Werewolf Chapter 1

Chapter 1

One Year Earlier

Tired. That’s the only thing I feel as I walk into my AP history class for the day. Last night was the longest night of my life and I’m just exhausted today. I feel like I can’t even will my legs to move enough to get me to class, let alone to sit through the most boring hour long lecture of my day. But alas, here I am (mostly because my mom wouldn’t let me play hooky and stay home today despite my extreme whining and begging, but that’s another story).

The only good thing about school, especially this class, is Lucas. I’m really starting to think he has a thing for me even though, with my ‘extremely impressive’ track record with guys, it won’t last long. He’ll move on soon, especially because of who, or rather what, I am.

“Hey!” Lucas says as he approaches my table. “Mind if I sit with you?”

“No, of course not.” I smile, glad to have the company.

The teacher, Mr. Simonson, walks in and begins his lecture of today’s grand topic: Gilgamesh. As if my future career somehow depends on me knowing the story of a man who was apparently two-thirds god and one-third human, which, I’d like to point out, is mathematically impossible. A person has two parents so they’re broken down into halves and then fourths and then eighths, somehow thirds don’t quite fit that equation. I mean, I’m only part human myself so I guess I shouldn’t be so quick to judge Gilgamesh and the possibility of him having not two, but three parents, some of who were godly in descent.

Lucas leaves over and whispers to me, “Hey, are you busy tonight?”

“I might be. What’s the occasion?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to go to T’s with me later,” he says. “But if you’re busy, it’s okay.”

“I’d love to.” I smile at him. I don’t want to brag or anything, but I was totally right about him. He does have a thing for me.

He smiles back at me with a grin that spreads from cheek to cheek. “Great. I was thinking that maybe after we get something to eat you’d want t0-”

“Mr. Kitler!” Mr. Simonson addresses Lucas, interrupting the part of this conversation where I was going to be asked on a real date. I growl lowly and turn to face the front of the class. “Would you care to share your thoughts with the class?”

“I was just asking Charlie if she understood how Gilgamesh could possibly be two-thirds god and one-third human, because I don’t understand it, Sir.” Lucas says cooly as if that’s the most logical discussion topic and was 100% the truth of our conversation.

“And what did Charlie say?” Mr. Simonson turns and directs his question at me this time.

Well s**t. Now I’m in the hot spot and not nearly as smooth talking as my male counterpart. I quickly make up a lie in my head and say it to myself twice before blurting out, “I was just telling Lucas that I don’t understand it either and that I’d really, um, appreciate it if you could just, you know, go back to explain it and stuff again.”

Our teacher takes a deep breath in, as if he’s trying to restrain himself from actually killing all of us for being so dumb, and then exhales loudly. “Have we not gone over this multiple times, people? How many times do I have to explain something before it gets through your thick skulls?”

He turns back to the board and starts drawing huge webs and mind maps about the connections between kings and gods and Gilgamesh and I think there was a small reference to a wall, or maybe it was a doll, I don’t really know because once again, I’m paying more attention to Lucas than to the lecture.

Lucas slips a piece of notebook paper across the table so it lands right next to my hand.

“I’ll pick you up at... 7??” Is written in his big loopy print.

“Yes. Remember where I live?” I write and slide the paper back to him.

“Of course. What kind of friend would I be if I forgot?” He passes the paper to me again, but this time I don’t write a response. Instead, I sit there with a stupid smile on my face, thinking about the date I have later tonight while only vaguely listening to the drone of Mr. Simonson’s voice.

*******

“Mom. no. I am going to do this no matter what you say.” I shove past her and into my bathroom, violently attempting to tame the frizz of my hair before Lucas gets here.

“Charlie, he’s a human. He’s not-”

“Mom! I know! God, it’s not like I’m going to change in front of him; he won’t know.” I yank my brush through my hair and pull my bangs back behind my ears. No, that looks stupid. I pull my bangs back out and they hang dangerously close to my eyes so I’ll have to keep doing the little head shake or hair flip thing all night. No, this won’t work either. I pull them down again and bobbi pin them under the rest of my hair. My phone goes off with a text from Lucas telling me that he’s here. God, I don’t have time for this.

“Charlie, if he finds out about this-”

“Mom, seriously, relax. It’s not like I have to marry him or anything, we’re going on a first date.” I storm out of the bathroom, only half satisfied with whatever my hair is doing. I grab my sweatshirt off my bed and start heading downstairs.

“Would you please just listen to me?” Mom follows me as I stomp my way down the front stairs.

“No, Mom. I have to go. He’s already waiting for me.” I go outside and slam the front door shut behind me. I walk briskly to where Lucas is waiting by his car.

“Hey! You look great!” He gives me a half hug. “Here, I brought you some flowers, I hope you like lillies.”

I take the bouquet of flowers from him and hold them up to my nose, inhaling the sweet scent. They smell really good and it helps calm me down a little.

“Is everything okay? You seem kind of pissed off.”

“Thank you for the flowers. And yes, everything’s okay, I just had an argument with my mom, that’s all.”

“What were you arguing about? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“She’s pissed because I’m going out with you tonight.”

Lucas looks between me and the house, where my mom is watching us from the front window. He smiles slightly. “I’m sorry. If you can’t go tonight, it’s okay. We can do this some other time.”

I motion for him to come closer and as he leans in next to me, I whisper in his ear, “I’m going to let you in on a little secret.” I hesitate for a moment, gauging his reaction. “I don’t care that my mom is pissed off about this date and I fully intend to have a great time tonight.”

He leans back and laughs. “Well then, my lady, your chariot awaits.” We walk around the car and he opens the passenger side door for me.

He walks around, gets behind the wheel, and drives us to T’s Diner where we sit in a corner booth. The waitress comes to take our orders and we both end up getting a burger with fries and root beer. We spend some time talking about how each of  our days went and how embarrassing that moment was in history today and how Mr. Simonson is the kind of teacher that really shouldn’t be a teacher because, as brilliant as he may be, he cannot explain things to save his life.

Lucas tells some really terrible jokes and stories that I laugh hysterically at because I have the worst sense of humor and I think almost everything is funny. After about 15 or 20 minutes, our food arrives and we keep the conversation up through all of dinner. At one point, I even had root beer come out my nose because he made me laugh right when I took a drink. Embarrassing, I know.

Before I know it, the date’s almost over. We’ve been sitting here, talking and laughing for at least two hours, maybe even longer. It’s completely dark outside and most of the other customers have already left. We even ended up ordering dessert because, about an hour after we finished eating, Lucas claimed he was hungry again and ordered us a banana split to share.

Lucas suddenly looks over and stares at me.

“What?” I ask, taking the last drink of probably my sixth glass (don’t judge me, it’s good) of root beer and sliding the glass to the middle of the table. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I want to show you something.” He smiles and stands up, holding a hand out to me. I take his hand and let him pull me to my feet. We stop at the register and Lucas picks up the bill from all the food we ordered. Then we head back out to his car and he starts driving to wherever it is he’s taking me.

After about 15 minutes, I start getting a little nervous because he seems to drive on forever on back country roads outside of town. He finally pulls off onto an old dirt road and we drive for another ten minutes or so until we get to a little lake side cabin at the end of it. Despite the weird location, it seems to be a popular place to be on a Tuesday night since there’s about 10 other people out here. I noticed that most of them are coupled off and sitting around a huge campfire they have right outside the cabin. The people are all talking and laughing, and a couple of the guys come out of the cabin with tons of supplies for making s’mores.

Lucas parks the car off to the side of the road and we walk over to the group, which is now singing along to music someone started playing from a portable speaker.

“Luke!” One of the guys exclaims and rushes over to hug him. “Oh man, I haven’t seen you in ages, dude. Where have you been?”

“Oh, you know, just focusing on school. Those assignments and tests don’t get put on hold just so I can have some fun.” Lucas laughs lightly. “Hey, do you still have the boat out here?”

“Yeah, it’s down by the lake. You can use it if you want, just make sure you tie it back to the dock when you’re done. I don’t want to lose it again like last time.” The guy laughs heartily and slaps Lucas on the back. “Oh man, do you remember when that happened? We had to take that stupid little sailboat out to try to find it and it took like three hours just for Justin to figure out how to sail it.”

The guy continues laughing and Lucas and I join in. It feels so good to be surrounded by so much life and enthusiasm out here. Everyone is just giving off so much positive energy.

“Yeah, I remember that. Anyways, we’re going to head down there. See you later, man.” Lucas gives the guy another hug then reaches a hand out to me. “Ready?”

“Ready.” I smile, take his hand, and let him lead me down a narrow path to the edge of the water. We head over to the dock where a little blue paddle boat is sitting.

We step into it and get it turned around so we can get away from the shoreline. We start paddling together in rhythm and there’s a long, mildly awkward chunk of time where neither of us says anything and we just paddle on in silence. I look around the lake, taking in the sight of the enormous pine trees that seem to tower over the water wherever they meet. Since it’s already pretty dark out, the smaller details are unnoticeable and the trees all cast weird shadows across the water because of the moonlight.

This is easily the coolest date I’ve ever been on. He literally bought me food and then took me out on a lake at night for a paddle boat ride; this is way better than anything I could’ve imagined him planning.

Once we get out to about the middle or so of the lake, Lucas stops paddling, I take his cue and stop too.

“Okay. Now look up.” He turns to smile at me before leaning his head back to look up into the sky. I tilt my head back too and gasp softly as I see what he was looking at. The night sky is completely lit up with ubiquitous moonlight and millions of tiny stars shining brightly. I don’t know much about astronomy, I can’t name any of the constellations of stars, but tonight, the view from this little paddle boat in the middle of a lake really is beautiful and awe inspiring.

I turn to look at Lucas. The moonlight illuminates his face and I can see the reflection of the sky in his eyes. His hair is slightly tousled and he has the most adorable little smile as he stares up with astonishment at the stars. I can’t help but think to myself that he’s the most amazing person I’ve ever met and that, out here beneath the stars, he’s so incredibly beautiful.

Lucas turns to look at me and we just stare into each other’s eyes for what seems like an eternity. My heart starts pounding and my stomach is suddenly filled with butterflies as he starts to lean towards me. I lean in his direction and we meet in the middle with a kiss. Just a salty, sweet little kiss that’s so perfect for this perfect moment with this perfect guy. And I realize, in this perfect moment, that I really like Lucas, and that I can’t wait to see where this goes.

Reviews

[Conjurer]

This chapter really flows, but it was a little hard for me to keep being invested because there wasn't much conflict. I've read the prologue, so the hints about the MC not being human aren't a mystery to me, since I know she's a werewolf; Mom is against dating, but it's merely a low-volume protest. “Charlie, if he finds out about this-” - I want to hear the rest, because it seems fine to me that he will learn about her secret. He's not creepy or suspicious, and if I had any doubts, I would quickly remind myself that he's the boyfriend in the prologue too. The two have a perfect first date, which is nice for them but too expected for me; I'd like him to mess up a bit, I'd like to hear their silly jokes so I could get a taste of their strange sense of humor.
Keep writing, best of luck!

[RayLynn]

Thanks for the awesome feedback!
I know this chapter is low on conflict, but check out the second chapter if you want to see where these characters head next. Trust me, it gets more interesting later in the book
Thanks again!

[Trouble]

This is just amazing, the way it flows is great and you're writing style is really good. I enjoyed reading, and will definitely read more! I love this kind of stuff, and the romance of it is awesome! Well done. Nicely written.

[Kent Rawski]

I liked the story and like you am waiting to see where this goes the ubiquitous moon gave me chills and the way moonlight is expressed on the faces not mentioned if its a full moon but sounds like change is coming

[Onlyme]

Now this was really good flowed to perfect the character interesting slight humour as well in the mix and building up nicely. Great read to be had and enjoyed.

[Wez Hardyn]

I'm rather 'long in the tooth' for teen romances but your writing is good enough to keep me reading. I'm intrigued by the domestic life of a werewolf! I hope the story will become more 'Munsters' or 'Adams Family' than 'Twilight'.

[RayLynn]

Don't worry, it's definitely not Twilight!
There are no sparkling vampires here

[wordman]

love scary movies,especially the wolf