Seth and Wyatt timidly walked through the back gate of Zoey's yard.

Immediately, Seth was struck with that feeling of, "I am not nearly important enough to be in a place this nice."

As he'd heard about many times before, there sat their indoor pool, built onto the house. Through the glass, he could see a waterslide built into rockwork behind the pool.

They also had a volleyball court, and a shed with some fourwheelers parked inside, visible through the open door.

They had what was basically a two story deck on the back of the house around the pool building, like a balcony with a normal deck below it, and staircase connecting the two.

I feel so poor, Seth thought.

On the top deck Seth saw some people he thought he recognized from school, lounging on chairs to try to get some of the springtime sun.

On the lower deck, a woman, probably Zoey's Mom, was out cooking food on a grill embedded in a stone counter.

Gosh, too rich even for a normal barbecuer.

He was being judgemental now. He put on a hopefully not fake looking smile as Zoey came out of the backdoor, wearing a swimsuit.

"Hi guys!" she said, "the food should be ready in about a half an hour or so. You can take a dip in the pool if you want right now. There's changing stalls over there if you need them."

She pointed over to where - legit - she straight up had changing stalls, like this was a public pool.

"Do you like, rent this place out to people?" Wyatt asked.

"Yeah," Zoey answered. "We do all the time. We let friends use it too. My Aunt does swimming lessons here during the summer."

"Neat," Wyatt said.

Zoey went out to the pool, and Wyatt and Seth walked through after her. There weren't a whole lot of people there yet, less then ten probably. The surface of the pool was undisturbed.

"What should we do?" Wyatt whispered.

The people sitting around the pool briefly glanced at them, but then returned to their conversations, one of which Zoey was now joining.

"Wait," Seth suggested to him. "I'm not going to be that guy that's the first to get into the pool."

"I am." Wyatt grinned.

Before Seth could stop him, Wyatt jumped into the deep end. Thankfully, Wyatt wasn't dumb enough to do a cannonball, but Seth noted surprise and disapproval from his peers.

That's where Seth drew the line in the popularity contest. Wyatt was his friend, and he wasn't going to be ashamed of him.

Seth tossed his stuff onto one of the pool chairs, and then jumped in after Wyatt.

The water was surprisingly warm as he sank down towards the bottom. Seth was thankful for it being inside, as any water outside, especially the ocean, would probably be too cold right now to comfortably swim in.

Seth relaxed in the comfortable boyancy of the water. He enjoyed swimming, and during the summer went to the ocean a lot to swim.

Wyatt laughed. "Thought you said you were going to wait."

Seth shrugged, which was kind of hard when he was treading water. "Just didn't want to be the first one in."

"Someone's gotta do it man," Wyatt smiled.

They looked over, and saw that Zoey and some of her friends were entering at the shallow end.

"Just promise me you'll hold off on going down the waterslide for now," Seth teased.

"Don't worry man," Wyatt said, "there'll be plenty of opportunities tonight for me to make a fool of myself."

Seth made a nervous laugh, and headed over to talk to Zoey. Though Zoey had invited him to come to her party, she hadn't affirmatively said whether she wanted to go on another date. He couldn't figure out what she meant to tell him then.

"Seems like your boyfriend likes to swim," Zoey smiled as he came over.

Again?

"Wyatt's not my boyfriend," Seth said. "I mean, I'm bi, so I've thought about it a bit, but I feel like it would be weird to date one of my best friends."

"It's just that you two seem inseparable," Zoey said. "You've been friends since elementary school right?"

"Yeah," Seth answered.

Zoey had been gathering information on him. Why? Was she into him? And did he and Wyatt really look like they were dating?

"Sorry," Zoey said, seeming to notice his discomfort. "My brother's gay, so I'm just not used to seeing guys so chummy with each other and not in a relationship."

"Oh," Seth said, feeling a little relieved.

Seth tried to think of some interesting question to ask Zoey, that would provoke good conversation. Perhaps asking her more about her classes at school, and -

Seth suddenly felt a bad pain in his stomach. Like, really bad.

He'd nearly forgotten what it was.

"Are you okay?" Zoey asked.

"I'm... no," Seth said. "Just a second, I need to talk to Wyatt."

"You look like you need to get help," one of the girls said with concern in her eyes.

Seth didn't feel like swimming over to his friend. "Wyatt?" he called.

Another stab of pain went through him, in the lower part of his gut, a feeling of pain distinct from the general stomach pain. The girls began helping him out of the pool as Wyatt swam over.

Sweat beaded on his forehead as they helped him up the pool steps. He was feeling weaker, and they really had to lift him to get him to walk.

They brought him into the house, into some kind of game room. Wyatt ran up and handed Seth his towel before the girls sat him on the couch.

"Someone call for help," Zoey said with really worried eyes. "This looks really serious."

"No," Seth groaned out as one of the girls looked like they were about to tap the emergency button on their phone.

"What?" Zoey said, "Seth you -"

"We know what it is," Wyatt told her. "We... we kind of were messing with transformational fluid."

Zoey's eyes widened. "You took gene juice?"

"It was just a little fun," Seth strained to say, "we were just going to turn into wolves for a few hours, but for some - aghhh," he groaned, "for... for some reason mine didn't work."

"Oh Seth that was really stupid," Zoey said, gripping his hand nonetheless. "So you're going to become a wolf for a few hours now?"

Seth didn't answer. His body felt like absolute crap. He started crying, feeling like a wimp. Wyatt and Skylar must've had a much better pain tolerance than he did.

The pain flared in his lower abdomen, and then there was a horrible sting in his groin.

Seth let out a scream he tried to supress, but he couldln't. His hands shot to his groin in some vain attempt to protect it.

One of Zoey's friends ran over to the door, closing the blinds on the glass doors, locking them, and turning on the lights.

"What's going on?" Wyatt said in confusion, "this didn't happen to me or Skylar when we changed."

As Seth clutched his groin, he made a horrible realization. His manhood. It was gone.

With a quivering hand, he reached his hand down his swim trunks, and then shot it back out just as quickly.

"Seth," Zoey asked, "what's going on?"

"No no no no no!" Seth cried out. "It's gone! It's... it's gone..."

Wyatt had a deeply disturbed look on his face, which didn't make Seth feel any better.

"This," Wyatt said, "doesn't look anything like a change into a wolf."

Pain subsided a bit in Seth's torso, but then started to run down his legs. When he wrenched his body around in response, he realized that his legs were stuck together.

"My legs!" he said, "I can't move them!"

Wyatt and Zoey bent down to see his legs. To his horror, he saw that muscle was forming between them, joining them together.

"Zoey," one of her friends said fearfully, "are you sure that we shouldn't call someone?"

"No!" Seth refused.

He felt his swimsuit tear, and watched as the gene juice continued to assault his body. His legs kept joining together, until they formed into one weird, single apendage.

"Wait," Wyatt said, "your chest..."

Seth looked down, and felt even more pain, though none of it was physical. Two mounds were growing on his chest.

Female breasts.

"Noo! I... I'm turning into a girl!?"

Seth's voice now sounded unlike his own. It was higher pitched.

Worse still, he looked down at his lower body, and watched as purple scales started to grow along it. When they'd completely covered his apendage, his feet began to grow larger, and thinner. They merged together, turning a light purple shade.

The strange growth grew larger than his face, and formed into a tailfin that was reminsicent of a billowing, bloomed flower.

The pain in Seth subsided, though he still continued to breathe quickly.

"Holy sh**," Zoey said. "He's a mermaid."

"And a girl one," Wyatt whispered.

"No," Seth cried, keeping his eyes shut to avoid seeing the tail. "This isn't happening, it isn't happening..."

"I... I just can't believe this," Zoey said. "One second he was just normal Seth... now... he's a she..."

Seth cracked his eyes open, and dared to look over himself. All of his body hair was gone, but he noticed strands of his chocolate brown hair extending down to the middle of his torso.

And on his torso was... was... them.

Seth burst into a flurry of tears. This was the worst day of his entire life.