Snap Twice | Wenclair (English)

II

"Hi, roomie"

The phone light came on in the middle of the night, causing Wednesday to open her eyes to the darkness of her room. It took her barely a couple of seconds to figure out where she was and what had woken her before she grabbed the device from the surface of the bureau.

"Enid, what are you doing awake?" she replied. After locking the cell phone screen, she placed it on her chest, causing the room to go completely dark. A strange feeling stung in her stomach and realizing an involuntary grimace giving way to a smile, her countenance immediately turned serious.

"I can't sleep..."

Wednesday let out a desperate sigh, rolling her eyes briefly.

"Clearly."

Small dots on the screen appeared and disappeared, followed by an uninterrupted blank space. Strange as it seemed, that unsettled her.

"Shouldn't you be in full transformation? There's a full moon."

She stared at the screen, waiting for an answer.

The vacations had come in fits and starts at Nevermore. After the death of Principal Weems, the term had ended abruptly. And although Enid had promised to send her an invitation to San Francisco, Wednesday hadn't really expected it to arrive. After all, the last few evenings with Enid had been....

Wednesday realized she was biting her lip when the screen light turned back on.

"I can't transform. I mean, I can, but... I don't know how to explain it. I don't feel like it?"

"I thought it was involuntary."

"So did I."

Silence again. Staring at the screen, Wednesday thought of an appropriate response, but her mind was completely blocked. The sudden memory of the last few nights at Nevermore had opened up a whirlwind of emotions that she had persistently managed to fold up and store in drawers inside her brain. The very idea that she was feeling anything was already quite uncomfortable for her.

"Is it normal then?"

-----

Enid was looking at the screen when she received the last message. She let out a frustrated sigh. Of course it wasn't normal. At least that's what her mother had told her before her whole family left to the woods behind the cabin where they spent their summers. Unlike her, that night they had all transformed, and were looking forward to sharing this moment with the youngest of the pack.

—Well, I must confess that it is rather disappointing, Enid. —Her mother had said, noticing that there was no trace of transformation in her as everyone else began the process. Enid felt that nagging voice in her head again, reminding her of how worthless she was to her mother's eyes.

—Is something troubling you, pup? —Her father questioned instead. When she looked into his eyes, she shuddered and almost burst into tears in his arms. With a gigantic effort she gave her a charming smile and told him not to worry, that perhaps she was still in the process of evolving. Her father, still wary, accepted the explanation and gave her a kiss on the forehead before retiring with the others, leaving her home alone.

Now, Enid felt that urge to cry again as she talked to Wednesday. She couldn't get out of her mind the fact that she actually suspected that the reason for her inability to transform was on the other end of the phone. Somewhere, while researching whether she would become a werewolf at some point, she had read a fragment that had recently resurfaced from the rubble of her memory.

"Newly transformed werewolves can become blocked, even after they have achieved a complete transformation. This is due, according to recent research, to changes in brain chemicals resulting from deep depression, worry, or overwhelm over repressed feelings or secrets. In a contemporary experiment involving 20 werewolves who had not reached transformation maturity, half of them were assigned a "false secret", while 5 other participants, selected exclusively for having a romantic relationship with someone at the time of the experiment, were subjected to rigorous isolation. Surprisingly, of these 20 individuals, only the 5 who were not induced in any way completed a transformation cycle."