Freaks: Year Two

The Butter...What?

"Can I finally ask what the hell is going on with you?" Ethan asked much later when almost everyone had left, and Maryrose,and the Odairs were out on the porch drinking cups of hot cocoa.

Maryrose looked over from where she was tying up her purple and pink hair in a ponytail, her cup of cocoa on the table right between her and Ethan. "What?"

"You!" Ethan exclaimed and he waved his hands towards her, up and down and side to side like it was obvious what he was trying to get across. "What's going on with your hair? It's been like a million – a BAJILLION – different colours."

Maryrose laughed and Jasper said, "I told you about her being a–"

"Like do you have magic hair dye?" Ethan asked incredulously.

"Not hair dye," Maryrose said, "but I have this special power."

"Special power?" Ethan asked with wide eyes. "What is it?? You're already a wizard, what else? What else??"

"I am a metamorphosis," she answered. "It means I can change my appearance at will. I can change my hair to any colour, I can change it to any length, I can change my height, size, I can change anything. Anything about myself."

"Whoa," Edgar whispered.

"Can you change your eyes?" Francis asked.

Maryrose changed her eyes from brown to blue in a blink of an eye.

"Wow!" Francis exclaimed and he turned to Jasper. "Can you do that?"

"Nope. Sorry, Maryrose is just really special. I even asked in first year if I could learn to," Jasper told him remembering how puzzled he had been the first day as he had seen Maryrose several times that day with a different hair colour and he had thought he had been going crazy.

Maryrose laughed. "Remember the Crunius Muto debacle? The pink hair?"

"Who could forget the pink hair!" Jasper exclaimed.

Toby looked over to Jasper with a raised eyebrow. "You had pink hair?"

"Once."

"Three times," Maryrose corrected.

Ethan let out a laugh. "I want to see that! Make your hair pink again. Do it. Do it, do it, do it!!"

"Nope, nope, nope," Jasper said, quickly knowing if he ever went home with a different hair colour than his usual black – especially the colour pink – he'd be beaten by his father and he guessed that had slipped Ethan's mind through the excitement of the day. "I don't think dad would be too impressed. Not a fan of dyed hair." 

Ethan's face dropped. "Oh. Right."

Maryrose sighed. "Well, I understand. Some parents don't like it when their kids dye their hair...my parents didn't want Pandy to put purple streaks in her hair. I just have a pretty cool loophole for it."

"Can you make your hair short?" Toby asked.

Maryrose nodded and her long pink and purple hair became short brown hair. "There. Short hair."

"That makes you look like a boy," Ethan said.

Maryrose quickly grew her hair to its usual long length at that comment, but she just shrugged it off, not letting it bother her. "Well...metamorphosis powers are pretty...wide range. You can do anything with them."

Ethan looked deep in thought and Jasper was just wondering what the hell he was thinking when Edgar asked, "Can you make your nose like Pinocchio?"

Jasper was worried Maryrose would get offended by the mention of a well known Disney film, but she just nodded and in fact grew a nose quite long like Pinocchio.