The next morning, June slammed her locker door shut. She didn’t scold herself. She didn’t glance uncertainly at her dress. She didn’t need a deep breath. June had a smile on her face that not even sandpaper could remove. She barely felt tired, even though it had only been a few hours since she’d gotten back to her house from the fateful night-hike with Cordelia. And she definitely hadn’t slept.

June shrugged on her backpack and started her walk to science class. The groups around her whispered per usual, and though June could still hear almost every word spoken in the hallway if she tried, she paid no attention—she was focused on getting to Brendan.

“Hey June!” yelled Jennifer Hammond, approaching her. “We’re holding a beauty pageant for farm animals and were hoping you’d enter.” The usual pack of girls with Jennifer all howled with laughter. For a moment, June’s old instincts kicked in and she lowered her head and prepared to speed up her walking. But then a new instinct flared to life—something fierce and feral. She met Jennifer’s eyes and paused momentarily, resisting a strange new desire to attack her, and then continued walking.

“Freak,” Jennifer muttered. But June kept moving; trees didn’t concern themselves with blades of grass, after all.

It would have been nice if Cordelia had offered some advice about how to cope with this new life, but after June had Shifted, Cordelia had gone from just acting weird to behaving like a zombie. June had to lead her back to the house by the hand and practically shove her into the shower, still dressed. The only words Cordelia had said, when she spoke at all, were, “I’m so sorry June, I’m so sorry I failed you.” Sorry for what? How could she have failed June? This was wonderful, it was fantastic, it was more than she had ever dreamed. She couldn’t Shift into an owl, so that was a surprise. But what she did Shift into was so much more powerful, so much larger, so much greater.

Inside the science classroom, Brendan was waiting for her. Today he had on a white t-shirt with the tree of Gondor front and center. June regretted that she even knew what that was. When he saw her, he angled his head to the side as if confused. As she gracefully slid on to the stool next to him, he asked, “What happened? You look like a cat that caught a canary.”

“I got another gift for my birthday,” she said, grinning. “A really big surprise. It’s the best gift ever! And it changes everything.”

Brendan’s face showed a mixture of confusion and curiosity, with a hint of disappointment.

“Don’t worry,” June continued. “Your chess set was still the best item I received, so take all the points and credit you want. This gift, though, it’s not really something that anyone else gave me.”

Brendan raised an eyebrow. “This sounds mysterious. What is it, then?”

June didn’t answer right away, and realized her grin had turned into a wide Cheshire Cat kind of smile. Since Cordelia was a zombie, and June was more than capable of taking care of herself now, why not choose for herself who she could trust with her secret?

June put her elbows on the black tabletop and leaned in conspiratorially. “I can trust you to keep a secret, right?”

“June! I hope that’s a rhetorical question. Who can you trust more than me? Don’t you know I’d walk the trail to Mordor—”

June held up a hand. “I know what you are referencing, but no, don’t even. That’s not a convincing argument.” She held in her laughter, barely.

“It’s too bad,” he said. “If only you liked The Lord of the Rings more—”

Now she did laugh, without a hint of self-consciousness, and it stopped Brendan in his tracks. His mouth hung open. “Oh, is that right?” June said. “Who could be a better friend than me?”

Brendan screwed up his face—it became apparent he was struggling to think of a clever reply, and eventually his eyes lit up. He must’ve finally settled on something, and it was sure to involve a pun. She leaned toward him again and put her chin in her palm, staring into his eyes. This must’ve thrown a wrench in the workings of his brain, because he fumbled out something that sounded like “Beautimost.” He went red, stuttered, and before he could get the right words out, Mrs. Hatcher entered the room talking at the speed of an auctioneer, officially starting class. June had won this round of repartee.

“Tell me about this secret gift after class, okay?” he whispered while they opened their notebooks.

*******

June shuffled her lunch tray to the checkout counter, carrying the same salad with chicken that she always bought, though today she felt like she could have eaten ten times the amount, regardless of how it tasted. Before June rounded the corner back into the lunchroom, she heard Brendan’s voice, infused with panic, cut through the din of conversations.

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She stopped and focused her hearing on him, sorting through the white noise of the other voices in the lunchroom. She counted the low laughter of one, three, no four, she realized, four jerks surrounding him. And from that laughter she could tell exactly who they were. She heard a stomp, a thump, and a wet squish. She clenched her teeth. A lunch tray clattered to the ground. More laughter. A spark kindled in June’s chest, blazing upward. Someone was going to pay dearly.

Rushing into the lunchroom, June spotted Brendan on the far side. Red sauce dripped down his white t-shirt, which was now stained and, most likely, ruined. Brendan would be heartbroken. Michael Lark stood in front of him, doubled over with laughter. Just behind Brendan were three of Michael’s friends, the kind of friends who weren’t big enough to pull off the feats of bullying that Michael did, but loved to be included in the cruelty. Because the group stood on the periphery of the lunchroom, few people had noticed the scene.

June practically pulsed with fury. Everyone and everything else in the cafeteria faded away and she saw nothing except the four mouth-breathers surrounding Brendan. She marched over and elbowed past two of them, sending them stumbling sideways. She continued forward, nodding to Brendan, and didn’t slow down even as Michael straightened up to his full height to confront her. He stood a head taller and outweighed her by at least thirty pounds, if not more. But he didn’t know what June could do now.

Nimbly balancing her tray in one hand, June placed her other hand on Michael’s chest and shoved, hard. The jagged sneer on his mouth widened to an oval as he sailed backward through the air. He crunched into the blue cinderblock wall behind him, adorned with a painted mural of the school mascot, Sven the Tiger. Sven was giving a cartoony thumbs-up, and at that moment, with Michael crumpled on the ground at the feet of the tiger, June felt like giving Sven a thumbs-up right back. Someone in the cafeteria gasped, but the buzz of conversation and clattering of utensils went on uninterrupted.

She returned to Brendan, who stared at her with open-mouthed astonishment. But before she could say anything, his eyelids shot upward, and he pointed in the direction she’d sent Michael flying. A snarl behind her warned what she would see. Sure enough, Michael had gotten to his feet, red-faced and puffing like a steam engine. He formed no words, settling for animal noises and spittle, and charged like a bull toward her.

However fast Michael was trying to move, he approached in what felt like slow motion to June. Still balancing her lunch tray in one hand, she nudged Brendan to the side, out of Michael’s reach. He stumbled away, confusion plastered on his face, but she couldn’t have him in harm’s way. She sent him a reassuring wink. Now it was time to teach Michael a lesson he wouldn’t forget.

As Michael got closer, he pulled his arm back, readying for what June presumed would be a vicious punch. He would actually try to hit her? Punch a girl? What a scorpion. She waited patiently until the last second, then swiftly dropped below his punch, slid to the right, and stuck her leg out. Her free hand shot out to grab the back of his green button-down as he passed her, transitioning from charging to falling. She held on long enough to hear a ripping sound.

June dropped the shirt, no longer on Michael nor buttoned-down, and stepped toward Brendan. Michael face-planted onto the shiny white floor, hard, right in the middle of the remnants of Brendan’s spaghetti. He slid. It looked like the spaghetti sauce went from his chest down into his pants as he kept going. June hadn’t felt so satisfied in months; she nodded with approval at her work.

“This is your last warning. Do not touch Brendan again,” she commanded the sauce-covered heap on the floor. She turned to Michael’s friends, who looked back at her with shaking heads and hands raised palm-out in gestures of innocence and pleading. She moved her tray, salad undisturbed, milk carton still upright, to her other hand. The entire cafeteria had gone dead silent. As June scanned the room, she saw at least eighty pairs of eyes focused on her. Oh well, let them stare, she thought. And learn what will happen if they pick on Brendan.

She gently grabbed Brendan’s shoulder and pulled him toward a table on the far side of the room. His mouth kept moving, but no words came out. Not more than ten steps in, something soft and wet hit the back of her head, interrupting her glow of accomplishment.

“You can’t hide behind your fat girlfriend forever, Brendan!” Michael spat. “I’ll find you and make you pay!”

June slowly pawed her hair; the projectile was sticky and crumbly. On the ground behind her was half of a meatball. That didn’t bother her—what bothered her was that Michael hadn’t learned his lesson. He had threatened Brendan, and she knew he didn’t make empty threats. June began to growl softly.

“Um, June, are you—” Brendan started.

“June! Brendan!” Mrs. Hatcher said, nearly crashing into them with the awkward power walk adults did instead of just running. “Did Michael just threaten you? And why do you both have lunch on you?”

“It was Michael Lark, Mrs. Hatcher. He attacked us.” Brendan practically shot out the words. “We just defended ourselves and now he’s threatening us!”

“Again?” She looked over at Michael and angrily shook her head. “I’ll take care of him. You two get cleaned up.” She marched over and grabbed Michael by the sliver of undershirt that wasn’t covered in sauce. Despite his vehement protests, she dragged him away while he stared hatefully at June and Brendan and made a slicing gesture with his fingers across his throat.

Brendan had to go change into his gym clothes, so June just brushed the bits of meatball out of her hair and stayed in the cafeteria to finish her lunch. She went and sat at a partially occupied table close by. Even from a distance, the smeared spaghetti sauce on the floor made her smile.

Ignoring the whispers of the people around her, she practically inhaled her salad. Her stomach rumbled like a truck engine when she finished, demanding more. She bit her tongue until the discomfort passed; she had to control her portion size, after all. For a few minutes, she studied Jimmy the janitor slowly mopping up the remnants of Brendan’s lunch.

Michael had promised to make Brendan pay. That simply could not happen. So, for the rest of the lunch period, she filled her head with thoughts of violence and retribution, until those thoughts crystallized into a plan.