You're dripping like a saturated sunrise
You're spilling like an overflowing sink
You're ripped at every edge but you're a masterpiece
And now you're tearing through the pages and the ink
Chapter 20: Renaissance
"Okay, I know we're all tired and miserable," Scott started. He paused, eyeing Mason suspiciously. "Except for you."
The pack was gathered in the parking lot around Stiles' baby blue Jeep, their elbows leaning on the dusty and bug-spattered hood. The August air was thick and muggy, even at eight a.m.
"Oh," Mason said, a wide grin plastered on his face. He had been smiling since Sherry first saw him this morning, a quite unnerving feat for a gloomy Wednesday morning. "I'm sorry. This is all just mind-blowing."
Everyone stared at him with blank expressions. Mason continued, excited. "You're a kitsune," he said, pointing at Kira. He laughed. "I don't even know what that is!"
She smiled weakly. "I'm still learning."
Stiles bounced on his toes in annoyance. "Liam, we said you could tell him. Not invite him to the inner circle!"
"Uh, I'm in the inner circle?" Mason gasped.
"No!" Liam and Stiles retorted in unison.
"Guys, look, back to Tracy," Scott said. "She's just one lone wolf. We can find her."
"One lone serial-killing wolf," Lydia muttered.
"Uh, she only killed one person, you know," Stiles reminded her. "The other two were mauled."
"Alright," Scott continued, "What do we do when we catch her?"
"I say we put her down," Malia decided.
Mason nodded slowly, his eyes wide. "Intense."
Scott ignored him. "Guys, let's concentrate on catching her first. We'll figure out the rest later."
The bell rang, signaling the end of their morning pep talk. The group dispersed, each person going in the direction of his or her first class. "Was there English homework?" Liam asked Sherry, sounding slightly timid.
"Read the first twenty-five pages of the textbook," she responded tersely. "There's a quiz. If you haven't studied by now, don't even bother. You'll fail anyway."
Liam backed away. "Okay, okay! Sorry." He nudged Mason. "Let's go."
Sherry exhaled and left in the direction of the main building. When she was halfway there, she felt a tap on her right shoulder.
"What happened between you and Liam?" Stiles asked, that analytical and detective-like sound in his voice. "Just before summer, you looked devastated when he almost died." Scott appeared on Sherry's other side, watching her in concern.
She glanced at them, calculating. Between the two of them, they must have already figured it out, so she wasn't sure why they were still asking. Scott understood chemical signals and likely already knew what she was feeling. Stiles, with his affinity for puzzle-solving, probably had pieced together the correlations between events and her actions. She sighed. "Emotional attachment is futile. Everyone I've loved has been hurt, one way or another, and I just... I just don't want to do it anymore. Feelings hurt, okay, and one thing I've always been afraid of is pain."
"Remember I told you about Allison?" Scott started. Sherry nodded. "The year I knew her and... loved her was the best year of my life. And when she died, it hurt. Like, like hell. And it still does. But I still wouldn't trade that year for anything. The thing is, no matter how bad the pain is, the love is always worth it. Don't block yourself off just because you it'll hurt. Let yourself love and be happy even though it'll hurt. One day, you'll be hurting anyway. In the meantime, let yourself be happy, okay?"
She was silent for a moment. "You know how I feel about Liam, Scott," she whispered. "It's not that easy."
Stiles' eyes flickered between Sherry and Scott, a look of understanding forming on his face, revealing that he hadn't actually known until just now. He opened his mouth to speak, but a call cut across the parking lot, interrupting him.
"Scott! Sherry!" Lydia yelled, walking side-by-side with Kira. "Do you want to get to class on time or not?"
"Sorry," Scott excused himself guiltily. "AP Bio is on the other side of campus." He nodded at Sherry. "Are you coming?"
She glanced at Stiles. "I'll catch up. Mrs. Finch likes me."
Stiles sighed, and when Scott left, he continued, "Why isn't it easy? If you want him, you at least have to try." He stared at Sherry levelly. "I had a crush on Lydia since the third grade and I was always chasing her. She may never have liked me back, but at least now we're close friends, okay? You need to have more confidence."
She shook her head. "It's not confidence. It's experience. I'm not like Lydia. I was always that girl, who's chill or cool or friendly or sweet, who's too pretty to be single and too nice to be interesting. I was the matchmaker, the wingman, the little sister type - but I'm not crush material. At least not for the ones I like."
"You know what?" Stiles said. "You're like someone got Scott McCall from two years ago and put him in girl form. You're like distilled Scott on his stuffed puppy days. And you know what?"
She groaned, "What?"
"Scott McCall always gets the girl."
"Are you telling me I attract all the lesbians?"
He pressed his mouth in a line, irritated. "I'm saying that the boy you like definitely has a crush on you, okay? Go get him."
Her DNA and RNA structure chapter test fluttered onto the black lab bench in front of her, the circled score screaming out at her. She glared at the red numbers, disappointed. She'd spent three hours, at least, studying for the test and still she was one measly percentage point away from an A.
The boy next to her with the pretty hair nudged her. "What did you get?"
She growled. "Eighty-nine percent." She looked over at his paper. Ninety-two. "Nice."
He pointed at the last problem on the first page of her test, a short answer question. "There, see?" He compared his response to hers. "You just forgot to include a description of the nucleotides."
"Oh," she realized. "Ugh. Stupid mistake!"
The boy grinned. "Hey, if you'd avoided that mistake, you would have about a ninety-four. It sucks that that had to be worth so many points."
"No, I should have been more careful," she sighed. His praise made her smile, though, so she added, "But thanks."
"Nice to see where your priorities are, Scott," Mrs. Finch remarked, officially starting the class as she slid his test in front of him. Sherry sat up attentively, resolved to pay attention to every detail of the class so that she could ace the next quiz. "Since you have such a good grasp of the subject, how about you lead us in a review of last night's reading?"
"Uh, sure." Scott sounded unprepared, and started distractedly turning the pages of the textbook. Sherry didn't understand the point in continually singling Scott out. Next to him, Kira watched him nervously.
"Scott?" Mrs. Finch said, after the boy turned pages for several moments and still hadn't found the right chapter.
"Sorry, just looking for the page," he apologized. Sherry couldn't see his eyes from her vantage point in the back of the classroom, but she noticed his head turning toward the door between flips of the pages and Kira glancing out at the hall. Following their gaze, she saw a familiar tousled brown head lurking in the doorway.
"Scott?" Mrs. Finch repeated.
Liam made urgent motions from the door, beckoning Scott over. "Yeah, one sec. Sorry," Scott said to the teacher.
Sherry felt bad. No wonder he couldn't concentrate.
"Scott!" Mrs. Finch said impatiently.
Scott tapped his ear and Liam's eyes widened in understanding. He backed out of view.
Inside, Scott had finally found the right page and seemingly accidentally knocked his pen to the floor, buying him some time as he listened for Liam.
Finally, Scott started to summarize the lesson. "It was basically about cell organelles and-" The fire drill went off, causing the students to all start packing up excitedly, shoving pencils and notebooks into their bags.
Mrs. Finch pursed her lips at her disrupted class, resigned. As students snatched their things and hurried toward the door, she ordered, "No rushing. It's likely just an unscheduled drill."
Scott muttered something to Kira and jostled his way out of the classroom. Lydia and Sherry caught up with Kira, confused.
"What happened?" Lydia demanded, elbowing some classmates out of the doorway. Everyone else parted to let her through, clearly recognizing Lydia's noble rank in the high school hierarchy.
"Tracy is here," Kira muttered. "In my dad's class."
Sherry's eyes widened. "Oh." She turned and ran down the hallway, in the opposite direction of the rest of the school. She couldn't hear Kira or Lydia following after by the time she entered the classroom of Mr. Yukimura, Kira's dad, which was vacant but for him, Scott, Liam, and two girls Sherry didn't recognize in the back of the room. On of the girls sat in a desk, an odd look on her face, while the other one tried in vain to persuade her to get up and follow the fire drill. Scott edged closer to the girl still sitting in her desk, a murderous look on her face and claws vandalizing the tabletop with long gouges. With the way Scott looked wary of a possible sudden attack, Sherry pieced together that the girl must be Tracy.
"Hey, we need to go," the other girl urged, peering at Tracy. She tilted her head, unsure what to do to help. "Are you all right?"
Tracy stared at something off in the distance, almost with a dreamy expression. Then she grabbed the girl's wrist, clenching painfully tightly, her dark-streaked claws piercing the girl's skin. The girl gasped out in agony.
"Tracy," Scott warned, inching toward her. "Tracy."
Tracy seemed to be in a trance, staring blankly ahead of her with a fearful expression on her face.
"Tracy, let go. Tracy!"
Her grip tightened, twisting the girl's wrist. Blood trickled down between her fingers. The girl whimpered. "You're hurting me!"
"Tracy, let go."
Slowly, she stood up, her gaze focused directly at Scott. Ominously, she finally spoke. "They're coming. They're coming for all of us." Tracy then collapsed, falling like a plank of wood. She laid unconscious on the floor as Scott and Sherry rushed toward her. Scott scooped her into his arms, obviating the need for Sherry's assistance. An ominous silver liquid pooled around Tracy's lips and Sherry choked in shock.
Mr. Yukimura opened the door for Scott as the boy lifted Tracy out. He pulled his keys from his pocket and ran out toward the front doors.
Sherry, Liam, and the other girl hurried into the hallway to watch. As Scott and Mr. Yukimura reached the double doors, Stiles and Malia ran in from a side hallway. At first, they were about to turn the corner, but the moment they saw what was happening, they backtracked frantically and opened the doors for Tracy to pass through. They ran out after them and the light blue doors slammed shut.
"She wasn't even supposed to be in our class," the girl said, staring suspiciously. "Where are they taking her?"
"Uh," Liam said, scratching the back of his head, as if debating what to tell her. He looked agitated, almost guilty that the other girl had gotten hurt. One warning look from Sherry made him gulp. "The hospital, I guess." Around them, the sounds of students returning to the halls and visiting lockers made Sherry suddenly aware of their visibility.
Liam returned his attention to the girl, his eyes drifting down to her bloodied wrist. "Do you need help getting to the Nurse's Office, Hayden?"
"I think I'll make it," she stated coldly, and began to stalk away.
A/N: This chapter continues into the next one, so don't get confused when the next chapter starts in the same scene as this one. (It's because each chapter is 2000 words, which is about my average word count per chapter, and I thought it would be easier just to split the 4000 words straight down the middle.)
I swear Layden is making my life extremely difficult ugh. Like, I ship it but it's really getting in the way of #Shiam tbh. What do you think of Hayden's introduction?
