He didn't know what happened, but he knew instinctively that something was wrong. Something wasn't as it had been. Tommy looked around the classroom, it was the same classroom he had been sitting in a moment ago, the same teacher was talking about something he didn't understand and the same people were looking bored. Then it struck him, he knew what had changed, it was where he was sitting. The two friends from the football team that he usually sat with were in their usual place, but his desk, next to them was occupied by someone else. He was sitting closer to the back of the room, and to his left was the weird kid, Merton, from the other night
He struggled to keep himself calm, not wanting to panic. He wasn't in the future, it was all in his head, he wasn't a werewolf, there were no such things as werewolves. Okay, so maybe he was going insane, but at least that meant that none of the other things were happening again.
"Tommy," Merton whispered to him urgently. Tommy ignored him, he wasn't going to speak to the boy, he wasn't even there. "Tommy!" He said it louder this time and more urgently. Still Tommy pretended not to hear. "You're wolfing out!" This whisper was quieter than the rest, obviously designed so that no one else could hear it. The boy obviously wanted to protect the insane and impossible secret. As much as he didn't believe what was happening to him, Tommy couldn't help but react, he looked at his hands and saw to his alarm that they were becoming the same wolf paws he had seen before. The realisation scared him even more, sending more and more adrenaline pumping around his system, speeding up the change. "Get out of here!" whispered Merton.
He didn't even bother to pretend not to hear this time, delusion or not this was too real. As real as the last time and just as terrifying. It was bad enough for this to happen, but supposing, just supposing it was real, he didn't want anyone else to see him like that. He got up and ran out of the classroom without a word, the door slammed behind him and he and he tried to think about where he could go. Where would he be safe? The only place he could think of was the bathroom, and he ran there as quickly as he could. Quicker than he had ever ran in his life. In fact it barely seemed to take any time at all to move from his seat in the classroom to locked inside a cubical in the bathroom where no one could see him. He was safely hidden from the world. Hidden because he was a freak and no one could know. If this really was his future he didn't want it, he would do anything to stop it, anything. He stood resting his head against the wall. "It's not real," he muttered to himself, "Not real, not real, not real…"
"Tommy, are you in here? Are you okay?" It was Merton again. If you could say one thing about that kid he really did seem to care about him. Tommy opened the door a crack and peered out, making sure no one else was around to see him. The bathroom was empty except for the Goth.
"Do I look okay?" He asked.
Merton's eyes glanced over him for a moment in a way that for some reason he didn't understand, made him slightly uncomfortable. "Not really, no."
Tommy bit his lip and tried to concentrate on calming himself down and becoming human again, or at least looking human again, as Merton and Lori had helped him to do before.
Merton joined in with a soothing haiku or two and eventually he felt the hair retract back into his skin and his appearance become normal again. He reassured himself with a long glance in the mirror and let out a shaky sigh, burying his head in his hands as he did.
"What's bothering you?" Merton asked, "You were worried about what people are going to say to you after class, weren't you? I know it looked like T'n'T were glaring at us, but I think it was just me they wanted to scare. They do it all the time, you just probably didn't notice before now."
"What are you talking about?" asked Tommy, "T'n'T are friends of mine, why would they want to scare me?"
Merton gave his best friend a strange look before he realised what was going on. "You're not my Tommy, are you? You're past Tommy again, from before you were a werewolf."
"I'm not a werewolf, this is all in my head, none of it is really happening."
"Sorry, it is." Merton thought for a minute, "You need to tell me what you've been doing since you went back to your time, did you tell anyone about coming here, about the wolf?" He knew that anything past Tommy did could have affected the time line and made changes to his present. He didn't know whether changes had been made already or whether there would be anything he could do to reverse them if they had, but he had to know.
Tommy shook his head, "I don't want people to think I'm crazy," he said, "I didn't remember it anyway. I'd managed to forget about all of this until I found myself back here. I didn't even realise what was happening at first, then I realised where I was and I… I guess I panicked."
Merton felt bizarre mixture of relief and dread. Past Tommy didn't remember his trips to the present, that meant there was nothing he could do there that might expose his secret identity in the present. On the other hand, it ruined the only hope he was still hanging onto that the past and future Tommys weren't real, that he wasn't really going to die. He had been thinking that if the past Tommy really was from the past, present Tommy would have remembered a trip to the future, but he didn't seem to. Now he knew that was because past Tommy had forgotten all about his little trip though time. Good news for Tommy that the chances that he was insane were reduced but bad news for Merton, who was fast losing hope of ever being able to write the screenplay to a blockbuster movie before he died. Of course it was still possible that Tommy did have something wrong with him, but Merton had never been able to believe that in the first place, he certainly couldn't now.
But what could he do? He couldn't have a past version of Tommy running about who might wolf out at any second and wouldn't know what to do about it, he could reveal Tommy's secret. "Come on," he said, tugging on the taller boy's T-shirt, "we've got to get out of here before something else happens."
Tommy didn't make any effort to resist, he just let himself be led out of the bathroom, down the corridor and out of the door. As they went he heard a voice behind him shout "Hey Dawkins, have fun in the bathroom with your boyfriend?" he turned around to see T'n'T high five each other before being ushered back into the history classroom by the teacher.
"Ignore them," said Merton under his breath. Tommy turned back but unclenched Merton's fist from the front of his clothes and walked without being dragged. He didn't know what else his future self had been getting up to other than being bitten by werewolves, but he thought he had a good idea and really wished he didn't.
Merton led him to a hearse, Tommy hesitated before climbing into a car usually used for transporting dead bodies, but realised he didn't have much choice. They drove back to the lair, went inside and Merton sat down at his desk.
"So what do we do now?" asked Tommy.
"I don't know, I haven't exactly got a plan. I just had to get you out of school before you changed again. You've…well, you will do a pretty good job of keeping you secret up to now. I couldn't let you blow it by changing."
Tommy sat down and rested his head in his hands again. "I can't believe this is my future." He said, "Look at it, it's horrible. I'm a monster that has to hide from people so they don't find out, I'm being bullied by the two biggest guys in school and I'm…" he broke off
"You're what?"
"I'm…gay." He whispered the word so quietly that even he could barely hear it, not wanting to believe it but finding himself saying it all the same.
Merton froze, then opened his mouth and a garbled, shocked stream of words erupted from it. "You're what? No, no…you're not gay. At least I don't think you are, you never said you were anyway. I know it's the sort of thing you might not mention but I'm fairly sure I'd know. Of course, I didn't know, not until now. You're gay?"
"No!" Tommy didn't know what to do, he had assumed form what T'n'T had said, but he had assumed he was dating Merton. That was the sort of thing he would expect Merton to notice. That meant he wasn't gay. "I just thought…because of what people were saying. I'm not, I was just worried my future self was, that I was going to be in the future"
"It's just a rumour, not true." Merton didn't feel the need to explain what had caused that rumour or mention any doubts about Tommy's sexuality that had recently begun to form in his own mind. None of that would help Tommy's obviously freaked out past self.
"A rumour. That's not so bad then, embarrassing, but not so bad. But all the other stuff, that's true." A dejected look formed on his face and Merton resisted the impulse to comfort his friend with an arm around the shoulder or even a hug. This wasn't his Tommy.
"You're not a monster, Tommy. You're a good werewolf, you help people. My Tommy, the Tommy from this time, I think he's accepted what he is and when you become him you'll have accepted it too. It's not always easy, but he does a lot of good for this town. Even if the people don't always realise it.
"And you needn't worry about T'n'T either, they like to think they'll capture the werewolf one day but they never will and they don't know it's you. Normally they don't bother you, I'm the one that has to worry about them."
Tommy didn't look convinced. He didn't like his future any more now that he had the last time. He couldn't see a single thing to like about it.