Amy was heading through the crowded hall to Chemistry when someone stepped on her tail. She let out an ear-splitting yowl and dropped her books. The nerves were shooting the pain all the way up her spine as if she had just been electrocuted. Her tail instinctively retreated and curled around her legs, and she rubbed its sore spot with her hands.
"I'm really sorry!" said the guilty party. Amy recognized him as a student in the same Chemistry class. He bent down to pick up her books. "I was just in a hurry...you should really be careful letting that thing drag on the ground."
"Yeah, well it's okay," Amy said, still flustered. "I'm sorta new at it. You don't have to do that." She joined him in scavenging for stray notebook papers. The hall crowd had thinned out now, so it was much easier to pick everything up.
The boy handed her what he had gathered. "I'm Sam." He extended a hand. Amy juggled all of her disorganized things with one arm pressing them against her chest so she could give him hers. Pressing all of her books against her new breasts, she quickly realized, was not the best of ideas, and she had to abort the handshake earlier than she would have liked in order to take the pain off her second row of breasts.
"I think I know you, from Chem class, right? I'm Amy. It was my fault, I should keep this thing tied around my waist."
"Well, not all the time. Just when you're in a crowd of people with heavy feet." The two were now walking to class together. Amy was immensely relieved...and quite amused...at the fact that they were having a rational conversation about her tail when normally the boy probably would have called the police. Or perhaps a vet. "How does it feel?"
"To be honest," Amy said, thinking about the question. "Wonderful! It's just a really neat thing that you don't realize how great it is until you get one."
Sam looked puzzled by her answer. "Uh, I meant does it still hurt?"
"Oh!" Amy realized. "No! No, it doesn't hurt anymore. For a second when you stepped on it all sorts of bells and whistles went through my brain." As if on cue, the period bell rang and they walked into the classroom. There were no assigned seats in the lab, fortunately, so they were able to converse for a few more minutes before the teacher got his lesson ready.
"You were talking about your tail like you didn't used to have one," Sam said in an analytical fashion. "And come to think of it, I don't remember meeting anybody like you before today." Now he seemed to be only talking the matter over with himself, probing his own mind for answers. "Why don't I remember seeing you here before?"
Amy wasn't sure whether to tell him the truth or not, but it was clear the mind-altering spell her collar was putting out could be thwarted if one simply realized the discrepancy of their own memories. She had to think of something, fast.