"If he gets any closer to me I'm going to elbow him in the face," I muttered under my breath.
My second day of school and Coach has assigned a project, a stupid filler project about where crude oil came from and how gas prices affect the economy. Posters were what he was making us doing, which we'd later present to the class. It'd take us a day or two to do, then another day or two to present them all; clearly two to four days he did not want to teach Economics. Pairs were decided by him as well, deciding on the "the person sitting across from you is your partner" method. And with my luck, I did not manage to grab a seat by the very little people I knew in the class today; I was partnered with Greenberg. I had taken to muttering to myself, and Scott had begun to reply with mutters himself, and we sprung into a little mutter-conversation from opposite sides of the room. One of the many perks of being a werewolf.
"If I had an extendo-arm, I'd gladly do it for you."
"Sadly, you are not Inspector Gadget. Nah, it's okay. I got this. But first, pick a number between one and ten."
"Why?"
"Just do it, it's a surprise." I saw Scott nudge Stiles and ask him to pick a number, to which Stiles leaned back in his chair and held up the number seven with his fingers.
"Okay, seven it is. Look back here in about...uh...five seconds."
I "accidentally" pushed a marker off of my desk, which had been shoved up next to Greenberg's to accommodate the large pieces of paper we were given to make our posters out of. I leaned over the edge of my seat in that weird way when you have to splay out your foot and you tongue makes its way out of your mouth because you concentrate on reaching to get whatever has rolled off your desk, and scooped the marker up, keeping a hand on the edge of my desk. I pulled myself back up, and swung my elbow towards his face. I was aiming for an eye, but he moved slight, which was enough to change where my elbow was going to land. I was just hoping for really hard jab in the eye, but no, he had to move. My funny bone connected with his nose; good thing no one was looking in our direction beside Scott and Stiles because the scene of my elbow swinging towards his face sure did not look like an accident. The swing was way harder than I intended it to be, and I felt cartilage shift under my elbow. Oh shit. I broke his nose. The only "training session" I had had with Scott was to control my change and a brief overview of some vocabulary terms that I should know, along with the dangerous plants that didn't agree so well with werewolves. I he had left the smell and hearing for me to figure out, but he had no mentioned any superpowered strength of any kind. That would of been a little help to know about; I guess it had just slipped his mind that I could potentially break people's noses.
His hands flung to his face, let out a string of curse words, and the first thing out of my mouth was, "Ohmygod, are you okay?" Of course he wasn't okay, I just broke his nose. A few head turned in our direction, a general reaction to the two phrases "oh my god" and "are you okay".
"I think I'm bleeding," he said, pulling back one of his hands, which had drips of bright red blood on it. I could see his nose, and it wasn't too far from where it should be; it looked like he had just been smacked incredibly hard in the face with a book...about three or so times. A few more heads turned around, hearing the words "I'm bleeding". I glanced over towards Coach - who was reading a magazine, his legs propped up on his desk - and Scott and Stiles were in my field of vision. They both looked kind of stunned, having just witnessed breaking Greenberg's nose. I gave them both a panicked look before turning back to Greenberg.
"Uh, you should probably go to the office or something."
"Yeah," was all he said as he made his way out of his desk and towards the door.
"HOLD IT GREENBERG. Where do you think you're going?" Coach said, flipping down his magazine dramatically. Greenberg turned around, some blood dribbling from between his fingers.
"My nose is bleedin-"
"Go, GO," Coach said, waving the magazine wilding in Greenberg's direction. "We don't need you bleeding on everybody. Sheesh."
.
"Māhealani, Evans, partners. White, Summerville, partners. Ward, King, partners."
Alas, partners again for projects. Well, more of a lab. Something possibly life threatening, since the teacher had put a warning that read "please wear safety goggles at all time, no matter what" on the front board. The chemistry teacher than began explaining the experiment, something about gummy bear and potassium chlorate, but I was half listening as he explained, instead reading briefly reading through the handouts he had given us, which was practically the written version of what he was saying. Basically, we were dropping gummy bears into test tubes that had potassium chlorate at the bottom, which would cause the gummy bear to catch flame and smoke and hop around in the test tube. Talk about brutal.
The teacher signalled for everyone to move to sit next to their partners, and everyone got up, pushing and shoving to get to their designated person. I stayed put, waiting for 'Ward' to come over to the table I was sitting at. Wait...Ward. Ward, Ward, Ward – I'd hear that name before...
"Told ya' I'd talk to you later," said a voice behind me. I twisted to look at the person, and sure enough it was the same battered and beaten Ward from the office last week, only his face was lacking any physical injuries of any kind. "We haven't been officially introduced," he said, holding out a hand. "Hello, I'm Mason Ward."
A smile lacking of emotion passed on my face briefly as I shook his hand. He took the open seat, dropping down his Chemistry book and folder.
"Okay, first two tables grab safety googles and good back to the hood," the teacher said, motioning to the big machine in the back of the room that resembled an oven. It had an exhaust fan in it, and the shield slid up and down; it was used to keep fumes from reacting chemicals from spreading into the room, since some of them that would be created in a high school Chemistry class could be potentially toxic. "The rest of you can get started on the worksheet on the back of that paper." Nor Mason or I were sitting at the either of the first two tables, and I groaned internally. Surprise worksheets were the worst. At least there were only six questions.
Soon the sound of the exhaust fan could be heard, followed quickly by the sound of intense sparking, like mini fireworks were going off. A few heads turned the direction of the hood, but all that could be seen from behind the five people standing in front of it was white smoke being sucked into the exhaust fan. I tried to ignore the sound of the sparking gummy bear, but it really bothered me; it was incredibly loud in my ears and I couldn't block out the sound. I must have looked distressed or sonething, because Mason asked, "are you okay?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Just a headache."
"Okay...so what did you get for number four?" he said, leaning towards me to get a look at what I had written down, which was nothing. I quickly read the question.
"Uh, exothermic. The reaction is exothermic."
. . . . .
"It was an accident, okay? I didn't intentionally mean to break his nose, Scott. I just meant to jab him in the eye," I said, slamming the door shut to my truck.
"Sure it was an accident," Scott said as he rounded the front of the truck, so he could walk together into the forest. We had agreed to train - well, more Scott train me - in the ways of the werewolf. Right now, I was the padawan to his jedi; almost absolutely clueless about several things.
"Shut up before I break your nose. Next time don't leave out that I have super strength."
Scott just shrugged, saying, "it slipped my mind."
.
As we began walking back towards my truck, I just so happened to step on a piece of ground that wasn't exactly completely solid. About as solid as jell-o before its been in the fridge, that kind of solid - what I'm trying to say is that it wasn't solid whatsoever and it just fell out from under my foot, along with a small area around it. And of course, I happened to be walking near the edge of a hill. You can probably guess how this is going to play out. As my center of gravity was suddenly shifted from walking on a flat surface to falling down a hill, I reached out for something to grab, a tree branch, solid ground, anything - but I ended up grabbing Scott's sweatshirt and pulling him down with me. We rolled for a little bit - getting a little scratched up in the process, due to low hanging branches and small plants that seemed to just want to make my accidental fall even more painful - before we landed on solid ground, Scott under me, our faces a few inches apart. He looked like he had the wind knocked out of him.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry. The ground gave out and -"
"It's okay," he wheezed out. I was about to get up off of him when he spoke again, and I froze, mid-push up of my arms. "Hey Nat?"
"Yeah?" I felt weird, kind of just hovering above him.
"I have the strangest feeling that I should kiss you right now."
A heat crept its way onto my cheeks. "Is that so?"
"Yeah, and like a proper one; not like last time."
For some unknown reason to me, the words made their way out of my mouth before I could stop them. "Then maybe you should."
A small smile cracked on his lips and his hand went up to my face, his thumb dragging along my cheekbone and his fingers threading into my hair, which sent butterflies straight to my stomach. I instinctively tilted my head into his hand and he gently pulled me down towards him, lifting his head up to meet me halfway. We were both smiling when our lips first touched. There was some sort of silent agreement that okay, attempt two, smiling and touching lips doesn't count.
The second time around he was gentle about it, and we probably laid there on the forest floor for at least fifteen minutes, just kissing. Good thing there were no runners or joggers in the immediate forest area at the time, because that would just be embarrasing for them to see. Like we would even notice, we were too busy with each other's lips. When he finally pulled back, both of our faces were flushed.
"Natalie?" he asked quietly.
"Yeah?"
"I think I left the passenger side window unrolled. Like all the way."
"Way to ruin the moment McCall," I said, chuckling.