My Best Friend's Werewolf

33 Life Chain

Two weeks have passed, and the next full moon is less than that away. On the outside life isn't hard for me to get back into. School may be starting back today, but I'm homeschooled. I don't have to deal with the whispers. Even though Eliza comes over to do school with me, she's still in groups that will talk behind her back. I know she's angry at me. But I did what needed to be done.

Life on the inside is difficult.

Am I going to go berserk and kill people when I shift? What happens? I have no answers.

I hear the front door unlock and slide open, and a moment later Eliza walks into the kitchen. "Hey," she says, setting her backpack on the counter I'm working at. "I would've called but you know. . ."

We're essentially grounded. We can only go to each others houses by ourselves if our parents know, and Eliza has to be escorted to the local high school for electives she's taking there like art. We also have new cell phones—the kind where you can only call home and my parents or as listed in my very short contact list—ICE1 and ICE2. I still haven't mastered which parent is which. I'll be in a rush, and my finger hits ICE2 when it should have hit ICE1, and then I have a long talk on the phone with the wrong parent about me only calling them if it's important.

"Grab a seat," I tell her and turn back to my American history textbook. My first assignment of senior year is to read thirty pages of this monster today.

Monster. Don't even go there, Addison Curry.

I grab my green highlighter and underline a sentence about King Charles I. I'm interested to see how he'll play into the American Revolution which according to the timeline in Appendix B., is still a hundred and fifty years away.

"You know I'll help you." Eliza doesn't look up from her copy of the textbook.

"What do you know about the Roundheads?"

"I mean on the full moon."

I scrape my tongue along my teeth, flipping the page. "You lock me up and leave. Who knows what I'll be like."

"I really think you should consider telling your parents."

I grumble as my highlighter slips down a line. "My mom is going to give birth at the end of September. What kind of stress would it cause her if she found out her daughter is going to turn into a man eating wolf?"

"You aren't going to eat anyone."

"Yeah, well you weren't attacked by wolves—pretty sure werewolves—in the woods twice. No, you were too busy petting Xavier."

The sharp intake of her breath and the pained expression that overcomes her face causes me to immediately regret my words.

"I'm sorry. I'd like to blame my outburst on the werewolf anger issue thing, but that was just me."

"It's fine." She ducks her head and continues reading.

Around noon, Eliza's mom stops by to pick her up and take her to her class at the school. Once I finish up my schoolwork I crash on the couch and turn the tv on with the remote. Some movie comes on the station the TV was left on. The guy and the girl on screen walk through an abandon building, decked out in padding and guns.

I curl my feet under a pillow, getting comfy.

A growl roars out from the speakers and a werewolf—a true half man half wolf werewolf— runs toward the couple, saliva dripping from his mouth. The woman raises her gun and fires. The werewolf collapses on the ground, writhing in pain.

I swallow, my finger hovering over the button to change the station as they walk over to the werewolf. The man kicks it in it's side as it howls out in pain. The man laughs and in the blink of an eye, the woman slashes of its head, holding the head up like a trophy, the slobber still dripping from the snout and to the cement but now blood joins it as it falls from the severed head.