Haley was sitting there, curled in her corner of the lab, when Professor Gibson spoke.

"I've decided to leave."

She blinked at her. "What?"

She was standing by the window, her rooster body silhouetted against the afternoon light. Her beak had grown even more since this morning — it jutted from her face like a pale, curved blade, and her words came out slightly wet around it. "I'm going to find someone to look after us. I called my friend — she's going to be the next professor. I left her a note about what happened to us. She'll find it tomorrow morning."

"Tomorrow?" she echoed, her voice flat. "Tomorrow we'll be... already chickens. Clucking in the coop."

"Yes." She said it simply, like she was confirming a weather forecast. "She'll find us there."

She wanted to be shocked. She wanted to feel betrayed had she really just decided this would be their ending, two animals in a coop, waiting for someone to find them? And she felt it, she did. A little twist of anger in her gut.

But mostly, she just felt tired.

Because it made sense. Of course it made sense. Brooke Gibson wasn't her professor anymore. She wasn't her student. They were a hen and a rooster, and nobody in the human world could help them now. Of course she was leaving.

She looked down at her hands. They were getting stiff, really stiff now, her fingers curling against her palms in a way she couldn't fully control. The transformation was taking its toll. She had to think hard about moving a finger, and even then it only twitched, like it was listening to her from a long way away.

But it was enough. She could still grip a phone.

She managed to grab hers from where she'd left it, fumbling with her clumsy fingers. She couldn't use her hands properly anymore — her claws would catch on the screen, her fingers wouldn't bend the way she needed them to. But she could tap. Just barely.

Haley decided to leave a message for her brother and Denny.

She didn't want to freak out the rest of her family. Her parents would panic, her mom would cry, her dad would try to drive out here and find her half-chicken and lose his mind. But her brother, her brother had always been kind to her. He deserved to …