That Friday... "Full Moon Time".
"Heh. Watch." Abbacio grinned, gesturing with the fifth cigarette of his morning break at one of Merston High's nearby ground floor windows.
"What…?" Mike mumbled around his second lightup of the day, hands cradling the tiny flame of his lighter against the rising wind as it whipped across the staff parking lot right out of Canada.
"Shhh, just… heh, watch."
Mista and Narancia had been at each other since their shared ride to school that morning.
Being full moon time, it started with sideways remarks about who was the most stanky.
Which escalated into face to face.
And a lot of swerving back and forth on the part of the old, battered truck.
Which escalated from face to face to the brakes of the old, battered truck being slammed hard, followed by an argument on the side of the road to school which escalated into a red-faced shoving match.
While traffic built up behind them.
Traffic which included a big yellow school bus that was heading to Salem Elementary.
The big yellow school bus honked just as Narancia grabbed Mista by the ruff and hung on as Mista grabbed Narancia, who still hadn't got his big-boy fur for some reason, by the hair, the two of them snarling insults that went waaaaaaaaay past critiques on the other young man's B.O., the two of them grappling and snarling in the middle of the street.
The bus honked again, louder.
They broke it up.
Shedding, they climbed back into the truck, and turned into the nearby student parking lot.
They then had an argument over who went first into the building.
Followed by a shoulder-shove match over who got to use the drinking fountain first.
Ditto first period P.E.'s locker room door.
Followed by still more remarks about pungent bodily emissions and whose stank was nastier.
In front of the cheerleaders, who were rehearsing for that afternoon's pep assembly.
Blushing, they stopped it.
This truce lasted roughly fifteen seconds.
Tired of their bullshit, the coach ordered both of them to sit separately between physical fitness tests.
Where they sat glaring at each other from opposite sides of the gymnasium.
Mista passed his fitness test, no prob.
Narancia needed work.
Mista rubbed it in.
Narancia flipped him off with both hands.
Mista returned the gesture, somehow managing to put more animosity into such a simple gesture than Narancia.
Refusing to be outdone, Narancia slid off one ratty counterfeit Converse and made a similar derisive gesture with his bare foot, both hands still defiant.
Within seconds, the two young werewolves collided in the middle of the gymnasium.
Trish Una, the main flyer girl of this year's cheer team, landed face down on the gym mats in the middle of a new pyramid formation, a move that was NOT part of their planned routine.
The cheer squad did not appreciate this.
Both, wound up in the office.
Both, were warned.
Both, had another shoving match over who went through the door for Practical Math class first.
They were already tardy.
Mr. Bishop, the math teacher, made them sit on opposite sides of the classroom. He remembered how it had been the previous year and believed in preemptive action.
Too bad Narancia lost his only pen, leaving him with a pencil.
A well-gnawed one.
And like most of this part of our story, it was pointless.
Too bad the pencil sharpener was next to Mista.
Pointless or not, too bad, Narancia needed to go across the room to use the aforementioned pencil sharpener - what fun!
Spidery, un-medicated Narancia, skinny arms and legs moving in all directions in the latest ADHD dance moves, be-bopped past Mista, who'd just been warned AGAIN by his mother via text that he'd better shape up because she was damned if his bullshit caused her to have to forsake her morning nap and come down to the office to deal with him directly, tried to ignore his best friend's and worst enemy's… antics.
Too bad Mista set his gym bag next to his chair.
Too bad Mista, having cleaned out his locker for the week, forgot to zip it shut.
Too bad Narancia and his impulse control issues spotted the sweat-stained tighty-whities atop the rest of Mista's mother's nightmares.
Uh-oh, stinky!
Without breaking his ADHD dance, complete with moves even Narancia couldn't predict, Narancia scooped up the fragrant garment, and yanked it down over Mista's head.
And then, like a good boi, sharpened his pencil.
Still doing his little dance.
Collective breaths held, the entire class, plus Mr. Bishop, a pair of nosy SROs outside copping a smoke in a downpour, and a raven with six eyes, watched Narancia groove.
Could this bit of classroom improv possibly get any better?
Why yes. It could.
In fact, it DID!
Narancia grooved his way past the stunned, blatantly befouled Mista.
And sat down, quite sure that as far as the IRS was concerned, 2x10=100, 3+5=9, and that houseplants were deductable but only if they were Boston ferns.
(Whatever those were.)
Mista, forgetting last Wednesday when his mother had to forsake her morning nap and personally deal with his stupidity in the school office, ripped off the offending undies and hurled them across the classroom, missing Narancia's head before winding up hanging from a ceiling fan.
Which now spun lazily in white circles, surrendering to anybody and everybody.
Ignoring his whirling undies, Mista marched fuming to where Narancia virtuously filled out a mock-tax form so that had it been a real one, he'd have been brought up on charges by the IRS, feet dancing to music only they could hear, free hand messing with a fidget spinner, hot pink.
Everyone held their breath.
(Except for Spectra, who was dead.)
Good boi Narancia showed the world that yes, indeed, 5+5=12. Or did 5+5=42? Who cares as long as you have an answer? As someone who happily filled in blanks with whatever answers that came to mind, Narancia happily answered questions any old way, oblivious to the fate which was rapidly advancing upon him.
Fate, which was Mista, bent, gripped the edge of the wire book rack on the bottom of Narancia's chair, and abruptly straightened in a near-visible cloud of werewolf musk.
In the middle of proving that indeed, 100-1=98, Narancia abruptly found that his view of the world now included the ceiling.
That, plus a thud followed by the laughter of the entire class.
"Time to intervene." Abbachio smirked behind the school's outdoor classroom while pinching out the sixth coffin nail of morning before tucking it back in the pack.
Mike, remembering having pulled similar shit back in the day, agreed.
Raina knelt beside the Stein's koi pond, the big, slow brightly-colored fish brushing against her hands like friendly cats before easing into Child's Pose after untying the strings of her bikini top, enjoying the sun on her recently tattooed back and upper arms.
Like Mike, she'd declined to go Stein "green".
They weren't Steins, and, no offense, never would be. So why look like one?
Behind closed doors in the guest house, Mike agreed, adding, "If things here go belly up, we need to be able to blend until we can escape."
The tall former Navy chopper pilot studied her arms where swirls of red, green, aqua, brown, purple, and turquoise ink wrapped around them. The floral and water patterns crossed her shoulders and down to the small of her back where a patch of intense green easily hidden by her pooled before swirling down her legs and the tops of her feet.
Not ink, Raina corrected herself, algae.
Algae, injected under her synthetic skin like ink.
Raina didn't understand how it worked, but if she couldn't get to a battery or a wall socket, she could "eat" by exposing herself to sunlight or a UV lamp because intricate tattoos were all the rage these days— even on women. Who would think that her "optional" extras were what kept her, and Mike moving and thinking?
Mike's "tattoos" were more masculine: flames, barbed wire, rattlesnakes, bears, and grinning skulls, flaring up his arms, across his upper chest and shoulders, and around his neck before it wrapping around his torso and into a patch of intense green like Raina's at the base of his spine before trailing down his legs, ankles, and feet.
She'd also had blue-green wings tattooed down the synthetic skin on either side of her new titanium spinal column above the main feeder patch – Vivica had hemmed and hawed over Raina's request until she found a design online and translated it into code so that Raina spent three days on her new belly on the marble slab as computerized needles injected the design into her flesh as Mike distracted her from the pain.
Mike's nieces didn't have theirs yet. The Steins insisted that the girls be allowed to "grow" before something as drastic as a full body design should even be considered.
Maggie was all for it, but Puck sullenly refused, allowing the Steins only to engineer portable batteries for her disguised as a backpack for school while Maggie eagerly anticipated what she'd look like when she was full "grown", temporarily making do with the green patch recently injected into her new, synthetic lower back.
As for Josie, ink, no ALGAE, was out of the question.
She was free and fully human. Why be forced to be anything like the rest of the family if she didn't have to?
And if things went bad?
They could always shuffle her in with a friendly Normie family if they had to. Who'd notice one more light-skinned black girl in box braids?
If things really got that bad, they'd leave the dog, no, JEREMY, with her as protection.
The sun dimmed, the temperature dropping.
Raina rose, watching lightning on the horizon walk towards her, skin automatically pulling energy out of the approaching bad weather.
As much as she would like to stand out in the rain and eat, it was time to get ready to go to work the afternoon shift with the air ambulance company that hired her last July
Mike shouldn't have to pay for all this good fortune on his own.
"Hey, boos, hey!" Josie exclaimed, waving the fox covered lunchbox she'd got from Goodwill with one newly manicured hand. "Move over. I'm hungry!"
Clawdeen, who'd done the manicure last night when they should have been doing Honors Lit homework, slid over so Josie could join her and the rest of the girls.
Josie, now wedged between Melody and Draculaura smiled, showing off her new teeth. Puck, plugged into the wall with a bright orange extension cord glared at her from behind the glass double doors of the outdoor classroom.
Josie nervously glanced in her biological mother's direction. Whatever it was she'd done THIS time to piss mama off, it could wait. Josie then shrugged, biting into her ham sandwich, packed that morning after Aunt Raina woke her up by tapping on the attic door with a broom handle.
Clawdeen dug an elbow into her ribs. "Yo, Jo-gurl."
"Yeah?" Josie leaned close to the werewolf girl to catch what she had to say in the lunchroom din.
"Fam and I are having a hair day this full moon weekend. Wanna join? You're nappy!"
School could be overwhelming, but friends made everything all right.