-Maia POV-

 

I woke up to a feeling of coziness, as though my head was encompassed by a warm, heavy blanket, though it wasn’t fluffy like one. I nuzzled into the object, sighing in contentment.

“Nn.”

There was an odd noise, but I wasn’t yet awake enough to care what it was. I continued to wiggle my head back and forth. It smelled really nice, too, like some sort of fruit that I couldn’t quite place.

I only stopped when I felt waves of embarrassment coming from Tessa.

Opening my eyes, I couldn’t see anything. Tilting my head up, though, I stared Tessa in the eyes. She was blushing intensely with a complicated look on her face.

{…Could you get your face out of my chest?}

I responded by nuzzling her harder.

“Eep!”

There was a knock at the door.

“Time to get up! School starts same time as usual!” Marissa said through the door.

Grumbling a little, I disengaged my face from Tessa and rolled over to see the alarm clock.

Sure enough, there was about an hour before we had to leave.

Standing up to get dressed, I noticed that at some point in the night, my fox ears and tail had returned. Tessa’s moth parts were back, too. Focusing for a moment, I felt my ears and tail disappear and watched as my hair changed from white to black.

I heard a small groan of disappointment behind me. At first, I wasn’t sure if she was groaning about school or the fact that I stood up. When I looked back, though, I saw that she was blushing bright red.

I hopped back onto the bed, smiling when I heard Tessa squeak. I positioned myself next to her, then wrapped her up in a hug.

{…This is nice.}

[Yeah.]

Fifteen minutes later, there was another knock at the door.

“I hope you two are getting ready and not going back to sleep! Two people means twice the time to get ready!”

Groaning, Tessa disentangled herself from me and stood up, before walking over to the bags of clothes we bought yesterday. After a moment of standing still, her moth parts disappeared once again. I watched from the bed as she paused, reached into one of the bags containing my clothes, and held up a bra to her chest. Upon seeing that it was too small, she muttered, “Sure enough,” before putting it back in the bag.

She took the bags of her things over to the corner of the room, then started to pull out clothes.

{No peeking.}

[I’m allowed to see you naked, but not getting dressed?]

{…It’s the principle of the thing.}

[Mhm.]

I watched her blush more and more furiously as I stared at her. She slowed down as she reddened, before stopping with only her underwear on.

{Please.}

I relented, collecting my bags and retreating to the opposite corner. I put on my clothes, only peeking over at her occasionally.

Once we were dressed, we left the room.

“You have about ten minutes for breakfast, then we need to go,” Marissa said, waiting for us at the table. There were already two bowls waiting on the table.

“Oh, before I forget, do you two want to change your middle names as well? I know your new first names and I figure you’ll keep the last name, but I wasn’t sure what to put for the middle name when I was filing some paperwork earlier.”

“Topaz,” Tessa and I answered, almost in unison.

“Okay, Maia and Tessa Topaz Brown,” Marissa said, writing it down.

After we scarfed down some oatmeal, we got in the car. Halfway through the car ride, though, I noticed Tessa beginning to radiate worry and even panic. Her breathing also seemed agitated, and she was almost hyperventilating.

[Tessa.]

Her breathing slowed somewhat.

[Tessa. I’m here with you.]

{…Okay.}

[We can do this.]

{Okay.}

[It’ll be alright.]

{But what if it’s not?}

[I’ll make it alright.] I said, reaching over to hold her hand.

She visibly relaxed, taking deep breaths.

{…I’m going as Alex. What will they think when they see me wearing a skirt?}

[They’re going to think you’re really cute.]

I smiled at her and squeezed her hand.

{But what if they say something?}

[They won’t. But if they do, they’ll have to answer to me.]

I flashed her a grin, and she blushed.

{…Thank you.}

I squeezed her hand again in response.

 

-Tessa POV-

 

After talking to some people at the school’s office, it was decided that Maia would be in the same homeroom and morning classes as me, though we would have different classes after lunch. I was surprised at how little paperwork there was, considering we were enrolling a new person out of nowhere, but Marissa just winked when I asked about it. Once Maia was properly enrolled, we said goodbye to Marissa and went to class.

As we approached the classroom, though, some of my worries began to return. I managed to push them aside when Maia took my hand again and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

Arriving at the classroom, the teacher came out of the room. Looking us in the eyes, then nodding to herself, she said, “Tessa, right? You can go on in, and I’ll introduce Maia here in just a minute.”

The bell hadn’t rang yet, so when I entered the room, it was loud with the usual conversations and gossip of high school students. It quieted down quickly, though, as I stood in the doorway for a moment. Face burning, and not in a good way, I marched to my desk and sat down.

The person sitting next to me leaned over and said, “Um, that’s Alex’s seat.”

I was honestly kind of surprised he knew that name. We hadn’t talked to other people much, and I hadn’t known that anyone even knew we existed.

“That’s me,” I replied, a bit too quietly.

“What?” the boy asked, leaning in closer.

“That’s me!” I said, a bit too loudly this time. People around me stopped talking to look at me, before understanding seemed to dawn on them and they went back to talking amongst themselves.

“And it’s Tessa now,” I mumbled, hoping he would hear. The boy next to me nodded in understanding, then went back to looking at his phone.

…That was it?

I sighed in relief. Maia was right. No one was going to say anything.

Suddenly, the door opened and the teacher walked back in. The room got quiet really quickly.

“Alright, class. We have a new student today. Everyone, this is Maia.”

Maia confidently walked in through the door, and immediately I both saw and felt the entire class swivel to look at me. I immediately put my head down on my desk.

[Quite the reception.]

{…Make it stop.}

I looked back up to see Maia waving at me. I weakly waved back, before resting my head on my arms and trying to ignore the stares.

“Let’s see, Maia needs a guide since she’s new…” the teacher said, going over to her computer. A few moments later, she looked up and said, “Okay, Reese, since you have the same schedule, you can show her around and answer any questions she has.”

A short girl hopped up out of her seat and saluted the teacher with a goofy smile on her face.

“Nice to meet you!” she said to Maia.

“…Nice to meet you too,” Maia replied, seemingly a little thrown off by Reese’s enthusiasm. I smiled to myself watching their interaction.

“Let’s see, you can sit over there, the far left seat in the front row,” the teacher told Maia.

That was just about the farthest seat from mine, I noted with no small amount of displeasure.

With some time still until the bell to begin class, Reese went over to Maia’s desk to talk with her, and the rest of the class went back to making a lot of noise. A few other people seemed to find their way to Maia’s desk, as well.

After watching for a moment as they had conversations I couldn’t hear, I put my head down on my desk again.

Not even a minute later, Maia asked me a question.

[Do you want to come talk over here?]

{…Yes. But it would probably be weird if I went over there.}

[If you want to, you should.]

I lifted my head onto my arms again.

Maia was staring at me, along with a small crowd of four people standing around her. She grinned at me.

[Also, I have the phone.]

She held up our phone. Ah. Right. Because of the disruption at the mall yesterday, we hadn’t been able to get an extra phone. I had forgotten it today due to my lack of pockets, but evidently, Maia had brought it.

{You can keep it.}

[Okay, but you should come over here anyway.]

I sighed and walked across the room to Maia’s desk, bracing for the questions that would undoubtedly follow.

Unexpectedly, though, there weren’t any.

“Hi! Tessa, right? I don’t think we’ve talked before,” Reese said excitedly. “I’m Reese, nice to meet you!”

“Um, hi,” I responded timidly.

Going around the group, the three other people introduced themselves.

“Hi, I’m Jamie,” the tall girl said.

“I’m Cass,” the particularly bored looking girl said, looking up from her phone.

“And I’m David,” the only boy in the group said. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you all too,” I answered.

“So, do you two wanna come hang out after school? We’re technically a club but we kinda just do our own thing, and we’re always happy to have new members!” Reese said, barely stopping to breathe.

“What kind of club is it?” Maia asked.

“Erm, that’s really not important-“ Reese began.

“Officially, it’s the music appreciation club,” Cass interjected.

Reese sighed. “It probably sounds boring to you. It’s fine, you don’t have to come,” she said, visibly slumping somewhat.

“Cool. We’ll be there. The bell’s gonna ring soon, can I get you guys’ contact info?” Maia asked.

“Oh! Sure!” Reese said, brightening once more.

I smiled. This group seemed like it would be fun.

“Hey, Tessa. What’s your contact info?”

{Uhh what do I do? You already gave them our phone number.}

[Give them our email.]

{Oh right.}

After exchanging phone numbers and email addresses, the bell rang.

“Well, I’ll see you guys after school,” Maia said.

{They seem nice.}

[Yeah.]

As it turned out, Maia and I had all our morning classes together. Reese, Maia, and I went through the classes before lunch with little incident.

At lunch, we split up. Reese attempted to drag us both over to her table of friends, but I sat at the table Thomas and we usually ate at.

Maia went with Reese after a few moments.

[Are you sure you don’t want to come with?]

{I should talk to Tom and tell him what happened.}

[We can do that later.]

{The choice is new people or an explanation.}

[…Okay.]

Sitting down at the table, I looked around. As usual, he was late. After a few minutes, though, I began to worry. Sometimes, like today, he wasn’t there in the one morning class we had together, but he was always at lunch.

Looking around the lunch room, I noticed that there were a few other people who had been transformed, too. One person had a second set of arms below the first ending in insect scythes. Another had curved horns and a lizard’s tail, like a dragon or something. It felt comforting to know that we weren’t the only ones who had gotten animal parts.

One lunch period later, Tom still hadn’t shown up. As I went to my first class without Maia, I was somewhat nervous. First Tom wasn’t here, and now I had to go without Maia.

Taking a deep breath, I walked into the classroom and to my seat. Once again, nobody said anything about me turning into a girl, and class went on as usual. Although, there were a few people that kept staring at me during the class.

After the teacher finished the lesson, there was still about half a class period left. I sighed, somewhat regretting not taking the phone when I had the chance.

[Hey, are you busy?]

{No, our class is done.}

[Okay, so I wanted to try something, but you’ll probably want to ask to go to the restroom because I don’t know what it’ll look like.]

Curious, I left the classroom and made my way to the restroom. I still felt a little spark of joy every time I went into the women's restroom, even though it shouldn’t have been that exciting. I felt like I was allowed to be there, though, and that’s what was important to me.

Locking myself in a stall, I contacted Maia again.

{Ok, what now?}

[Well, you know how when you let me take control, your body disappeared? What if I let you take control of just an eye?]

{Hmm… Let’s try it!}

I felt Maia partially release control, like she used to in order to let me sing or hum when we were on walks.

I felt around for Maia, focusing on the part of her that felt empty. I pushed myself in, and…

{Woah.}

[Woah.]

It felt… strange. I could see with one eye the bathroom stall I was sitting in, and in the other was a classroom and arms holding our phone.

I felt my face, trying to touch the eye I could no longer see out of. I shuddered in surprise when my fingers reached partially inside of my eye socket.

{Uhh, Maia? My eye’s gone.} I tried not to sound panicky, but couldn’t prevent the emotions I was surely sending her.

[Oh shit. Um, try to release control of my eye again.]

Doing as she said, my vision returned to normal. I sighed in relief.

{Okay, it worked.}

[Do you want to try again?]

{Sure.}

Maia allowed me into her eye again, and I was once again half-viewing her class.

She turned her head over to Reese, and she jumped in surprise. She said something I couldn’t hear in what was probably a whisper.

[Hehe, she’s really confused what happened. She’s asking why I have a red eye and a gray eye now.]

{Are you going to tell her?}

[…No. It’ll be our secret.]

That comment filled me with a warmth I hadn’t realized I missed.

For about five minutes, we chatted while scrolling through news on our phone, noting all the stories about transformed people.

[Kinda weird how there’s people with animal parts and people with superpowers.]

{And some with both.}

[Yeah. Kinda makes me wonder what exactly our powers are. We’ve got the sharing thing with our bodies, but then there’s definitely also something up with you turning invisible and me making barriers.]

{Yeah. I wonder if Marissa got a power, too.}

[Hm. Dunno.]

I realized that it had been a while, and I was probably expected back in class.

{It was fun seeing through your eye, but I should probably go back to class.}

[Okay!]

I released control of Maia’s eye and took control of my own again, relishing the feeling of once again not having air in my eye socket.

Leaving the stall, I bumped into someone.

“Oh, sorry,” I said, trying to move out of the way.

Then, someone grabbed my wrist.