The next day I got up early for school, and fixed breakfast for me and Mom. Dad was still in bed; he didn't need to be at work until afternoon and he'd be working late.

"Is there anything else you need me to do before I go?" I asked Mom before I went out to the bus stop.

"No, this is fine," she said. I'd made her a large salad to snack on after breakfast, and she was ensconced under her blanket on the sofa again, with the materials for her next skirt within arm's reach on the ottoman and the end table. "Really, it's been wonderful to have your help the last couple of days, but I was doing mostly okay by myself when your Dad was at work and you were in Athens -- I can get to the kitchen and bathroom by myself, leaning on the walls and furniture, if I go slow and careful."

"I love you, Mom. See you this afternoon." We hugged, and I went out the door.

The bus was driven by a man I didn't recognize; he sat oddly on the edge of his seat, with a long tail sticking out of a hole in his pants, and he had webbed fingers. The bus had fewer kids on it than usual, but since most of the ones there were centaurs, and they took up twice as much room as the bipeds like me, it actually seemed more crowded. Will got on the bus just after me, wearing a skirt; I'd been saving a seat for him, but I realized too late that of course he couldn't fit there next to me, he'd need a whole seat to himself like the other centaurs. He found an empty seat, which fortunately was also across from another empty seat; I moved back there and sat across from him.

"How are you doing?" I asked. I'd noticed he was leaning on the mailbox while he waited for the bus.

"Tired and cold," he said. "This thing's drafty. I'm wearing long johns under it, but they don't cover everything."

"Sorry," I said. I changed the subject, and we talked about games until the bus got crowded, and I gave up my seat to a centaur girl who looked like she needed it more. It was standing room only by the time we reached the school, even though I think there were only two-thirds as many kids on the bus as usual.

I parted from Will just after we got off, as he had a different homeroom; I'd have a couple of classes with him later in the day. Mrs. Jessup, my homeroom teacher, turned out to be a Kennesaw chameleon. Most of the time, her skin was the color of the blackboard, but as she moved around, it would sometimes turn pale like the wall, or light brown like the wood of her desk.

I sat next to Arnie. He was bundled up like Will had been when we went out in the yard Saturday, with two pairs of baggy pants and a blanket wrapped around his lower torso, held in place with a couple of belts.

"Dude," he said to me, "how'd you get off so easy? Where were you?"

I told him the lie about being in Huntsville.

"Man, that's creepy awesome. What number am I thinking of?"

"It doesn't work on centaurs," I said, "or anybody else except people who were there in Huntsville when things changed. I figure our brains changed so they'd broadcast and pick up coherent signals of some kind -- they're still trying to figure out how it works, but they say there's increased electrical activity in our brains."

"So you're smarter too?"

"No, we just think louder. But nobody else can hear us, and we can't hear other people because they aren't thinking loud enough."

"Hmm. You think you might move out there after you graduate?"

"Maybe. I'm not ready to make plans that far ahead."

Mrs. Jessup called the roll right about then. Only three-fourths of the people whose names she called answered, and I noticed she left off several names of people who weren't there. When she was done with the roll she said:

"I have some bad news." She paused, and looked at the papers on her desk, and said: "You know there were a lot of accidents the Saturday before last. A lot of good people died. Some of them were your classmates."

She was quiet again, maybe nerving herself to go on. Amy Donaldson started crying, and that set off several others -- not all of them girls. Mrs. Jessup sniffled and went on:

"There are others who were hurt badly that day and are still in the hospital, or recovering from their injuries at home or in a rehabilitation center. The school has had information from students' families about some of them; others we don't know about -- they may be missing, or their families may know what happened to them but haven't informed the school. If you know anything about the students whose names I called who aren't here today, let me know. As for those whose names I didn't call... Tony Gustafson, Ken Sanders, Connie Velasquez, and Tina Wilson were all seriously injured, and aren't yet ready to return to school, but are expected to fully recover. Penny Fanshaw and Doug Urquhart are still in the hospital in critical condition. Lyle Henderson, Kim Linder, and Arvind Patel are all dead."

Except for Kim, I hadn't heard about what happened to any of them; I was pretty shaken up, but not as bad as some, who'd been closer friends with the kids who'd died. Arnie was crying, and trying not to show it. "Sorry, man," I said quietly. "She was cool. She didn't deserve that." I don't think that was the right thing to say, because it made him cry harder, so he couldn't even try to hide it anymore.

Mrs. Jessup let people cry for a minute or two without saying anything more. Finally she said: "I wish I could leave you alone to grieve over your friends, but I'm afraid we have several administrative tasks before you go to your first period classes. I can see at a glance that many of you are what the news is calling Marietta centaurs, or Smyrna wolves, or Kennesaw chameleons like myself -- but others I'm not sure about. When I call your name, please tell me briefly -- not everything that's changed for you, though we might need to know that later on, but just whether your diet has changed -- if you're purely herbivorous, like the centaurs, or carnivorous, like the wolves, for instance -- and whether you need any special physical or academic accommodation because of your changes. Um..." She looked at her roll again, and said: "Lindsey Babcock?"

"I brought my own lunch," she said. "The cafeteria doesn't have to fix anything special for me." If she wasn't sitting in her usual spot, I might not have recognized her; her face wasn't as radically changed as the wolves', but her eyes were bigger and farther apart, and her mouth and jaw were shaped differently -- larger, more rounded.

"All right," Mrs. Jessup said, "but I still need to know..."

"I eat bugs," she said in a small voice.

"Ah," Mrs. Jessup said, and gave a stern glance to a couple of guys who'd started snickering. "Insectivore. Noted. The cafeteria can accommodate you with a day or two's warning, I think, if you don't want to have to bring your own lunch every day. Anything else we need to know?"

"I don't think so."

She went down the roll, calling on each of us who hadn't been in or near the school district on Valentine's Day. When she called, "Jeffrey Sergeyev?", I just said:

"No, ma'am. I still eat the same things."

And she went on. When she was done, she said: "Your second period teachers will go over this as well, but note that if you're herbivorous, you should sit as near as you can to the south end of the cafeteria, and if you're carnivorous, or if you're omnivorous and you want meat with your lunch, you should sit toward the north end of the cafeteria. If you're biologically omnivorous, but vegetarian, try to sit in the middle."

Amy raised her hand, and asked which was the south end.

"The one with the large windows," Mrs. Jessup said.

Soon after that the bell rang and we left for our first period classes. I walked with Arnie, as we were both going to Ms. Tang's algebra class.

"If you really can hear us thinking, and you didn't tell her, you're going to be in big trouble for cheating on tests and stuff," he said.

"Dude, look up 'Huntsville telepaths' on Wikipedia if you don't believe me."

-----

Arnie was moving easier than a lot of the other centaurs -- like Mrs. Benson, he'd been a little overweight before the changes, so he wasn't so skinny and had more muscles on his legs. Most of the centaurs were slow and wobbly, like Mom and Will; some of them were using canes or walkers. The centaurs took up more space than before, especially the ones with canes or walkers, and here and there I saw someone walking on all fours; so even though a lot of kids were dead or in the hospital, the halls were more crowded than usual. A couple of times, on our way to class, I saw one of the centaurs fall down, either just because they were weak and wobbly or because somebody bumped into them. I was going to try to help, but other people closer to them helped them up before I got near.

I'm not going to tell you about everything that happened that day; even with all the weirdness of seeing people I knew changed in so many ways, 90% of it was just another school day. Ms. Tang went straight into the next algebra lesson as though we hadn't been out of school for a week, and really I can't say she was wrong -- I mean, math is the same whether you've got two legs or four, whether you eat vegetables or meat or both. Some of the other teachers talked briefly about the changes, and how sorry we were about the people who were hurt or killed, and then went into lessons that weren't much different than they would have been if they hadn't been delayed for a week.

I sat near Will during Mr. Meredith's American History class, but didn't get a chance to talk to him before class -- he hobbled in at the last second, and some of the other centaurs came in late. That was happening a lot, actually; at the beginning of second period the assistant principal went on the intercom and announced that students with "mobility issues" -- meaning mostly the centaurs, although I saw a few bipeds in wheelchairs or on crutches, too -- could be up to five minutes late to class with no penalty. Will steadied himself on my shoulder as we walked to lunch; I decided to go through the herbivore/vegetarian line with him and sit with him. Arnie joined us when he saw where we were.

Lunch was a disaster. Seating the centaurs at the far end of the cafeteria from the carnivores and omnivores and whatever dubious meat the cafeteria was serving them that day was *not* enough; there wasn't enough room to put empty spaces between them, and a lot of them got sick to their stomachs from seeing carnivores go by with lunch trays or seeing them eat meat at the next table. Several actually threw up, including Will. Fortunately, he didn't get any vomit on my clothes, though I had to clean my backpack after Arnie and I helped him get to the bathroom and clean up. They were both in bad shape, famished from not being able to snack during morning classes, but too sick to eat any lunch. There was another intercom announcement a few minutes later, saying those who couldn't stand the smell of meat could go to study hall for now and come back to eat later.

Arnie and Will went to study hall from the bathroom, and I went back to the cafeteria to finish eating. I was worried about Arnie and Will, but also looking forward to the next period. Ms. Killian was my favorite teacher, even though biology (which she taught) wasn't my best subject -- it wouldn't have been in my top three favorite subjects, if she hadn't been teaching it. I was hoping she'd have something interesting to say about all the changes, and she didn't disappoint me.

"I think the unit on plant reproduction can wait a few days," she said. She was a centaur, and steadier on her feet than I would have expected; she wasn't noticeably overweight before her change, so I was expecting she'd be still be underweight for her new form. "I'm sure you've all been thinking about the changes you and everyone else have been through. There's a lot we don't know about them yet -- most importantly, why and how they happened -- but there's a lot we do know, too. This stuff is more important for your daily lives than the anatomy of plants -- to be honest, more important for most of you than half or two-thirds of the syllabus. And it's a good chance to talk about how scientists work, since the things we'll be talking about are new discoveries, a lot of them still tentative and controversial. We'll focus on the changes for the next week or two, and probably return to the subject several times in the course of the year as new discoveries are announced.

"To begin with, can someone offer a brief description of what happened on February fourteenth? Not just what happened here, I mean, but in general."

Several people raised their hands, including me. Ms. Killian called on a black girl a couple of rows in front of me, who didn't have any obvious changes. "Latisha?"

"Everybody in the world changed somehow," the girl said, "and people in the same area changed the same way, but people in different places changed in a lot of different ways. And people who were sick or injured before got better while they were changing."

"That's accurate as far as it goes," Ms. Killian said. "What else? George?"

I knew George Ryder a little bit, though I wasn't close friends with him; he'd become a Smyrna wolf. "People got nauseated for a few seconds, and then went numb all over, while the changes were happening."

"Most people, as far as we have reports, yes. Jeffrey? Anything to add?"

"Not everybody had the nausea or the numbness," I said. "In places where there weren't any physical changes, just mental changes, we had headaches instead."

"Interesting," Ms. Killian said, and for a moment I wondered if that meant she hadn't heard much about places like Huntsville where the changes were mental, or neurological, or whatever. "That's a good point. As far as we have reports, every human being in the world was affected in one way or another, but there are a few places -- relatively few; there may be hundreds of them scattered around the world -- where the changes were more subtle, affecting only the brain and not the rest of the body. Jeffrey, do you mind telling us some more about that?"

I squirmed uncomfortably, but I'd set myself up for this, and had to go through with it. I told them what Aunt Karen had said about her telepathy in her emails and IM messages, as though it had happened to me. Fortunately, I hadn't run out of material when Ms. Killian cut me off. "Thank you. That's enough for now," she said. "You might do an extra credit report on that -- not just from your own experiences, but whatever you can learn from online research and interviewing people in Huntsville. Talk to me about it after class if you're interested. Does anyone else have anything general to add before we start talking about specific changes?"

Several people who'd had their hands up earlier had lowered them, and Latisha had raised her hand again. Ms. Killian called on Kirsten Tanger, who'd become a centaur. She'd been really pretty before, and I'd had kind of a crush on her; it was strange to see her with hollow cheeks, bony arms, and a flat chest, and I wondered if she'd be pretty again when she gained some more weight.

"Kirsten?"

"It was too weird to be natural, and too all at once to be something like terrorists releasing a plague germ. So it had to be a miracle."

Ms. Killian gave a barely perceptible sigh, and I felt sorry for her, having to put up with students like Kirsten. She said simply, "Let's finish gathering all the facts we have about the changes before we start forming hypotheses about why they happened. Anyone else? Latisha?"

"People who had just one part of their body affected didn't get numb all over," she said. "But we had worse nausea than the people who changed all over, I think."

"Right," Ms. Killian said. "There seem to be three broad categories of change, and it looks like we have examples of all three right here. We 'centaurs' are an example of the first -- our whole body changed; even the parts that look superficially similar, our upper torso and head, have some changes to their internal organs. We, and apparently all the others with full-body changes, lost all feeling for as long as the changes took -- about eight or ten seconds in our case.

"Some others -- Latisha, you can do an extra credit report on your change-region if you want, but for now I'll give an example I've read about: people in some areas of Washington, D.C. had major changes to the structures of their hands and feet, but the rest of their bodies were mostly unaffected -- except, presumably, some neurological changes to enable them to control their changed hands and feet. They lost feeling in their hands and feet for a couple of seconds, while the changes were happening, but didn't experience nausea -- I suspect the nausea was an effect of changes to internal organs.

"And others, like Jeffrey, seem to have changes only in their brains, and had headaches during the changes. -- Yes, Anna?"

"We must have had changes in our brains, too, or we wouldn't be able to control our hind legs." Anna was another centaur; I didn't know her last name, barely knew her at all. "I mean, a lot of us can't walk very well yet, but if our brains hadn't changed we wouldn't be able to walk at all. So why didn't we get headaches too?"

"That's a good question," Ms. Killian said. "Some scientists think it's because when we lost feeling all over, that masked not only the pain we would have felt from our skeleton and musculature restructuring, but also the headache that the rewiring of our brains might have caused. But we don't really know yet.

"There's another important factor that no one's mentioned yet -- something that's the same for everyone, no matter how they changed. Anyone?"

No one said anything for a few seconds, then George Ryder raised his hand, and she called on him.

"Conservation of mass," he said. "We all weighed the same afterwards. That's why most of the centaurs are so skinny."

"Exactly," Ms. Killian said. "That suggests, to me at least, that whoever or whatever caused these changes was limited by the laws of physics, even if we don't understand how or why." She looked hard at Kirsten as she said that, and I made the connection; if it were a miracle, God could have created new matter for the centaurs' expanded bodies. He wouldn't have to just rearrange what was already there.

"Does anyone have any other observations to offer about different types of changes? Can you think of another way of classifying the different changes besides the one I mentioned...?"

I'm not going to repeat everything she said; as for the factual stuff, you can look it up if you don't already know it. I think that's enough to give you the idea of what it felt like, when it was all new and nobody knew for sure what was happening. But to understand everything that followed, you need to know that not only was Ms. Killian my favorite teacher even before the changes, but biology was by far my most interesting class for the rest of that school year.

I stayed for a few minutes after class to ask Ms. Killian what she meant about the extra credit report; so did Latisha and a couple of other students who'd become something other than centaurs or wolves. She gave us pointers for finding more or less reliable stuff online about the change-regions we'd been in on Valentine's Day and what we'd become, but said that there were so many new human species -- over six hundred in the United States, twenty-one in Georgia -- that a lot of them, especially the lower-population ones, hadn't been studied much yet except by local doctors. "Try to interview three or more people," she said, "at least two of them not related to you, and at least one of them a medical professional or scientist. You've got until the end of the year, but the sooner you get it done, the more likely I'll be able to let you do a presentation on it."

I was wondering where Latisha had been on Valentine's Day, and I had a strong suspicion from what she'd said in class, but I didn't feel like asking her right out, and she didn't say -- mostly we were just listening to Ms. Killian and asking her questions, like how many pages did she want, and what did she mean about print sources from before the change, and so forth. One of the others, Tyrone Anderson, said that he'd been in Bainbridge, down in south Georgia, visiting family, and he'd become an insectivore. I realized that he had the same eyes and jaw as Lindsey Babcock, and figured she'd been somewhere in south Georgia too, though not necessarily in Bainbridge -- in rural areas the change-regions sometimes sprawled over thousands of square miles. The other was a girl named Tandy Shannon, who had a tail like our new bus driver, and webbed fingers; she didn't say anything about where she'd been or what other changes she might have that weren't obvious.

I suggested that we form a study group to meet and talk about how to do the research for these projects, and Ms. Killian said that was a good idea. So we exchanged phone numbers, email addresses and IM names; we didn't have time to do more before we had to get to our next classes.

TrismegistusShandy

Four of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in EPUB format and Amazon in Kindle format. Smashwords pays its authors better than Amazon.

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