The New School

The teacher had turned into a manatee again.

Meghan closed her eyes and turned back to the class she did not want to see. The sheet of paper containing her presentation notes was swiftly turning into a sweaty, wrinkled mess.

“The, uh, era of industrialisation was cha-characterised by… um…” She gasped and stumbled back as something light but sharp struck her face. Her eyes sprang open and she flinched at the sight of her classmates, sitting or lounging or squatting across rows and rows of desks. In the frontmost seats, two boys—or rather, two octopi as they now were—sniggered. The seahorse behind them, who had been Meghan’s new best friend Natasha only last week, snorted in disdainful comment.

The transformations had started ten days ago, only a week after Meghan’s arrival at her new school. The first to change had been the teacher, his already rounded form bulging out to the size and shape of a manatee, his whiskers thickening and blackening eyes retiring to the sides of his head. She had screamed and pointed and then fainted, and had woken up in the school nurse’s office. The nurse herself had turned into a tuna fish right in front of her, and Meghan had run away home.

She had tried to explain to her parents, but they had sent her back to school the next day, not believing a word. The teacher had been his old self at first, but then the other pupils had started to shift shapes, some permanently, some flickering back and forth before settling into their new habitus. They were all marine creatures: sea snakes, crabs, different sorts of fish, even an amoeba. Meghan was at a loss to explain how these animals could move around, or even survive, without water, but they did.

“Are you all right, Meghan?” the teacher asked in the high, skittering squeak of a manatee. It was hard to tell, but he seemed worried.

“I’m… I’m fine.” Meghan swallowed again and closed her eyes. “Spinning Jenny. The Spinning Jenny was the first great, um, innovation of the Industrial Age.”

The sniggers from the front row intensified. The teacher directed a long-suffering look at the two octo-boys. One of them caught his eye, but instead of simmering down he stood up, or at least arranged his limbs so that the varicoloured sac of his body rode higher.

“Why do we have to listen to that?” His words were hard to make out from among the watery slurps. “She’s weird, and she’s just so dry I’m falling asleep.”

“Yeah! She’s dry!” the other octopus confirmed, rising to flank his friend. “And you’re just a big ass-kisser of a sea cow!”

Everyone was pulling themselves up now and the classroom turned threatening. Meghan’s heart climbed into her throat and she let her weakened legs drop her into the chair beside the blackboard.

“Let’s get her some water!” someone burbled from the back, probably an enormous sea bass. Others eagerly took up the cry, and Meghan found herself gripped tightly in the tentacles of the octo-boys. She screamed and fought, but the suction-cupped appendages twined and twisted and squeezed harder as they dragged her out the door of the classroom and into the girls’ bathroom halfway down the hall. From very far away came the protesting manatee squeaks of the teacher.

A lamprey swatted its tailfin against one of the taps and water gushed out at enormous speed, overflowing the basin in seconds and splashing out onto the floor. The tentacles holding Meghan began to force her towards the stream, inexorably, ignoring her flailing and the screams that cut off when her face hit the water.

Afterwards, everything was better. Meghan spread out her fins and regarded the iridescent feather-like extremities with satisfaction, admiring the combination of red, black and blue. Siamese fighting fish, apparently.

“You look nice.” Natasha’s voice held a tinge of envy.

Meghan looked at her friend through new eyes and would have smiled if her mouth had been able to move that way.

“You’re beautiful,” she answered truthfully, although beautiful did not do justice to the girl’s rainbow colouring, not even the spring green of her belly or the orange ridge down her back.

Meghan glanced at her own strange reflection in the mirror.

“What will Mom and Dad say?” she muttered, suddenly unsure.

“Oh, they can be fish, too,” Natasha said. “Come on, we need to get to recess before it rains.”

“So what if it rains?” Meghan giggled. “We’re fish!”