Page 8 of Shaped to Be Yours

Jason did look the same, usually, which was handsome in an effortless way and built, even if other things had changed. I hadn’t told him this, but I’d thought something was different at the start of senior year. Just a feeling, like I could tell how honed he was, how much he was listening and seeing and sensing more than he used to.

Myabuelaalways said that I was sensitive to the unnatural, which eventually became thenaturalonce we discovered the monster realm and started being friends and colleagues and even significant others with some of them.

Like I was.

I was dating a monster.

I was dating Jason.

“You know I don’t look different, Mom,” Jason muttered, hands in his pockets and shoulders still hunched like he’d reverted to a ten-year-old in her presence. “Not like this.”

“I know, honey. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to say when you look good. You do!” Sandy reached up to pat Jason’s cheek, and the awkwardness retreated with a sweet moment passing between them.

I could see how relieved Jason was that she could touch him without flinching. I think he’d been most afraid of that. Some of our friends had flinched those last few weeks of school. I never had though. It was Jason. I was more likely to yell at him for saying something thoughtless or crass than be afraid of his claws coming out. For me, nothing much had changed.

Other than really liking the way his tongue felt in my mouth. Which was weird when we’d been friends for so long, but oddly easy too.

I was maybe never going to tell him that feeling his fangs, even when they pricked me and drew blood, was a serious turn on. I’d found certain monsters attractive before, but it’s not like I’d known I was a closet teratophiliac. I wasn’t! I’m not! Not really. Not until I’d kissed one.

But no.

Not until I’d kissed Jason.

“If you catch a cold, you’re making your own soup.” Sandy patted Jason’s cheek again and headed for the parking lot.

“You always say that!” he called after her.

We hefted our bags and followed Sandy to the car. I noticed Jason being extra honed again, craning his perception, as if he expected everyone to be watching him. A few people looked our way, but if they knew who he was,whathe was, it was mostly left to curious stares.

The train station was at the edge of town. From what I knew, the research facility I’d be working at was on the other side of town, not far from where Jason’s house was beside the woods. The woods where he’d been attacked.

Hehadbeen attacked. We just didn’t know by what, or if the attack had anything to do with his transformation other than being the catalyst for it. If I was insanely curious to see Jason’s new form, then I was certifiably so to find out what he was. He had to be curious too. Which was why I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t let the scientists help him figure that out. I got that no one wanted to be experimented on, but these were the people I’d be working with. Maybe, after I could vouch for them more, I could change his mind. I didn’t know how else we were going to find answers.

“There’s the facility you’ll be working at,” Sandy said. “I still can’t believe how quickly they got it up and running.”

I leaned forward between the seats, where Sandy was driving and Jason sat shotgun. The building we were passing was massive. It served all sorts of functions. Various research teams were studying everything under the sun. It also housed monsters working toward their visas, provided the naturalization classes they were required to take, and who knew what else.

The building was a little intimidating, all white with tinted windows that made it look like it was covered with a hundred beady black eyes. Thankfully, over email and from the phone interview I’d had with the lead scientist on my team, she and her research partner—who was also her husband—seemed pretty easy going. They had kids close to my age and were just as focused on making a home for themselves here as studying how our worlds were different.

Zinnia and Beck Q’ah-la-khan—with a click on the Q that I was still learning to get right—had been categorized as kappas, a type of aquatic monster. I’d done a ton of research to make sureI didn’t offend them and knew as much as possible about their species. They were naturally amphibious. They could survive multiple days without being in water but preferred at least an hour a day in a freshwater pool. They were carnivores but were enjoying expanding their palettes, and their constitutions seemed capable of digesting like omnivores. They aged and matured the same as humans and came from a very human-like culture, making them one of the best species for immigration. They’d been here for several weeks already, ever since Elder Ridge opened as a tester town.

“Yeah, that all grown up and graduated thing is still hitting me.” I chuckled.

“You’ll do amazing, honey. And it’s paid?” Sandy asked.

“Yep. Contract to hire too. It was stiff competition to get chosen, since the facility is so new. I guess they liked that I’d already been in a tester town for years and had regular interactions with monsters.”

“Like me?” Jason turned to look at me. “Do they know about me?”

“Well, yeah. They’re the team who would be studying you if you changed your mind about—”

“I am not going to change my mind about being a guinea pig.” Jason looked forward again with a bounce of his seat. It was a sore spot, I got that. I still hoped I could change his mind.

We turned into a driveway almost as soon as we’d passed the research facility. Jason really did live right by it, in a small cluster of other homes with the woods behind them. “Wow. I could walk to work if I want to.”

“Don’t be silly. You can take Jason’s truck.” Sandy pulled in beside it in the garage. She drove a tiny red Elantra. Jason’s truck, which she’d taken to graduation, assuming they’d be driving back together, was a white early 2000s Ford F-150. We’d still filled the truck bed with most of Jason’s—and some of my—things, so we’d have less luggage for the train, but Sandy had driven it back alone.

“It’smytruck to offer,” Jason said, as we filed out of the car. “But of course you can use it, man.”

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