Lauren O'Brien had once been a member of Sarah's clique ... until Sarah became Saralyne. That tall bumpkin's face vaguely resembled Sarah's and had Sarah's hair color, but otherwise bore no resemblance to Lauren's former BFF.
Lauren turned to her other BFF, Tiffany Sanders, for answers. Tiffany didn't have them. She barked at Lauren in an Australian accent, "Get away from me, you cow!"
"Cow?" Lauren looked at herself. She had somehow become a bit plumper. Not a Gladys Brewer, not even close, but a bit too soft for the cheerleading squad. "This can't be! I wasn't fat this morning." To Lauren, a few extra pounds made her "fat."
Tiffany turned her back on Lauren.
"No! Tiffany!" Lauren waved her thickening arms in panic. "Please!"
The other students were staring at Lauren. A lot of them weren't white, or at least not fully white. Lake Point High's student body used to be almost all white. What was going on? How could the student body have been replaced overnight? No, even more quickly than that. Lauren had hardly seen any nonwhites when she came to school before first period. Sarah had still been Sarah then. If Lauren had been more observant, she would have noticed that Sarah's blue nails had turned purple - halfway toward the red they became during first period. Where did all these ... out of towners, no, foreigners come from? Their accents were beyond the range that Lauren was accustomed to.
As if the strangers around her weren't disorienting enough, the walls of the school building began to warp. Lauren saw the words "Lake Point" on a poster morph into "Whitelace." The floor beneath her feet became cleaner. The lights over her head shone brighter. The entire facility was being upgraded before her eyes which felt funny. She blinked and even tried to cry, but the odd sensation wouldn't go away. Her skin was tingling.
She shoved open the girls' bathroom door and halted in front of a mirror. Her eyes were wide open. They were hazel now and getting browner by the second. Her short nose was losing its upward tilt and lengthening. The freckles that had been sprinkled across it since childhood were vanishing as her skin darkened slightly. Worst of all, her bright red mane was turning brown. Even her scalp was tingling now. Her hair wasn't being dyed; its very roots were changing. "Oh my ..." She thought of G-d. Her brain automatically inserted the hyphen. It never did that before.
She looked down at the cross pendant she wore. It was fading away. A blink later, it was gone. Part of her wondered why she had such a thing. Hadn't she had a Bat Mitzvah? But she was, no, had been a Catholic like her Irish ... no, Jewish ancestors. She looked like Lauren O'Brien with a lot of special effects makeup to conceal her Irish features, but she also looked like her new mother. The name "Amber" popped into her head. Mrs. Amber Levine. Amber? My other BFF? But she is ... was my age! That would make her ... and me ... Lauren didn't dare finish her thought as she fished for her wallet. Her ID card confirmed her fears. It said she was Lauren Levine, a student of Whitelace Academy. The photo of her on it matched the dark-eyed brunette in the mirror.
She dropped the piece of plastic on the floor and stepped away from it, as if distance could save her from the changes it represented. She bumped into two girls behind her. "Oh!"
"What's wrong?" asked one of them.
"I'm sorry," said Lauren. "I ..." She recognized the girl's voice as Melony Tyne's. The girl was almost like Melony ... except she was mostly Caucasian. Melony's skin was bleaching.
"Are you okay?" asked the other girl.
"No," replied Lauren. "Everyone's changing! Even you ... Yuki!?"
"I'm not Yuki," said the other increasingly white girl. "I'm ..."
