My chest went first.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
It felt like something hot and rusted had been shoved between my ribs and somebody was now twisting it in. Every breath scraped the back of my throat. The air tasted metallic, thick, like blood pooling in my mouth. I gagged on it, yet soon sucked it in anyway, because my lungs refused to stop.
My hands were shaking so violently I couldn't tell where the tremor ended and I began. Fingers locked. Bones started popping: small, sharp sounds like knuckles cracking, except they didn't stop. Skin stretched, split and stung. My fingernails, now blackened and thickened, pushed, forcing their way out until they curved and sharpened into something that was no longer human.
Claws.
"No, no, no!" I tried to whimper but it came out like a hesitant howl. I tried to pull my hands back, but they didn't listen either. They slammed down on the desk instead.
Crack!
Wood splintered beneath my grip like it was wet paper. Someone gasped. Izzy screamed. Another blonde at the back of the class had tears trailing down her rosy cheeks, whisper-yelling, "Oh my god, look at her fingers! Ivory, look!"
A low ragged growl tore out of me before I could stop it and my throat regretted it instantly. It felt as if I'd shredded myself raw from the inside out.
"I'm not looking," Ivory told her.
She was lying. They all were.
I could feel their eyes on me now and every stare landed like a blow. My back seized, muscles spasming hard enough to bow me forward. Something in my spine shifted twice like it was being rearranged by hands that didn't care if it hurt.
It hurt. God, it hurt.
My shoulder blades were being pried apart with a crowbar. Heat bloomed there, deep and vicious, and my skin ripped, crawling over muscle that refused to stay the shape it had always been. My calves cramped so violently I cried out, the sound breaking halfway through.
A chair scraped so I saw now that Arlo was on his feet.
"What's happening?" His voice was steady, but his eyes were huge and locked on me. And not in a way that felt good. "Ida?"
"Stay." My voice cracked, splintered. I tried again and failed. "Stay away from me." The words came out shredded, dragged through glass. My mouth was on fire.
Sable jumped out of her chair. "What the actual hell? Are you having a seizure?"
"Shut up!" one dreadhead snapped. "She's not faking. Look at her!"
Look at me? Naturally I slammed my eyes shut. Bad idea because everything else got louder, one sense heightened in the absence of the other. I could hear Ivoryy's leg bouncing fast, the thin whistle of Arlo's breath as he inhaled and all seven frantic heartbeats. So loud it made my skull ache, and underneath it all my own pounded in the wildest way possible.
"It hurts." I gasped, clutching my chest as if I could physically hold my heart still. But my skin merely ripped again, muscles jerking in a rhythm that wasn't mine. Something inside me was waking up.
No one moved. Scratch that, no one dared until Arlo took a step closer.
"Ida," he said quietly. "Look at me." Another mistake. The moment my eyes found his, that thing inside of me crescendoed. His face, his guilt, his words. I kissed her to get you off my back. How dare he?
Humiliation surged in that moment, then rage followed. Then hunger; sharp, sudden and terrifying in its clarity.
I screamed like a banshee, racing into the nearest window out into the night. Running until dusk swallowed me whole.