When we got done telling Mom and Dad about what had happened -- not everything I've just told you, but a suitably edited version -- Dad said he was getting hungry, and asked if we were too; we said yes. He went into the kitchen to start cooking.
When he was out of earshot, Mom said: "So, I'm not sure I understand... You're girls now? You look just the same."
"No," Uncle Mike said, and I added:
"Even the girls in Athens aren't girls anymore."
"Everybody of both sexes lost all their reproductive organs," Uncle Mike said. "We look kind of like girls, undressed, but we aren't."
"Have you seen a doctor since the changes?"
"No, but lots of people have, and the results are pretty consistent. The hospitals and doctors told people not to come in unless they had some sickness or injury unrelated to the changes, they were so overwhelmed."
"Well, we'll get our doctor to look at Jeffrey next clinic visit. I want to know for sure."
"Can I ask you to do something for me, Mom?" I said.
"What is it, honey?"
"Don't tell anybody I was in Athens."
"What?"
Uncle Mike looked at me curiously.
"I want to tell people at school I was in Huntsville with Aunt Karen and Uncle Dave," I went on. "They still look like regular people, and so do I, as long as I've got pants on. And their telepathy only works with people who were in Huntsville on Valentine's Day, so unless I run into somebody from Huntsville, I can pull it off."
"Why?" she asked. But Uncle Mike understood:
"He doesn't want the kids at school to know he's been -- that he's lost -- I don't blame him. Lying's usually not a good idea, but I'd consider going along with him on this, Darlene."
"And you didn't understand at first -- it would be worse with the kids at school, Mom. Maybe with the principal and teachers, too -- they might make me use the girls' restroom and locker room, and that would make it even worse."
"And think about this," Uncle Mike added; "probably most of the kids at his school were at home, here in this school district, that day; most of the rest were probably nearby, in the same region as Pavel, or one of the other neighboring regions. I don't know how these physical changes are going to affect the cliques and social groupings in high schools, but I'd be surprised if a lot of the kids who were a long way from their school district, like Jeffrey, don't end up somewhat isolated and excluded anyway just because they're the only kid of their kind in the school. If they think he's changed into a girl, too -- don't make it any worse, Darlene."
"Let's talk to your father about it," she said. "I don't like the idea -- I don't think it's going to work, you can't fool that many people for very long."
-----
Uncle Mike and I ate at the kitchen table with Dad. Dad ate nothing but steak; Uncle Mike and I shared some of the steak, and Dad had baked a couple of potatoes for us. We told Dad about my plan.
"I understand," he said, "and if you want to tell your friends you were in Huntsville instead of Athens, I won't contradict you. But if the school officials, or the state or Federal government, ask us where you were and what happened to you, I'm not going to lie to them -- we could get in serious trouble for lying on a census or tax form or whatever. I might refuse to answer, though. We'll see."
"Thanks, Dad."
Uncle Mike was going to go home after supper, but Mom and Dad didn't want him on the road after dark, and he agreed to spend the night. Next morning, after he left for Athens, I told Mom and Dad I wanted to go over and see Will.
"All right," Mom said; "maybe you'd better call first."
I did. Will's mom answered the phone.
"Hi," I said, "it's Jeffrey. Is Will home? Does it suit for me to come over?"
"Jeffrey! Yes, sure, come over any time today."
So I walked over to Will's house, just down the street. I rang the doorbell, and Will's mom answered it.
She was walking better than Mom, though a little unsteady, and she wasn't nearly as skinny as Mom -- of course she'd been a little overweight, though not really fat, before she turned into a centaur. She wore a big skirt that covered her whole lower torso and came down to her knees on both pairs of legs, and she had two different kinds of slippers, both of them too big for her, on her front and back feet. Her chest was as flat as a little girl's, which seemed stranger in a way than her being a centaur.
"Hi, Jeffrey," she said. "Come on in."
"Hi, Mrs. Benson," I said. "I'm sorry about your husband."
I'd exchanged emails with Will while I was staying at Uncle Mike's, and learned that Will and his mom were at home at the moment of the changes, but his dad was out running some errands. He apparently lost control of his car when the changes happened -- along with everybody else on the road in that area -- and was killed in an eleven-car pileup.
"Thank you, Jeffrey." She gave me a hug. "I still can't get used to it. In a way it's good that I had all this to get used to as well," gesturing at her extra pair of legs, "it took my mind off losing him, a little bit... Just a little bit, but maybe it made it easier." She sniffed and rubbed her eyes, then said: "Will's upstairs in his room -- can you wait a moment?"
"Sure," I said, following her into the kitchen. She got a big bowl out of the cabinet, opened the refrigerator, and put a head of lettuce and a couple of cucumbers in the bowl. "Could you please take this up to Will?"
"All right."
I went up the stairs and down the hall to Will's room. The hall door was open. Will was lying in bed reading; he had an empty bowl on the bed next to him.
"Hey," I said. "Your mom sent some more food."
"Thanks," he said. "I'm getting hungry."
He was even skinnier than my Mom. He was wearing a T-shirt, and covered up with a blanket from the waist down. I sat down on the bed next to him and handed him the bowl; he tore off some lettuce leaves and ate them before he said anything more.
"I'm sorry about your dad," I said.
He closed his eyes for a moment, chewed and swallowed, then said: "Thanks." He didn't say anything else, just took another bite of lettuce, then picked up a knife off his bedside table and started slicing one of the cucumbers. "Want some?"
"Sure," I said, and took some of the cucumber slices.
Finally, after he'd eaten enough to take the edge off his hunger, he said: "So... what's it like?"
I shifted uneasily. "You mean, what happened to me in Athens?"
"Yeah. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to --"
"Before I tell you, I want to ask you a favor."
"Sure."
"I'm pretty sure you're the only person besides my parents, around here, who knows I was in Athens this weekend. Promise not to tell anybody."
"Okay... But people will look at you and know you weren't anywhere around here. I mean, almost everybody in Georgia, except around Athens, looks totally weird now -- mostly not as weird as me and Mom, but --"
"Yeah, I know. I'm going to tell people I was staying with my Aunt Karen and Uncle Dave instead, in Huntsville, Alabama. They still look human -- sorry."
"No problem."
"Anyway, they didn't get any physical changes out there. They're telepathic --"
"Cool! But how are you going to fake that?"
"I don't have to, as long as I don't run into anyone from there. Their telepathy only works with each other, not with other kinds of people -- people in other change-regions."
"Okay, that might work."
"I don't guess anybody from our school was in Huntsville on Valentine's Day. The middle of February's not the most popular time for going to the Space Museum."
"But if somebody was there, and they can't talk with you telepathically they'll know you're lying about where you were, right?"
"Yeah, it's a risk. But think about what people are going to act like if I tell them I was in Athens, and what really happened to me."
"Good point. All right, I won't tell anybody."
So I told him about what had happened to me, in more detail than I'd given him in my email; a little more than I'd told Mom or Dad, even. But not everything.
"Wow," he said. "That's harsh, man."
"I shouldn't complain," I said; "I mean, I just lost my dick, but you lost your dad -- and lots and lots of people died, or got hurt so bad they're never going to get better. How are you for walking, since the change?" I guessed not well, since he'd stayed in bed the whole time I'd been there.
"I can walk now -- I couldn't at first, just didn't have enough muscles on my legs, not until I'd eaten a lot over the first few days. But I'm still pretty unsteady and I get tired fast. Actually -- I need to go to the bathroom. Could you help me stand up, let me lean on you?"
"Sure," I said, and stood up. He threw off the blanket and slowly swung all his legs off the side of the bed. He was wearing a pair of shorts over his hind legs, and loose socks on all his feet, but nothing on his front legs or lower torso. I put out my arm, and he leaned on me as he stood up, wobbling a lot.
I guess if you've never been to Atlanta, you might never have seen a Marietta centaur. There are four-legged people called centaurs in other places -- I've met a couple -- and I've heard that in eastern Europe somewhere they've got people who look almost like the old mythological centaurs, with hooves instead of feet, and all hairy from the waist down. Ours aren't like that; all their individual parts look human, but there's too many of them and they're put together oddly, by pre-divergence standards. Their legs are skinnier and their feet are smaller than an old-style human of the same height, and their lower, horizontal torso is a little longer than their upper, vertical torso, but otherwise just like an old-style human's. The main difference is that a female centaur's breasts, or a male centaur's vestigial nipples, are under the lower torso instead of on the upper chest like in old paintings of female centaurs. If you think about it, or if you've ever seen a female Marietta centaur nursing her baby, it makes a lot more sense. If they were way up there, how would the baby reach them without his mom having to lean way over and probably hurt her back? Anyway, I didn't know all that at this point; my Mom had scarcely gotten up off the sofa, when I was in the room, since I came home, and Mrs. Benson was wearing a long skirt, like I said. But this seemed like a good time to tell you.
Will's shorts were really loose on him, his legs and butt were so skinny, and they fell off him halfway down the hall -- I didn't realize at first, I was just ahead of him with his arm on my shoulder, and only saw he was naked when we got into the bathroom and he said, "Okay, I'm good from here. You can wait outside." So I turned around and left, half-closing my eyes in embarrassment at his scrawny hindquarters. I picked up the shorts and underwear from the floor and tossed them into the bathroom, not looking, and then closed the door behind me.
I waited in the hall, figuring he might want help getting back to his bedroom too, until I heard the toilet flush and the faucet running. He opened the door, and I saw his legs wobbling as he steadied himself with one hand on the sink and another on the door. "Help me," he said.
I let him lean on my shoulder again and we walked back up the hall to his bedroom. I wondered how he'd gotten his shorts back on, or wiped his butt if he needed to -- his arms didn't look long enough to reach. I finally worked up the nerve to ask.
"Not easily," he said. "But my lower torso is pretty flexible, so I can bend and reach it. -- What about you?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I mean, I guess you have to pee like a girl now, and wipe afterward and stuff...?"
"Yeah," I said, blushing. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Okay." He was silent for a few minutes, and then said: "Want to play a game?"
So we played *Champions of Marduk* on his Playstation for a while. He wasn't playing his best, because every time there was a slight lull in the action he'd take a hand off the controller and eat a piece of lettuce or cucumber, and several times he got caught off guard that way. And maybe lying on his side, seeing the screen sideways, was affecting him too. After an hour or so we took a break.
"So, school's starting back Monday," I said.
"Yeah," he said. "I wonder what it'll be like. I don't know how many of us are still alive, how many kids got killed in car wrecks or plane crashes or whatever, and I don't know how many of us were right around here and how many were in other places."
"I don't know either," I said. "I'm guessing it'll be mostly centaurs like you, with some who were in one of the nearby regions, wolves like my Dad and otters like my grandparents... Have you heard from anybody else?"
"I heard from Arnie that Kim's dead," Will said. "She was in a car accident, like my Dad, with her whole family... Arnie's a centaur too. I haven't seen him, but we've talked on IM."
Arnie and Kim had been dating since near the beginning of the school year. "Oh, no. I hope it was quick... How did Arnie sound when you talked to him?"
"Pretty torn up. He wouldn't say much, just that she and her parents and sister all died in a wreck."
We were quiet for a while after that.
Something else occurred to me. "What are you going to wear to school? It looks like your old clothes don't fit you...?"
He scowled. "We got mail from the school board with changes to the dress code... They said if we're having trouble getting pants tailored for centaur bodies, it's okay for boys to wear skirts. I'm going to have to do that, Mom's been working on altering some pants to fit me, but making skirts is a lot faster and she's made five or six skirts and only one pair -- a quartet, really -- of nice pants for wearing to church."
"Huh," I said. "I guess it'll feel weird at first, but probably everybody else will have to do the same, so it's not like anybody's going to pick on you."
"Except maybe some rich kids who can afford to have plenty of tailor-made clothes."
"Yeah, maybe. You could call it a kilt, I guess."
Mrs. Benson invited me to stay for lunch, and after calling to check with Mom and Dad, I accepted. Will leaned on my arm with one hand and held the stair rail with the other as we went down the stairs. This time his pants didn't fall off, thank God.
Mrs. Benson asked after my family, and I told her the truth about Mom and Dad, and the briefest possible lie about myself. I was worried she was going to ask a lot of questions about what it felt like to be telepathic, but she focused on my parents instead.
"How are they taking it?" she asked. "Being so different, I mean..."
"Okay, I guess," I said, shifting uncomfortably. "I've been home for less than a day, but they seem to be working it out fine. Dad eats in the kitchen, and Mom eats in the living room, so she doesn't have to see him eat meat --" I hastily changed the subject when I saw how even talking about that was making Will and Mrs. Benson look queasy, but I wondered how the school lunchroom was going to handle that, with a mix of herbivore, carnivore and omnivore students -- and who knows what else; maybe there would be some kids who needed to eat grass or carrion or something?
"What about you?" she asked. "Is this okay?"
"This is delicious," I said, which was mostly true. She'd made a pretty good vegetable soup; I would have liked it better without the carrots and celery, but I made myself eat them anyway. She felt bad enough about her husband getting killed without me hurting her feelings over her cooking, too.
"And at home...?"
"I ate supper with Dad yesterday," I said, stopping myself just in time from saying, "with Dad and Uncle Mike." I continued after another spoonful of soup: "And I ate breakfast with Mom this morning... We'll work out some kind of schedule like that, I guess."
After lunch, Mrs. Benson said: "Why don't you boys go play outside for a while? It's not too cold."
Will looked reluctant, but he said: "Sure. Jeffrey, can you help me get dressed?"
We went upstairs, Will leaning on my arm again. "Okay," he said. "Can you open the window and see how cold it is out there?"
I did, just for a moment. It had warmed up since I walked over there a few hours earlier, but I didn't think he'd want to go out there in shorts or even a skirt. I'd never worn a skirt, but I thought they looked drafty.
"I thought so," he said. "Help me with this." He was pulling two pairs of jeans out of a drawer.
It took several minutes to get the jeans on. To make them stay on, we had to use his dad's suspenders, and we had to roll up the cuffs, especially on the front pair, because they wouldn't go up as high on him as they used to. That still left a good part of his belly in front, and most of his lower torso, uncovered. He put on another long-sleeved shirt -- also one of his Dad's, I thought -- and that covered his belly and a little bit of his lower torso.
"Wrap a blanket around my middle," he said, "and let's see if we can make it stay with a belt or some suspenders."
After a couple of tries, I did just that. By now he was looking even more wobbly, and he laid down as soon as I was done.
"Let's rest a minute before we go out."
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"Yeah, just a little tired. I'm getting stronger every day, but not very fast."
We were quiet for a few moments, and then I tried to cheer him up by talking about some other places where people were worse off -- Nashville, for instance, where they'd all gone blind. We got to talking about other places and weird changes we'd heard about, and forgot we were supposed to be going outside, until Will's mom yelled at us.
"Coming," Will called back, and got out of bed.
We went downstairs and out the back door. Will has a cool backyard, hilly, with a lot of trees; it goes back maybe five or six hundred feet to the neighbor's fence. We went far enough to be barely in sight of the house, and Will leaned against a tree.
"Man," he said, "I don't know if I'm going to be ready by Monday. All that walking from one classroom to another..."
"Most of the other kids will be in the same boat, I guess, along with a lot of teachers. They'll have to work something out -- give you more time between classes, or rearrange your schedules so you don't have so far to go between one class and the next, or something."
We walked around in the little patch of woods for a little while, and tossed a ball back and forth, stopping and resting a lot. Not long after we went back inside, I went home.
