The sun peeked through the curtains. I threw the covers over my head. If I stayed in bed, then there could be hope that yesterday had been a crazy fever-induced dream. Or maybe someone had slipped something into my drink and I’d hallucinated the whole thing.
It was easy to pretend underneath the familiar feel of my old white cotton sheets. I touched the hole on the corner that had ripped when I trusted Axel to do my laundry once. Any second, he’d come in here and annoy me.
An inhumanly loud beeping chafed my ears.
A groan and a few bangs came from Meredith’s room before the alarm clicked off.
No such luck. Guess I’d better deal with the day.
I threw the sheets off. I appreciated what they’d done, trying to make me feel at home, but it didn’t matter. This wasn’t my home.
Running away didn’t work. I was left with only one option.
Time to face reality.
I pulled myself from the safety of my bed, and quickly showered. Meredith walked into the bathroom as I was wrapping a towel around myself. She mumbled something unintelligible and flipped the shower back on.
Someone definitely wasn’t a morning person.
I went back to my room to get changed, trying to ignore the fact that I was touching a million and one things and had exactly zero visions was getting increasingly harder. But I had bigger things to worry about. I started opening drawers as I considered my outfit options.
The kids I had seen last night were made of hotness. There was no way my short, curvy, Latina frame could compete. I dug through my clothes, trying and failing miserably to ignore the scent that covered everything. I decided to keep it simple with jeans, a black KMFDM T-shirt that fell off one shoulder, and a pair of yellow neon and gray kicks. No flip-flops for me. There was no risk of me shifting. The question was—gloves or no gloves?
I fingered a pair of cobalt ones. I felt naked without them, but did I really need them?
My visions could come back, any second. They had to. I grabbed the gloves and shoved them in my back pocket.
I made my bed as I waited for Meredith. Mom always said I was a little too much of a neat freak, but I felt more at ease about the parts of my life that I couldn’t control when the ones I could control were in order. Lord knew my life was out of my hands right now.
As I smoothed out the comforter, the conversation in the room next door came through the brick like it was paper. They were gossiping. About me.
“What does Dastien see in that girl?”
“I know right? She’s short. And weird. What is with those T-shirts she wears?”
My shirt today was cool. I was sure of it. Maybe everyone didn’t know who KMFDM was, but they were a totally awesome electro-industrial band from the 1980s. Okay. So maybe it was weird, but I wasn’t changing it because some random girls didn’t get it.
“He had Imogene. And if he was tired of her, he could have his pick of the Weres. Why would he throw that away to bite some stupid norm?”
This was so not helping my confidence.
I pounded on the brick a few times. “I can hear you!” I said.
They giggled, and I wanted to plow through the brick and pummel them.
The water shut off, and Meredith went into her room. I rushed into the bathroom, trying to get control of myself. I was flipping out. Since when did I ever care about what someone said about me?
If I was being honest, I usually cared, but I never let it show.
I took a deep breath and held it in until my lungs burned. When I let it out, I felt marginally better.
What now, Tessa?
I picked up my perfume, and took the cap off. The smell of rubbing alcohol filled the room. I put my nose up to the top of the bottle and sniffed. It stank. The florals and fruits that I loved were barely there, and the alcohol was strong enough to give me a headache.
Did perfume go bad?
I put the lid on and carefully placed it in the trash so it wouldn’t break. My complexion hadn’t worsened, but I’d found the best thing I could do when feeling a little lacking in the confidence department was to put on some war paint. I finished off my brown smoky eyes with some liner and mascara. Happy with the results, I grabbed a chapstick and went back into my room to try to figure out what I needed for class.
My schedule sat on top of the pile of books on my desk. I stared at it for a minute before shoving everything in my backpack. Who knew what I’d need for metaphysics or Were history? Whatever they were. I folded up the schedule and put it in my pocket.
Meredith’s flip-flops clacked on the tile bathroom floor. “Give me five, and we can go down to breakfast together.”
“Okay.” I didn’t want to face the cafeteria alone anyway. People didn’t give you the stink-eye like those girls gave me and then let it go. The last thing I needed was a fight on my first day of school.
I plopped back on my bed. The whole situation was awful. One stupid party. One stupid boy. One stupid kiss. And my life was virtually over.
Disgusted with my own whining, I pulled my schedule back out and tried to focus on what it said. Normal classes were before lunch, and after seemed to be the weird stuff—Were history, metaphysics, and martial arts & yoga.
The more I thought about it the worse my nerves got. A bead of sweat rolled down my face, which was odd. Even during gym class I didn’t sweat that much. Maybe I was still sick.
I took deep breaths, but that made me feel dizzy. My skin crawled. Head between the knees was all I could think to do.
My stomach twisted and my bones ached.
“Okay, Tess. Ready—” Meredith’s voice dropped off as her footsteps quickened on carpet. “Breathe deep for me. Calm. It’s going to be okay. You’re fine. No reason to panic. Just stop fighting the change.”
“I’m not feeling super fantastic.”
“You’re fine. Your body’s just on the verge of deciding whether or not to go furry.”
“That’s crazy. Do you know how that sounds? Completely batshit crazy.”
“I know. It’s gotta be weird for you.”
I snorted.
“If you don’t want to shift, then don’t get too worked up over anything. Deep slow breaths. Food will help. You didn’t eat enough last night.”
“I ate.”
“Not enough.” She looked around my room. “Damn it. They should’ve put a mini-fridge in here. Once you get used to eating more, you won’t need it. Until then, I’ll get Mr. Dawson to put one in here for emergencies. You’ll have to rely on the one in the common area until then.”
After a minute of deep breathing, I started to feel okay, and glanced up at her. “Thanks.”
Meredith knelt in front of me, her mouth quirked up at one side. “Any time. I know you don’t trust me yet, but I hope we’ll be friends.”
I shrugged. “I’ll do my best. No promises.”
“Cool.” She grinned. “Rad shirt.”
“You like KMFDM?”
She shook her head. “No idea who they are, but love the screen print—black on electric blue is kind of my thing.”
“I can tell.” She’d complemented her blue streaks with blue eye make-up.
“Feeling good enough to walk to breakfast?”
I stood up slowly, and took a second to make sure I was all right. “You really think food will fix this?”
“It’ll help keep your wolf happy so you’ll be less likely to change.”
That meant absolutely nothing to me, but it didn’t really matter. “Okay. Let’s go eat.” I swung my backpack over my shoulder. I had to start trusting someone here, and Meredith seemed as good an option as any.