Side note: I played with how things progress in this episode just a little bit. Just think it works better to add CJ into all of it this way.

Just as a reminder to all of those who are reading: When the text is written in bold and italicized lettering "like this," that is the part of the conversation had in sign language.

Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Wolf. I also have no claim on any pop culture references that I may use throughout my writings. I only own my OCs. Enjoy the read.

(o.o)

Chapter 1.13

The first half of the week went by like usual. Stiles picked me up in the mornings for school and dropped me off afterward. I'd spend the night reading all my textbooks to get some sort of head start.

Thursday morning was different. When I climbed into Stiles' Jeep that morning, he seemed off. He didn't pass me his dimpled smile. Stiles had barely acknowledged me at all. The car pulled away from the sidewalk without so much as a 'hey.'

I chewed on my lip for a second before debating on asking him about the faint dark circles under his eyes. "Stiles?"

Stiles glanced over at me. "Yeah?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah." He said, confused by the question. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You don't look like you've slept, at least not enough." I insisted, glancing down at his clothes. "And the t-shirt you're wearing is from yesterday, it's just a different plaid shirt. So, what sleep you did get, happened in that shirt."

Stiles' mouth gaped open wide. "Wow." He struggled for words. "What - ?"

"I pay attention," I told him, shying back into my seat. "Sorry."

Stiles shook his head, "No, CJ, you're okay. There was...another murder last night." He got out finally.

I did my best to hold my scoff in. I was getting tired of how many people died around here. "Did you know who it was?"

"One of the deputies. She used to help me with my homework when my dad worked nights." Stiles explained.

"Stiles, I'm sorry," I said, moving my fist in a circle on my chest.

Stiles nodded. "Thanks."

"If there's anything I can do, let me know," I told him. "About Vernon, too."

"You know about Boyd?"

I nodded, confused by the question. Was I not supposed to know about Boyd? I mean, sure, it wasn't on the news. My mother would have asked me about him. I didn't say anything to him after that. I didn't know what to say. We split ways once we got to the school. He went off somewhere finding the deputies cordoning off an area of the school. Stiles had failed to mention they found the deputy's body on school grounds.

Awesome.

I went straight to Ms. Blake's classroom. Before I took my seat by the window, I turned in a few of my assignments. Students trickled in. Lydia sat to my right; Stiles and Scott sat in front of us. As I did every English class, I opened up the book for the week and started to read, keeping to myself for the period.

Most of the way through class, Scott and Stiles started to whisper each other animatedly. I glanced up at them from my book, trying to catch what they were saying. However, Scott had his back to me, and Stiles was talking way too fast for me to read his lips.

Lydia tapped my desk with her pen, taking my attention away from the boys. "How do you like the book?"

I shrugged, glancing to Scott and Stiles for a second. "It's alright."

"Because I thought it moved pretty slow, you know?" Lydia continued. "It couldn't seem to hurry up and get to the point."

I nodded, "Yeah, I can see that. It's kind of annoying how the narrator almost always has no idea what's going on."

Lydia nodded, eye's glancing back to her friends for a split second. It looked almost like she was glaring at them.

I furrowed my brow at the exchange but ignored it. I looked at Lydia's desk, seeing her drawing. "That's really good." It was a sketch of a tree. "I didn't know you could draw like that."

Lydia nodded again and smiled at me. "A hidden talent, I guess."

(o.o)

After lunch, Lydia and I had a free period together. She'd generally help me with some classwork, especially when it came to my science class. Even with the syllabus from Ms. Blake, I was having trouble understanding the subject. Mr. Harris' notes were insane. The problem was, I couldn't even find her before lunch. I roamed the school, trying to see where she might be. As I moved to the lower level of the school, I found Scott and Stiles in the stairwell with one of the twins.

I narrowed my eyes at the sight, unaware that any of them were friends. I slowed to a stop on the landing. "Sorry, I don't want to interrupt. Have any of you seen Lydia?"

Scott shook his head. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, she helps me with some work during the free period."

"I think she said something about an advanced math study group," Scott said, speaking slowly so I could understand him.

"In the middle of the day?" I asked, confused. Why wouldn't she have told me that she changed our plans?

"Hey!" Stiles waved, sticking himself in front of me. "Um, I kind of have this thing after school. I can take you home, but I'm gonna be stuck here awhile."

I looked back and forth between Scott and Stiles. They weren't telling me something. Obviously, I couldn't say what, but I knew they were keeping secrets. "No, that's alright," I told Stiles, trying not to pay attention to the attractive twin staring me down. I grabbed my phone, sending a quick text asking for a ride. "I can get someone else to get me. See you later." I said, before pushing past the three of them and finishing my descent.

It took everything in me not to overreact as I had before. I know I'm not privy to every little thing that happens in this school. I know I don't need to know every detail about these people's lives. It's more irritating than anything because it seems as if they're actively trying to hide something from me. The way they talk huddled in a circle. The weird glances I get throughout the day. Even the look that Lydia gave Stiles and Scott this morning in English. It's like she was warning them that their conversation shouldn't have happened in front of me.

A hand on my arm stopped my focused stride down the hallway. I looked up at the person the arm belonged to and smiled. "Danny."

Danny waved at me. "Hey, CJ. You okay?"

"Yeah," I looked back at where I came from. "Just lost in thought I guess. How are you?"

"I'm good." Danny smiled. "Are you coming to the memorial concert tonight?"

"That's tonight?" I questioned, getting a nod from the tall boy. "I don't think so. It's not really something I can enjoy."

Danny realized after a second what I meant. "Right. That actually makes sense. You should still come, though. Be supportive." He held up his instrument case.

"I think I'm gonna sit this one out." The phone in my pocket vibrated as the alarm went off signaling the bell. "I've got to get to class. Good luck tonight." I sent Danny a wave and hurried onto my next class.

(o.o)

The last course of the day came too slow. I was avoiding talking to Scott and Stiles, and Lydia had failed to show up, so I kept to myself. Or I tried to, at least. As I read from the textbook, I could feel my hands start to shake. My insides suddenly felt frozen, and I felt as if I was going to be sick. I closed my textbook and clenched my fists, trying to get them to stop shaking. They wouldn't.

The classroom started to feel smaller as the seconds past. I had to leave. I stuffed my book in my bag and raced out of the classroom. I hurried through the empty hallway until something made me stop.

There was a scream. A loud cry. I knew I'd heard it. I furrowed my brow and hurried off in the direction of it. I stopped in my tracks when I saw Lydia standing in an empty classroom staring at the chalkboard. "Lydia?" I asked, entering the room.

Lydia turned towards me. "CJ? What are you doing here? You should be in class."

"So should you." I reminded her, studying the board. The drawing had five circles each intertwined. "What's that?"

"CJ, your mom will kill you if she finds out you're skipping class."

I narrowed my eyes at her, "I wasn't feeling well. Not that I need to explain myself." But even saying the words, the sickening feeling deep in my stomach had gone away. "Stop avoiding my questions. What going on?"

Lydia looked between the board and me, before shaking her head.

"Lydia?"

"You need to go."

I was taken aback by her order. "What? Why?"

"Seriously. Just go."

I studied her face. She looked angry, but also confused. I scoffed. "Fine. Don't tell me." I insisted. "I really should be used to all the secrets this town has. All the ones you have."

"There's no secrets."

"Bullshit, Lydia," I stressed. "I'm not stupid. You're keeping something from me."

Lydia licked her lips once before she bit her lips together. She wasn't going to say anything.

I rolled my eyes before turning to leave the classroom, running into Scott. I glared at him but pushed him out of my way. It was this school. This town. Everything about Beacon Hills was insane. I hurried out of the school and paced the sidewalk in front of it, waiting for my ride. Thankfully, it had shown up early.

As soon as I saw Derek's car pull up and stop, I was in the passenger seat. I slammed the door shut and asked him to drive away.

Derek gave me a look but drove off anyway. "You okay?"

"This town…" I trailed off, not finding the words. "These people are all dumb. I can't believe I never knew how much Beacon Hills sucks."

"Why does Beacon Hills suck?" Derek questioned.

I groaned, chewing on the inside of my cheek and shaking my head. "Do you realizing that this whole town is built on lies?"

Derek furrowed his brow, glancing between me and the road. "CJ, what are you talking about?"

I nodded, realizing he was going to lie to me, too. I shook my head again. "Nothing. Never mind." The rest of the short drive to my house as kept in silence.

"If anyone's keeping secrets, it's you." Derek stopped the car in front of my house and put the vehicle in park.

"I'm not keeping anything from you." I scoffed.

"Yes, you are." Derek insisted, his tone absolute. He knew. He might not have known what exactly I was hiding from him, but he knew it was something. Much like I knew that Stiles, Scott, and Lydia were keeping something from me.

I was such a hypocrite.

Derek sighed, softening his glare on me. "Whatever it is, you know you can talk to me, right?"

I gathered my bag from my feet and went to push the door open.

Derek's hand on my arm stopped me. "I'm not Carter." He said, making my heart stop for a second. "I won't ever be. But I'm here when you want to talk."

I didn't respond. I didn't know how. I could tell Derek that I saw Carter whenever I visited his grave. I could tell him that I talk to him. I could tell him that I swear I heard someone scream today at school. Instead, I nodded at him and left the car.

Going home turned out to be an even worse option than being at school. During dinner, Mom told me we'd be going to the memorial concert at the school. I tried to argue with her. I explained how it had been an awful day and that I wasn't feeling well. Still, once the time came, the whole family loaded up in the car, and we headed back to the place in Beacon Hills I hated most.

If I was going to go to this thing, I was going to do it on my terms. When we arrived, I saw Danny standing up by the stage with the twin I'd seen in the hallway with Scott and Stiles. I looked back at my mother signing to her that I'd be right back. I walked up to Danny with a smile on my face.

"CJ!" He signed, smiling back. "I thought you weren't coming."

I shrugged, glancing back at my parents. "Mom practically forced me into the car. I just wanted to wish you luck again."

Danny smiled and looked at the blond next to him. "CJ, this is Ethan." He said. "Ethan, this is my friend, CJ."

I got a warm feeling in my chest at the word friend, then looked to Ethan with a wave.

A teacher I'd barely recognized came up to the three of us, talking mainly to Danny. "It's time to start." She said, then turning to me. "Thank you for coming." The teacher put her hand on my arm.

My vision got fuzzy for a second and, instead of what was actually in front of me, I saw the teacher lying on the ground, blood pooled around her head. Her throat was slashed. I gasped and pulled away from the teacher, staring up at her.

"CJ?" Danny waved a hand in front of my face, getting my attention. "You okay?"

I swallowed the fear in my throat, hoping that feeling would go away, but it didn't. It was as if my insides were cold again. "I should go sit with my parents," I said, hardly finding my voice. After walking away, I took a seat next to my dad.

Dad put a hand on my shoulder and signed with his other. "You okay?"

I nodded at him. I took a deep breath to calm myself down, and as I did, the lights in the room dimmed, and the music began. A minute or two goes by before I can tell that they're playing. The tempo has sped up, and it seems the bass drum was hit harder. The fierceness in the music is hard to ignore. The band members are opening their mouths. I furrowed my brow and looked at Dad.

"Chanting." He says.

Still, I don't understand why there would be chanting during a memorial concert. I looked around at the other people in attendance, and I saw Stiles come in through the back entrance.

Another few minutes pass, and there's a scream. It sounds just like the one I heard at school earlier in the day. I look around, but no one is acknowledging it. It's as if no one heard it, but I heard it. When I sit back in my seat, my eyes land on the teacher playing the piano. Time moves too fast for me to actually believe it, but in the matter of a few seconds, the teacher was on the ground, recreating the pictures I saw a few minutes earlier in my head. It was in front of me. The teacher was lying in a pool of her own blood with her throat slashed.

"Is that me?" A voice next to me sounded through my ears.

"Oh, my God." I gasped. The teacher stood next to me. I backed up into my father. My dad's tight grip on my arm proves to me that I'm not imagining it this time.

My insides still felt like ice. Whatever happened to the teacher, wasn't stopping with her. I quickly and roughly pulled myself out of my father's grasp and ran for the exit. I wasn't sure where I was going, but I had to find out where the scream came from. In my panic, I had to tell someone what I thought was going on. I pulled out my phone and video called Stiles.

He answered and held his phone up to his face so I could see him. "CJ?"

"Stiles, something's wrong?" I insisted. "Somethings happening."

"CJ, are you okay?"

"I'm fine! I'm fine. But I think - " I stopped myself before going with the feeling I had in my gut. "I think Lydia is in trouble."

Stiles nodded. "Okay, where are you?"

I looked up from my phone and at my surroundings. I entered the building and recognized instantly where I was. "The English hall. I'm not even really sure why." I stopped in my spot.

There was another scream.

I looked at Stiles' face on my phone. "Did you hear that?"

"CJ, don't move!" The screen where Stiles' face was turned back into my home screen. I scoffed and put my phone back in my pocket. Seconds later, Scott came in through the door from the courtyard.

"Scott?" I questioned.

The dark-haired boy ignored me and burst through the door to Ms. Blake's classroom.

"What the hell?"

I went to follow after him, but someone grabbed my arm. I turned to see Stiles and sighed in relief. "What's wrong with Scott?"

"Stay here." He said with a gesture. Stiles rushed around me towards the doorway. He peered in but was stopped. The door slammed in his way, and he struggled to get it open again.

"Stiles!" I shouted, trying to get his attention. "What the hell is going on?" I hurried forward after I was ignored and looked through the window on the door. I saw Lydia tied up to a chair on the far side of the classroom. "Oh, shit." My heart stopped. "Lydia!" I pushed hard on the door, trying to help Stiles get it open, but it wouldn't budge.

Stiles stopped pushing on the door a moment later.

"Stiles!"

The boy's head snapped towards me.

"Push!" I screamed, giving the door one last heave. Finally, we got the door open. I grabbed a pair of scissors from Ms. Blake's desk and rushed to my cousin. "Lydia?" I questioned, noticing that she was barely hanging on. "Hey, Lydia? You okay?"

"CJ?" Lydia asked, blinking her eyes open.

"Hey," I said with a smile. "You gotta stay awake, okay?" I went around, cutting the rope holding her to the chair.

"You're not supposed to be here."

"Oh, screw you." I scoffed. "I'm done with that bullshit. Stay awake." I kneeled down in front of her, noticing the bruise beginning to form on her neck. "Who did this to you?"

Lydia looked past me toward Scott and Stiles.

Scott pulled his plaid overshirt closed, hiding something from me. I furrowed my brow at him.

Lydia tapped my arm, and I looked back to her. "Where are your parents?"

I suddenly realized that I had left them back in the auditorium. "I don't know. After that teacher died, I ran out of there."

Stiles hurried towards me, placing his hands on the sides of my arms. "Teacher?"

My heart beat fast in my chest at his forcefulness. I nodded. "The music teacher. She was playing piano for the recital, and one of the strings just snapped. It slit her throat." I refrained from telling them the rest of the story about seeing it before it actually happened and hearing the teacher after she died.

Stiles dropped his hands from my arms and looked to Scott. "That's three."

"Three?" I asked, curious about what he meant. "Three what?"

A small hand grabbed my wrist. "CJ, let's go find your parents," Lydia said, trying to pull me along. "We need to get home."

"No," I said, firmly, making the others, stop in their spots. I took a deep breath. I needed time to think before I hashed it out with these three. I wanted to find out what was going on, but I knew I had to do it tactfully. "We need to get you to a hospital. Or to the police or something. You were attacked."

Lydia nodded at me. "You're right. Let's go." Lydia wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and I helped lead her back towards the auditorium.

(o.o)

Mom fought with me to get me home. I didn't want to go home. I tried to stay with Lydia. Especially since she was hurt, and I had a feeling that it was happening. I had quickly come to the conclusion that I needed to tell someone what the hell was going on with me. Things just kept getting weirder by the day.

Mom wouldn't allow it though. She claimed that the night had been too traumatic and everyone needed to go home and get some sleep.

I wasn't going to get any sleep. Not only were the events of the day replaying in my head, but a storm was rolling in, and it seemed like it was going to be a rough one. I turned out the lights, kept myself quiet, and pulled out Carter's laptop hoping to make some progress.

I couldn't help but think there was a reason for everything that was happening. Still, there was one thing that stood out the most to me: I knew that the teacher was going to die before it happened. I didn't realize it at the time, but I certainly knew. In the same moment, a thought came to mind that was worse than the whole day.

What if Carter knew?

The thought alone made my breathing stop. It was something I needed to consider though with everything that was happening to me.

What if Carter knew that he was going to die? What if he knew when?

I took a deep breath, double-clicking on the locked file folder. The password prompt box came up, and I slowly typed in the numbers, hoping I was wrong.

08202012

The screen paused but after a second the contents of the folder loaded, showing numerous files, all dated.

I closed my eyes, trying to put all the pieces together and quickly hating the puzzle. There were hundreds of entries, dating back as early as 2004. I was eight and Carter was sixteen. I clicked on the very first document.

"I told Derek about what I can see and hear. Bodies of people I don't know. The screams and the whispers. Feint buzzing when the world is silent. He believed me. It was like he already knew. The dreams have been getting more and more prevalent. More and more real. They've started happening when I'm not even sleeping. I don't know if I should take sleeping pills to hide the fact that I'm not getting any rest. It might make things harder to escape."

What the fuck?

Carter saw things? He heard things? I shook my head, going for the next dated entry. This one had Paige's name at the top.

"Derek had to tell me what really happened to her. He told me that he was the one that did it. He killed her to stop her pain. He didn't want to tell me, but a couple of days after she died, I described her from the dream I had about her. Derek said it was exactly what she looked like. It was exactly how things happened. He's different now. Derek blames himself for trying to change her. He loved her. So did I. Not in the same way, but I'm still going to miss her."

Carter knew about Paige. Paige was Derek's biggest heartbreak, and he was the cause of all of it. Things were still hard to understand. What was he trying to change her into? More importantly, if Carter knew, why didn't he say anything?

I clicked on another one from 2005, not wanting to read that one anymore.

"Fire. I dream about fire almost every other night. I can't imagine how many butterflies I'll step on if I say something about them. I keep it to myself. I don't tell anyone. I can't. This is too important.

Then there's a wolf. Cut in half. Laura told me it's how a lot of the hunters kill wolves. It's certainly something she and Derek wouldn't ever heal from. No amount of magic could fix something like that."

Wolves? Did he mean werewolves? And hunters? Magic? None of that was real. Or was it? I pushed the laptop off of my lap and grabbed my phone sending a text to Derek.

I need to see you ASAP. I waited impatiently for Derek to text back, tapping my fingers against my phone.

Finally, the device vibrated. I can't.

I took a deep breath. Guess I need to rip the bandaid off. I know what you are. I texted, being vague enough, but hopefully, he'd still catch on.

What?

Carter told me.

It was minutes before Derek responded. I can't leave. Can you come to me? At the hospital.

I quickly agreed, not even bothering to ask why he was in the hospital. I changed into jeans and a t-shirt and grabbed my jacket to protect myself from the rain that I knew was coming. I looked at my bedroom door. I was supposed to be asleep.

I needed to figure this out.

I grabbed my car keys from my bag and went to the window. It wasn't a long drop to the ground, and there was a tree I could climb down which I did smoothly.

I got in the car and closed the door softly. With my hands on the wheel, I hesitated. I can't do this. I can't drive. I haven't been able to drive in over a month.

Lightning flashes in the distance, pulling me out of my trance.

Finding out what was going on was too important. I took a deep breath, put the key in the ignition and turned it, bringing the car to life. Without a second thought, I pulled out of the driveway.