Now: October 24th

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Jamie wasn't in the janitor's closet. 

It was a normal highschool janitor’s closet. Full shelves of cleaning products, and a little space just big enough for two teenagers to sneak into. Wyatt looked behind the shelves, even behind the row of mops, but Jamie really wasn't in here. For a minute, Wyatt thought this was a prank. One of the practical jokes that Jamie liked to play. But Jamie didn’t come bursting in through the door, or the ceiling, or the air duct, and Wyatt slowly came to the realization that Jamie just wasn’t coming. 

Wyatt shuffled his feet. He wasn’t sure what to do now. Jamie had never missed one of their… ‘make out rendezvous’ as he liked to call them. Actually, it had been Jamie’s idea to meet up every Monday morning in the janitor’s closet before school. He said it made him feel like ‘a real classic American teenager.’ 

So where the hell was he now? 

Wyatt checked his phone. No new texts since last night, when they had said goodnight. With a sigh, he shoved his phone back in his pocket. He hated this. He wished he could go to the front of the school and wait for his boyfriend like a normal person. But no, keeping their relationship a secret meant he couldn’t do that. 

He couldn’t talk to Jamie in the hallway, or at lunch, or anywhere outside of their little ‘rendezvous’. Wyatt was getting sick of it. 

He pulled his phone out again, but still there was nothing. He sent Jamie a text, asking where he was, but the text wouldn’t send from the closet. 

Wyatt waited ten minutes before the bell rang and he had to slip out of the closet and head to class. All the while, cursing the idiot for forgetting about him.

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Wyatt was still mad when he sat down at lunch. He had expected to hear from Jamie by now, and when he had texted Jamie in the second period the text had been unable to be delivered. The twit must have let his phone die again.

Wyatt was sitting at one of the middle tables in their big, yellow, cafeteria. The table was long, with two benches on either side, and Wyatt was sitting where he always sat. At the end, with a clear view of the table in the far corner of the cafeteria, closest to the entrance. 

Wyatt was sitting with a group of his basketball budd- team (basketball team , dammit, he was not going to start using all of Jamie’s vocabulary in his head) as he waited for Jamie to arrive with his normal crew of annoying juniors. He was going to give Jamie his best glare, Jamie would know what it was for.

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Wyatt's first twinge of concern came when Josh, Jones and Denise came in without Jamie. He shrugged it off though, groups weren't always together, and those three hung out on their own all the time.

His worry returned in full force when Tiffany and Justin walked in. Tiffany was walking protectively close to Justin, who looked like he was about to faint. Call it wolf intuition (which Jamie wouldn't, Jamie would call it his wolfy senses), but Wyatt knew something was wrong. Justin looked extremely upset. Where the fuck was Jamie?

Wyatt did not think, he was already up and walking towards them before he even knew what he was doing. He veered away before he reached their table, catching himself before he started interrogating Jamie’s friends. Instead he walked over to the nearest garbage can to throw out the sandwich he still had clutched in his hand. He was no longer hungry anyway.

He leaned against the wall and took a steadying breath. Glancing around the cafeteria, no one else noticed anything was amiss. His teammates had kept on talking when he walked away. They knew Wyatt wasn’t much of a talker. 

Jamie's friends were sitting close together at a table by the back, clearly wanting space from the rest of the school. They were all listening intently to Justin. Wyatt cursed when he couldn’t hear what they were saying. 

He was a fucking werewolf hiding in front of a bunch of humans. If there was ever going to be a time where he used his abilities in school, now would be it. 

Closing his eyes, Wyatt pulled at his wolf. When he could feel it rumbling his chest, Wyatt took a steadying breath, and honed in his hearing. 

“-they don't know what happened! They found him in the middle of the street, just, bleeding out into the pavement.” Justin's voice sounded pained as he spoke. “Their best guess is it was a hit and run.” 

“But they said he was going to be alright, didn't they? The only real injury was to his head?” Tiffany asked.

“They don't know,” Justin said, “right now they have him in a medically induced coma. His body may be fine, but brain injuries are really serious. We won't know more until he wakes up.”

Wyatt jerked his head to the side. 

Jamie was in a medically induced coma. And Wyatt had been upset about texts . 

Blinking back tears, Wyatt hurried out of the cafeteria and towards the closest restroom.

Jamie had been in a hit and run? Why was no one talking about this?!

Wyatt pushed into the mercifully empty bathroom and locked himself into the closest stall, sinking onto the toilet seat and burying his head in his hands. He needed to get a hold of himself before someone came into the bathroom and heard him gasping for breath.

After a few minutes of steady counting and breathing, an anxiety trick he had learned from Jamie, Wyatt felt well enough to bring his head up and take his phone out. He stared at his text message to Jamie for a moment, before clicking away and opening google. He searched for a car accident in their town, Sage Meadows, but nothing came up. He searched for an injured teenager in Sage Meadows, still nothing. They must be keeping it from the public. Why? He didn't know. But it left him with frustratingly little information.

The bell went off before Wyatt could decide what to do next. One thing was for sure, he was not staying in school the rest of the day. With one last deep breath, Wyatt made his way out of the stall. He washed his hands, splashed water on his face. He needed to think of a way to get information about Jamie. 

Grabbing a few paper towels to dab at his face, Wyatt thought about the people he knew who could help him. His siblings were usually his go to for help… but not with Jamie... Brandon and Carol were too young to help in any way with this. Lauren was living in San Francisco for college. His uncle Tony was his next go to person, but he lived a town over and disapproved of his relationship with Jamie.

Wyatt sighed, tossing out the paper towel. Jamie was the one who was good at making plans and figuring things out. He was also the one with connections in the hospital. Wyatt knew that if their positions were switched, Jamie would probably already have at least three working theories, and four plans of action by now.

There was no time for self pity right now though. Jamie was in the hospital, and Wyatt needed to at least try to see him. Resolved, Wyatt went to his locker to grab his bag. He just needed to get to the hospital, everything else he could figure out from there. 

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