Chapter 8

Later that day, me and the sibs were chillin' at home with Mom and Dad. I didn't have anything better to do, so while my sibs were all doing their own things, I sat down on the couch and watched the news with my parents. The well-known reporter Katherine Mulligan was talking about something gnarly that had gone down during the night.

"Good morning, Royal Woods, though it's definitely not a good morning for some. Philip 'Flip' Filipini, the owner of a local convenience store and despicable charlatan and swindler, was found dead at the crack of dawn by a potential customer who noticed that one of the convenience store's windows was broken. The customer was traumatized by the gristly scene within: entire shelves toppled over, products scattered across the floor, and the mutilated body of the man himself lying in a pool of his own blood. Police reports state that Flip was mauled to death by an as-yet unidentified large animal. Numerous large chunks of flesh are missing from the corpse, which also shows clear signs of a losing struggle. I don't know if Flip has any loved ones in Royal Woods, but I say good riddance!"

I count myself among the people that shares Ms. Mulligan's sentiments. Almost everyone in town hated Flip with a passion, my family especially. The police may not have identified the culprit yet, but I immediately knew who was responsible. The blood I'd cleaned off of Sam was human after all. Actually, scratch that; Sam's werewolf form was more of a what than a who.

...

It was almost a week before Sam came back to school. Bizarrely, Lisa managed to convince the terrified student body that what they saw on Halloween night was just a mass hallucination from spiked punch and tainted snacks. Principal Rivers and her assistant were in on Sam's secret, as well as Sully and Mazzy, but everyone else was in the dark.

At lunch, Sam told us that Sandra had dropped him off at the isolated Sleeping Bear Dunes campground before each of his other two transformations, picking him back up the morning after. He had then taken two extra days to sleep off the various aches that followed. With minimal help from Lisa (who voluntarily tutors me and the sibs on a regular basis), Sam was able to catch up on homework without difficulty. There was a burning question that I had to ask, though.

"Hey, Sam, why did you call us the first friends you'd ever made? Your cabin couldn't have been that isolated, could it?"

"Our cabin wasn't isolated at all," Sam explained. "Even if I wanted to make friends, I couldn't. People tended to go out of their way to avoid me, and still do. I was too rugged for their tastes, even for a mountain environment. It got to the point that when my sister Simone had her friends over for a sleepover, she chewed them out for a whole twenty minutes because they were saying mean things about me behind my back. Growing up, my best friend was my own father. We did everything together; hunting, fishing, wood carving, watching sports. Truth be told, I had a good life, and I wouldn't have traded it for the world. Then, that one night happened..." Sam's voice had taken on a more somber tone, so Mazzy, Sully, and I interjected and told him that he didn't have to talk about something so painful so soon.

We all stuck around after school for band practice, and Sam killed it singing "Animal I have Become" by Three Days Grace. Afterwards, we switched gears to something more lighthearted, namely "Born to be Wild" by Steppenwolf. After that, Sam and the others suggested possible lyrics for a song I was working on personally, entitled "Play it Loud." We did that for about twenty more minutes until Sam got a text from his aunt saying she was waiting to pick him up.

We were getting our homework from our lockers (by strange coincidence, Sam's locker was right next to mine) when a large hand nearly slammed my door shut on my fingers. Bryce stood there with fury in his eyes and a large bandage across the bridge of his nose.

"You owe me a date, you little tramp," he snarled at me. "One way or another, you're gonna be mine, and you're gonna love me!" The same paralyzing fear I'd felt on Halloween night came back, but this time, Sam was there to protect me. With a surprising amount of strength for how slender he was, he grabbed Bryce by the front of his letterman jacket, tore him away from me, and slammed him against the lockers.

"Stay away from Luna, or else," he warned. Bryce only laughed.

"Or else what, tough guy? What are you gonna do?" Without letting go, Sam held up his fingers so that Bryce could get a good look at his long, sharp nails.

"You see these, Bryce? These aren't just fingernails." Sam reached over and dragged his nails down the wall, leaving five deep scratches in the beige-painted plaster. "You wouldn't want anything worse to happen to that pretty face of yours, would you?" Yes, Bryce cared about his looks just as much as any teenage girl. Bryce himself gulped and shook his head furiously. "Good. Now get lost!" Sam let go of Bryce, who scrambled away as fast as he could. "Sorry you had to see that, Luna. As you can see, some of the Wolf's traits persist in my human form," he explained before I tearfully leaped into his arms. He was caught off-guard by the hug, but returned it nonetheless as my fear escaped through my tears and soaked his shoulder. We stood there for a moment, then Sam cleared his throat and asked, "I know this might be short notice, but would you like to hang out at my place for a while?"

"Yeah, I'd like that a lot," I replied with a sniffle. Sam handed me a dark blue handkerchief from his back pocket for me to wipe my eyes with (I guess I was lucky that it was one of the few days that I chose not to wear makeup) and I texted my parents to let them know where I was going.

...

Sam and Sandra lived on the second floor of the same building as the Burnt Bean Cafe. Once we arrived, Sam and I did our homework together at the kitchen table. Afterwards, we sat in the living room with Sandra and watched The Dream Boat on TV. All three of us were on the couch, me between Sam and Sandra. I decided to "test the waters" as people say and leaned my head against Sam's right shoulder. He later couldn't recall whether his action was conscious or not, as most of his attention was on the show, but he reciprocated by wrapping his right arm around me and pulling me closer. The feeling of warmth and safety that came from his embrace was so overwhelming that I almost fell asleep. I say "almost" because I would have if Dad hadn't texted me telling me to come home for dinner. Sandra insisted on driving me home, because the neighborhood around the Burnt Bean was alright during the day, but got pretty unruly at night.

"I don't want any unsavory folks to get the jump on you," were her exact words.


There, wasn't that sweet? Over the course of the next few chapters, we'll see Sam and Luna beat themselves up over trying to ask the other out and getting cold feet at the last minute.