yet I still feel an immediate need to defend myself as if I'm being verbally attacked.

"Is it really that strange?" I ask. "You and dad sit around and watch people play football and stuff."

"Yes, but those people move," my mother counters.

I don't really have anything to say to that. Not because I can't keep trying to explain, but because I should have known better than to start. We've done this sort of back-and-forth before, and I'll just get accused of being argumentative if I don't let her have the last word. I guess I can't really say nothing either, or that becomes a problem, but my mom pretty exclusively wants to talk about things that I very much don't want to talk about. I should change tactics.

"How has your work been?" I ask.

That gets her complaining about the corporation she's currently contracted for and all the legal work she has to do for them, though heavily edited for confidentiality. …Most of the time. Sometimes she lets some things slip that she's legally not allowed to, but I kind of like it when she does. It helps to be reminded that she's a person that needs to vent sometimes, too. She gets overwhelmed, she makes mistakes. She needs a human connection from time to time, too. That's why she's so insistent on forcing my brother and I to spend time with her. She doesn't actually have any friends outside of work, and she spends so much time complaining about her co-workers that I'm not sure she has any at work either. I think her legal firm has in-house parties every so often, and sometimes she goes to those, but honestly I think she likes big social gatherings even less than I do. And that's saying something.

Neither of us have been diagnosed with anything, but no one in my family is exactly neurotypical.

"Ask me about my work!" my father says once my mom is finally done with… whatever she was saying. I just kind of made noises at her and pretended to listen.

"Honey, we're about to start eating," my mother protests, dropping some pancakes on my plate. Mmm. At least I get pancakes.

"Aw, this one's not that gross," he insists. "A man came in the other day, he must have been late twenties, early thirties? And he still had a bunch of baby teeth because of an impacted canine that grew in sideways and blocked off an incisor as well. A real big one! His other canine came in fine and it was like a damn vampire fang on the left side of his mouth, but the right was just a worn-away baby! Barely longer than its neighbors. It struck quite the amusing contrast."

Huh. I wonder if vampires are real. My guess would be no; magic is real, sure, but the one magical creature I know of (me) is nothing like any urban fantasy novels I've read. Whatever magic secret society that probably exists keeps a tight lid on stuff, I'll bet.

"He's probably the one that gave you COVID," mom grunts.

I let the two of them carry the conversation, taking advantage of their distraction to quickly lift up my mask and sneak a bite of delicious, syrupy pancake into… my… mouth. Huh. This batch doesn't seem as good today, for some reason.

…No. No! Do I not like pancakes anymore!? I take it all back! Curse you, horrible monster transformation! Curse you a thousand times! You have given me my limbs, but you have taken away my love!? How could you ever—ooh, wait, mom's also making sausage. She plops some on my plate and I gobble it down, the savory flavor—or 'umami,' as dad would call it—multiplied a hundredfold and firing off every endorphin generator in my brain. Okay monster transformation, I forgive you. Feel free to return to your regularly-scheduled ruining of my life.

My brother wanders downstairs shortly afterwards, yawning and plopping himself into the chair next to me without so much as a hello. Which I'm perfectly okay with. My little brother and I are about as opposite as they come: he's tall, I'm short, he's athletic, I'm nerdy, he's tan, I'm pale, he's talkative, I'm quiet. He doesn't even have any interest in video games, which I think is a big ripoff. A sibling that I could play Super Smash Bros. with would be awesome, but nope. Somehow, the girl of the family is the gamer, and the boy of the family is the gossipy asshole.

It's fine, though. Now that he's here, he can take all the attention off of me. Mom grills him for information harder than she grills the sausages, but at least she still cooks enough for me to get extras. A lot of extras. I wish there were eggs, too, but… well, I ate them all yesterday. I have no idea what I'm going to eat tomorrow, but I'll figure that out when it happens. I hate how thankful I am that dad catching a potentially deadly disease means I can get away with wearing a mask at the breakfast table. Before this transformation started I'd probably be freaking out at the idea of someone in my family being sick. I really don't want to catch the plague, and I have no idea why everyone else seems so laissez-faire about the whole thing.

"I'll be getting us some of the saliva tests from work to make sure none of us are infected," my mother comments. "But for now just stay out of the same room as your father."

"A whole forced vacation and no one to spend it with!" my dad laments. "Nobody make any judgy comments about our Netflix history this week, I'm going to be desperate."

I was already going to be desperately avoiding my whole family, but now I just have an additional reason to. I feel like my mom and brother aren't going to be quite so diligent about not spreading things around. They're certainly not wearing masks indoors. …Though I guess they're not dealing with their teeth mutating either. Still, though!

I glance at my phone to check the time, and decide it's close enough to when the bus arrives at the stop for me to be able to politely excuse myself. I wait for my family to be distracted and shove the rest of my food into my mouth at once, pancakes and sausages together, but when I try to close my jaw I realize two things: I just unhinged my jaw, and my teeth aren't designed for chewing anymore. I'm forced to swallow the entire mass of cake and flesh whole, causing me to make a weird involuntary grunting noise in the process. My brother turns my way so I quickly turn my back to him and grab some water to wash it all down with before getting my disguise back in place. I continue to pretend not to see him as I grab my backpack and make for the door, my face burning red.

"You heading out, Hannahgator?" my dad asks. "You can use my car if you want."

I blink. Huh. I guess he's not going to be driving to work, is he? But… agh, I don't wanna leave Brendan alone on the bus.

"I think I'll take the bus to school, but I'll drive myself to work tonight if that's okay?" I hedge.

"Of course that's okay," he agrees. "You're not going to be able to get to work otherwise."

"Right. Yeah, that makes sense."

"Love you, Hannah!" my dad calls out.

"Love you too," I call back, guilt clawing at my heart since I know that's a lie. I desperately wish it wasn't, but it is.

I exit the house and immediately realize I'm an idiot for denying the car. I could just drive to the bus stop and pick Brendan up myself. And then we'd have a car to go out to eat with! Stupid, stupid, stupid. I didn't think about that, I just kind of instinctively didn't like the idea of driving to school for some reason.

I guess it's just not my usual routine.

I meet up with Brendan at the bus stop, give him the bad news about my dad, and let him know my finger-claws finished growing in. More importantly than that, though, I tell him about my super awesome amazing cleaning spell.

"Of course you'd be more excited about getting one-sixth of prestidigitation than everything else that's been happening to you," Brendan comments dryly.

Wh… the nerve of him!

"Hey!" I protest. "My magic is way more awesome than a fractional cantrip! Get me a bag of Skittles and I'll instantly sort them all by flavor into separate little baggies."

He opens his mouth to respond, then closes it, then opens it again.

"...Shit, okay, that is pretty good," Brendan admits.

"Right!?"

"Now I'm just imagining a goddess showing up and being told to sort candy for you," he muses. "Imagine how that would feel."

"Oh, I mean, I can't actually summon her for this spell yet. I haven't named it, and she only shows up if you speak a spell's name."

"...So the whole car incident is even more unnecessary than it already was?"

"Shut up! It was an accident!"

We depart the bus still engaged in friendly bickering, parting ways soon afterwards. I really need to get around to showing off my recent monster parts to him, but unfortunately I'm working today. I guess I could probably get today off if I call in saying my dad has COVID, but I don't have any symptoms so that feels like it's just me being lazy. Arguably, I should stay home just because of the risk that I might transfer COVID to a customer, but I haven't even looked at my dad without an N95 on for over a week. I seriously doubt I've gotten anywhere close to catching it, but I'm still really, really scared that I will.

…Actually, wait. Can I catch COVID? I'm like, half bug person, and I'm slowly becoming more and more of a bug person every day. COVID barely affects other mammals and it conclusively can't infect invertebrates, birds, reptiles, or amphibians. I guess I'm technically still more mammal than anything else, since I still have hair and breasts and stuff. …Aw, geez, I didn't think about that. I'm becoming less and less of a mammal! I hope my bazoingas don't fall off, I really like them.

My day is pretty boring until gym class happens, because gym class means I have to change into gym clothes, and changing into gym clothes means I have to take clothing off. Fortunately, I am super smart, and I prepared for this. Gym clothing has to be a t-shirt and shorts, plus a sports bra if I don't want my aforementioned badonkadonks to get sore. Normally I'd change into all of that at school because I don't like wearing sports bras all day, but to minimize the risk I'll be changing that habit on gym days. At some point I'm gonna have extra limbs poking out of my body, and I'll definitely not be wanting to take my shirt off anymore. So my sports bra and t-shirt are already underneath my long-sleeved shirt, so I just have to take the latter off. Swapping from pants to shorts is a little risky, but it's fine for now: my thigh socks go well above the spot where my leg is mutating, so as long as they don't fall down too much I should be golden!

Confident in the iron-clad guarantee of normalcy my exceptional planning skills have granted me, I step into the girl's locker room without worry and almost immediately get all thoughts yeeted clean out of my skull when I spot Autumn changing her shirt. She… she has abs. Oh my god she has girl abs, oh geez oh frick oh no I want to put my face on them aaaaaaa!

My plan forgot to account for how gay I am. Rookie mistake. Autumn's normal outfits are always so bland, I never really got the impression that she was buff underneath them. It's not the gross kind of buff that ignores the fact that humans need body fat in order to be healthy, and women need more body fat to be healthy than men do. Autumn doesn't have abs that look like tank treads, you couldn't grate cheese on them or whatever. But she's very obviously toned. Easily on par with someone from a varsity sports team. She's not on any teams, though. She's not in any clubs, as far as I know. But who cares, the important thing is that I did not expect her to be this hot! She tricked me!

Her shirt drops over her tummy, cutting off my view and shocking my brain back into functionality. Shoot, agh! I can't get caught ogling, that'd be so embarrassing!

"Oh, hey Hannah," Autumn greets me. "Need something?"

"Buh?" I ask.

"Hmm? Oh, sorry, I thought you were staring at me," she says.

I can feel my face about to turn red, so I quickly turn away and shake my head rapidly.

"N-no! Nope! No, I just… got really distracted there, sorry!" I lie terribly. "Haven't been getting enough sleep lately, I guess. Haha."

"Right," Autumn answers flatly. "Well if you're not about to start getting blood all over the place again, I'm gonna go line up."

"Nope! No blood today so far!" I squeak.

"How reassuring," she grunts, then steps past me and out of the locker room. I quickly get changed according to plan and follow her. Class starts soon after, and we do our stretches before starting a warm-up jog. Both feel very, very strange to me. For reasons that I suppose should be obvious, my exoskeletal leg is noticeably less flexible than my purely-skin-covered leg, and by the same token I can't really strain the exoskeletal leg all that much. When it reaches the edge of its ability to rotate, it's because two chunks of bone-chitin have clonked up against each other and are no longer able to budge, no matter how hard I try. The act of stretching it at all feels somewhat pointless, since I'm just kind of… not stretching it. But of course, I go through the motions anyway. The worst part is when I get a piece of lint stuck inside my joint, which itches like crazy and feels really, really uncomfortable. I immediately cheat a bit and clean it out with magic, shuddering at the alien feeling of it sliding around inside me.

The jog gets to me because I just feel lopsided. My mutated leg is much stronger than my normal leg, and while it's not too difficult to tone it down to normal human levels to match, I don't want to tone it down at all. My body wants to leap with every other step, pushing me harder so I can feel the wind rush past me. I do my best to ignore the urge, sticking to what I feel like is a normal pace for me as I watch Autumn run. I never really paid much attention to her before, but she's pretty solidly near the front of the pack, huh? The track team outruns her but that's pretty much it. That's pretty cool. She starts getting close to lapping me, and I'm not really feeling all that tired so I do my best to speed up, letting her get close to passing me and then matching her so I can chat for a bit.

"Don't take this the wrong way," I huff, "But I never expected a fellow book nerd to also be super active!"

Autumn glances at me and opts to slow down slightly to help me keep pace. Which is nice of her, even if I don't really feel like I need to.

"Uh, yeah," she agrees, giving me an oddly searching look. "What can I say, I'm multifaceted. Did you need something?"

"I, uh, was just wondering if you'd given any more thought to the thing I asked you about at lunch," I say sheepishly. "No rush! I know you said you wanted time to think about it, but… uh, y'know."

She grimaces.

"I… had forgotten, actually," Autumn admits. "Sorry. Ask me again at lunch?"

"Oh, no problem," I assure her. "Um… do you wanna partner up for all the partner stuff today? We're playing volleyball, right?"

"We are," Autumn confirms. "Hmm. No offense, but… are you also a book nerd that's super active? I don't want to do everything at a reduced pace."

Hmm. I'm still not feeling tired, and we've run nearly a half mile.

"Go ahead and speed up," I challenge her. "I may not be as buff as you, but I'm faster than I look."

"Hmm," she mutters doubtfully. "Okay."

We start to speed up, and I do my best to keep pace without my form getting too weird. It's a lot easier than I expected. Did I not get any external changes today because I'm getting internal changes instead? I guess I don't really have any way to know. I just have to be careful about overheating and/or accidentally letting my socks slip. They're doing a good job of staying up so far, at least.

"So," I comment idly, my breath finally starting to huff a bit. "You work out, huh?"

"You were looking at me," Autumn accuses, though she at least seems amused rather than grossed out. That does nothing to prevent my face from getting red, of course.

"I… I'm just curious!" I protest. "You're nice and I want to get to know you! You don't really seem to have any other friends, which makes you all mysterious and junk."

"Maybe I just don't want any friends," Autumn grunts.

"Pfft, okay Sasuke Uchiha," I snort.

She just gives me a weird look.

"Wh… what?" I protest. "Have you not seen Naruto? I don't even like anime and I've seen Naruto."

"Mm-hmm," she mutters. "Well if you're really dying to know, I do martial arts. Self-defense stuff."

"Oh!" I grin. "That's super cool! Is that why you were busy after school yesterday?"

She gives me another weird look, distinctly different from the first and completely incomprehensible to me. Gah, am I doing something wrong? Is my disguise slipping!? No, no, everything seems to be in place. It's just me, normal human Hannah, doing normal human things with my fellow normal humans.

"Yeah," Autumn eventually confirms. "That's what I was doing after school yesterday."

"Nnnneat," I say, snapping the T a little as my mind screams a mile a minute. Autumn's always a little weird, but I feel like I'm missing something big that I just absolutely do not see at all.

Autumn is… not very talkative for the rest of gym class, which my anxiety interprets as an abject failure on my part. I don't even know why I'm doing this. Trying to be friends with someone because I have a crush and want to date them is a little bit… ugh. Like, I'm just setting myself up for heartbreak, aren't I? There's like a ninety percent chance she's straight, and even if she's gay she's not going to want to date a gosh dang bug monster! I should really just leave her alone.

…Or so I tell myself, but after Autumn and I part ways and I get through my third class of the day, lunch rolls around and I find my feet taking me to the library. I ended up eating in a bathroom stall again, so Autumn is already there when I arrive, her nose buried in the little notebook she's always looking at and scribbling stuff in.

"Um… hey, Autumn," I greet her awkwardly.

She jolts, briefly giving me a wide-eyed look before she seems to figure out words again.

"Hannah. Hi."

Well, she figured out a couple words, anyway.

"Hi," I say. "Um… is it okay if I sit?"

"Oh, uh, yeah," she confirms, motioning to the seat across from her. "Feel free."

"Sure, thanks," I agree, sliding stiffly into the chair. We stare at each other for a bit, and I can't help but ask. "Did I make things awkward in gym class?"

"What?" she asks. "No? I mean, I don't think so?"

"Oh. That's good."

Another awkward pause descends. I'm tempted to pull out some homework and start it, but I feel like the conversation isn't really finished. It's just delayed.

"...Does Saturday work for you?" Autumn suddenly asks.

"Huh?" I blink.

"Saturday," she repeats. "I thought about it, like you asked me to. Do you want to go to the mall Saturday?"

Do I have work Saturday? Oh shoot I don't. I'm free that day. We can go and get new outfits. Me and Autumn. Er, Autumn and I? Cute girl with abs and idiot bug. I bet she could pick me up really easily.

"Um… sure," I manage to force my mouth to say. "That sounds awesome. Thanks."

"Cool," she says quietly. "I'm, uh, really bad at shopping though. Just a fair warning."

"I bet I'm worse," I admit. "Don't worry about it."

She chuckles a little, and it's so cute it almost hurts. I don't really see her smile much, but she definitely looks better that way. I hope I can make her smile more and more. Although… maybe I should be more careful about that, thinking back on our conversation in gym.

"Hey, uh, I kind of made fun of it at the time, but… were you serious when you said you didn't want any friends?" I ask.

She stiffens up immediately, and I almost regret asking, but… well. Communication is important, and friends don't let friends say vaguely cryptic red flags about depression without offering a bit of support.

"I, um… I suppose that sounds like something I might say," she mutters bitterly.

"Yeah, I made a joke out of it at the time, but that was probably rude of me, thinking back," I admit.

She shrugs.

"It's fine," she says. "Please don't worry about it."

Shoot. That was definitely the kind of 'it's fine' that means 'it's not fine,' wasn't it? Do I know her well enough to press on this? …Ugh, no, I don't think so. I want to be her friend, but we've only met a handful of times now. Maybe if the d—the friendly outing goes well, I'll feel comfortable pushing. For now, I feel like it's best to back off and just be there if she wants to open up. Maybe continue the conversation in a different direction.

"I have… one and a half friends, I think," I admit. "The half-friend is Ida. I don't know if you know her, but we got in an argument and we're not really talking right now, but I think she'll come around. My best friend is Brendan, we've been pals since elementary school. But that's pretty much it. I don't really reach out to other people at all."

A pang of guilt stabs at me as I realize I do, in fact, have three other friends: Teboho, Kagiso, and Sindri. I haven't known them long, but they're undoubtedly my friends. Still, I can't really talk about them here.

"You're reaching out to me," Autumn points out. "I'm honestly surprised you haven't already decided I'm a weirdo and stopped trying."

"Uh… well, I like that you're a weirdo, I guess?" I admit. "I'm also a huge weirdo. Like, probably way weirder than you think. I think weird is good. And like, sure, you don't talk much, but that just means you're not flapping your mouth when you don't have anything to say."

"That's hardly the strangest thing about me," Autumn protests.

"Well, I look forward to learning what else there is!" I insist. "My eyes just glaze over when normal people bond over normal things, it doesn't mesh with me at all. I don't know why, I just… can't focus on anything outside my own little zones of interest, I guess. Like… Pokémon, or tabletop games, or fantasy novels, or… you, I guess!"

She blushes a little. Actually blushes. What? Oh god did I just flirt? I didn't mean to flirt! Aaah!

"I'm one of your zones of interest?" she presses.

Code red! Code red! Abort, abort!

"Uhh, that… kind of came out wrong," I stumble over my words, my mouth feeling dry. I can't believe I said that, aaagh! "I just… I mean you've been really nice to me. Helping me clean up blood and stuff. You do martial arts. You're cool. So… I wanna hang out with you more."

Another unreadable expression flashes over her face, but she quickly buries it in a book, no longer looking at me. Did I make it too weird? Or… is she also…?

"So… Saturday is good?" she mumbles.

"Um… yeah," I agree. "Saturday is good."

The rest of my day is just a blur of me trying not to let out a squeal of lesbian triumph. I know my gaydar is made out of two broken toothpicks and a slice of cheese, but if she's maybe, possibly also in the same boat I am, that would just… aaaah! No. No, calm down, Hannah. You're reading too much into things. The only interpersonal thing you're insightful about is noticing when someone is trying to deflect away from a serious problem, and the only reason you're good at that is because you've used all those techniques first.

I'm just… projecting, probably. I can figure things out once I get more data from the shopping mall trip. It's way too early to be fantasizing about touching our foreheads together, or getting to feel her biceps, or biting into the meat of her thighs and letting her blood run down my throat. I want to hold her close and dig my claws into her back, I… I'm going to take a cold shower when I get home. Holy carp on a hook, those are not good fantasies to have! That would kill her, you stupid brain! What the heck!

…I'm never going to be able to have a relationship, am I?

Maybe I can cancel the shower. That thought is plenty chilling on its own. None of this matters, does it? The friendship doesn't matter, the maybe-date doesn't matter, Autumn's sexuality doesn't matter. I'm not going to be human long enough to enjoy it. I do my best to hide it, to forget about it, but what's happening to me isn't going to go away. The threat of being outed won't vanish. I am a monster and I'm becoming more monstrous all the time. It doesn't matter if I hate it or enjoy it, it's going to happen and I might not even be the same person when I come out the other side. Autumn isn't a potential date, not really. She's just another distraction, and before long that won't be enough.

I hug myself tight, clutching my triceps so hard I almost puncture my gloves with my claws. What's going to happen to me, when the world finds out? Just thinking the question is enough to make my good mood die on the vine. For a while there, I was really starting to believe I didn't mind the idea of being a monster. It's scary, but also exciting. It feels like me, in some way that being human somehow doesn't. It's right and I like it, so why… why am I afraid again?

I guess no matter how much I'm okay with being a monster, I'm still mortally terrified of being a freak.