Chapter 10

I wandered past some kids playing on the swings in the playground, and almost jumped out of my skin when I heard someone on a skateboard come up behind me, but they just went past me towards the half pipe.

I approached the covered picnic area and sat down. I was here; it was after sunset, where the Hell was the person who sent the note?

I looked into the small valley next to the picnic area; there were discarded cardboard boxes at the bottom, left over from a day of kids sliding down the hill. I saw someone moving in the darkness on the hill opposite me. I considered investigating, but decided against leaving the well lit picnic area. I was here, whoever sent the note could find me. I wasn't about to walk into a trap, anymore than I already had, I realized with a bit of fear.

Music started playing. It sounded close by, but I couldn't see the source. I stood up and looked around. I couldn't see anybody.

"When I see your smile, tears roll down my face. I can't replace." Someone sang. I looked around, seeking the unseen singer. I would have recognized the voice sooner if I hadn't been so worried. The singer continued and I started searching. I couldn't pinpoint the source of the music; it seemed to be coming from everywhere.

"I will never let you fall. I'll stand up with you forever." Came the words. I recognized it as Your Guardian Angel by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. Ryan once told me how much he loved that song.

"Seasons are changing and waves are crashing, and stars are falling all for us." My brain finally caught up to what my ears had been telling me. It was Ryan singing.

A sudden light caught my attention, and I turned towards the hill opposite the picnic tables. There, written in Christmas lights in twenty foot tall letters was a single word, 'PROM?'

I stepped out towards the glow, spying Joey at the bottom of the hill, now illuminated by the multicolored lights, holding an extension cord.

"Because I am here, for you." Ryan sang, and I heard a soft thud behind me. I turned to see Ryan standing there, clutching a microphone. He'd jumped off the roof, where I could now tell the music was coming from.

All the emotions I'd felt over the last hour and Ryan's beautiful voice overcame me. I couldn't speak.

"I will never let you fall. I'll stand up with you forever. I'll be there for you through it all. Even if saving you sends me to heaven." Ryan finished the song and took the sparkling microphone from his mouth.

I grabbed him and pulled him into a hot embrace. I didn't waste time with any foreplay. My tongue plunged into his mouth and was greeted by his own. I lost myself completely in that kiss.

I pulled away at last. "I thought I'd lost you."

"Never." He said, and pressed his lips again into my own.

I pulled away after another eternity spent against his lips. "That was cruel." I said.

"I'm sorry. Forgive me?"

I sighed. I can't stay angry at him, even when his flare for the dramatic does take him too far. "Always."

"So you haven't answered my question yet."

I laughed. "Of course I'll go to prom with you." I pulled him into another kiss, as hot and passionate as the first.

"Ooh." Sharpay said.

I opened my eyes and noticed that the rest of the pack was there.

"You were all in on it?" I asked.

Kelsi nodded. "Of course, why do you think we didn't answer our phones?"

"I hate each and every one of you, you know that?" I said with a laugh.

"What? Why?" Jason asked.

He had to be joking. I turned and looked at him, but his eyes were filled with sincerity. He was either the greatest actor in the world, or he wasn't joking.

Kelsi snickered. Sharpay snorted. I broke down in laughter, letting the last of the tension I'd felt leave me.

"Can I unplug these yet?" Joey called from the base of the hill.

"Yes." Jesse shouted down to him.

"Well I guess our bet's off." Joey said the next day during rehearsal.

"Bet?" Ryan asked, looking at me.

"Uh, yeah. I bet him I could find a better way to ask you to prom then he could to ask Jesse." I said while blushing.

Ryan laughed, and then made a face. "What stinks?"

I took a whiff of the air, he was right, something didn't smell very good. It smelled a little like the nest had; it was a mixture of rotting meat and sewage. "You don't think one of those things is here, do you?" I asked in a whisper.

Ryan shrugged and began looking around. Some of the other cast members started making faces, noticing the stench too.

"What is it? Why aren't you rehearsing?" Mrs. Jewls asked from her seat in the auditorium.

"It smells like there's something dead up here." One of the other cast members said, his name was Mac or something.

Mrs. Jewls climbed out of her seat and stalked onto the stage; I was shocked and how well she walked given how old she was. She walked up to the cast member that had answered her and took a deep breath. Her eyes narrowed, and she turned to face the fake tree that we'd made for Twinkle Town, and was seeing use again in this show. She walked up to it and took a deep breath, before prodding the interior with her cane. "I should have known. Someone go get the janitor, there's a dead rat in here." She glared at the thing's corpse as though its presence was a personal insult. She spun and stalked back to her seat, I heard her mumbling under her breath, "damn dead rats, always trying to sneak into my class."

The janitor came and cleaned out the tree, taking the rotting thing away in a bucket.

Once the smell had started to fade, Joey sighed. "Well, it's now or never, I guess."

I followed his gaze out towards the all but empty auditorium, spotting Gabriella, Taylor, and Jesse studying in the back row near the lighting booth.

"Good luck." I said.

He nodded and turned to walk towards Kelsi.

"What do you think he's going to do?" Ryan asked.

"The same thing I was planning, but better."

Kelsi nodded and sat down at the piano, I'd been wondering why it was on stage today, it wasn't used at all in The Tempest. Joey retrieved one of Ryan's microphones, and Kelsi started playing. I recognized it as the song from the second act of the winter musical; Joey's solo where his character realized he was in love with Ryan's.

Joey fixed his eyes on Jesse and sang it now with far more emotion than he'd ever managed during the production. He and Ryan had horrible chemistry together, something for which I am forever grateful. I guessed that it hadn't helped things that Jesse and I were in the audience for every performance.

Everyone in the auditorium and on stage fell silent. I looked out passed the lights to see Jesse staring at Joey with a fierce blush creeping into his cheeks.

Joey finished the song, his eyes never moving from Jesse's. "Jesse, will you go to the prom with me?"

All eyes turned to Jesse, waiting to see his response. His cheeks looked like tomatoes, but he nodded.

Joey jumped off the stage and ran to his boyfriend, folding him into an embrace. A chorus of oohs and ahhs filled the auditorium, turning into subdued applause when they kissed.

"Well, it looks like you owe me one." Ryan said with a laugh.

"How do you figure?"

"I saved you from losing your bet."

I smiled and pulled him into a kiss of our own.

The rest of that week and the next passed. With no basketball to interfere we practiced everyday after school. Gabriella caved into Sharpay's pressure and joined the stage crew, so did Jesse. I suspected Gabriella did it just to get out of the house; her mother only let her participate in school activities these days. The pair divided their time between preparing for the Scholastic Decathlon state championship and coming up with ways to generate the necessary special effects. Their first two attempts were a little… smelly for an indoor performance.

It was Friday, the day before the full moon, when both Jesse and Joey's acceptance letters to the University of Albuquerque arrived. Jesse was offered the standard tuition waiver for being in the top five percent of our class. Joey didn't get a scholarship, but Mr. Evans told him not to worry about it. Mrs. Evans told him he was part of the family now, and that as long as he was willing to put in the work they'd see to it that he got an education.

Ryan's parents flew to Atlanta the next morning, his father was working on some sort of real-estate deal, and his mother went just to spend more time with her husband. I'm always amazed that Ryan and Sharpay haven't been screwed up by how often their parents are gone. They lived their life like they were still on their honeymoon, But it was obvious that their parents did love them, and they spent a lot of time with them when they were in town, which meant I now spent a lot of time with them too. It'd been two weeks since Mom had promised we'd have a talk, but I hadn't been home to do more than a few loads of laundry in that time. I spent every night at Ryan's, and she didn't say anything about it the few times I did see her.

Ryan had convinced me to supervise Joey's transformation. He needed to focus on helping Jesse control it, and wouldn't be able to give two inexperienced Oborotni the attention they needed. Right before sunset he took Jesse into his room, and I found myself sitting across from a very nervous Joey.

"So what's it like?" He said with fear obvious in his voice.

"You've asked that before, man."

He blushed. "Yeah. I guess I have."

"A lot."

"So what do I do?"

"Well, for starters, strip."

"What?"

"Hey man, if you want to destroy your clothes…"

"No, okay." He stood up and turned his back to me before unbuttoning his shirt. He looked over his shoulder at me, his cheeks scarlet. "Aren't you going to take off your clothes?"

"I wasn't planning on changing."

"Oh yeah, right."

"If it'll make you feel better I will." I said.

He nodded. "Yeah, that'd be good. I don't want to do it alone."

"Hey, you're not alone. Everyone in this house has been through it."

"Yeah but…"

"It's fine. If it'll make you feel better I don't mind. Unless you're just saying that because you want to see me naked."

Joey jumped and turned around. "What? No!"

"Relax. I'm just kidding." I stood up and pulled my shirt off. I didn't bother to turn around, months as an Oboroten had long before stripped me of any shame over nudity. Not that I'd had that much to begin with really.

I took off my pants, and caught him looking at my crotch. He turned away when he saw I'd noticed. "See something you like?" I asked.

"No… I've just never seen another guy naked before. Other than Jesse."

"Never?"

"Well, on the internet, but not in person."

"Not even in the showers after gym?"

"I never showered after gym, I was always afraid I'd get a hard on."

I laughed, and felt the tingle begin in my spine. "Well, here we go."

"What?" Joey asked, and then a strange look came over his face. "That feels weird."

"It'll get weirder."

"I'm not sure I want to do this."

"You don't really have a choice."

He nodded.

"This is your first change. So don't even try to fight it. Just let it happen." I said as the tingling sensation spread up my own spine.

Joey grunted in reply. His spine was reshaping itself and he fell forward onto his hands. He was fighting it, I could tell. If he hadn't been it would've been over already.

"Joey, watch me. Just let go." I dropped to all fours and opened myself to the tingling. It flashed through me; I didn't even feel the pressure it happened so quickly. My canine instincts woke up, filled with concern for the still struggling pack mate in front of me.

Joey took a deep breath and let it out, his eyes were closed. His transformation accelerated from there. Thick brown hair erupted across his body and his face elongated into a muzzle. Less then a minute later his change was finished.

I strode forward with confidence and sniffed him. His posture showed submission, and I nodded. He sniffed me then, and then turned to sniff the air. The room was filled with Jesse's strange scent, with hints of Ryan and Sharpay's jaguar lingering here and there.

I glanced at the door, realizing it needed someone with hands to work. I closed my eyes for a moment and changed back. I was disappointed that I didn't get to spend more time as a wolf, but right now I wanted thumbs.

Joey watched me change back, his jaws hanging open in awe.

"Don't worry. You'll get the hang of it." I started putting my clothes back on. When I'd put on everything but my shoes and socks I headed towards the door, but paused before opening it. "Sharpay's out there. Are you going to be able to handle that?"

He looked at me confused, like he didn't understand what I was saying. His wolf was in control, great.

"Joey!" I said.

He jumped and blinked. I don't know what it is about saying someone's name, but it always seems to work. "Nod twice if you're in control."

He nodded twice.

"Good. Now are you ready for this? Your wolf isn't going to like the way Sharpay smells. Can you keep it under control?"

He nodded twice more.

"Okay." I opened the door, and he took a step back. Her scent was stronger in the hall I knew from personal experience. A look of determination filled his eyes and he stepped passed me and into the hallway.

I followed him down the stairs to the living room where Sharpay was watching television. A low growl escaped from Joey as we entered the living room.

"Joey!"

He shuddered, but stopped growling.

"I take it he's not quite house broken yet?" Sharpay asked.

"Like you were any better when you first changed?"

"Please. I had to face an entire pack of wolves on my own. He just has to face one incredibly attractive Nagual, and he has most of his pack to back him up."

I sighed and took a seat on the love seat Ryan and I shared most nights.

Joey looked at the television and gave a confused bark.

I looked at what Sharpay was watching. "ESPN?"

Sharpay jumped and fumbled for the remote. "Eww… how did that happen?"

She changed the channel to Lifetime.

"That seems to happen a lot." I said.

Sharpay grunted.

Ryan followed Jesse's hybrid form down the stairs half an hour later. Jesse strode to the wolf lying in the middle of the room and sniffed it. Joey stuck his tongue out at Jesse, prompting one of his boyfriend's unnerving, hyena-like laughs. Ryan sat down next to me and draped his arm over my shoulders.

"Any problems?" He asked.

"Nope. The kid's a natural." I planted a kiss on his cheek.

"You're feeling frisky." Ryan said.

"Want to go upstairs and see just how frisky I can be?"

Ryan laughed and stood up, offering me his hand.

Sharpay sighed and turned up the volume on the television. "Don't you two get any ideas." She said to the wolves on the floor as Ryan and I climbed the stairs to his room.