It wasn't strictly true that Jenny knew Michelle; she'd seen her around at school a few times and said hello once or twice, but Michelle was far from the friendliest girl in the world, for reasons that made much more sense now. Jenny wondered if Michelle had any friends at all outside of her family; maybe the reason she'd invited Jenny over was that she was lonely, and Jenny already knew her secret.
Jenny continued to wonder about the reclusive mermaid-girl as she walked down the couple blocks separating their houses. It was still early fall and plenty warm, so she'd just put on her swimsuit and headed out; after all, if she was going to be hanging out in the poolhouse, she may as well be ready to hop in the pool, if that was okay.
In a few minutes, Jenny had finished her trek and was standing at Michelle's front door. She knocked and waited, and the door was answered by Michelle's mom. "You must be Jenny, right?" she said. "Come on in."
Jenny stepped inside the house, and Michelle's mom shut the door. "I know Michelle already asked you," she said, "but I need to reiterate: it's very important that you not let anyone else know about this. We've gone to a lot of trouble to keep Michelle's secret over the years, and it would all be for nothing if you let other people know. Michelle has a hard enough time with her condition as it is; having her suddenly be the focus of a media frenzy would be just awful. Do you understand how important this is?"
Jenny nodded, and Michelle's mom smiled. "Good girl. She's out back, in the pool." Jenny made her way to the back door of the house. She pushed the door open and stepped into a corridor, greeted by a warm, moist breeze. She walked down the corridor, opened the other door, and stepped into the poolhouse.
The pool was huge, monstrous. It took up nearly the entire area of the building and to be nearly half as deep as it was wide, except for a small five-foot area. Various objects were scattered around the edge of the room, most notably Michelle's wheelchair, by the ladder out of the shallow end. Michelle herself was hanging on the edge of the pool in the five-foot section, staring at her visitor.
"Hey," she said. "Come on in, if you want."
Jenny smiled and jumped right in. When she had surfaced, the two began to talk.
"So," Michelle said, "let me get the basics down first. Yes, I'm a mermaid. Yes, I can breathe water. But no, I wasn't born this way."
"But then why did your parents build this when you were born?" Jenny asked. "And you've been in that wheelchair since as long as any of the kids at school can remember..."
Michelle sighed. "Well, that's the strange part. See, I used to-" She hesitated for a moment. "Ah, heck you already know my most attention-getting secret. I used to be a normal human boy."
Jenny wasn't quite as surprised as she probably should have been, given the things that had happened to her family lately. She feigned a little shock, and Michelle continued. "So did my sister Jennifer. A couple months ago, though, he became a girl, and I became...this."
Jenny was even more curious now. "How?" she asked.
Michelle shrugged. "That's the thing. I don't know, and neither does Jon-er, Jennifer. All we know is that there was some kind of rock involved, but we can't remember anything else about our changes, even though we can remember the rest of our lives perfectly. But everyone except Jon and her friend Karyn and me thinks we were always girls, even Mom and Dad. I guess that sounds crazy, but it's the truth."
"Not that crazy," Jenny said. She almost blurted out then and there about the changes that had happened to her family, but caught herself; maybe she shouldn't be sharing that just yet. Instead, she stared at Michelle's tail while she tried to think of what else to say.
"You can touch it if you want to," Michelle said. Jenny gently brushed the scales of the mermaid-girl's tail, running her hand down the softly-muscled curvature, then drew her hand away; she wasn't sure what the deal was, but something about this was giving her a funny feeling in her penis, and she didn't want it to draw attention, whatever it was doing.
Karen Connely had just put a pie in the oven when her husband walked in the door. "You're home early," she said. "Slow day at the office?"
Mark nodded. "Yep. It's nice to have one every now and then; God knows I was too cranky to stay much longer, with these periods. How the hell did you manage to keep yourself so reasonable when you had to deal with that?"
Karen smirked and shrugged. "You just do; I suppose it helps when you have all of puberty to get used to it."
"I suppose so. Well," Mark said, hanging up his jacket, "at least it's over with, for now." He walked over and embraced his wife. "Where are the kids?"
"Becky's still at school, and Jenny's visiting a friend down the street," Karen replied. "Mmm, have I told you how much I love the way you hold me?"
Mark smiled. "Yep, but I don't mind hearing it again. So, any plans for the afternoon?"
Karen looked up at her husband, a gleam in her eye. "Well, we've got about a half-hour before the pie's done," she grinned.
Mark smiled. "Yeah, we...wait, are you suggesting-"
Karen took him by the hand. "I think," she said, "that it's time we got reacquainted."
