The locker door slammed shut, the noise echoing down the long hallway of Seven Falls High School. June scolded herself. Why was she so clumsy these last few days? She hadn’t even pushed hard, and the locker door slammed so violently her ears rang. Yesterday she had grabbed a glass and it shattered in her hands. That was a fun mess to clean up.
A few groups stopped to stare at her, which made June’s chest tighten. Beginning her walk to class, she didn’t bother looking for a friendly face. The hallway was typical of a million high school hallways, with banks of drab blue lockers, a beige tiled floor that might once have been white, and hastily made posters on the walls announcing sports or clubs. Pumpkins and skulls dotted a few of the posters too, marking Halloween’s approach. While June, as a freshman this year, had walked the hallway dozens of times already, it had never felt so foreign. She could hear just about any conversation she wanted if she focused, and when she passed someone, if she closed her eyes and held her breath, she could faintly hear their beating heart.
But listening in on conversations and heartbeats was made difficult by the sensitivity of her nose: flowery scents (probably perfumes), something like wood and citrus (probably cologne), and the acrid tinge of teenage body odor (definitely boys) all felt like they were stampeding up her sinuses and assaulting her brain.
Fanning her face as she walked, June noticed one of the groups still staring at her. And talking about her. Tension built in her shoulders.
“What a loser,” said Jennifer Hammond, her blonde hair cascading to her slim, tan shoulders, barely covered by the narrow strips of a white tank top. “Look at what June is wearing today! She looks like a grandma. I wonder if she has her dentures on too!” She laughed maliciously; the other four girls around her joined in. “Hey June, looking good!” Jennifer yelled out.
June lowered her head and sped up. At least her dress was comfortable and covered her shoulders; Jennifer looked likely to freeze to death in an overly cold classroom. A smile crept across June’s face at the idea of it. And anyway, who really cared what other kids thought? Not her. Most of the kids at Seven Falls were unrelatable dumpster fires.
As she passed other groups of students, she heard more insults, some whispered, some said more loudly and wickedly:
“June is the fattest month of the year—”
“Look at June. Gross. Does she even try?”
The tension weighing her shoulders turned into an oppressive heaviness and the hollow feeling from the car ride to school returned in full force. Her initial excitement at hearing all of the conversations around her started to wane.
June walked by another group of girls and couldn’t help but focus on what they were saying: something about having a crush on a junior. While it was nice to hear someone not insulting her, she stopped listening and shook her head in disgust. Crushes were a waste of time—they distracted from the important things.
June rounded the door into her classroom and finally found a friendly face: Brendan Todoroki, sitting at a table in the front left corner of the room. June plopped onto a wobbly metal stool next to him. There was only one other person at Seven Falls High School that June could relate to, and sitting down next to him felt like walking out of a rainstorm into a warm, dry living room.
Brendan had come to Seven Falls in third grade, when his family immigrated from Japan. He stood a few inches taller than June, weighed a lot less, and had straight black hair that he swept to the side so it wouldn’t fall in his eyes. And in those eyes, green like a pine tree, June always saw unrestrained approval shining back at her. Only two other people in the world looked at June with approval like that, although they both happened to work at the lab Cordelia owned: Mr. Moseley, the security guard and the closest thing she had to a grandparent, and Aunt Violet, a scientist. But with Brendan, something else was buried just beneath the surface too, a glimmer she couldn’t place, unique to his eyes when they were looking at her. It was a good something, a warm something, and she certainly didn’t mind.
“Happy birthday!” Brendan said. “You got my gift in the mail, right?”
“I did, but I think they delivered the wrong thing.” June struggled to form and maintain a frown as she pulled out her notebook and placed it on the smooth black tabletop. The room smelled of dry erase markers and a hint of something burnt. This stronger sense of smell was going to take some getting used to.
Brendan’s excitement turned to panic. “What’d you get?”
“Somehow they delivered a The Lord of the Rings chess set, but I’m sure you sent me a Harry Potter chess set, since that is the best fantasy series ever written.” The look of revulsion on his face overcame all her mock disapproval and she laughed.
To his credit, Brendan recovered quickly. “You know, if you just liked The Lord of the Rings more, we could be such good friends, June. And I wouldn’t have to explain to you over, and over, and over again, how Harry Potter is but a shadow and a copy—“
“Of course I love it!” June interrupted. “It’s the best thing I’ve gotten. Although my birthday isn’t until tomorrow technically, so someone else might top you.” A faint hint of worry creased the middle of Brendan’s forehead, which caused June to laugh again. The tension of the walk to class melted from her shoulders and she no longer felt hollow.
“When has your mom ever topped my gifts?” he ventured.
“I get gifts from other people too, you know,” June shot back.
More kids poured into the classroom now, drawing her gaze, and the hallway smells and sounds came with them. June focused her attention back on Brendan to block it all out. He was giving her a dubious look and saying “…I know you won’t open whatever your dad sends you—”
“Call him Richard,” June corrected. The name left a sour taste in her mouth.
“Yeah, my bad. Still no glasses? Did the doctor figure out why your eyes changed color?” He brushed something off the shoulder of his red t-shirt, which read Blimey! Detectives in big black letters.
June shook her head. “Nope, she had no clue. But my vision is perfect now, so I won’t be wearing my glasses anymore. Cordelia is acting super weird about it though. What’s with that shirt? It’s new, isn’t it?” June knew every item of clothing Brendan owned, and she had never seen this one before.
“It is,” he responded. “You’re slipping. I was wondering how long it would take you to notice—”
“I noticed as soon as I saw you, but you didn’t close your mouth long enough for me to ask about it.”
He tilted his head down and looked at June from under his eyelids. “Uh huh. Anyway, I think you’d really like Blimey! Detectives. It’s this book series about undercover detectives in Britain. They always surprise the bad guys at the end, who are always stunned to learn they were detectives all along. Then one of the bad guys inevitably says, ‘Blimey! Detectives.’”
“Maybe I’ll check them out over winter break. But I have an important question: What would you be if you could turn into any animal?”
He looked down at his gangly arms. “Probably something strong, like a bear.” His eyebrows shot up and his eyes brightened. “Or maybe—”
“Don’t say it,” June said. “I meant a real animal, not—”
“A werewolf!” He grinned like an idiot.
“I should have known we’d end up here.” She closed her eyes and let out an exaggerated sigh. Brendan wasn’t too far off, though. Each Shifter could transform into one animal, and while Cordelia had never given June an exhaustive list, she had said that anything warm-blooded and carnivorous was possible, so a wolf Shifter—but not a true werewolf—could exist. But June couldn’t tell him that—Cordelia had sworn her to secrecy, on pain of death or worse, like lectures.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“Hey, you asked the question,” he continued. “Werewolves have it all—super strength, super hearing, the ability to smell trouble from a mile away. But I wouldn’t be a savage, just killing and maiming. I would help people, fight villains, save people in distress. You know, hero stuff.”
“Yeah, for three days out of every month,” June replied.
He chuckled. “Three days is better than zero days, June. And imagine if I could change whenever I wanted—”
June almost choked. She looked around the classroom, scanning the posters of the periodic table and the solar system on the wall until she was certain no emotion showed on her face. “Why hero stuff?”
“Seriously? You wouldn’t want to be a hero?”
“Maybe. I mean, I wouldn’t be a villain, of course. I just—I don’t think it makes sense to go around saving a bunch of strangers. They could be jerks, for all you know. Why not just use your powers to swipe anything you want and to see the view from all the tallest trees in the world? Or to study the animal you turned into?”
Brendan’s eyes glazed over, and June knew he’d gone into deep thought. Eventually he spoke again. “It seems like that would be a waste.” His gaze came into focus just in time to see June’s menacing frown. “I mean, not a waste,” he corrected, “but less than the full potential of turning into an animal. And you’d choose a bird wouldn’t you, since you want to be—”
“Yes, and I’d be the best ornithologist in the world,” June said, tilting her chin up. “If my research helped people, fine.”
“I know you’d be the best. You’re the best at whatever you put your mind to.” Brendan smiled and June felt her cheeks flush. “That’s why you need me, June. When evil arises, especially if you have powers, you do hero things. Even your beloved Harry did a little bit of wizard hero stuff, or so I’ve heard. So fear not—I’ll make a hero out of you yet.”
June opened her mouth to protest, but Brendan held up a hand to forestall her. “You just have to be careful and master your powers. Good guys always win. Think of what you could do if you were an eagle.”
“Or an owl,” she said softly.
Brendan went to respond when a wad of paper hit June in the back of the head and landed on the floor. She ignored it.
He frowned, looked at the paper, then back at her. “You heard that someone else went missing right?”
“Yeah, I heard it on the radio this morning. That’s five people in the last five days.” She brushed aside the coincidental timing—her eyes had also changed five days ago.
“Something bad is happening,” Brendan said. “Seven Falls needs a hero.”
“It sounds more like Seven Falls needs people to stop going in the forest alone. They’re probably fine, just lost.”
Brendan gave her a skeptical look just as a wad of paper smacked into his cheek. June whipped around, her eyes narrowing with rage. She glared at the two Jeremys—Jeremy Sanders and Jeremy Cassidy—laughing at the back of the room. If looks could kill, she hoped hers would right now.
At that moment Mrs. Hatcher walked in, talking at machine-gun speed, ending their conversation. “Today we will continue our study of reptile biology and turn to the fascinating world of snakes! Did you know snakes are basically solar powered creatures? If they don’t get enough warmth, bodily functions, like digestion, can stop altogether!”
She wrote on the board: “snakes + cold = bad news.”
“And we are just getting started! Were you aware some snakes can spit their venom up to eight feet with deadly accuracy? Eight feet!”
June eagerly grabbed a pencil and opened her notebook to a fresh page. One thing she knew with certainty: the best grades kept Cordelia happy, and a happy mom made for a much more pleasant life. And Cordelia wasn’t wrong. The best grades would allow June to attend the best college. And she would need the best education to become the best ornithologist in the world—well, that and the ability to Shift into an owl herself.
Despite June’s efforts, only one person ever earned a better grade than her, at least sometimes: Brendan. And when he did, a part of her was proud of him, and a part of her wanted to pull her hair out. June studied early and often. Brendan might put in some study time the day before a test if someone twisted his arm. Yet he had managed to beat her on twenty-two of the last fifty-seven graded tests and assignments. June still won more often, but not by the crushing margin of victory she wanted.
After class, they made their way to the cafeteria, moving with the flow of the crowd through the hallways, backpacks and blue lockers stretching out in front of them. “What made you start thinking about powers and turning into animals? Is it because of your eyes?” Brendan asked.
June didn’t want to lie, but she couldn’t tell him the truth either. “It’s just—it’s an important thing to think about,” she finally said. “Plus, you wouldn’t want to be unprepared if you stumbled upon something radioactive, or if the most powerful dark wizard in history tried to kill you and failed.”
Brendan laughed and she brought up something that had been weighing on her since their conversation about heroes. “Have you ever heard the story of the scorpion and the frog?”
“Does it involve a race, like the tortoise and the hare?” Brendan asked.
“No, it’s the one where a scorpion needs to cross a stream and asks a frog for a ride across on his back. It’s one of Cordelia's favorites—she’s probably told it to me a hundred times. The frog is worried the scorpion will just sting and kill him, because he’s, you know, a scorpion. But the scorpion promises not to and—”
“And then they pull a thorn out of a lion’s paw?” Brendan interrupted.
“No, just listen. The scorpion points out they’ll both drown if he stings the frog, so the frog agrees to carry him. When they’re halfway across the stream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog is super upset, and says, ‘Why would you do that, now we’ll both drown!’ And the scorpion just smiles and says he couldn’t help it—it’s his nature to sting. Then they both sink.” She paused and shot out her arm in front of Brendan to stop him from walking right into the girl ahead of him, who had halted to adjust her giant plaid backpack.
Brendan looked down at June’s hand on his chest and his cheeks turned bright red, probably due to embarrassment over almost plowing into someone. The girl started moving again, June dropped her hand, and they continued toward the cafeteria.
“Your mom really knows how to bring the mood down, June. She’s a real drowner.”
June gave him her best blank look.
“You know, like a downer, but the story was about drowning. It’s a pun.”
“Doing those again?”
“I can’t stop being clever. It’s why you love me.”
June fought back a grin. “If you say so. Anyway, Cordelia says the story is a warning about human nature. You know, like no good deed goes unpunished.”
“I think your mom is borderline psychotic.”
“Brendan,” June said stiffly. Cordelia was still her mother, and the only family she really had—or at least family that was related by blood.
“Okay, okay, sorry. But the things she says to you, it’s just—anyway, I don’t think helping people is a bad thing.”
“Why?”
“I was grateful when a young girl—a heroine, if you will—stepped in to help me when I first moved here.” He gave a playful bow.
June snorted. When Brendan first came to Seven Falls, she hadn’t thought much about him. She certainly hadn’t seen him and thought, Finally, my best friend has arrived. But a few days after he’d started at school, a group had surrounded him near June’s usual recess hiding spot. She watched as a big-for-his-age turd king named Michael Lark pushed Brendan down and stood over him while a group of other boys laughed. Brendan had looked terrified and about to cry, and something inside her had ignited. Before she knew it, she’d stomped over and through the circle of laughing kids to help Brendan up. June had been tall for her age back then, and taller than even Michael Lark, so no one dared do more than call her fat before slinking away. And since that day, she and Brendan had been inseparable.
“I wasn’t being a heroine,” June said. “Those jerks were encroaching on my quiet space. How could I have known we’d be best friends after that? You could’ve been a total nerd for all I knew.” She smirked just as they arrived at the cafeteria.
After buying their lunches—June had her usual papery salad with rubbery chicken—they sat down at an empty table along the outskirts of the lunchroom. Brendan had just started a pleasant debate over whether magic should require a wand or a staff, when the overpowering smell of department-store cologne enveloped June like a smog cloud, and an ominous shadow loomed over them.
The shadow belonged to the leering bulk of Michael Lark, who remained both big for his age and a king turd. Malice glinted in his close-set, squinty blue eyes. Michael often wore tucked-in collared shirts (today’s was baby blue) and far too much body spray.
“Well, well, June and Brain-den,” he sneered. “I know you won’t mind if I take this!” He slowly forced his arm between them and reached for Brendan’s brownie.
“Oh, um, of course not,” Brendan replied with a last, despondent look at his dessert.
Cordelia’s voice popped into June’s head out of nowhere. Just sugar and fat, terribly unhealthy. She grimaced. But the look of defeated resignation on Brendan’s face silenced the thought and sparked something hot in June’s stomach. Her hand shot out and grabbed Michael’s wrist before he could reach the brownie. “I mind,” she snarled.
“Like I care,” Michael said, flicking his arm violently, to no avail. He looked astonished that June was still holding on to him, and she was just as surprised—add newfound strength to the list of changes in the last week. She finally let go, leaving an angry red ring on Michael’s skin. He snatched the brownie—quickly this time—with his other hand. “I’m just saving you a few pounds, since you’d end up eating it anyway,” he said to her, then eyed Brendan’s chocolate milk.
“Touch his tray again and you might lose your hand,” she growled.
“Oooh, I’m so scared,” Michael mocked, and then he laughed—but it sounded empty, and he didn’t touch the chocolate milk. Instead, walking away, he said over his shoulder, “I’ll see you losers around.”
June felt a vein throbbing in her forehead. “Now that is a scorpion,” she said to Brendan. “You’re telling me you want to help people like that?”
“I’m thinking more about his victims. Are you sure you wouldn’t want to use your powers to squish him flat and save others from his torture?”
She had to admit, that did sound appealing. Perhaps an owl could squish a scorpion under the right circumstances.