by Anita Oh
Like the way people were glaring at me enough as it was, or the way that polo was evil.
The bell rang, but instead of everyone rushing out like they normally did at the end of the day, they hung back. I thought it was strange, but then when we left, they followed us. They obviously wanted to see if Tennyson and I were going off to canoodle somewhere. Tennyson didn't even notice — I guessed he was used to that sort of thing — but I kept a sharp eye out. Charlotte Du Pont had once threatened me just for speaking to Tennyson, and I didn't want to get caught somewhere unawares by a bunch of his fangirls. I tried to stay ahead of them as Tennyson went off toward the polo grounds, not even saying goodbye, and I turned toward the Red House.
Sleep. I needed sleep. Everything would seem better after sleep. I could hopefully forget all this for a few hours, and when I woke up, I'd be refreshed and ready to find some answers. Sleep was everything.
But it would have to wait. Sam was waiting for me on the steps of the Red House.
"Come in," I told him. I didn't want to risk letting the others into the house before me so they could lie in wait. Maybe I was paranoid, but I'd spent enough time around these people to know not to leave them an opening.
Sam followed me up to my room without saying a word. I had no clue why he was there; he hadn't seemed eager to talk to me earlier.
You seem bothered. Is everything all right?
I gave a small start. The appearance of Sam had almost made me forget Tennyson.
I'm fine. Just go torture some horses.
I wouldn't have thought it was possible to sigh psychically, but Tennyson managed it.
I let Sam into my room warily. At least Katie's insane cleaning obsession meant that the room wasn't a mess, but I never knew when she'd pop up, and I had the feeling this wasn't going to be a conversation I'd want overheard.
I motioned for Sam to sit on the sofa, but it felt weird to sit there with him, so I went over to the little kitchenette area.
"Something to drink?" I asked, my voice sounding too loud.
He shook his head, which left me with nothing to do. I leaned against the bench and folded my arms across my chest so I would feel less vulnerable.
"So…" I said.
"I'm sorry I haven't been helping with your research," he said.
I shrugged. "You're not obligated."
"I am, actually, if it's something that affects my pack. But that's not why I'm sorry." He picked at a thread on his pants. "I've been bitter and petty, and I'm sorry."
I raised an eyebrow. "Okay…"
"You were my best friend, and then Tennyson — he's like a brother to me. You're the two most important people in my life, and that you have this bond with each other… I suppose I was jealous. I let that get in the way of helping you, and I'm sorry."
I wondered how I'd be reacting if Sam had bonded with some other girl. Not well, probably. But I doubted I'd have the guts to own it like Sam just had.
I took a deep breath and sat down in the armchair. "I don't even like Tennyson that much," I told him.
He huffed out a laugh that didn't sound genuine. "Still," he said. "It's always the two of you in these situations together."
"To be fair, sometimes it's just me. Or everyone."
He shook his head as if I was missing the point, but I wasn't. It made me wonder which of us he was jealous of, me or Tennyson. It hadn't escaped my notice that he'd spoken about our friendship in the past tense. I supposed that had been my call, but it still stung.
"Look, I get that you're upset, but it's not as if people can just replace other people. Even if Tennyson and I someday stop despising each other, it's not as if either of our feelings about you would change. It's totally separate. I mean, just because donuts are delicious doesn't mean I want to stop eating grilled cheese, right?"
"I'm grilled cheese?" Sam asked, his smile seeming more genuine now. "That's kind of plain. Can't I at least be lasagna?"
I smiled back at him. "I don't know if you have enough layers for lasagna."
He clutched at his chest. "Ouch."
My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out to look at the screen. It was a message from my dad. That gave me an idea.
"Look, we've both hurt each other, right? Whether intentionally or not. So, maybe we should just let those things cancel each other out. Call it even."
He nodded. "You're not mad at me anymore?"
I thought about it for a moment and realized that without even meaning to, I’d forgiven him. "I'm over it," I told him. "And, actually, I'm supposed to go meet up with my dad now. Do you want to come along?"
A wary look crossed over his face, as if I was putting him through some sort of test.
"That's okay," he said. "I think it's better if you guys spend some time together by yourselves. If he needs to say anything to me, he can do it through you. It's better if we all know where we stand."
I nodded. That sounded fair. "Well, he's waiting for me, so I'd better get going."
As I got up to find my coat, I checked in with Tennyson.
You need to spend some quality time with Sam, I told him.
We met at the lighthouse again, but this time my dad was already waiting for me. He paced back and forth as I approached, but when he saw me, he stopped and sat down on the step, as if he wanted to appear less agitated than he was.
"Your message sounded urgent," I said. "What's up?"
He narrowed his eyes, looking up at me. I couldn't tell if he was suspicious of me for some reason, or if he was squinting into the setting sun.
"I have some follow-up questions about what you told me Sam said."
I raised my eyebrows. "And you couldn't send them in a text?"
"I'm not in the habit of sending sensitive information through unsecure channels, and neither should you be."
I didn't want to talk to him about what Sam had told me. It had been a while now since I'd seen Tennyson, and I kept reaching out to be sure he was still there. It was a strain to be apart. I should've told my dad to wait and met up with Tennyson before coming out here. I should've known my dad would bring up stuff that might bother me. I was a big dumb dummy, and this was going to go badly. I just knew it.
"Anyway, I don't think Sam knows anything more than he told me. It seemed a strain for him to remember that much." I wanted to nip any potentially alarming questions in the bud.
"Do you think he'd let us take him back to the place where he was found? If we could retrace his steps, it might help him."
I sighed. "I don't know. He's still pretty fragile. I'll ask, but don't expect much."
"Are you okay?" he asked. "You really do seem different. Has anything strange happened to you recently? Anything to do with magic?"
The way he asked it made me take a step back from him. He knew something about what was happening to me. I didn't trust him one bit, and every instinct I had told me to get as far from him as I could. But if he had answers, I had to get them from him.
Lucy?
I ignored Tennyson. "What do you know?" I asked my father.
Lucy, where are you?
"You know that different kinds of magic can trigger your dormant gene?"
I nodded. That was old news.
"If you're exposed to enough magic, it can bring about a transformation phase that we call the Becoming."
The world seemed to fall silent at his words. The way he said it, it sounded like a death sentence.
"Becoming?" I asked. "Becoming what?"
Lucy! Answer me.
"Becoming whatever it is you were destined to be," he said.
I scoffed. "That's a pretty pathetic non-answer."
"Becoming one of them." His eyes were dark, shadowed. “One of these sub-humans. The Becoming transforms people into something else, something paranormal. Something almost human but not."
I raised my eyebrows at the term “sub-human” but didn’t call him on it. Still, I wouldn’t be forgetting the tone he’d used when he’d said it in a hurry.
>
"So, what? Like a werewolf? A witch? A freaking mermaid? What?"
"It's not something we have a lot of information on," he said, but it sounded like a lie. "If it's happening to you, Lucy, you have to tell me."
"You haven't even told me what it is, so how should I know?"
But I knew. Oh, I really knew.
"As far as we know, it feels like being overtaken by a greater power from within," he said. "But reports are conflicting."
"And then what happens?"
"This is all speculative, you have to understand. Once the power overtakes the body, it then undergoes a kind of rebirth, and then the transformation is complete. Does any of that sound familiar to you?"
"No," I told him as Tennyson Wilde yelled inside my head. "Nothing like that here."
Chapter 9
My freakout when I left my dad was different from the other freakouts I'd been having. It was more of the usual type, that kind that didn't involve glowing. A "What the hell is my life?" kind of freakout.
I wandered around the forest in a daze, my father's words playing back in my mind, over and over. Becoming. Rebirth. Transformation. I didn't want any of that. I mean, I didn't love my weirdly-shaped, gangly body, but it was my body, and I was used to it. I knew how it worked and what to expect from it. And I was fine with that. My body and I, we understood each other. We had an agreement. You do the things I need you to do and I will give you pizza and other delicious things. We were on good terms. But this, this was far from anything I'd ever expected or wanted. This was really bad. Something inside was taking me over, and I wouldn't even know what until it happened. Like an evil lucky dip. Well, unlucky dip, I supposed.
"Lucy!"
Tennyson Wilde suddenly stood in front of me, snapping me out of my thoughts. And, man, did he look mad.
"I've been calling you for hours! I thought…" He shook his head and strode forward, hovering over me. He wanted to touch me, to calm me, I could tell, but he felt awkward about it.
"It's not your fault!" I told him. "I thought this all had something to do with the bond, but it doesn't."
"Yes, well, we can discuss it inside," he said, then took me by the hand and led me forward.
Rather than the feeling of calm it usually gave me, Tennyson's touch seemed to bring me back to myself. It felt as though I was a kite that had come untethered, and he had caught me and brought me back to Earth. I felt anchored to him, as if he was the only safe thing in all of existence.
As we walked, I realized we were in a part of the forest that I'd never seen before. I had no clue how I'd gotten there, which kind of extra freaked me out. It was such a huge forest, covering most of the island. Anything could have happened to me while I was spacing out. I could've wandered right over the edge of a cliff.
"How long since you slept?" Tennyson asked me.
"How long since you slept, more like it."
"I'm a superior being. Therefore, my stamina is much greater."
I rolled my eyes but didn't comment. He had made a valid point; I couldn't keep things up the way I was going.
"Tennyson, wait," I said, pulling him to a stop. Somehow, I wanted to tell him what my father had said without everyone else around.
He listened without speaking as I told him everything my father had said, his eyes dark and unreadable.
"Have you ever heard of it?" I asked him when I was finished. "This Becoming?"
He shook his head. "No, but it's more or less what we expected, isn't it?" He squeezed my hand. "Whatever happens, it doesn't matter. We'll get through it."
I stepped closer to him, looking up into his face. "Am I dying?" I asked him. "Is it really that bad?"
He furrowed his brow. "What are you talking about?"
"You're being super nice to me. It must be bad."
He rolled his eyes and turned to keep walking, dragging me along with him. "Don't be stupid, Lucy. I'm always nice."
I snorted.
"And at any rate, we're stuck together for the moment. Your problems are my problems. There's no point in making this harder than it already is."
What he said was logical, but it still seemed weird to me. The whole time I'd known him, we'd been in opposition, even when we were working for the same thing. To have him truly on my side seemed strange, unnatural.
"And, anyway," he said in a voice so quiet that I was sure he didn't mean for me to hear. "You're pack now."
His words filled a place in my heart that I hadn't even known was empty.
When we got to the Golden House, Tennyson sent me straight to bed while he went to fill everyone in about the new information. I'd been in his room before, both when I was tiny and when I'd been in his body, but it was different somehow, being there when I was my regular self. It seemed illicit in a way that being in Sam's room wasn't. It felt even weirder to get into his bed, so I just lay on top of the covers. The bed was firm, some sort of mega-expensive memory foam, I thought. It didn't move at all, no matter how much I wiggled around; it just stayed in exactly the same form. The pillow was a weird shape, sort of dipped in the middle. Normally, I liked to scrunch my pillow up into a little ball, but this pillow would not scrunch. But once I got used to it, it was super comfortable. For a weird pillow. The whole room was so Tennyson that I fell asleep without thinking too much about it.
It was still dark when I woke up, but someone had put a soft blanket over me. I felt as if I'd slept for weeks and my body had forgotten how to move. It took me a long time to haul myself back downstairs.
The other four were seated around the big table when I came in, books stacked up between them. I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and sat down next to Althea.
"What time is it?" I asked.
"Seven," said Tennyson.
I looked at him curiously.
"You slept all day."
"It's tomorrow?" I asked, alarmed. I'd missed a whole day of classes.
"We took notes for you," said Nikolai. "Well, our minions did. But they're very good. Color-coded."
"Thanks," I told him.
"You need to sign up for an activity, too," said Althea, handing me her tablet. "The deadline was today, but we asked for an extension for you."
I nodded. I hadn't even thought about activities. Tennyson did polo, and Nikolai had been in C&C club with me last year, but I had no idea what the others did.
"What are you guys doing?" I asked.
"Violin," said Althea, rolling her eyes. "Mother insists."
"I've left C&C," Nikolai said, looking up from his book and marking his spot with his finger. "Sorry. I know it was our special bonding time. This year I'm doing jazz ballet, if you want to sign up for that?"
"You know they probably won't all wear leotards, right?"
He shrugged. "I live in hope."
"I'm doing art club," said Sam, looking at me shyly. He'd always been really good at art.
Art club sounded fun, but my skills in that area were pretty laughable.
“None of you guys do sports,” I said, finding it odd. They all seemed like country club types who would play tennis or golf and wear white sun visors and polo shirts. It was so easy to picture. “Well, except polo, I guess. If that’s considered a sport.”
“Because of the lycanthropy,” said Althea. “It’s not allowed. Polo is different because of the horses, but even so…” She glanced over at Tennyson.
“Wait. Lucy doesn’t know about the…” Nikolai stopped talking when Tennyson shook his head.
“What?” I asked. “What don’t I know about?”
Tennyson sighed but didn’t answer, and I could feel his embarrassment.
“Have you ever actually seen Tennyson play polo?” Nikolai asked.
I hadn’t. “I’ve seen his horse,” I said.
“The horse that he bought for five million dollars because its previous owner was known for his cruelty,” said Althea quietly.
“Wait, are you only the polo captain so you can destroy the system from the i
nside?”
Tennyson shrugged and wouldn’t meet my eye.
I bit down on my smile as I scrolled through the list of clubs, feeling inexplicably pleased. I was about to give up and join Nikolai in jazz ballet when something caught my eye.
"Do you need a lot of equipment for fencing?"
If I was going to be in this strange paranormal world, really in it, it would be good to have some fighting skills. Althea had tried to teach me a bit, but we didn't have the proper equipment or facilities. I knew that if the Others came for me, they wouldn't be all, like, en garde, but anything I could pick up could only be helpful. Still, you needed fencing swords and masks and stuff, I guessed.
"Most of the equipment is provided, I think," said Althea. "For things like that, where safety is an issue, the school provides it so that it's at the right standard."
"Awesome," I said, clicking on the button to sign up.
I knew I should catch up on studying, but I felt bad working on something for myself when everyone else was researching on my behalf, so I pulled a pile of books closer and got to work.
"Why are all of your problems so obscure?" asked Nikolai after a while. "Why is it never anything that can be found with a quick Google search?"
"I know, right?" I said, then turned a page and scanned it for any sign of the word "becoming". So far, no luck.
"I mean, logically, it's going to be lycanthropy, right?" Nikolai continued, pushing the books away and leaning back in his chair. "Since it was triggered by Tennyson."
"It was triggered by a spell," said Tennyson. "So, she could be a witch."
"Well, at least that would make you retrospectively right," I told him. "You used to be so sold on the idea."
"I say we break for dinner," said Nikolai. "This could take months."
I felt as if I'd just started, but then, I hadn't eaten in over a day.
I'd just marked my spot and closed the book when Althea gave a little gasp.
"I think I've found something," she said, leaning in closer to the book so that her long dark hair made a curtain around her. "'When one with no power or ability undertakes the Becoming, their will is tested to ensure that only the worthy shall succeed. If they master the power within, the Rebirth shall be achieved during a transformative event, and thus the Becoming is complete.'"