"I keep telling Ethan he needs to stop whining about this and deal with it," Abby said.
"So, you don't care if this ever gets fixed?"
"What? Of course I do...but I'm dealing with it. And I might have to deal with it forever."
She spotted Ethan on his phone, pretty much ignoring the conversation until Lydia ran up to him excitedly. "Come have fun with me," she told him.
"Go...stop looking at your phone for five minutes," Abby said.
"But...Da-bbby," Ethan said.
Lydia looked at him. "I just...have a lot of energy...maybe we could play catch," she suggested.
"Or fetch," Rebecca said, with some seriousness.
Back at the mall, Mikey and Simon had traded in the clothes they had been wearing for store credit to offset what they wore out and were sitting on a bench. "Today hasn't sucked..." Mikey said. "Unlike the rest of the week."
"You've been in a bad mood all week," Simon pointed out.
"Do you blame me? This is the first good time I've had since..." he gestured to himself. "No one at school gets what is going on."
"You think I don't understand?" Simon said. "And do you think any of my friends understand this? The only person I sort of talked to about it was Zoe...But we're in a house full of people in the same situation." He paused. "Have you been having dreams?"
Mikey didn't look at him when answering. "Yeah...can't remember them clearly..."
"Neither can I...but they've been pretty intense either way. I woke up and everything just felt...different. Then I realized because I was on that inflatable mattress again."
"What are you guys talking about?" A familiar voice said. They looked up to see Athena and Zoe standing there. "And what's with the wardrobe change?" Zoe asked.
"I hate wearing your stuff, so I got some of my own, okay?" Mikey said.
"Sure....but...that's...different," Zoe said.
"I think it looks great..." Athena said. It was more her taste than Zoe's old taste, to be honest.
"Thanks," Mikey said. He seemed in a less bad mood.
"We've been talking about...the changes," Athena said, not sure what to call them.
"What about them?" Simon asked.
"Just...Zoe said some things without realizing it that I noticed were strange. Was wondering about the two of you."
"Like what?" Mikey asked.
"Well, how about this...I'm going to ask you a question, and you say the first thing that pops into your mind, okay? Don't think about it," Athena said. They both nodded. She looked at Simon first. "What's your full name?"
"Simon Bla..." he paused suddenly, realizing what he'd started to say.
All of them had a perplexed look. Picking up behaviors was one thing...but names?
