“What’s going on, Seth?” Miss Minnick always called me by my last name in front of the other students, but called me by my first name in private. She was a nice lady, a good teacher, and an awesome mentor.

“I’m April’s Fool,” I said. “In fact, she’s probably looking for me right —“

“Oh, pffft. That girl needs to be put in her place.” Miss Minnick collected the blue-books stacked on her desks. She was the only teacher who still used blue-books for our exams in this age of tablets and smart-devices.

“I don’t think I’m the one to do it, Miss Minnick.”

Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Hammerstein is at the cusp of finishing high school in his hometown of Los Alamos, NM. He has a seemingly ideal life and is blessed with loving parents, a cute baby sister, and great friends. Nicholas is a gifted student and martial artist who has dreams of leaving for college at the end of his senior year. But, living in a world of Emergent humans, he will soon find his life turned upside down as his life and the fate of a kingdom hang in the balance. His future and theirs will be determined by how he navigates the drastic changes in his body and the magical and superpowered Mergent population he joins.

Joey settles in to life as Jo, starts new ventures, and learns to blush.

“Come on,” Rylee said to her hair, which paid no mind to her, as she ran a brush down the right side of her head. Ever since she’d started presenting herself as a woman, she’d found that hair was the biggest battle; the way it framed her face was essential for maintaining the illusion, and today it just wasn’t falling right.

Chapter Three

I made it to my Advanced Placement United States History class just as the tardy bell rang. Miss Minnick, my teacher, followed me with her eyes as she hovered above her cushion at the front of the room. Miss Minnick was an infernal, and she had tiny demon horns above her eyebrows, and a wispy angular tail. Her class always smelled faintly of brimstone.

"What do we say about being on time to class, children?"

I winced.

The class recited: "To be early is to be on time. To be on time is to be late. To be late is to write an essay!"

Ellen Carpenter woke first. She always did on a work day, and almost always on weekends, too. After enough time, some habits just stick with you. The pattern had become a routine - throw on a dressing gown, step into slippers and pad down the stairs to make a pot of tea and some breakfast for both of them, sit quietly listening to complaints about work colleagues she had never met, make a packed lunch and a flask of coffee, then a quick kiss, a “have a nice day”, and she was on her own again.