Jennifer met her friends at the bus stop. Kelly, the archetypal ditzy cheerleader, Muffy, the smart girl who preferred to be called Lisa, and Katie, the resilient hard worker who just managed to get a spot on the cheerleading squad.
“Morning guys”, said Jennifer. She noticed that Lisa had a bothered expression on her face. “You OK,” she asked.
“Had you seen the news this morning?”
Jennifer shook her head, the news wasn’t something she’d paid much attention to.
“Coach Cromarte was arrested this morning.”
What?? That was their cheerleading coach! “What was she arrested for?”
“Uhm, well that’s what worries me. Apparently they found a stash of human and bovine growth hormones yesterday afternoon in the training room with her fingerprints all over them. They were all about 2/3rds empty, and when they gave here a blood test, they came up negative for any enhancements sooo.”
Jennifer was thunderstruck. “SO??”
Lisa sighed hard. “So we need to see the school nurse like post-haste.”
To their horror, all four girls tested positive for HGH/BGH. “What’s going to happen to us?” Jennifer recalled the phone call earlier and wondered if Karl had heard about the arrest and decided to play it up, or was this the Transform or Dare curse changing reality so it would appear “natural.”
“I really don’t know, Kelly. It may not affect you at all, we haven’t dealt with these kinds of enhancements before. We know that they originated in Southwest Asia, so we need to get these to the nearest lab for analysis. My guess is, and this is just a guess, that you will all be affected differently.
The nurse was compassionate enough to send the girls home for the rest of the week, with the understanding that they would get a note and a call from the school advising their parents to their family doctor to be screened.
Since Jennifer’s mother was at work, Lisa’s mother gave her a ride home.
“Are you feeling OK, Jen?”
“Yeah…well, no. My face has been feeling kind of strange since this morning.”
“What? How do you mean, ‘strange’?”
“Uh, just sort of tickling, y’know around my ears.”
Lisa’s eyes narrowed. “Jen, have you always had fuzz along your cheeks?” She’d just noticed it in the sun, Jennifer seemed to have downy golden fuzz in front of, and surrounding her ears.
“…No.” Jennifer had a worried expression on her face. She was never very hairy to begin with, a natural golden-white blonde who never really had to shave.
“Ok…sorry Jennifer, but look at this.” Jen looked in the mirror of Lisa’s compact and saw what Lisa had noticed.
“Oh God,” she whispered.