Satier Madsen

"Ready?" David Corwin grinned. He was always grinning. His steel gray eyes seemed to always be laughing at a joke only he understood, but right now I was in on it. We had a bottle of non-toxic ink and were in the teacher's lounge of Cardozo high school. Now, if only we could find Principal Picadildo's - I mean Picadillo's - "special smoothie." I know, I know...we should be more mature...this is, after all, our senior year, with graduation just over the horizon...for a moment I think I hear angels singing...then David hauked up a lung. "You're sick, dude." He ignored me, of course, and took a bottle of soda out of the teachers refrigerator and spit a ridiculous amount of mucus into it.

"Ah, sick but creative, Satier, m'boy!" I couldn't help but grin. David has that affect on people. He has an answer for everything, never knows when to shut his mouth, and always looks like he just rolled out of bed. This was his second time through twelfth grade. I don't think he wants to graduate- he likes it here in the concrete prison run by apes (our school), or so he claims. I still have my suspicions -and hopes- that he's not serious. If you're nineteen years old and content to be in this- okay, it's his choice. Let's focus on the task at hand.

"Where the hell does he put that crap?" The crap, in question, is this brown-black-gray chunky liquid that our principal actually swallows. It's supposedly a health shake, but I have my doubts.

"Well if it looks like it came from the sewers, and it smells like it came from the sewers, maybe it's sh-"

"Here we go!" I plucked it off the bottom shelf and set it on one of the tables behind me, pulling the ink out of my jeans pocket. David unscrewed the thermos and took a sniff, even though we both know a jock strap is roses compared to this stuff. He gagged and held the cup up accordingly, while i uncapped the ink and started pouring it into the witches brew. Then there was a click, and we both ducked under the table as someone slipped into the room.

"Yes, a teacher would never notice you two underneath the table. I swear, that's the most brilliant place you could be- aside from hiding behind the door, of course."

I let out a long breath and heard David echo it. I poked my head up and was relieved to see Aaron Thomas, and not a detention-slip-toting troll. Aaron's just shy of six feet, a full head shorter than me and about half a head shorter than David. He has unruly blonde hair that he hacks off when it shows any signs of curls, which it always does. He's kind of lanky but not awkward, lean with sharp green eyes that never miss a beat. Aaron's sneakier than David and I by a mile and some change; He could walk into a bank and walk right back out with half a million and no one would know the difference. That's what his specialty is. The invisibility and cunning he seemed to employ on a whim, using it to escape his problems scot free. So it wasn't too much of a surprise when he strode over and took the bottle from my hands, using a black sharpie he pulled out of God-knows-where to scribble something on the label. He handed the bottle back to me as I stood, but David snatched it and squinted at the writing.

"Awesome."

He sounded impressed, so I being the patient adult that I am, grabbed the ink. "Gimme." Across the faintly listed ingredients was the name, "Sidowski." I smiled and added a few more drops to the smoothie then went to a find a not so obvious hiding spot for the bottle. I listened to the swishing of the toxic mixture as Aaron covered it and shook it up before placing it back in the fridge while I placed the ink on a shelf, near one of Mr. Sidowski's personal text books. First rule of screwing with teachers: Don't get caught. Second: Get rid of the evidence. So we were bending the second rule. Who cares? Someone has to take the blame, and honestly, Sidowski can take care of it. Just like he took care of my report card last year. Yeah, right.

Now we had to slip out of the room unnoticed. The only time this was simple was during or right before a bell: A tidal wave of teenagers swept you up so hard and so fast that even if you wanted to wait around and dawdle, you couldn't. So, Aaron pulled out a cell phone and punched in a number. We were quiet as we waited for him to set the wheels in motion. A few seconds later he nodded, to himself more than us, and said, "Now." He hung up the phone then fiddled with it a few more seconds. When he looked up, he mumbled softly, "Five...four...three...two...okay, let's go." He turned on his heel and stuck his head out of the door, bobbing it back and forth a few times before the three of us slipped out. Ah, sweet victory.

Aaron handed the phone to David, and his dark head bounced ahead of us as we followed him to the main office. Aaron and I walked over to the bulletin, reading new announcements and notices while David explained how he found a fellow peer's cell phone in the library, and as a good samaritan, was turning it in immediately.

Once that was done, we made a right and rounded the corner at the end of the hall. At the end was the principal's office. A little before that was the main entrance, attendance office, and nurse's headquarters. I could hear Holly Fuller's voice before we even reached the nurse. "I know I have it somewhere, just let me look in my bag...I swear, I had it right here..." I could practically visualize her standing there, emptying her whole bag on Nurse Caplan's desk and sighing exasperatedly. Blowing a loose strand of wavy red hair out of her face, struggling to find a note that would excuse her from gym that day.

As if on cue, Mason Fuller, her older brother, came strolling down the hall. While Holly was a petite red head, Mason was big and broad, well over six feet with short white-blonde hair and an easy going disposition. The one feature they shared was two sets of amazing blue-green eyes, the color changing with their emotions and clothing. He rapped his knuckles on Caplan's door and walked in, holding a piece of paper in his left hand. "You left this at home, Holly."

Brother and sister laughed off Holly's forgetfulness, apologized for wasting Caplan's time and excused themselves after all the pleasantries. When they stepped into the hallway, we were waiting for them.

When you're close friends like us, you're like family. You know eachother's habits. So it came as no surprise when Holly began chattering animatedly and we all grunted and nodded our heads every few moments, not listening. She'd tell us again later anyway. Right now she just needed to get things off her chest. Plus, it was way too early to bother trying to listen. At a crossroads in the hallway, we all stopped for a moment. It was a silent agreement as we all made a right towards the library, in case anyone in the office checked to see if we really had been in there this morning. We don't exactly have the best reputation in this school, but then who does?

"Satier!" She does. Shit. "Satier!" I turned just in time to see a blur of brown-blonde hair before being tackled onto the tiled floor. Beaming down at me was my girlfriend, though God help me figure out what I was thinking when I asked her out. She gave me an eskimo kiss, the dimples in her cheeks prominent as she leaned her elbows on my chest. "Uhm..."

"I called you yesterday." She pouted. "You never called me back. You were supposed to call me Sati," I hate being called "Sati." It's girly, and well...it's just girly. Need I say more?

"Don't call me that."

"You know you love it."

"No. You love it." I got up and let her tumble off me and onto her ass. I always told her I didn't like it-which proves how much she listens to me. I stood and brushed off my jeans, only helping her up because I was raised better than that.

When my parents were still around, anyway. Now I live on my own, but I get lonely so I usually crash at one of the gang's or Derek's. Derek is a senior, and our Alpha. I should probably explain what that means. It means he's the glue that keeps everyone together, juggling a yard maintenance company left to him by his dead father and school, while taking care of our ungrateful asses. It's also the position of leader in the structural hierarchy of wolves. So why does a group of teenagers call one of their own Alpha? Because we are wolves. Animals; Hunters with all the weapons of mother nature, and the intelligence of a human. A deadly combination. We shift. We shed our human skins for the pelt of a wolf. To run on four legs instead of two, our paws pounding a tattoo into the earth as we give chase and sing songs of life to the stars. We are wolf, and we are human. We are hunters and invulnerable. We have apposable thumbs. It's sweet. Back to the now.

She looked at me uncertainly, her eyes crinkling at the corners, even as she plastered on a hesitant smile. "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed, huh? What's wrong, baby?"

I sighed. I was tired. It was too early for this. She'd been flirting shamelessly with half the basketball team anyway. God knows how many she'd been sleeping with. "We're wrong. You're wrong. There's a rollercoaster about to careen off the tracks in my head because of you. We're done. Over. Does that spell it out for you?"

Her eyes teared up, and I barely heard her whisper, "Why are you being like this?"

My head was starting to hurt. Not a good sign. This was taking too long. "This is who I am, Alissa. I'm not a goody two shoes like you. I'm not your boyfriend anymore. You just aren't right for me. Go shake your pom poms for someone else, okay? I've lost interest."

She sniffled and started blubbering. Jesus Christ. Why me? I just turned and walked away, seeing everyone a few feet ahead of me. I smiled tiredly, a thanks for the privacy. Mason put his arm over my shoulders as we walked to the library, letting me know we're buddies and he's there for me. Damn. I really do love these guys.