by Jeff Sampson
You know, I was never the girl who had many motherly instincts. I preferred to use my dolls and stuffed animals to re-create epic movie action scenes rather than dressing them up and putting them in toy strollers to play Mommy. Maybe because I didn’t have a mom growing up to copycat, I don’t know.
But since this change, alpha instincts had risen within me, telling me to keep my pack close, to protect them. Programming, yeah. Just like the pheromones that made Spencer so alluring. But like with Spencer, I’d come to embrace this part of me. Even if it meant I now carried around a hollowness inside where Dalton would be.
At least maybe I could find him, save him. My mother apparently was surviving just fine in the shadowmen dimension, and Mr. McKinney didn’t seem terribly concerned. Still, after the way the shadowmen had stalked us, had dragged Dalton away while he was paralyzed with fear…Well, I had vowed to rescue him. And I intended to keep my promise.
It was the least I could do after already losing one of my pack, Emily Cooke, forever.
Absentmindedly I walked over the damp grass to sit on the bleachers. The metal seats were like ice beneath my thighs. Hands shoved deep in my pockets, I set my bag between my knees and watched the runners as they paced themselves. A month ago I would have thought they were crazy, both for being up so ridiculously early and for finding jogging an enjoyable activity. But the wolf side of me loved to run, found it exhilarating, and that joy had become a part of me now, too.
It took a moment, but then I realized I recognized someone on the track. She was in an expensive-looking yellow jogging suit, her black hair pulled back into a ponytail, her expression stern and focused.
Tracie Townsend.
Class president. Fellow werewolf. Formerly super chipper, almost annoyingly so…but ever since the changes began, she had started to think she was going crazy.
I hadn’t seen her in days—the girl had become an expert at outmaneuvering me in the halls. She was like a ninja or something, able to meld with the shadows while I walked by, oblivious.
There was no way she was going to be able to hide wearing bright canary yellow, especially not against the backdrop of gray that was the early morning sky.
Leaving my bag on the bleachers, I stood and jumped nimbly from metal step to metal step, barely making a sound. I hit the ground and immediately started to jog, reaching the track just as Tracie came near. I matched her stride and ran next to her. She was so in the zone, she didn’t even notice.
“Good morning!” I said, forcing my most upbeat of voices.
She started, but did not slow down. Glancing in my direction, she let out an exasperated sigh.
“I told you, Emily, not interested.”
I shrugged. “I’m persistent. Sue me.”
“Maybe I will!” she said. “You’ve been blowing up my phone and in-box for days. I hope you know I set your emails to automatically go to spam.”
In front of us, one of the joggers stopped to tie his shoe. We rounded him in unison, not missing a beat.
“That’s too bad,” I said. “Spencer and I figured out how to control our powers so that we can access the best parts without any of the side effects.” I tilted my head. “Mostly. It’s a process.”
Tracie looked at me side-eyed as she pumped her arms to the rhythmic beat of our sneakers hitting dirt.
“Really?” she asked. Before I could she respond, she shook her head and added, “Actually, no, stop it. You told me things would be fine at the party last week and you were wrong. I’m done listening to you. I just want my life to be as normal as possible during the day.”
She upped her speed and pulled ahead of me. Sweat beaded at her brow and began to drip from the tip of her nose.
Nighttime, looks like you get to come out and play, I thought. I could feel her—my—growing excitement as my arms and legs surged with strength. In seconds I went all Flash and effortlessly zoomed ahead of Tracie. Spinning on my heel, I jogged backward so that I could face her.
Grinning, I said, “So, just FYI, I am in no way an athlete. But notice my speed. Guess which part of me that came from?”
Tracie stopped running, stomped her foot, and put her hands on her hips. “You’re going to run in front of me? Really?”
I stopped as well, then sauntered to stand directly in front of her. “Really.”
“Watch it!”
Tracie and I both looked behind her to see two football players barreling toward us. We stepped out of the way just in time for them to hustle past.
“Sorry!” Tracie called out after them. “Good luck at the game tonight!”
They responded with disinterested grunts.
“Here,” I said, gently placing a hand on her arm. “Let’s go to the bleachers. There’s some stuff you should know.”
Tracie closed her eyes. She placed her hands out in front of her, palms toward the sky, and then raised her arms up as she took in a long, deep breath. Then, aiming her palms down, she let her breath come out in an exaggerated whoosh as she pushed her hands toward the ground. She did this a few times while I, and a few joggers who ran past us, stared at her.
Finally, Tracie opened her eyes. “Cleansing breaths,” she explained off my look. “You were throwing me out of balance. I needed to put myself back in order.”
“Oh,” I said with a knowing nod. “Like yoga or something.”
She gave me a withering look. “Yeah, something like that. Anyway, fine, let’s get this over with. I have a lot on my plate and I don’t need you stalking me through the halls all day. Again.”
I grinned. “Excellent.”
The two of us walked side by side back to the bleachers. Tracie grabbed a yellow gym bag that matched her tracksuit, then followed me up the steps to where I’d set my bag. We sat down on the cold metal seats and she pulled out a little container of moist towelettes. She proceeded to wipe the sweat off her face.
“You have five minutes,” she said as she discarded the towelettes in a pocket of her bag, then produced another one to scrub at her hands. “Then I have to go shower so I can be at the student council morning meeting before I do announcements.”
“Five minutes is all I need.”
I spat it out as fast as I could, all that had happened since last I saw her—the real reason for Dalton’s disappearance, what happened to Megan, the extra security at BioZenith, and how Spencer and I had been training to control our shifts. By the time I got to Mr. McKinney showing up at my house last night and everything that he’d revealed, I had her full attention.
“They want us to come to BioZenith tomorrow?” she asked. “And you’re saying my mother knew that I’m like this?” She looked away from me, her eyes glazing over as she studied the line of evergreen trees beyond the sports fields. “I mean, I guess she must have. They would have had to…implant me.” Her hand flew to her mouth and she gasped, “Oh God. I…Oh God.”
I put my hand on her back and rubbed it comfortingly. She didn’t pull away.
“I know,” I said, my voice softening. “I just found out my own dad knew, too. I don’t know if we can trust them. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re keeping a lot from us. I already figured out there’s one more werewolf like us. Emily Cooke’s cousin. I sent him an email but haven’t heard back yet.”
Tracie shook her head slowly. “My mother…” she said, completely ignoring what I’d said about Evan. “And they’ve been watching us….”
I squirmed in my seat. I’d been saving the biggest revelation for last, and I wasn’t sure how she’d take it.
“Tracie, there’s one more thing,” I said. “My mother and your father aren’t dead. They were the scientists involved with the project, the ones who made us. And they’re both alive in the dimension where those shadowmen come from.”
Tracie closed her eyes once more. She breathed in, out. Then, strangely enough, she laughed.
“Of course,” she said. “Why not? Of course he’d be alive. What’s one more thing to completely throw off track ever
ything I’ve worked for?” She snapped her head to look me dead on. “Do you know how hard I’ve worked for the past eight years to get where I am? My mother is an artist, so she thinks she can live in the clouds. If it wasn’t for me, our bills would never get paid on time and our refrigerator would be filled with spoiled food. All while she flakes and spends her day painting or writing stories, living off the money my dad left for us.” She let out an exasperated sigh. “The only way I’m going to get away from this city is to excel at everything, and the only way to do that is to be organized. But for the past month this stupid curse has done nothing but throw my life into turmoil.”
“I understand,” I said.
“Do you?” she snapped, her eyes wide and accusing. “Do you really, Emily? What were your goals before all this? Any?”
I didn’t respond.
“Because I have many. And now I’m awake half the night as a”—she lowered her voice—“werewolf.” Louder, she continued, “And when I’m not…that…my evening is spent in a state of paranoia where the world doesn’t look right, inconveniently during prime homework time. Did you know I got a B-plus on a calculus assignment last week? A B-plus in math, Emily, which is the most rule-oriented subject in existence, and which is supposed to be my specialty. How does that make me look?”
“Not good?” I guessed.
She rolled her eyes. “Understatement.”
I got up, then swiveled around to sit backward on the bleacher below Tracie so that I could look up at her.
“I get it, I do,” I said. “My problems aren’t the same, but trust me: My life has been insanity lately. I think at the very least Spencer and I can help you control the shifts so that you can go back to being yourself at night.”
The girl fell silent, lips pursed. Her eyes scanned me as she considered all I’d said.
“You promise that you can help me get this thing organized?” she asked me, her tone hopeful. “This isn’t just some ploy to lure me into another absurd Mission Impossible plot?”
“I promise,” I said. I placed one hand on my heart and the other in the air—and as she watched, I forced both hands to transform so that they were covered in fur and my fingernails stretched into claws.
Tracie’s eyes went wide. Her hands shot forward and she grabbed mine, lowering them so no one could see. I laughed.
“All right, I believe you,” she said. With a start, she pulled away from me, reached into her bag, and pulled out her phone. “Oh damn, it’s late. I need to shower. Text me when you want me to meet later. I can’t stand another night of this.”
I stood and climbed back over to where my own backpack lay. “Don’t forget to take me off your spam filter.”
With a roll of her eyes, she held up her phone to show that she had my contact page open. “Already done. I know how to keep my stuff organized.”
“Awesome.”
Her belongings gathered, Tracie offered me—for the first time—a weak smile. Then she flounced down the bleacher stairs to head toward the girls’ locker room.
I couldn’t help but grin to myself. It had taken some time, but Tracie was finally coming into the fold.
Now all I needed to do was make peace with the cheerleaders. They were the outliers in all this, the wild cards. Not created by BioZenith, but by some other company related to it somehow. They were intended to guard us, though Casey at least didn’t know entirely why.
All I knew was that they trusted BioZenith and its employees as little as I did. Which meant before we met with the parents there tomorrow, I needed them on my side.
4
HOW DO YOU JUST SHUT YOURSELF OFF?
“You look crazy exhausted.”
Spencer met my grin with an expression that was not the least bit amused.
“That’s probably because I got woken up by a text in the middle of the night,” he said as he walked toward me. “But that’s just a wild guess.”
It was almost time for the first bell to ring, and I’d been waiting under the covered walkway outside the front entrance of school for Spencer to arrive. We were surrounded by at least a hundred other students all milling about, their laughter and chatter an incomprehensible buzz that echoed beneath the metal roof above us.
When Spencer reached me, I instinctively pulled him into a hug, not caring what anyone thought. Which is, you know, progress—a month ago I’d have died of embarrassment before showing anyone any sort of public affection. For all the problems these changes had brought me, I had to admit they had done wonders for my confidence.
It didn’t hurt that despite some of her faults, Nighttime Me had confidence to spare.
We held each other for a brief moment, the both of us inhaling our respective scents. Then, reluctantly, I pulled away—even with my lack of experience I knew that a too-long hug was just awkward.
“So what happened last night?” he asked, his exhaustion erased by a chipper grin. I almost blushed realizing it was me that had made him so happy.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him to an empty bench. We sat down and, leaning in close, I went over all that had happened with Mr. McKinney the night before and with Tracie that morning.
“Whoa,” he said simply when I was done. “I mean, I knew my parents must have had something to do with that after what we found in those files, but…” He shook his head.
“At least Tracie is finally with us,” I said. “All we need now is the cheerleaders. Too bad they still think I’m an evil skank and won’t give me the time of day, even with Casey trying to convince them to talk.” I shook my head. “Man, as much as I’m glad sometimes that Nighttime came along, I could have lived without all the stuff she pulled at parties pissing off every other kid at school.”
Biting his lip, Spencer looked over the crowd. Catching sight of someone, his face broadened into a full smile. “You know what, I have an idea. There’s a football game tonight, right?”
“It’s a Friday in the fall, so yeah,” I said.
Without warning, Spencer jumped to his feet. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
With that, he darted through the crowd. It took a moment, but I finally recognized who he was heading for—Mikey Harris, the tall, attractive, super-popular ringleader of the cool kids who I once tossed across a room while drunk.
It was a whole big thing.
Spencer and Mikey clasped hands and gave each other a quick bro hug before Spencer began talking animatedly, waving his hands while Mikey looked down at him, amused. I couldn’t make out what they were discussing, but it sure looked interesting.
I let my eyes wander across the crowd. It had begun to thin as kids started to go into the school to hit up their lockers before heading to homeroom. As the crowd in front of me parted, I saw another person who had been avoiding me all week.
Megan. My best friend.
She stood outside of the walkway, leaning against a gnarled tree that had shed most of its leaves. Her skin and waist-long hair were so pale, her clothes so pitch-black, it almost seemed as though she’d stumbled out of an old black-and-white film and found herself in a world of color.
I tried to meet her eye, but her gaze was distant, her expression unreadable. She stood so still it was as if she was a wax figure of Megan instead of the girl herself.
There was something off about her. I knew she’d had her heart broken, thinking I’d abandoned her for new friends. I knew how horrible it was, what she’d gone through in the woods. But she didn’t seem depressed or sad, not exactly.
Instead there was a strange aura about her. I blinked my eyes, thinking maybe my Nighttime vision was slipping back to daytime. But it was still there: a hazy, superimposed image of herself hovering in the air that had gone blurry around the edges.
Part of me wanted to stand up and walk over to her, just as I had Tracie, and make things right. We were best friends all through elementary and junior high, back before Megan was broken down by some super-bitchy girls. She’d been happy then. Trusting. A l
ot like a female Spencer—goofy and funny and charming, the slightly more outgoing version of me.
Since high school started she’d been dour. She’d been hurt and closed herself off, and so I became her sole friend, just like she’d been mine. Then the werewolf stuff happened, I pulled away from her, and in her desperation to keep our friendship from collapsing she found out what I was. She begged me to change her into a werewolf too so that we could have powers and be part of a pack together. Of course I couldn’t make it happen. In the real world you can’t become a werewolf from a bite, you have to be born that way.
Despite my rescuing her from Dalton when he almost devoured her and despite my pulling her free from the shadowman who tried to invade her body, she refused to see me at the hospital. She didn’t return my calls or emails.
As much as it hurt, I guess this meant we’d grown apart. That we were no longer friends. And no matter how much craziness overwhelmed my day and how many new pack members I found, it still hurt not to be able to talk to her about all the silly, geeky stuff we’d shared for so long.
Before I could go to Megan, a tall, skinny, incredibly hot guy with black hair came up to her—Patrick, the foreign exchange student from London who I’d gathered she’d recruited as a new friend. She gave him the briefest of smiles, coming to life for the first time since I’d seen her leaning against the tree. As they walked toward the school entrance, she took no notice of me—but Patrick did, his eyes flickering to me for just a moment.
When he saw me, he looked afraid.
And then they were gone, disappearing behind the milling crowd.
“All right, Em Dub, we’re all set.”
I blinked, then looked up to find Spencer had returned.