"Conner, I need you to drive me to Mississippi."

"What?"

"Jackson, Mississippi," Lanie repeated. She was standing on Conner's front porch, having gone straight to him after leaving Genetics Engineering. "That's where they took Rachel."

"How do you know?" Conner asked.

"I just went to Genetics Engineering and asked a few questions," Lanie answered. "It looks like they might've taken Rachel to their lab in Jackson, Mississippi."

Conner's eyebrows knit together. "You didn't find out why they took her, did you?" he asked.

After two weeks without school for Christmas Break, school was back in session at Eastside High. Unfortunately, Lanie had developed a habit of sleeping in over the break, so she wasn't ready to start waking up early again.

Fortunately, she had her roommate Rachel to help her out. "Lanie," Rachel said. "Lanie, wake up!"

"Mmph."

"Come on, Lanie!" said Rachel. "We've gotta get ready for school!"

"Ugh." Lanie brushed her hair out of her face and looked up at her best friend. "Why do we have to wake up so early?"

The last year or so had been hard for Saige, but she always found a crumb of comfort when she went to spend time at home. After graduating high school in 2021, Saige had started college at Harvard in Massachusetts with a major in psychology. Just weeks before, Saige had passed her finals with a GPA of 3.1 and then came home for Christmas. Now it was New Year's Day, and she was visiting the University Of Chicago campus where an old friend was attending.

Cameron could not wait to see Gerald again. Since Cameron had been away at college for almost a year, the two of them had not been able to see one another. But now that it was June and Cameron was home, he could go and see Gerald again.

Cameron reached Gerald's house, knocked on the front door, and was greeted almost at once by his old friend. "Hey Cameron!" Gerald said, giving him a fist bump.

"Wassup?" said Cameron.

"Come on in," said Gerald. "I've got some kettlecorn ready for us."

"What-you made kettlecorn?"

Right when Third Period ended, Miles went out to find a private spot. He pulled out his phone and called Mr. Al. "Hey Mr. Al," said Miles. "Is this a bad time?"

"Not at all," Mr. Al answered. "Did you and Zoe find something?"

"Zoe did," said Miles. "Alan Chase told her he'd seen Brittany Meier give Isaac Schmidt a little black box. And when Zoe followed Isaac out behind the gym, Isaac opened the box, and it turned him into a girl."

"Oh, it did?"

Now that the truth had been revealed, sort of, Zoe didn't feel as much motivation to keep going about her school activities. She did still support the breast cancer awareness club, and she still socialized with Miles and Alan and all her other friends. But since she now knew Skylar was innocent, there didn't seem to be much of a purpose for navigating the social hierarchy at school. Sure, there was still a witch out there, but there were virtually no leads on who it could be.

The following Wednesday was the party at Alan's house. Zoe, Miles, and Avery all carpooled to Alan's house together. When they got there, they were greeted by Alan at the front door. "Hello, friends," said Alan. "We're gonna be in the backyard for the party."

"Okay," said Miles. "This should be fun."

The hopes for escape looked grim. The only way out of Skylar's bedroom was the door, which led straight into the hallway, which in turn led to the entry room that Skylar had just entered. What choice did Zoe have? Could she duck into the hall bathroom? No, that wasn't possible. She'd have to run out into the hall, which would completely expose herself. But Skylar was already heading down the hall. Zoe would have to think of something.

For the rest of the week, all anyone at school could talk about was Ralph being turned into Ruby. Everyone-the boys, the girls, and even the teachers-were scratching their heads over what had caused the transformation. The generally accepted theory was magic, though that raised more questions than answers. What kind of magic was it? Was it a curse? A forgotten wish? A potion that had been slipped into Ralph's food earlier that day?

For the rest of the week, Zoe tried her best to keep an eye on Skylar. Since P. E. was the only class she had with her, there wasn't much opportunity to interact with her and try to get closer to her. Of course, there was the first meeting of the breast cancer awareness club, but it ended up getting delayed to Friday at the last minute. So Zoe had to wait a little longer for that opportunity.

Zoe took all her girl clothes back into her old bedroom, which was where she slept for the night. When she woke up the next morning, her dad had already left for work, but her mom was still home. "Hi Zoe," her mom said.

"Hi Mom," said Zoe.

"How does it feel? Waking up as a girl?"

"It's...kind of weird," Zoe admitted. "I was hoping yesterday would turn out to just be a bad dream, but it wasn't."

"Don't worry," said Zoe's mom, "Being female isn't all bad."

"I know," said Zoe. "It's a lot easier to go to the bathroom now."

Zack hated summer school.

The whole point of summer vacation was to give kids a two-to-three month break from school, wasn't it? So why even have summer school? That just totally defeated the purpose. But Zack's parents insisted that he needed it, so here he was, sitting in the classroom while listening to Mrs. Swanson drone on and on about math.

Lanie gaped at Angelina. Deep down, she knew Angelina was telling the truth, but she still couldn't get herself to believe it. A horrible woman like Angelina...Lanie's mother? The idea sickened her to her very core. "But how?" Lanie asked. "How can you be my mother?"

"I hooked up with your father nearly seventeen years ago," Angelina answered.

"What?" Lanie asked. "I thought you hated men."

It took Rachel all day to finish her homework. Since yesterday was so busy with her and Lanie helping set up Jenny's funeral, she hadn't had time to work on her homework. But, after hours of hard work, she finally finished her assignments.

Rachel laid on her bed and sighed. What she really needed right now was a nice, warm bath to relax. Unfortunately, her dorm's bathroom didn't have a bathtub, so she couldn't exactly fulfill that need. Plus, she'd already taken a shower that morning, so she didn't really feel up for taking another one.

From that point on, it seemed like all anyone could talk about at school was the fact that Conner Hawkins was now dating that girl Lanie Evans, who'd just came in out of nowhere and surprised everyone with her charm and her good looks. Heads in the hallways turned whenever they saw Conner and Lanie walking together. Both Conner and Lanie loved the attention and soaked it in. Neither of them had been particularly famous at school before, so it felt great to be treated like celebrities.

For the next couple weeks, Lanie and Rachel continued to go to the board game club and hang out with Conner, Justin, and the other guys there. Outside of the club, Lanie practiced playing checkers at the orphanage with Rachel, Aaron, Trevor, and some of the other kids at the orphanage. It took some time, but she was able to improve. And it got to a point where one day, in the game club, Lanie actually beat Conner in a game of checkers. She felt proud of her victory-but she didn't let it cloud her feelings for Conner.

A week after the opening social was when school started. Mr. Ryan signed both Lanie and Rachel up for Eastside High School, much to Lanie's delight. Conner had said he'd be going there, so she was looking forward to potentially seeing him again.

The night before the first day of school, Mr. Ryan came up to Lanie's and Rachel's room with a surprise. "Hello, ladies," he said. "Guess what I've got for you?"

"What?" Lanie asked.

Mr. Ryan reached into his bag and pulled out two brand-new, unopened Samsung Galaxy phones. "We got new phones for you," he said.

ANOTHER QUICK NOTE: Thanks to Heather Rose Brown for responding to my dilemma with organizing this story's chapters, and helping point me in the right direction. Thanks to erin as well, for helping me with the technical stuff that allowed me to access the "Outline" tool for my stories and organizers. Your help is greatly appreciated.

***

Lanie, Rachel, and Jenny rode the train for the rest of the day until it started to get dark out. The train kept going for a little while until it came to a train yard at the edge of a city.

Lanie woke up really early the next morning. After leaving the office feeling dissatisfied and unhappy with what Angelina had said, Lanie had decided to just go to bed early. But she ended up waking up at 6:00 the following morning. She couldn't get back to sleep, so she decided to just get up and shower for the day.

After getting out a fresh change of clothes, Lanie went back into the shower area. She stripped down, left her dirty clothes on the bench, and turned on a shower nozzle. While she was soaping down, Rachel came in wearing only her bra and panties.

QUICK NOTE: does anyone know how to properly organize story chapters like this? For my previous stories that were multiple chapters, someone (I assume a BCTS staff member) organized the chapters into a sort of folder-like page for the single story.

After the were done shopping, Lanie and Ruth went to the foster home Ruth had been talking about. It was a large, four-story building that looked more like a school dorm building than an orphanage. The front of it had the name "Pretty And Pink Foster Care" written in dark pink paint.

"Pretty And Pink," Lanie said when she saw the foster home's name.

"Yes, that's right," said Ruth. "Now, before I take you to your new room, there are a few things I need to tell you. First, you're gonna be in a room with three bunk beds and four other roommates."

Quick note: it's been a long time since I posted on here. Even though my stories were well-received, I haven't had a whole lot of ideas for new ones. But one of my first stories was "New Home," which revolved around the protagonist Oliver/Olivia being turned into a girl and going to an all-girls foster home, only to find out that the foster mom isn't quite what she seems. For a while now, I've been wanting to revisit that idea and maybe create an improved version of that story. And now the day has arrived.

With that-enjoy.

***

Author's Note: Before I get to the conclusion of this story, let me address the vagina vs. vulva vs. uretha controversy that I've been seeing in the comments and messages. I confess that I am a genetic male, and as one person pointed out, I did not know the full details. I'm sorry for offending females that have read this, and in future stories, I will try to be more anatomically accurate.

Okay, now that I've apologized for that, let us get on with the story.