And then she sat down in her room, almost queasy at the thought of what was happening to her. Mom had left for her conference, leaving Alyssa alone… and a couple of kilos lighter than she remembered being.

Her life was over. Telling Mom what she’d done? Not happening. Only, she’d expect to meet her for dinner in two or three hours, and what could she possibly do? Even if Mom didn’t notice her gait, and she didn’t overbalance and fall over, there was still no way she could just sit there, and eat, as if nothing was wrong when anything she ate would fall straight into her innards.

…she was hungry, quickly getting hungrier. She hadn’t gotten very much out of that pizza.

Alyssa fell back onto her bed, staring blankly into the air. If she was going to feel like this, it didn’t even matter if she could keep it a secret. She’d be going crazy from hunger in a day or two; crazy enough to tell Mom, and get a new body. She’d never hear the end of it.

Options. What options did she have? There were a lot of them, in theory she was fully programmable, but she’d never bothered to pay attention in biology class. Even if she had, she didn’t think she could use them without going through Mom. She’d never needed to, since her body could usually fix itself.

Did other people ever have days like this?

She groaned, feeling her stomach with one hand. Flat, not concave, so long as she didn’t try pushing, but the jig would be up if someone did. Mom had a habit of hugging her goodnight.

Maybe she could fill it with something.

xxx

It would be wrong to say that going to the pool was nerve-wracking.

She was used to going to school despite wounds, and she’d long since noticed that people were very bad at noticing. So long as her skin wasn’t broken, and there were no obvious broken bones, nobody would be able to tell. She and Alex had an unofficial partial truce in effect on Mondays, just so they’d look normal for gym class on Tuesday.

Still…

And she was used to going into the pool with her classmates. But those weren’t strangers.

Having left her clothes behind in her locker, she showered quickly at the side of the pool and tried not to look around at the other people in the room. It helped that it was mostly empty, but there were still more people than she thought comfortable. A group of chattering women in the background, a couple of kids, a boy—she blushed, and tried not to be obvious about it as she turned side-on. It gave her a tingly feeling to be looked at, even potentially, but she didn’t think he was actually looking in her direction.

She dipped in a toe. The water was nice, warm and inviting.

Stepping in, up to her hips wasn’t a problem. Going in further, she clenched her butt and walked very slowly. The water pressing against her stomach felt odd, but…

And *now* he was looking at her, visibly, scanning her from head to hips and giving her a smile. She blushed, again; her arms nearly twitched up to cover her breasts. Of course, he thought she was deliberately taking it slow—

She stepped off the side of the ramp, and sank like a rock. The water instantly closed over her head, but she was far too distracted to tell. Her skin grew tight over her hips, but as she’d half expected—despite her clenched butt-cheeks—she felt a trickling sensation, inside of her gut, and through her hips. The water was forcing its way inside, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Not that she really wanted to. The sensation… well, it wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t *un*pleasant either. The cool water tickled as it entered, speeding through in gradually increasing bursts as as her butt cheeks tired. It felt almost like being massaged, if a person could massage the inside of her hips.

Thinking about it, she decided that they probably could, but it’d mean finding someone who was kosher with breaking her open and then massaging the split muscles. Alex was the only one she could think of who wouldn’t start rumours about her just for asking, and she didn’t think they got along well enough yet to ask for something like that.

The flow of water slowed, and her body stopped trying to fight its way up quite so much. She still had to hold on to a crossbar to stay underwater, but she felt almost like normal again.

The feel of it caressing her bare skin really was like nothing else, wasn’t it?

Alyssa decided that, rather than go straight in and out, she’d swim a couple of laps first.

xxx

“—“

Left arm, right arm, kick, left arm. Swim down to kick off the far wall, restart with left arm—

“Hey!” She heard someone calling, and stalled out mid-stroke. It was the boy from before; he’d swum over and was treading water a few feet from her.

“Geez, you’re fast.” He smiled at her. “I’m Jim. Say, I was wondering if you wanted to get out and do something later?” He hooked a thumb back at the group of women. “I’m here with my great-grandmother over there, but she’s boring, and there’s no-one here my own age ‘cept for you. How about it?”

“Alyssa,” she replied automatically.

“Nice name. So…”

“Are you asking me out on a date?” She blinked. They’d barely met!

“Do you want it to be one?” His grin grew broader. “But no, not really. I just want to do something more fun than sitting around on my own. You look like a fun person.”

Oh, he had no idea. Well… She casually looked him over. He was actually rather cute, and he *was* looking at her face right now—point to him, since she wasn’t, but she figured that was payback for earlier. So, sure, why not?

A dozen reasons why not immediately made themselves known, and she ignored every one of them. Alyssa nodded. “Sure, I’m game. I’ve got dinner with my mom in an hour’s time, though—“

“Same as me. Let’s meet up afterwards? I’m rooming with grandma on the third floor.”

“So am I!” She smiled. “I mean, I have a room on the third floor. I actually have a room of my own, so…”

“Want to meet up there?” He asked, and she nearly burst into laughter. No points for guessing what he was hoping for *there*, and she wasn’t about to do that with someone she didn’t know, especially not in her current state.

“I’m thinking outside,” she said. “By the food dispenser? I’ll meet you there at, say, ten o’clock.I think there’s a VR arcade downstairs—“ His smile dimmed a little. “But we’ll figure something out. Lots of things to try.”

He nodded. “Looking forwards to it. Say, are you staying much longer?“

“Sorry, got to get ready for dinner. This was supposed to be my final lap anyway, so yeah. See you!”

She swam away, taking extra care to be a little more acrobatic than usual. She thought she could feel his wistful gaze on her back, but it was probably just imagination. Still…

A date. She had a date, and Alex hadn’t even had one yet. Put *that* in your cigar and smoke it, brother.

xxx

Aand…

She should probably have guessed, but it was *really hard* to hold her butt shut against the weight of the water, so as a result she ended up with a kind of sashaying, side-to-side gait as if she was trying very hard to hold in her pee—or showing off for someone. God damn it.

It was incredibly relieving, when she got back to her room, to let it all out. There were wet spots on her underwear and trousers by then, all of them fortunately pure water. Unfortunately this left her with her remaining length of intestine everted, again, and no further towards a solution for dinner than earlier, with only half an hour left to prepare.

She grimaced. This was ridiculous. She’d gotten through worse scrapes, right? Like just the other day, when she was literally in two dozen pieces and coughing up actual blood. Of course, she’d had Alex to help fix her up back then.

She had a date, so she couldn’t get too drastic, but maybe if…

It took her a few minutes to find a suitable knife. More precisely, it took her a few minutes—of her strictly limited time—to find a knife that sort of wandered vaguely towards suitability; she’d never used a serrated knife on herself before. She didn’t that stop her, because… well, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and this way there was a chance she’d get away with it.

Honestly? She’d barely ever used a knife on herself at all, it was usually Alex. She persevered, though, and another few minutes later, fifteen minutes before her dinner date, the skin on her stomach fell open like a lid. A bit more sawing had it all off.

She looked… awfully empty. She hadn’t inventoried it all at the time, but…

Stomach. Gall bladder. Pancreas, and *most* of her liver(!). All gone. Her oesophagus hung limply, open at the lower end, and there were no signs of regeneration that she could see.

Of course there weren’t, right? She’d lost her digestive system, there wasn’t energy for anything like that. Mom always said she should worry more about her future…

She’d found some hobby glue, with which she glued a plastic bag to her oseophagus, taking care not to leave too many cracks. She tested that by eating half of a snack bar; nothing fell out, and eating the food actually reduced her hunger pangs a little. Not that she thought she could get anything from it. It was in that state, though—her stomach still open, a plastic bag half-resting on the inside of her hips—that she heard a knock on the door.

“Alyssa! Are you ready?”

That was Mom, a few minutes early. Why was she early? She was never early!

Alyssa panicked, scrambled to her feet—and almost choked as the bag, full now of a glass of water as well as chewed snack bar, fell heavily on her womb. She caught herself heavily on the bathroom wall.

“Hey! You alive in there?”

That didn’t sound like the joke it should have been—

“I’m fine!” She shouted back. “I’m still getting dressed. Just wait a minute!”

What the hell, what should she do? There wasn’t time to *fix* anything, she was *naked* and Mom would suspect something was up if she took much longer than it’d take just to dress. What—

Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. But she liked…

Having already walked herself into a corner, Alyssa pulled at her womb, tearing the entire structure free of connective tissue and dragging it out of her torso, then grit her teeth as she sawed it off, going through the outermost part of her vagina. The muscular passage kind of recoiled in response, forcing her sex to open widely—she could *see* the floor through her hips for a second before it recovered.

But that wasn’t enough, there was still something that would be way more embarrassing. She tore out her bladder—taking a few panicked seconds to dry up the urine—and then, after a moment’s thought, sawed off her kidneys to make sure that she wouldn’t start leaking.

This left her hips as basically a concave container with three holes in it, and now when she let the bag down she had no trouble standing. The skin that was supposed to cover it, though…

…it didn’t want to reattach. She stuck a few more hapdash blobs of glue on, forcing it to stay. That, and a tight t-shirt, would make sure that nothing fell off.

“Coming,” she said at last.

God dammit she was hungry.