School was about to begin for Jennifer, and she didn't want to be tardy this week. But how was she going to drive with these ridiculous chicken feet? More importantly, what would people say?
Jennifer reached for the phone to call her good friend Christi when the phone started to ring.
"Who is it?" asked Jennifer, fear in her voice.
"It's Christi. Something happened, and I need to see you. I'm on my way." Before Jennifer could say a word, the phone was dead.
Within ten minutes Jennifer heard an anxious knocking on the door, the doorbell ringing insistently. Grateful that her parents had already left for work, Jennifer threw on one of the strangely altered blouses in her closet over her body and headed downstairs. She didn't even stop to consider pants, her white feathers covering any embarrassing female parts.
Opening the door, Jennifer found her friend standing in the doorway. Christi rushed into the house, not even glancing at Jennifer. "Jennifer, you won't believe what happened to me, I-" Christi stopped in the middle of her sentence, her eyes finally taking in Jennifer's altered body, traveling from Jennifer's frightened blue eyes, over her unusual green blouse, down across her broad white feathered thighs and along her scaly orange shins.
Jennifer began to blush, but one glance at Christi made the blood drain from her cheeks. Like Jennifer, Christi was normal on top but changed on the bottom. Christi was sporting feathers of the lightest tan below her waist which ran down to her knees. Below the kneecap, her legs became featherless and scaly, their color a dull shade of pink. Christi's forward-facing toes had merged from five into three, her heel now resembling a shortened fourth (reversed) toe. To top it all off, Christi's nails had lengthened and thickened into translucent claws.
"What's happened to us?" asked Jennifer, almost speechless. Jennifer noticed that Christi was also wearing a long blouse that only served to cover her ample breasts.
"I don't know but it's happened to almost everyone!" replied Christi. "My parents are changed too. They're like bird people or something. I think my Mom gave me birdseed in my lunch bag. I had to get my Dad to drive me here because I told him that we had flying lessons together in the morning off campus. I mean...I don't even have wings!" exclaimed Christi, holding up her arms while unconsciously fanning her tailfeathers in agitation.
"Well, not yet you don't" responded Jennifer darkly.
During the brief pause in their conversation, Jennifer's home phone began to ring again. It was Michael, the captain of the East Hampton football team and her current boyfriend. "Uh, hey babe. I need to see you like right now. It's kind of an emergency."
"Michael, this is a bad time," replied the cheerleader.
It was only when he told her that he was pulling into the driveway right at that moment that Jennifer realized that she couldn't avoid him.
"Oh shit Christi, Michael's right outside!" yelled Jennifer.
At that moment, the doorbell rang for the second time that day. "It's me. Let me in babe!" hollered Michael.