Joan awoke with an itching feeling on her face. Bringing her hand to her chin, she felt a stubble and suddenly remembered the previous days' events.
Vanessa slept next to her, her arm around Joan's waist, causing her to sigh inwardly that she had such a good friend during her crisis. She groggily sat up and could see the thick matt of hair on her chest. It looked thicker now than it did the previous day, but that might have been because she was in such shock.
"Good morning," Vanessa wearily greeting, yawning and stretching her sleepy body. "I don't know if we have enough shaving cream to do you again!" She didn't mean to be rude, but Vanessa was a very blunt girl. She eyed Joan up and down wondering how so much hair could have regrown in such a short amount of time. She then looked closer at her face. "I think you have some new hair, too, on your forehead."
Joan reached up and touched her forehead just above the eyebrows with her fingertips. Indeed, there was a thin layer of prickly hairs growing there. She wondered how bad it had gotten.
"I talked to your mom last night," Vanessa reported, avoiding Joan's downcast face. "She said you're welcome to stay with me until things get sorted out. Todd hid the ray gun before he got home and can't remember where he put it. They'll be looking for it."
After a few moments of awkward silence, Vanessa decided to drag Joan into the bathroom to try and shave her again, this time using soap instead of cream. Indeed, she had gotten hairier overnight. Not only was forehead prickly, but her ears as well. Undressing, Joan discovered that there wasn't a single patch of bare skin left on her body.
"There's no way to get rid of it!" she exclaimed in despair.
Vanessa took a few minutes to console her before they embarked on the time-consuming task of hair removal. Within three hours, all the hair was gone, but within several hours, it was mostly back.
"What am I going to do?" Joan asked.
"Just sit tight and wait for your mom and brother to find the ray gun," Vanessa said. "That's all we can do."
Joan spent the afternoon watching TV mostly, cringing whenever she saw a commercial advertising a new beauty product. Vanessa watched as the hair seemed to grow longer with each hour, though she neglected to say anything for fear of sending her friend into even more despair.
That came to an end, however, when Joan reached up to scratch her face. Her fingers sank into a soft matt of hair, about an inch long each. She immediately rushed to the bathroom to see her face completely covered in a furry layer. Removing her shirt, she saw that the hair covered her whole body. She guessed that it was about four inches long on her body, with two-inch hairs covering the backs of her hands and arms all the way up to her shoulders.
The hair that grew from her shoulders was even thicker and longer, as was the hair on her chest and down her spine.
"What's happening to me?" she asked.