Teeth Out And Growling ||Gerbert||

i. Bone to pick (at)

T.W.: Substance abuse, cheating, slight gore.

i. Bone to pick (at)

*

The morning begins with me staring at my milk, gummy with cereal; raw deer mixed in with lucky charms as I watch Mikey eat his. I wash it down with OJ. Which helps little.

The memories of full moon nights are blurry; it always comes in flashes: a flesh wound by the neck - I carve into it and strings of muscle are plucked as the heaving stops. There's no rush of pride to come with it - this too is roadkill - and I step aside when I'm done and lick the blood over my muzzle as other wolves crowd over it, snapping teeth at each other for a better cut.

Mikey's silent. I've never asked him - or anyone - what's left of it when sun rises. He won't talk about it anyway, hasn't since that night when I was seven, and he was five. So we go through the motions instead and pretend we can't feel flesh in our bellies or the ache of our new bones that are just a few hours old and how it stings to carry the backpacks, or any weight really. I put the bowl in the sink and swear to clean it after I come back, twist the keys in my hand in a circle over and over till they tangle in my palm.

"You think we could walk to school?" I ask Mikey - the only way we acknowledged full moons is through me rounding everyone up to a white van (and no, the jokes about it won't pay for a different car, unfortunately). Mom bought it for me as soon as I turned fifteen, 'it should fit at least a dozen wolves' she said and nodding just to escape her worried, proud eyes.

"I mean, if the gas tank's not empty we should drive," he shrugs all nonchalant, and I send it to the group chat because our neighborhood would fucking kill us if we started a howl at 7am. I wash the bowl as we wait for an answer - Jamia's not coming, as usual.

We pick everyone else up: Frank first, then turn left to Bob's house a few blocks over, and Ray awaits by the bus stop and Evan with him; they all toss their backpacks aside and sway together with the van. Evan and Frank talk in hushed tone and pleasant smiles, but we can all smell the stiffness because guess what, it's fucking odd to have a brother-in-law at seventeen - not legally of course, just wolf law, but it's all the same. It's something music, something books and then discussing last night. Thankfully my attention is divided more to the traffic lights and I only catch crumbs of conversation - skrew McCracken, this and that.

As we pull up and I park the van next to a beat up red Volvo, Frank gets a text and almost jumps out of his skin with a shriek: "It's Jams, says Bert's alone in the locker room if we," he gestures towards only me way too clearly, "wanna confront him."

"Right, yeah..." I manage a weak smile and climb out of the driver's seat. Bert's a leader of another pack, even if he wouldn't strike you as such - he's too fucking feral, too coke induced mania and a few beers shy of being either a rockstar or homeless, not a person who's leading a pack (only teenagers tho, teenagers who think different, so that's that). Mikey says we just have clashing styles, but we both refuse to shower all the same and prefer baggy hoodies over skinny jeans so I don't know what the fuck he means.

It's almost half past 7am, and the halls are eerily empty; each step rings off the walls - there's no way he won't see me coming. I pass few girls near the lockers, and he's still there, but there're four legs that swirl off the windowsill instead of two - Bert rolls one of his homemade joints with the thin milky paper that he licks and folds with delicate, butterfly fingers; Quinn beside him with an amused glint to his eye.

"Whoa, Gerard, didn't realise we're having a meeting - give it to me straight, how bad is the company flunking? Do I have to fire Jenny from accounting because GodDammit, she's our best employee!"