The driver did not seem to notice; despite not wearing a jacket, she hadn’t thought to turn on the heater. Ever since his impulsive act of heroism, it seemed, all temperatures were perfectly comfortable for her.

He wasn’t about to complain. In a couple minutes, the car would be turning onto his street and pulling up next to his blessedly familiar townhouse and he could finally put these truly bizarre couple of days behind him. His head still recovering from the beating, he warded off car sickness by keeping his eyes glued to an old Twizzlers wrapper stuck to gum on the floor mat.

The agony he’d awoken to in Kara’s apartment — the agony that he’d been certain would finish him off — had settled into a dull ache that he felt… everywhere. Her attentive care, which had matched the tender care of a nurse with the forceful regiment of a drill sergeant, had done its job. Finally she had decided that he would survive outside his care and called his folks with the terrible news. They’d hopped in the car immediately after hanging up the phone. He’d need to get a deferment on his classes; there was no way he’d be able to finish the semester in his condition. While he’d relished the increased attention he’d gotten of late, he was relieved that he’d be able to go home and recuperate.

Finally, the scraping sound ceased, followed promptly by the engine’s uneven purr. A moment of silence. Then he heard the driver’s side door open and slam shut. A moment later, his support gave way beneath him as the passenger door parted for winter’s frigid bite.

A firm hand halted his fall toward the road, getting a solid grip on his blanket-covered shoulder. An arm wrapped around his waist, also blanket-covered, on the opposite side. His world rotated 90 degrees as he felt the seat pull away from him. For a moment the entirety of Derek’s weight bore down on the limb hooked under his arm pit, and then the world rotated back and his feet made gentle contact with the pavement. The arm maintained its support while his legs slowly took on burden of keeping him up right.

After giving his head yet another frustrating moment to clear, Derek surveyed his surroundings. Kara’s traffic cone orange 1988 Chevy Sprint Turbo was double-parked next to his lime green ’96 Dodge Stratus, still partially buried in the snow. The curtains in Jerry’s window parted for a round, pimply face that stared out at the new arrivals. A streak of black ice ran down the driveway.

And then there was Kara. Her long mane of silky dark hair put the models in those Pantene commercials to shame. The sleeves of her once loose fitting tee shirt parted in the slight dip where perfectly round shoulders that would forever preclude the need for pads met the gentle curve of her relaxed biceps. Breasts that seemed to defy gravity strained against the cotton fabric. The bottom hem of the shirt, meanwhile, hung a couple inches in front of her perfectly flat stomach. Alluring hips that had not been distinctive a week before were supported by rock hard thighs that were each as thick as his neck. Her legs each sloped down in a perfect “V” to ankles that he bet he could still encircle with his thumb and middle finger. That she was wearing cut-offs in below freezing weather no longer struck him as extraordinary.

His gaze slowly made its way up all five feet, seven inches of her before finally meeting her eyes with an expression that mixed wariness with gratitude. She followed him  to the front door with a grocery bag containing the few things he’d had with him. As he opened the door and began to step inside, another firm grip on his shoulder cemented him in place. Turning around, he looked down — just barely — into expectant gaze.

“What?” he choked out, with a voice that was finally beginning to regain a bit of its former character.

“That’s my comforter,” she reminded him.

“Oh, right.”

As he unwrapped himself, the cold tore into him with increasing gusto. He tried not to shiver, and failed. Now totally exposed, he handed over the blanket with trembling hands.

Kara lifted a handful of it to her nose, inhaled, and let out a contented sigh. “I love your smell,” she murmured more to herself than to him.

Grabbing the plastic bag from her, he was again about to turn around and head inside when she embraced him with a sudden fierceness, and again began to change.

After a moment she let go and walked over to the living room window. “There,” she exclaimed decisively after examining her reflection. “Just the right amount. Wouldn’t want to overdo it.”

Satisfied she stepped back onto the cracked concrete of the front walk and stared down at the purple-mottled and suddenly shorter figure now backed against the wall. “Thanks for everything, Derek. I hope you feel better real soon.”

It took him a moment to get his words together. “You’re-you’re welcome, Kara! Why don’t you come visit me back home some weekend?”

She laughed, a patronizing little laugh. “Oh, you <em>are</em> a silly boy! Didn’t you just hear me? I’ve gotten all I need from you know. This is good bye.”

And without another look, she turned around and covered the distance to her car in a light, effortless sprint. He watched her shitty subcompact scrape its way down the street, turn the corner and fade into oblivion before the cold forced him back inside.

Jerry was waiting, the writing on his black “There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don’t” tee shirt distorted by a chest that a week ago could have given Kara a run for her money. His face bore a complex mix of concern, horniness and awe.

“Are you alright, buddy?” he asked.

Before Derek could answer, he blurted out an urgent follow-up query.

“Who was that?”

Light emanating from an unadorned archway across the room drew his attention. The source of the light, he suspected, was also the source of the wonderful smell. Still sore pretty much everywhere, he rotated unto his side and fixed his attention on the light, watching for something to happen.

He didn’t have long to wait. After a couple minutes, a silhouette manifested in the archway, carrying two plates heaping with everything that smelled so good. After a few steps, the outline of a person resolved itself into the mousy girl from the previous night, only better. And he realized he knew her. Her name was Kara Dorsey; he had English Composition with her Tuesdays and Thursdays. Until this moment, she had seemed as physically unremarkable to him as he had seemed to others; if he hadn’t found her essays so interesting, he doubted he’d even know her name.

Nobody would call her unremarkable looking now. Her dark hair, which had always been an untamable mess that threatened to swallow her head, now flowed smoothly down her back and catching the light with a shimmer. She’d tucked it behind her left ear, but let it flow over the right side of her face. Her skin, which had always been a pale yellowish, sickly hue, now glowed bronze in the warm light from the kitchen. Her back, usually bent over from the phantom weight of too many library books in hours past, was now straight as a rod. Her better posture also kept her head back and brought her chest forward, where pert breasts that Derek had never noticed before strained against a skin-tight white tank top. Alluringly, her black bra strap was only partially covered by the fabric of her top. The waistband of equally tight jeans caught on her rounded hips in exactly the right way. And while she still wouldn’t fit anybody’s definition of tall, she appeared to be a couple inches taller than she’d been the night before,
even taking into account the more upright stance. And while he’d witnessed her get attacked with every bit of the savagery that he’d endured, there wasn’t a mark of injury on her.

Even as Derek tried to wrap his mind around the sight before him, her warm brown eyes locked onto his open stare.

“Oh! My hero has awoke! Perfect timing!”

As she reached the couch, she bent over and put the two plates down on the battered coffee table. After dragging his eyes away from chest that had spread out before him, he noticed her biceps — biceps he’d never notice before — drop down as her arms straightened.

That done, she rounded the corner of the couch and peeled back the blankets. After surveying the extent of his cuts and bruises, she grabbed onto his forearm to pull him up. But before she’d gotten him into the upright position, she started changing again. The skin-tight clothes got even tighter. She seemed to lean backward, but her hand remained gripped to his arm. Her kneecaps emerged above the edge of the sofa cushion. Letting go, her back arched back and she let out an orgasmic purr. Suddenly the 5′ 2″ girl, who only a day before had been a 4′ 11″ girl, was a 5′ 5″ girl. And all of the areas which Derek had noticed improvements on the walk over were even more improved. The increasingly curvy, newly athletic young woman before him, reexamined him with suddenly appraising eyes.

“So you’re what fixed me!” she exclaimed. “It didn’t make much sense to me last night, but I figured, why question a good thing.”

The extraordinary revelation was, if anything, more shocking to Derek, who was still dumbstruck by Kara’s last iteration and crippled from his previous wounds.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he croaked out, the words catching in his dry throat.

She shook her head and laughed a high, melodious laugh. The movement caused her hair to dance lyrically around her face.

“You don’t need to lie around me. I’ll keep your secret.”

She flashed him a wink that made him swoon a little, in spite of things.

“No, listen,” he pleaded, his voice clearing a little. “There’s no secret. As far as I know, nothing like this has ever happened before.” Pause. “What makes you think it’s not you?”

She rolled her eyes in response. “Even in your black-and-blue state, you should have been able to see that I was different before. What’s the difference between my before and after pictures? Close quarters with you. Twice.”

Derek’s curiosity overcame his pain and confusion. “You mean I was around for the first changes?”

Her hand flicked onto her hip in impatience. “Try to keep up, boy. Before last night, I could barely handle my thirty-pound backpack. By the time you intervened, I was at least as bruised and battered as you are now. But after they took off, I huddled against you to consolidate body heat.”

A small peak rose among the blankets. She rolled her eyes again.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she snorted, before plunging back into her story. “But anyway, as I pressed against you, the most incredibly thing happened. I felt the pain lift right out of me. I could feel myself healing. And then, once I was all better, I became better than better.”

She paused thoughtfully for a moment.

“How much do you weigh?” she demanded.

Derek couldn’t believe the sheer strangeness he was living. “Around 150-160, why?”

She beamed. “Because,” she replied triumphantly. “I carried you all the way back here last night. And I didn’t even have to catch my breath.”