There was a beep as the announcements came on, and the teachers throughout the building tried to get their students to "settle down and be quiet". Some of them failed and just gave up, walking out into the hallway to listen and relay the information to their students later. There was a little sound as though the microphone had been passed around, and the assistant principle went through his little speech about the school-supporting events that would take place over the following weekend. The final bell rang, echoing down the halls, signaling that 7th period and the school day was over. The students streamed out the classroom doors, cheering. They were relieved that exams were finally over and done with for the year and excited about the three-day weekend and the snowfall that had been promised by the weatherman that morning.

I was the last kid to make it out of my 7th period class and to my locker. For someone who had probably aced all the exams she had this week, I felt like heck. See, I felt so horrible, that I couldn't even bring myself to say the other word that belongs in the end of that sentence — and it wasn't mental pain, it was physical. Everything hurt; all my muscles ached.

I shuffled down the path I had memorized since the first day of school. Down the hall, around the corner, down the hall again, down the two flights of stairs that lead to the basement, and down the hall once again to the locker in the middle of the hallway. As I got approached my locker, my pain suddenly went away and I saw my best friend fiddling with the lock, his back turned to me and not paying me any attention what so ever. I quickened pace and kept my footsteps as silent as possible.

"Come on, come on, think Sanders, think. 0…43…17…," he said, as he spun the dial. The lock clicked and the door swung open. "Oh yeah, uh huh! Score one for the team!" he said, jumping up and doing a fist pump.

"And just what team would that be?" I said.

He jumped, and whirled around. I noticed he moved something behind his back. "Christina, hey. Didn't see you there. I uh…um…wanted to see if… I could open it," he said, nervously.

"What for?" I said, shifting my bag.

"Well, I…wanted to surprise you by…putting your present…in your locker," he mumbled.

I had totally forgotten during the day. My birthday was this Saturday

"Aw, thank you Simon," I said, giving him a hug. He brightened immediately.

"I just thought of something. I'll give it to you tonight during dinner before the movie," he said. I nodded. Earlier, at lunch, Simon had told me that he had made a plan. He had arranged with his parents that he'd pick me up at 7:00, we'd walk to Cici's Pizza—only a couple of blocks from our street (we're neighbors)—and then go see a movie. I had called my dad during lunch and he said I could go. He trusted Simon.

"Get your backpack. I don't want to miss the bus," I said. He nodded and ran down the hall to his locker. I put my book into my purple messenger bag with my binder and velcroed the flap shut. I set my bag down and took my black coat out of my locker and put it on. I closed and locked my locker, and turned towards Simon.

"I'm gonna go get us a seat on the bus," I called to him.

He nodded, continuing to stuff random objects into his backpack from his ridiculously full locker of God knows what. I walked up the stairs—only one flight this time—and out the nearest set of doors that lead outside. I walked up to the line of busses waiting in front of the middle school and got on the one all the way to the left. When I reached the top of the three little steps, I found that the right front seat was open for takers. I wasted no time in plopping down on it.

"Hey, Steve," I said, waiting for his usual response.

"Good to see ya, Christina," he said. There it was.

Steve was a polite, African American bus driver whose job seemed to be to always drive my bus to school, even when I change from elementary school to middle school. He was probably the only staff member—can you call bus drivers school staff members?—in the school that I really trusted. He actually cared about his job. His bus was always clean, he made sure that he knew all the kids by face and name, he was always on time (to and from school, even on half days), he was never late no matter what the weather was like (he came early when it was raining or snowing or on particularly hot or cold days), and handed out Blow pops on a weekly basis (often breaking his routine when it was the day before holidays; sometimes when it was just plain, old, longer than normal weekends). Honestly, I thought the man was an awesome role model.

Simon got on the bus soon after that, and after making sure everyone was on the bus, Steve pulled away from the curb and headed towards our neighborhood. When we finally got to our bus stop, we walked toward our houses. When we were at my house, he reminded me that he would come over at 7:00, we hugged, and went our separate ways—I went up the front porch steps and into my house as he walked next door and did the same thing.

I dropped my bag on my chair at the kitchen table and spotted a note on the fridge. I walked over, picked it up and read it. It was dad saying that we were out of several things and that he went to go some of them at the store and that he'd "be back soon". I automatically translated that to mean that I was on my own for at least an hour. I decided that I should lock the front door. I turned around and headed for the door.

I was in the middle of the hall when it happened. Right then and there the pain returned, tenfold. This time it wasn't all over. It was my back and it felt like it was being split open. I fought my desperate urge to scream bloody murder. As if I needed anything else at that moment, my head decided that it was the perfect time to explode into similar pain. I sank to my knees and cradled my head, hoping against hope that it would stop. No such thing happened.

I couldn't hold it in any longer. I howled; long, hard, and loud—not howling in the sense of screaming. No, nothing at all like that. When I howled, I sounded so much like an actual wolf, that I scared myself, and that was hard to do.

I doubled over, hugging myself as new excruciating pain exploded in my head. I was gasping for air now. Why was it so darn hard to breathe? I didn't have any time to think about it as everything suddenly went silent. I couldn't hear anything. Then, as suddenly as it had left, it was back in a few painful moments, louder and sharper than ever. I could hear my dad's computer humming in his office at the back corner of the house. I shouldn't have been able to hear that.

Before I knew what was happening, the front door slammed open. Several armed men in black protection suits with bulletproof vests stormed into the house taking position in a circle around me. I heard the tearing of clothes, several gasps from the men, and then felt a pinch in my right arm. Looking down, I found a syringe sticking out of my arm, no doubt having just injected me with some kind of drug. Growling, I yanked the syringe out of my arm, stood up shakily, and tossed the thing away. I turned around and started stumbling towards the stairs that lead to the second floor of my house. I never made it. The drug had taken effect and I was really dizzy now. I fell, and as I went down, I hit my head on the stairs, adding to the pain. It didn't last for long as I began to fall unconscious. The pain slipped away, the sounds died down, and my eyes felt heavy. One of the men knocked the mirror off the nearby table, and as it fell, I got one short glimpse at what I looked like before the mirror shattered on the ground. I managed one more scream as I sank into the blackness that was all around me.

"NO!"

I was a monster.