Mikey and Alan spent the remaining portion of recess sitting inside and talking. They covered a number of different topics, but quite a bit of the conversation centered around Mikey's status as the school's only harpy. This was a bit uncomfortable for her; she almost felt like she was being put on display. But Alan was too curious to make her feel like a freak, and he didn't seem like that kind of person anyway. He was genuinely interested in the details of her new form, although he was polite enough to not ask about the especially private bits.
And she indulged his thirst for information, even volunteering some facts he was too shy to ask, but she could tell he wanted to know. (His expressions of sympathy at learning that she was oviparous were a bit clueless, but comforting nonetheless.) Mikey found it odd that she was more upfront with him about her body than she had even been with herself, but it was nice just to be getting a bit of respect from someone outside her immediate family.
Alan, for his part, was feeling a bit awkward himself. He was at the age where most boys stop considering girls weird, but before they begin to find them desireable. So it was kind of strange for him to be showing this much interest in one, and he couldn't decide whether it made it more or less unusual that his new friend used to be a boy. But he had always been fascinated by animals, and that curiosity carried over full-force to his partly-avian schoolmate. He wanted to learn everything there was to know about harpies, and about Mikey.
But it would have to wait for now, because it was time to get back to class.
Jon was feeling a bit better now. She kind of felt that letting Carrie handle it was taking the easy way out, and that perhaps she should have told the staff herself. But on the other hand, it was going to be hard enough keeping Sarah from hating her with an alibi. Karyn at least just hadn't been particularily inclined to asked her not to assist, but Sarah had specifically asked her not to tell.
She wasn't really sure why she cared what Sarah thought. Part of it, she was sure, was sympathy for someone who was in essentially the same plight as her. And it was hard not to feel sorry someone who was so miserable.
Another possibility Jon considered was that she just liked having friends and acquaintances who had been through a change. Not so much for the sympathy factor as that she knew what they were, and it wasn't going to change. One thing she had picked up on in the past week was how arbitrary the whole thing was. Since the disease had no visible symptoms aside from the change, it was virtually impossible for anyone to know whether they had actually caught it or not. And it only had the rate of infection through exposure to an infected person as the common cold it replaced, so even that wasn't a reliable indicator. People could go for years without knowing-
Her thoughts were interrupted by a familiar figure racing down the hall. Karyn only used her cat-like quadripetal, bounding run when she was really in a hurry, so it was obvious something was up. Jon flitted down to face level with her cat-girl friend. "Hey, Karyn," she said. "What's up?"
"You haven't heard?" Karyn gasped. Jon shook her head, and Karyn's ears perked right up as she grinned wider than Jon had previously thought possible.
"Okay, get this," she said. "Those guys you told me about? The asshole jocks?"
"Steve Farber and the rest?" Jon asked. Where was this going?
Karyn nodded. "There's six new mermaids in the nurse's office."
Jon's eyes went as wide as Karyn's grin. "Believe it or not, but somehow the exact same strain of the disease got in the whole pool, and they were the only ones in their gym class who'd never been exposed! Twenty minutes in, and bam! they're flashing the whole rest of the class! Farber didn't even realize what happened until she caught sight of her own tail fin completing a lap!"
Jon tried to reply, but couldn't find the words. She knew she shouldn't be feeling glad about this, but it was difficult to feel sorry for people who'd tried to physically assault an ex-girl merely for being an ex-girl. "Um..." she stammered. "Uh..."
"Yeah," the cat-girl laughed. "That's what I said. They're draining and disinfecting the whole freaking pool room as we speak. Idon't know if this is God, or karma, or what, but it's pretty great."
