“Wait,” Tabitha said once they left the room. “I should grab a few more clothes. We don’t want our new friends to go around naked, now do we?”
Ricki slapped her forehead. “Yea, that would make sense. Go ahead and meet us downstairs then.”
Tabitha went back into the bedroom while Ricki and Brenda headed down to Rick’s lab. They got to the door and descended the cold, concrete steps. The senses in both of their feet told them they were still missing something from their attire. “Make sure to bring some shoes down, too!” Ricki called up, hoping Tabitha would hear her. “I wonder if we’ll ever get this right,” she laughed.
The mysterious pink smoke was still hanging over the lab in a big, dense cloud. Even with the windows open, it had not funneled out into the open air. “That’s strange, isn’t it?” Brenda asked.
“Very strange,” Ricki affirmed. “I’ve never seen any kind of smoke just hang like that.”
They were still standing on the steps. They were not close enough to breathe in any of the smoke. Brenda was worried. She asked, “Are you sure that if we breathe in some of that we won’t change?”
Ricki looked at her. “I have no idea. We’re just going to have to chance it.”
“That’s not very reassuring,” Brenda said.
Ricki motioned with her head for Brenda to follow her down the rest of the way. Brenda did so more than a little reluctantly. They reached the bottom of the stairs. Ricki kept walking but Brenda stopped where she was. “Would you come on?” Ricki asked impatiently.
“No, I-I’m too afraid,” said Brenda.
Ricki threw up her arms. “Fine, I’ll walk into it, and prove to you that there’s nothing wrong. OK?” Brenda nodded. Ricki turned and walked over to the equipment tables. The smoke hung low enough that her entire upper body passed through it. As soon as she entered the thick daze, Ricki noticed something. She wasn’t coughing. She hadn’t been able to stop coughing earlier in the night when she was Rick. And all of that had immediately preceded her transformation. “See?” she turned back to Brenda, though she could not clearly see her. “It’s fine. I’m not coughing at all.”
For Brenda, that was all she needed to hear. She had coughed enough herself earlier in the night. But she also remembered how Ricki told her she changed, so she wasn’t worried anymore. However, as soon as she entered the cloud of smoke, she began to cough violently. “No…” she pleaded. “I don’t want to change.”
Ricki heard her friend’s trouble and came running to her. She grabbed Brenda by the wrist and pulled her out of the smoke cloud. She sat her down on one of the wooden chairs in the lab. “Stay here,” Ricki said. “I’ll find what I need and be right back.” Ricki tore back through the lab and found the Flits can in the back of one of her cabinets. She ran back through the smoke and back to Brenda. Brenda was still coughing, but it seemed to be subsiding. “OK, I’m here,” she said, putting her hand on Brenda’s thigh, hoping to comfort her in some way.
A minute later Tabitha came running down the stairs. “What’s wrong?” she asked. There was a very worried look on her face. She heard at least some of the commotion.
Brenda suddenly stopped coughing. “Oh, God,” she said, and took a deep breath. “That did not feel good.”
“Are you OK?” Ricki asked, still worried.
“I feel fine now,” Brenda answered. She giggled. “I think I feel better than I did before.”
Ricki jerked her head back in disbelief. “How can you feel better now?”
“You’re the scientist,” Brenda replied. “You tell me.”
“Then tell me how you felt and how you feel now,” Ricki demanded. There was definitely something strange about what Brenda said.
“Right after I transformed, I felt great, better than I ever had,” Brenda explained. “But there was still something that felt…missing. I have no idea, but something still didn’t feel right.”
“Was it something mental?” Tabitha asked. “Like you knew you were supposed to be Brendon?”
“No,” Brenda said. “Not at all. It was more like something hadn’t developed yet. Like there was still some kind of internal change that didn’t happen. But I have no idea what.”
Ricki and Tabitha absorbed what Brenda said. “This doesn’t make any sense to me,” Tabitha said. “Do you understand what she means?” she asked Ricki.
“Maybe,” she said. “I changed after I inhaled the smoke. Brenda changed after having sex with me. So did you.”
“Yea, so how come I don’t feel like that?” Tabitha asked.
“You don’t?” Rick asked. Tabitha shook her head. “That’s what I needed to know. Brenda and I changed sexes. You didn’t. Brenda and I have both inhaled the smoke now. You haven’t. So, if Brenda is right, and there was some kind of internal change that still had to happen, it happened to me immediately, but it didn’t happen to Brenda until just now. You don’t feel that way because you were always a woman.”
Tabitha looked up at the ceiling. She tried to decipher Ricki’s theory. She realized it did make sense. “Maybe,” she said. “Heck if I know, you’re the scientist.”
“That’s what I said,” Brenda laughed.
“So what’s going to happen if I inhale the smoke?” Tabitha asked.
“Probably nothing,” Ricki answered.
“Probably?” Tabitha asked suspiciously. “That’s your best answer?”
“Just wait a minute and see if she changes at all,” Ricki snapped. She looked back at Brenda who suddenly looked worried once more. They waited for two minutes, but nothing happened. “I changed in about three or four minutes after first breathing the smoke,” Ricki said. “It’s been longer than that for her. So, no, you won’t change.”
“Fine,” Tabitha said. With that she walked into the cloud of smoke. She stood at the edge and started coughing almost immediately. She backed out of the cloud and stumbled to the chair next to Brenda and sat down. A minute or two later and she stopped coughing just as suddenly as Brenda had.
“Do you feel any different?” Ricki asked.
“Not in the least,” Tabitha answered.
“That’s good to know,” Ricki said. She picked up the can and walked back to the smoke. She collected as much of it as she could in the can, surprised to find how much it held. She looked back at the cloud of smoke and saw that it did not appear diluted at all. "We're ready now," she said to the others.
"What about the windows?" asked Brenda, having noticed they were open. "You don't want to let it get away, do you?"
"If it was going to, it would have a while ago," Ricki said. "There's something very strange about this smoke."
"No kidding," Brenda replied sarcastically. "Look what it did."
"I meant besides the obvious," Ricki chuckled. "I need to study it somehow when we have time." She gave it one last, lingering look. "Weird," she mumbled. "But we don't have time now," she said, turning back to her two friends. "Let's get our little transformation tour underway."
Brenda and Tabitha stood up and they ran up the stairs. "There's our shoes," Tabitha pointed to the three pairs of heels, each one a different color matching their dresses. They put them on.
"Wow," Brenda said. "They don't feel uncomfortable at all. It feels like I've been wearing them for years."
"Good," Tabitha said. "Because they're going to make your feet hurt soon enough." She laughed when Brenda gave her a puzzled look. "Just trust me."
"OK, let's go," Ricki said. Her hands clutched tightly onto the spray can of smoke. Tabitha grabbed the extra clothes and they went out the door.