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“It’s a five gallon
bucket with a toilet seat on it.”
    I couldn’t help but chuckle
myself. She brought a couple pills to me, and I took them as fast as possible
and hoped that they would help the pain, at least a little bit.
    “So where are you from?” I asked
her.
    “Far off, you probably wouldn’t
know it if I told you. Do you need anything? I can grab you some of those
blankets to prop your feet up on so that they stay above your heart? That’s
supposed to help with pain and swelling too.”
    I ignored the way she blatantly
didn’t want to tell me where she was from and accepted the blankets.
    “I’m going to try to nap now,” I
said. “It’s really hard to sleep through the pain, but I think I need some
extra rest.”
    “Yeah, that fall really tore you
up,” she agreed.
    “What do you mean?” I asked,
suddenly worried, “Is something wrong other than my ankles?”
    She cleared her throat, “Well,
you’re face looks pretty beat up as well.”
    I felt myself blush, “Oh, that
happened before that fall, actually.”
    Her face looked inquisitive, but
I closed my eyes to avoid any more questions.
    “I hope you sleep well,” she
said. “I’m going to go walking around outside while you rest so I don’t bother
you.”
    I nodded, and she headed out the
door.
     

Chapter Twelve: Adeline
     
    I had no idea why I let him call
me Violet. We had known each other since Kindergarten. He knows just about
everything about me. Surely he wouldn’t treat me any differently upon figuring
out what my name is.
    I stopped suddenly and realized something
that changed my mind; he was nicer to me as this beast today than he was when I
was a human yesterday.
    He called me Violet, though. It’s
not exactly what Shakespeare wrote, but that was his inspiration for my name,
and I picked out that book for us to read in class. Did he remember it because
I chose it or simply because it is a great work of art?
    The ground crunched beneath my
bare feet. I hadn’t even realized that I forgot to put my shoes back on. I
lifted up my right foot to see a dog-like padding on the bottom of them. I must
have been too tired when I took off my shoes last night to notice.
    I sighed. “At least my hands
aren’t padded too,” I said aloud to no one.
    My mind suddenly switched from
thinking about Daniel to thinking about my bigger problems. I was part animal
now, and I needed to figure out how to change back. I should have brought the
spell book with me too, but I was in such a hurry to leave that I only grabbed
the plant one.
    I backtracked to yesterday
afternoon. Stacy had given me the spell book, but why? Did she give it to me on
purpose, or was it a mistake? If it was a mistake, then what on earth was a
book like that doing in a storage room in a library? Especially lying on the
floor for anyone to pick up? It didn’t make any sense.
    My body tensed and I suddenly
felt alert. I turned my head slowly to see a rabbit about thirty feet away from
me, and I wanted to chase it with every fiber of my being, but I stayed still
and fought the urge as it slowly jumped further and further away from me. I
remained frozen until I could no longer sense it.
    “Great!” I said aloud, angered by
weird instincts.
    Under no circumstances would I
eat an uncooked animal; I didn’t care how much that the spell had changed me. I
had always believed that my mind is more powerful than my body, and now I would
simply think of this as a challenge to prove that.
    I breathed the fresh air around
me, glad that no animals were around and I could relax.
    Why were no animals around?
    I turned in circles, but I
couldn’t see a single bird or squirrel.
    “They’re hiding from me. I’m a
predator now,” I said, kind of relieved that I didn’t have to smell them and
kind of sad that something else was avoiding me.
    I sat down and thumbed through my
book looking for plants I recognized that Daniel and I could eat. The only
plants that I was sure of were