The pair walked home briskly, hoods up and faces cast downwards. Jen’s mind was on Beth constantly as she tried to swallow the reality of what was going to happen. She suddenly realized why people drown themselves in alcohol – the reality could very well be too difficult to face, and by facing it head on, she could easily speed up the process more than she already had by fretting about her mother so much.
At home, Carol spoke to Andy, who was full of questions and plans for Thanksgiving. When she heard that there was another meeting, a whole slew of questions followed.
“I don’t know yet what went on,” Carol replied. “I promise I’ll try to find out and get back to you.” Saying their goodbyes, she politely hung up. “Where are those girls?” she wondered aloud.
Almost as soon as she’d said it, the two stepped inside. “Where have you been?” Lisa pulled her hood forward a bit and strode past her, making sure not to make any eye contact. Jen proceeded to quickly explain that they’d gone to see Beth, paying no mind to Lisa.
“Oh, and how is she?” Carol asked.
Jen gulped, unsure of how to answer. She simply shook her head. “I’m not ready to talk about it yet,” she said at last. “It wasn’t good.” She quickly recounted their visit, saying next to nothing about Beth’s physical condition and focusing instead on Greg and his handling of it all.
Carol nodded and Jennifer dismissed herself. After she’d gone, Carol managed to stifle her tears long enough to escape into the privacy of her room, collapsing on her head and finally letting the tears flow and the sobs escape from her choked throat. Her mind felt hazy, as though she didn’t know what to think. She knew what she had to do, and that was to love and protect her daughter, both physically and mentally, but beyond that everything was a haze and she was feeling burnt out.
Suddenly came a light rapping on the door. It was Lisa, she knew. No matter what was happening to her on the outside, Lisa was still the same girl she’d always been, and she always would be. “Mom?” a quavering voice came next.
“Come in, Sweety,” Carol called. She had just enough time to sit up clean her face off when Lisa nervously crept in, closing the door behind her. Carol did all she could to stifle a cry at the sight of her daughter’s face. Her dark black hair made it impossible to hide the fact that her beard and moustache were now taking off, and her nose was growing a bit bushy as well. At the moment, however, what caught Carol’s attention more was her eyes. Water was welling up in them, and she could see that Lisa was fighting with all her strength to keep it from spilling.
She tapped the bed next to her and Lisa carefully climbed in. Carol instinctively pulled her into a tight hug just as the sobs broke free and began to gently rock side to side as though comforting a small child. “You’re okay,” she whispered into her fuzzy ears.
“No, I’m not! No, I’m not!” Lisa choked a bit and proceeded to explain to her mother about Beth in great detail. With each new detail, Carol seemed to only tighten her grip, both in sorrow and fresh anger at what that coach had done. “I’m not even human, Mom! One day it’ll disappear entirely!” she woefully burst out after all was said.
“You listen to me,” Carol said, gently rubbing her daughter’s back as they embraced. “You are human, and you always will be. What really separates man from beast? Is it our bodies? It’s what’s inside of us that makes us human. You’re a human, and you always will be, and I’ll always treat you as such.”
“But you won’t recognize me,” Lisa protested. “What’s going to happen when I’m like Beth? When one day you walk into my room and find a monster in place of what was once your daughter? Or when my humanity is so far gone that the only way to make any human connection is by emitting these awful hormones?” Her mind briefly traced back to Jen, and how she was more than happy to win a guy through pheromones alone. To Lisa, it was preposterous and sick. Just a few weeks ago she wouldn't have accepted that as a valid reason to date anyone, and she certainly wasn't going to assume it was a good reason now.
Carol released her grip and cupped Lisa’s face in her hands, making sure that her fingers didn’t show any signs of disgust as the soft skin of her palms met with the bristles that so freely spouted about her child’s face. As the tears slid down, they splintered into a veil of water upon reaching the new growth of hair, prompting Carol to briskly wipe her face clean.
“You listen to me,” she said in a voice that was both stern and loving. “You are always my daughter, no matter what happens, and I will always recognize you. Okay? You and I are joined at the hip, and always have been. The Papidaki family only grows closer in times of crisis, not farther apart. You’ll do well to remember that.
‘I’m so proud of you. You have an inner strength that most your age don’t. I know who my Lisa is, no matter how she looks.” She gave her one last quick squeeze before finishing with, "I don't know if anyone will ever fall in love with you, and I mean really fall in love, but I do know that you're smart enough to only be with someone who loves you for who you are, and I'm sure that Jen will see that in time as well. She's just desperate right now and clinging to any signs of hope she can find."
Lisa swallowed hard. Could she always be true to herself, even in the face of such a massive genetic change? And even then, did she really know who Lisa was? She felt a surge of relief as her mother flattered her with that talk about inner strength and such, but she didn’t see it in herself. Lisa knew who she had been, that’s for sure. She was that little bookworm who relied on Jen’s strength to push her where she couldn’t go herself. She was that one student who always made the honor role and was considered a model student by her teachers. No one could really care about any of that now, could they? And if they did, it would only be second to what she now be known as. Perhaps her mom saw something in her that she couldn’t see herself, but she couldn’t place her finger on it.
After she’d calmed a bit, Carol began to check her over, making sure that she would never make Lisa feel like a science experiment, especially now. She gently turned her head, running her fingers alongside the hair that was now growing inside her ears. She breathed a sigh of relief as they moved upwards, running through her hair, scrutinizing her scalp for any sense of budding horns, only to find none, and also finding that the hair still clung firmly to her scalp and wouldn’t be falling out any time soon.
“Let me see your feet,” Carol said in a way that sounded like a request. Lisa bent over and pulled the socks off her feet, turning around to allow her mother to examine them fully. Carol ran her fingers over the developing pads. “Can you feel this?”
Lisa shook her head. That wasn’t entirely true, as she could feel the pressure that something was touching her feet, but she couldn’t feel the texture or tell what it was without looking. Then, to her utter surprise, Carol drew the foot her mouth and gently kissed one of the developing pads, like a mother kissing a young child’s boo boo.
Lisa drew her foot back and replaced the sock whilst Carol slid beside her and placed her arm over her shoulders. “We’ll get through this,” she reassured. The two sat in silence for a while until Carol noticed Lisa fidgeting with what had to be her bra straps. A quick look at her chest told her what time it was.
“You go take care of that,” she said. “I’ll be out for a bit, but I’ll be back as quick as I can.”
Lisa nodded and headed towards the bathroom, sure that Jen had already beat her there. Carol stood up, stretched, and drove to Beth’s house.
She looked scornfully at Greg’s home and attempted to knock politely on the door. Her frown quickly turned into a forced grin when the door opened and Greg stood staring at her, not bothering to try and mask his displeasure at receiving yet another visitor that morning.
“I hear Beth hasn’t been doing well,” she said after a moment of awkward silence.
“You a reporter?” the man snorted, more than prepared to slam the door in her face at a moment’s notice.
“No, my daughter is a friend of hers. She and another friend came to visit this morning.”
Greg looked her over before rolling his eyes and muttering, “I don’t see the resemblance.”
That was an insult Carol couldn’t bear to take. Placing her hand on the door, she forced it to open all the way and invited herself in, slamming it behind her. Several vases near the entrance shook at the force and her fiery eyes turned on the small man now standing in the corner with the same vacant look in his eyes as when they first met.
“Do you hear yourself?” she asked him, doing all she could to keep her voice down. “Did you talk that way towards them? Do you have any sympathy at all?”
Greg didn’t answer at all. In fact, he acted like he hadn’t even heard. “What are you, the local know-it-all?” he asked. A childish remark, but he didn’t care.
“I’m the parent of a suffering child, the same as you!” Carol retorted. “How can you be so cold?”
Greg looked about, as though making sure he couldn’t be overheard. If the walls had ears, that’s exactly how he behaved. He took a seat in a dining room chair and looked at Carol with a pained face.
“I’m a terrible parent,” he admitted, “but I really can’t stand to be around her. I know it’s wrong, but it seems that every time I look at her, I see less and less of the Beth I knew. The other night I was looking through some old scrapbooks and O how beautiful she looked! Then I think of the creature I’m now saddled with, and I can’t stand seeing her like that! I just want her back – the way she used to be.”
Normally, an outburst like that would have tugged on Carol’s heartstrings, but not this time. “You don’t think I don’t have feelings like that?” she asked. “You don’t think that all I want is to return Lisa to normal? Every one of those girls’ parents feels exactly the same way. The question is how are you going to handle it? If Beth had been disabled in an accident, would you treat her as you do now?
‘It’s hard to look at Lisa and the other girls, but how much harder is it for them to look at themselves, or each other for that matter? This is everyone’s problem, and unless we behave as a unit, you’ll lose your daughter in more ways than one.”
Greg didn’t respond. He simply stared at the floor as though desperately trying to regain his composure. Carol paid him no mind and reached into her over-sized purse.
“I brought some cookies for Beth,” she said. Greg simply gestured towards the living room in response and Carol went on her way.
In the far corner of the room was a staircase, and Carol spotted what she knew could only be Beth sitting on the top step, doubled over. She rushed to her side and tentatively clasped her shoulder.
“I just fell,” she replied. “I was on my way back to my room from the bathroom and tripped.”
“Well, let’s get you back to your room, then,” Carol replied as gently as she could. She helped the small girl to her feet, trying not to stare too hard at her. Beth had always been shy, and especially around her for some reason. As they walked, she realized that she had to keep a firm grip on her arm to keep her from swaying too much. She couldn’t tell if it was her feet or if her sense of balance was just in need of a lot of recalibration.
Her thoughts momentarily turning back to Lisa and Jennifer, she wondered if Andy would be available at home for when they needed help getting around, or if she should just look for some walkers for them to use until their balance came back. Would they think that’s silly?
Carol helped Beth climb back into bed and the two began to eat cookies and chat. It wasn’t about much, as Carol knew how shy Beth was around her. They talked about small things, such as school, the weather, and food.
“Do you ever plan on going back to school?” Carol asked.
Beth just shook her head. “I’m currently being cyber schooled, and I like that a lot. I don’t know what good it does me, though. I don’t even have plans of leaving the house again, except for Thanksgiving, of course.”
“You and the other girls should go hang out sometime,” Carol said. “I’m sure it would do a lot of good to get you out of the house, and you don’t have to go anywhere special. Even if all you want is to hang out at my house, wouldn’t that be better than here all the time?”
“Maybe once in a while. The problem is that I don’t think anybody understands. Even the other girls, since they aren’t where I am yet. Nobody understands us; not even our families.”