The Angst of Metamorphosis by Everett Maroon

Carolyn Ross was going to become a star phoenix, I could tell. She already had luxurious multi-colored hair that looked more gold or red depending on the light or what she was wearing that day. Even from across our dingy cafeteria, she stood out, and not just because a small crowd of devotees followed her wherever she went. She actually radiated a little, like her body just couldn’t wait to show off what it would become. Soon, from the look of things.

On our part of the planet, children went into metamorphosis around their fourteenth to sixteenth autumn; back where my cousins lived, nearer the equator, it was earlier, often before their twelfth autumn.

Carolyn and the rest of my class were on the edge of the shift, but I for one wasn’t looking forward to it.

My friend Gabby noticed me assessing Carolyn and her entourage.

“Realistic expectations, my friend,” she said, uncrinkling the cellophane off her sandwich—today it was chicken salad wrapped in lettuce leaves. She held it in her tiny olive fingers like a musical instrument she would play instead of lunch she’d eat.

“What are you talking about?” I poked at my cold spaghetti with a plastic fork. Specialty of the world-famous Chef Boyardee.

“We’re not Miss Carolyn Ross. But our metas will be what’s right for us.”

“That’s a nice thought.”

I focused on turning one strand of pasta into 37 pieces, all separated from each other forever. My next step was to mash them into the sauce. This was preferable to eating any of it.

We turned to see a scuffle at the doors to the cafeteria, where a barrel-chested student staggered over to a support column. Wiry, thick porcupine-like quills stuck out through his shirt and sliced through what had very recently been a neutral pair of khakis; the staple of our school’s dress code. He grunted and slammed into the support again, as if the backs of his ribs would better comprehend what it was, as poles go, than his eyes could manage.

Sometimes metamorphosis came on badly, threatening the mental capacity of the human, which is why we attended training early in life to help manage the moment of the first and most powerful meta. This classmate clearly hadn’t studied very hard before his change into a human-sized, wild boar.

“Is that Warren Beauman?” I pointed with my fork. I’d bent the tines and now they stuck out at odd angles.

“Good eye,” said our friend Jeffrey Cox, who sat down at our table.

His avocado-green cafeteria tray was warped in the middle, so his cup of milk had sloshed over the rim a few times. Jeffrey once took a lot of teasing, both because of his last name and because he was large. He had learned to ignore most of the constant taunting, basically by growing close to two stories tall. Unsurprisingly, he turned into a grizzly bear at his first meta last year. At this point, only the most buff of the football players would take him on. So whether in metamorphosis or “in plain state,” as we called it, messing with Jeffrey was something of a very bad, terrible idea.

“Seems there won’t be much of Warren tomorrow,” said Gabby, nibbling at a corner of lettuce. Slowly she looked back at Jeffrey and me as school security led him away, probably to Dr. Hendrix’s office downstairs. Dr. Hendrix was our school’s chair of the Metamorphosis Department and she had seen more bad metas than probably anyone else in town.

“This is why it pays to study, people,” said Jeffrey, eating half of his cheese steak in one bite.

“That doesn’t bother your stomach?”

“Oh, it’ll bother my stomach later, but it doesn’t matter if I eat it in two pieces or twenty. Cafeteria food is cafeteria food.”

I nodded and waited for the bell to signal the end of the period.

#

Unfolding the first wing was challenging. Gloppy with thick slime, little bits of orange shell still stuck to the translucent skin that showed just how hard my heart—whatever heart I had at the moment—was pulsing hard.

Hold on, hold on, I told myself. I had a searing need to flap my arms, or wings, or whatever protruded out from my shoulders. Me, I was me, I needed to remember. Hannah Pace, that’s me. I live at 31927 Carousel Boulevard. My cat is Mr. Stinkers, named when I was little. I’m smart and not very pretty, and not sure I want to be, anyway.

Forget pretty, I’m some kind of small dragon now.

I gave in to the urge to shake myself out, and amniotic fluid exploded off of me, landing on the ceiling, desk, and my True Blood poster. Dad would not like this, me having my meta without anyone around, but I didn’t feel particularly eggish the night before, so I gave myself a pass.

Broad wings, from the look of them. I turned to look at myself in the full-length mirror, but either my eyes were still adjusting or I’d gotten fluid on the glass, because all I could discern was a long streak of red. Maybe a big spike at the end of my tail. Seeing that, I remembered Dr. Hendrix’s class. Only practice moving in a safe environment. Ask for help. Stay grounded. Grounded.

With wings, could I fly? This was way better than a silly star phoenix, with all those ashes that just made a mess.

I opened my mouth and roared, fighting a deep need to blow fire across the room.

I couldn’t wait to show Gabby and Jeff.

———

Everett Maroon lives and writes in Walla Walla, Washington, and blogs at Trans/plant/portation.com. He has had short stories published in SPLIT Quarterly and Twisted Dreams Magazine.