"First there is something I need to show you", Erika said as she took a small detour to lead Cole to the grassy meadow.
For some reason Cole looked pretty serious and quiet, rather than his usual mischievous self. They walked for a moment in awkward silence. Erika was still embarrassed from her secret being revealed, 'plus she wasn't that close to Cole. He was just the annoying older brother for her friend Melissa, although unconsciously Erika always was a little infatuated with him in the way younger teens tend to look up to their friends' elder siblings.
After a moment they reached the meadow where Erika had found the salve. It was an open field near the road, surrounded by patches of forest in a neighbourhood with a low density of houses. Occasionally the field served as a dumping ground for habitants who wouldn't bother disposing of their wastes properly, but the city did its best to keep the area clean.
A faint breeze was making the leaves rustle in the trees, and the dew from last night's storm was making the grassy meadow glisten eerily in the morning light.
"This is where I found it," started Erika, "the salve." She led Cole to the middle of the field.
"I thought you were making this up to hide the fact you were really a boy?" Cole said, suspicious.
"I'm not a boy! I swear it's the truth. I found a bottle here and brought it back home. I accidentally hit the nozzle. It made me grow a... thing."
"How is that even possible? It sounds like bullshit..." Cole was reluctant to believe her.
"I don't know! But you've seen me earlier in the kitchen. It's not a normal boy penis, and I didn't have it before I accidentally sprayed myself with the salve. Now I get these... urges."
"Ok it did look weird, but that's normal boy's urges. As far as I'm concerned", Cole added.
"That's not all... The penis is really sensitive and gets hard all the time... but the really strange part is that if I don't release the goo out of it-"
"You mean masturbate" Cole cut.
"... uh, yeah. If I don't do that, my body starts changing more." Erika added nervously.
"Changing how."
Erika was really hesitant now. "Like... I don't know, you're not gonna believe me. Like, werewolf changes? Not human changes. Like something from a science fiction movie, I swear."
"That doesn't make much sense... You think the salve is from some weird experiment?"
"I don't know, Cole! I just found it. It was laying there in the grass. Someone must have dumped it."
Cole started looking around through the meadow as if to find more clues. Erika followed him around.
"What are you doing? You don't believe you're gonna find some- OH" Erika shouted in surprise as she tripped over something and fell in the grass.
She sat up and looked. There was a small waterlogged cardboard box half-buried in the ground. Cole walked up to it and tried pulling it off the ground, but it was too wet and ripped apart, revealing its content - mostly broken bottles and jars not dissimilar to Erika's salve, but also one sodden notebook. Cole picked it up and tried to flip the pages.
"It's drenched from last night's storm. The pages are all blurry and stuck together," he said as he was attempting to single out a page to read and it tore from the book. "Perhaps if we let it dry we can salvage parts of it."
Erika picked up a single vial still intact from the box. It came with a label with the "female" sign on it, and her heart raced a little faster. She hoped really hard it could be a cure for her condition, although it could just as much make the matter worse. She stuffed the vial in her bag and got up. Cole seemed absorbed in the diary and didn't notice.
"I think it mentions dogs in there, from what isn't too blurry to read. Perhaps some experiment about breeding."
"See?" Erika said victoriously. "That's proof."
"That's hardly proof at all. Show me the salve and then we'll see".
Erika shrugged and walked to the road, followed by Cole who was keeping the diary to himself.
After another long moment of walking in awkward silence, they finally reached Erika's house.