We took a break in English from our assigned reading to talk about literature themes and symbolism and stuff. Apparently, themes were something I was supposed to learn at the front end of high school. Guess Sulphur Springs didn’t put much thought into literature as an academic priority.

Mrs. Lovette wrote on the whiteboard: Werewolf vs Lycanthrope.

“Can anyone tell me the difference in the definitions of these words?” she asked. Cheryl raised her hand beside me. The motion caught the teacher’s eye—unluckily, she ended up calling me instead.

“Collin?”

I shrugged. “Aren’t they… the same? They mean us. People who can turn into wolves.”

Cheryl puffed, annoyed from being put aside in favor of my underwhelming answer.

“If we were to approach these words with the lens of denotation, that is correct,” Mrs. Lovette responded. “However, annotatively, some writers have their own reasons for choosing one over the other.” She underscored part of the words: Werewolf vs Lycanthrope. “Can anyone tell me what these prefixes mean?”

Again, Cheryl’s hand shot up.

“Anyone in the back corner?” Mrs. Lovette called again. I turned my head over my shoulder to look. Right smack dab was Pierson and his pack, all with blank faces.

“The prefixes mean, like, wolf people?” Pierson, the ever-fierce leader of his pack, dared to answer.

“We're looking for the definition of their prefixes, not the whole words, Pierson,” Mrs. Lovette responded. Pierson folded his arms, more annoyed than embarrassed. “How about you, David? You had your hand up earlier.”

Cheryl groaned, clearly on the verge of losing her shit.

“Were means human. Like how weregild refers to a human’s worth, paid in the case of their murder or injury by another,” David answered with a smirk, clearly enjoying Cheryl’s misery. “Lycan comes from the Greek word Lykanos, meaning wolf.”

“Yes, David. The significance of the difference in the swap of these prefixes and suffixes of these words—“

“Is because one implies our nature as humans first. The other, as wolves,” Cheryl burst out.

“Excellent, Cheryl,” Mrs. Lovette said. “However, I would prefer it if we answered questions after being called upon. How many of you, in your assigned readings, have an author that uses the word Werewolf?”

Cheryl nudged me, her hand raised again. I went along and raised my hand, too.

“And lycanthrope?”

A smaller part of the class put their hands up—the Wuthering Heights groups.

“If you haven’t come up with what topic you want to focus on for your book projects, consider why your books either use the words werewolf or lycanthrope. One exception for Great Expectations, where one character is referred to as a werecat--we don't have a word similar to lycanthrope for felids in reputable, English dictionaries. Think about the importance of how your individual authors present human nature. All three discuss the importance of how we behave in response to things like romance and social class, but one fits the more tragic, cynical genre that suggests our natures are more hopeless than we'd like…”

My attention span drifted. There will always be the wolf inside of us, whose needs are satisfied differently. Was this more like werewolf, where our other sides were more secondary to our human nature? Or lycanthrope, where that side of us was always lurking, waiting to burst out. I hadn’t thought of it at the time, but what was my therapist, Amber, trying to teach me? Were our other sides in need of physical stuff, like exercise? Amy and I had a pretty good shift running around last week—was that good enough to satisfy our hidden natures?

Hopefully, whatever Amber was getting at wasn’t some puberty-related question.

The bell abruptly ended my stupor. As we stood up to leave class, Cheryl said something to me that I could barely hear above the commotion of everyone packing my bags. I absentmindedly nodded my head.

“Great,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight.”

🌕 | 🌗 | 🌑

My table at math had a pretty good grip on the school work of the day, punching away at their calculators. All our calculators were the size of bricks, and half as heavy; with all the buttons and programs it was more than capable of adding and subtracting, like calculating the projectory of a spaceship or graphing Harvard-level stuff. When I turned mine on, whoever had it last class used the letter functions to write something inappropriate. Idly, I doodled on the margins of our paper assignment, filling out the bare minimum that I could manage.

I didn’t have to guess, from my table’s chatter, that everyone was ahead of their assignment. I flipped through my book as if I was getting something done, stopping to studiously stare every few seconds at a table of figures. My acting wasn't great.

“What are you searching for?” someone behind me asked.

My back stiffened, and I made an elongated Uhh sound.

“In the textbook,” he clarified. There was a squeaky rumble of Simon pushing his chair over, backing it up until he was right beside me. My table went silent, but he didn’t seem to care for the awkward attention.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Nothing, just working on my assignment,” I responded.

“Really? Sounds more like you’re flipping the pages than reading. We aren’t even on vectors and planes yet.”

“Guess I’m super ahead, huh?” My cheeks warmed with embarrassment.

"Let me see." He reached a hand out to slide my assignment closer to him with the tips of his thin, elegant fingers. They were pianist’s fingers, the kind that would tangle on the keys without perfected practice. “Well… you spelled your name correctly on the page. That’s something. Today’s the fifth, by the way. Not the fourth. Let me see your calculator.”

I should have said no. I gave it to him anyways—he already had my assignment hostage.

“Here, you’re trying to figure out the hypotenuse of a scalene, not a right-angle triangle, so you aren’t going to find the square root of a2 and b2 combined, you’re going to use the Law of Cosine. It’s in Chapter Four.”

I let Simon scribble on my paper margins, and show me how to shortcut functions on my calculator. He was even bold enough to dog-ear some of the textbook pages for me. I didn’t notice how much time was passing until the bell rang, and we’d only gotten three-quarters of the way through.

“What are you doing tonight?” he asked me.

“Nothing, really.” The words eeked out of my throat, and I realized the whole time, I’d barely talked aside from some uh-huhs. “Why?”

“There’s an after-school study club. You should go. Seriously.”

“I’m that hopeless?”

“Your words, not mine,” he replied. “Bring your assignment. I’ll be there.”

“Really? I mean, cool.” I casually shrugged. “I guess I’ll consider it. Thanks, Sine.”

At the mention of his nickname, his head snapped up, the cold blue of his eyes jabbing right into my self-confidence.

“I mean, Simon,” I corrected myself. “Haha, sorry, too much trig on my mind.”

“3:45,” he simply responded. “Room 230. I’m usually there a few minutes beforehand.”

Simon stood up and packed his things and made for the door. I did the same, not wanting to be late for gym.

🌕 | 🌗 | 🌑

Stars, I felt like I was floating the rest of the day, and I could barely describe why.

At gym, one of the girls nearly hit me with a pickleball, but my head was so far in the clouds I could barely bother with being upset.

Cheryl buddied up with me in the lunch line as she always did, chatting a million miles per hour. David waited at the table already loaded with his complaints about his English partner, a conversation I’d rather stay outside of for political reasons. I glanced over to Simon’s table, still empty. Would sitting right next to him now be too upfront? Then, there would be the fact I was abandoning Cheryl.

Pierson’s words resurfaced in my mind. If your new friends can’t handle a little bit of jealousy, well…

Cheryl was the nicest person at school. Would she be jealous if I left? She’d been accepting of everything I did so far, so there was a good chance it was okay. Everyone was telling me to get to know more people, after all. But what if she wasn’t?

Honestly, I’d rather cut off my tail than hurt her feelings.

“You okay, Co?”

My thought bubble burst, bringing me back to Earth.

“Yeah,” I answered Cheryl. “Just thinking. Figured I’d get some practice in, using my brain.”

She smiled at my joke, then turned around to talk to Selene. I played around with my spaghetti, having already eaten all the meatballs.

Ash was missing for fifth period, so I sat alone. My textbooks were stacked on my desk. I should be studying. Yet I could barely pay attention, more caught up in thought. At the end of the day, Cheryl met me at our lockers.

“You ready to go?” she asked.

“Go where?”

“To my place to study. You know, what we talked about it during English?”

Shit. Was that what she was talking about earlier?

“Sorry, I uh… forgot, and made plans to meet with someone,” I answered, flinching at the end.

She raised her eyebrows. “With who?”

“Just… someone. Not that I don’t want to hang out with you. Sorry, I fucked up.” If I had wolven ears, they'd be flattened against my skull.

“Oh.” There was a moment between us, her face blank, and I couldn’t tell if she was going to be angry, disappointed, or both. She broke into a wavering smile instead. “So… you’re meeting with a special someone, then, aren’t you?”

“No, I mean, it’s just someone for trig—“

“You don’t have to hide it, Collin. I get it. No wonder why you’ve had that face all day.”

“W-what face?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she continued. “My dad’s picking me up, so I’ll catch you later.”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow.”

The conversation wasn’t as bad as I feared. I swung my back over my shoulder, excited to make my way to Simon’s study session. I waved at Cheryl one last time, who smiled again, though once she broke eye contact she quickly sped off.

Room 230 wasn’t far away. I took the stairs two at a time, nearly slipping. Once I got upstairs and turned around the corner, I saw Simon down the hall, arms clasped around his bag, talking to someone.

Well, not just someone. Pierson.

The asshole had his classic stance of leaning over his subject with an arm propped against the locker, towering over Simon. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled, my voice ready to growl in case Pierson was playing bully again.

Then, Simon laughed, grinning at something Pierson said. He waved a hand around like he was explaining something, and Pierson chuckled in a deep tone. I tried to tune my ears in to eavesdrop, but they were too far away, speaking at a volume too low to hear. Their bodies were close, familiarly close.

Too close.

Something in my chest sank, pulling the weight of my shoulders with it. Before either could spot me, I fled.

🌕 | 🌗 | 🌑

When I got home, Amy and Sam asked me how school went.

“Fine,” I answered bitterly. “Just fine.”

The tone of my voice gave me away. Amy raised her eyebrow. “You… wanna talk about it?”

I made an ff sound. “I said it went fine.” Sam put down a book she was reading at the table to glance at my sister.

“You… wanna walk to the gas station with me?” Amy asked. “Get a few steps in?”

“No,” I declined. “I’m super tired from school right now, I want to go to bed.”

“No problem. You want anything?”

“A soda.”

“You sure?” Sam chipped in. “You’ve been drinking a lot of coke lately. Remember what the dentist said when you had that cavity drilled?”

I rolled my eyes. “An iced tea, then. Unsweetened.”

Sam gave me a look that I ignored.

“It’s no problem,” Amy stepped in. I wasn’t sure if she meant me or Sam. “Be back soon.”

After Amy left, I didn’t want to spend any more time than I had to downstairs. I stomped more than I should have on the way up, but Sam didn’t shout at me, nor did she storm up the stairs to yell out a lecture as I slammed the door. I had silence to myself.

I don’t know why I felt so frustrated. We were just going to meet casual after-school study session, not a date or something. So what if Pierson was there? As unlikely as it seemed, maybe the two were uncanny friends. What was there to kick up dust about?

As much as I wanted to punch the wall, the house didn’t deserve it. I flipped the hamper with a kick—most of my clothes were clean and folded away, so the satisfaction was lacking. My fists tightened and loosened, until my eyes laid upon the white flower my therapist had given me.

Its petals weren’t as tightly closed as before, slowly unfolding since the last I looked at it in the morning. My brain still buzzed with anger that I forced myself to swallow. In the end, I flopped onto the bed face down on a pillow and passed out.