"So there's no hope?" Carol asked, her voice audibly quivering as she tried to restrain herself from a total breakdown.
Dr. Perkins drew a deep breath and looked the mother straight in the eyes. "There is a slight hope, but I don't want you to spend the rest of your life holding onto it. They might recover, but it's nothing that we, the established medical community, can do."
There was hope, Jen thought. The biggest problem would be finding the right someone who could accept her, and another someone who could accept Lisa. Jen didn't particularly care about the rest of the cheerleading squad, as they were little more than a bunch of anorexic girls, but she and Lisa were very close.
She glanced Lisa's way, who was staring blankly at a wall. That's always what she did when faced with a huge problem - refusing to show her grief, she would simply find comfort in becoming like a stone.
As for Jen, she was already wiping a few stray tears from her face. She knew that she'd be balling her eyes out by nightfall.
Carol wrapped her arms around the girls and proceeded to usher them back out to the car, herself now a fountain of grief. "It's hard," she said to them in a reassuring voice, "but I'm sure we'll find a way to deal with it."
The three climbed into Carol's little vehical and began the drive home. Carol explained that she was going to call Jen's mom with the news and both girls decided it best to retreat to Lisa's room for the day. Jen knew that her mom would never accept her, and she was hoping that Carol would just take her in.
The car slid to a stop and the girls rushed up the stairs and into Lisa's bedroom. Lisa collapsed on her bed, immediately bringing her hands to her face and briefly fingering the skin for new hair.
"This makes zero sense!" she finally said, her voice strong again. "Hair that can't be shaved off, muscle growth irreversable? That's never happened before! And it should be genetically impossible for a person's breasts to grow too much after genetics have already determined their size!"
"There's something about all this that I have to tell you," Jen said. Kyle said in the rules that she could explain the conditions of the curse, just not how she got it.
"I'm cursed," Jen explained. Lisa looked at her, resigned to hear whatever else fantastic story that could be spun. "That's why this doesn't make sense, and it wasn't supposed to involve you to begin with.
"The thing is, I wound up with a curse. According to this same curse, I am forbidden to tell you how I got it, but I can tell you how to get rid of it."
"You're not pulling my leg, are you?" Lisa asked, now understanding the seriousness of Jen's monologue.
"No, I'm not. You see, our bodies are going to grow to be covered with hair. He - the one who cursed me - never said anything about muscle growth or libidos or anything like that. It was all focused on hair. It's going to grow and cover our bodies. But, we have until we turn 19 to find a guy who will love us for who we are, regardless of appearance. If that happens, then he will also share in the curse for five years, his own body mirroring ours. After that, the curse ends and we, for all intents and purposes, live happily ever after."
"It's like the rules in a fairy tale," Lisa muttered. She glanced in the mirror, noticing a slight shade of grey above her lip. "Well, I'm not about to spend the rest of my life looking like a hairy, lactating freak of nature. I suggest we get started on the solution right away. Just explain to everyone what's happening, and wait for someone who could care less."
"Easier said than done," Jen sighed.
"Not necessarily," Lisa explained. "Trust me, there's tons of kinky weirdos on the Internet. Not that I'd want to be with any of them, but there has to be a few decent people, and maybe in some truly caring guys in our school. We've just never really looked before - never had to look, being cheerleaders and all."
Jen knew Lisa was right. Rather than resign herself, she should give it her best shot. Love, true love, took time, but there was still enough time before her 19 birthday, two years away yet, to find that one guy.
She touched her cheeks, certain that she could feel the hair clearer than before. Lisa was already logged in to various dating sites and had a yearbook propped open on her lap. In another application, Jen could see her designing a database on her computer of actual prospects. Just like her to go all out. The hardest thing for Lisa, Jen joked to herself, would be finding someone who could accept her intense nature.