“So, what you’re saying,” I said, “is that you didn’t buy me a candy bar because you care about my feelings.”

Wynezra rolled her head back and slapped a hand flat across her face. “I’m saying that I think our tastes have completely swapped.”

“Buy me a bag of pork rinds, and we can prove it,” I said.

I wasn’t gonna lie, after that Almond Joy, I was totally craving something salty.

“I can’t. That was my last dollar.”

I scowled.

“Can you buy it?” she said. “For science?”

I grumbled as I pulled my purse onto my shoulder, hefted myself out of my seat like a sentient sack of potatoes, and dragged my feet every step of the way to the vending machine.

It was then that I realized: I really wanted those pork rinds. And I hadn’t even tried them yet!

I walked faster until I was standing directly in front of the vending machine. It towered over me—foreshadowingly—like a vision of my own future mausoleum. I inserted my dollar, pressed the necessary buttons, and the metal twirly-whirl rotated until the pork rinds were released and dropped into the bottom hatch dispenser. I grabbed the pork rinds, ripped them open, and shoved one in my mouth.

Oh my god. I liked pork rinds.

I had practically emptied the entire bag by the time I returned to the table with Wynezra—chewing with a look of dead-eyed panic. Wynezra seemed grim but hardly surprised. She already knew what the outcome would be.

“Okay, confession time,” said Wynezra. “I didn’t come here to talk about food. I wanted to tell you about… something else.”

I nodded as I therapeutically popped the last pork rind into my mouth.

“I don’t think I’m sexually attracted to Holden anymore,” she said.

I chewed that final pork rind intensely.

“But I was looking at Imogen the other day and… well… it’s hard to say what I was feeling, but the boinger in your pants got particularly boingy.”

I swallowed the pork rind like a metaphorical revelation of the devastating truth. It went down my digestive pipe like a rock.

“Ezra,” she said, “I think we’re turning into each other.”

I couldn’t process my conversation with Wynezra. I refused to. I mean, neither Holden nor Imogen wanted anything to do with me, so what difference did it make?

I spent the rest of school compiling a list of the reasons why Wynezra was wrong—why we were still ourselves and not Animorph transformations into each other. It wasn’t a terribly long list, but it was something. I cornered Wynezra after school.

“I’m way too emotional to be you,” I said, by way of greeting. “Like, I feel like I want to cry every day, and I usually succeed.”

“Okay…” said Wynezra.

I waited for her to tell me I was right, but she just stood there uncomfortably, saying nothing.