Chapter 9

Today is cheer spirit day. It's an event where the entire school community comes together to show school spirit through activities like themed dress-up days. Its primary goal is to boost school spirit and create a positive environment for students and staff.

This year, we're to dress as our inner selves-- the person we believe we truly are inside. It could be a fictional character you believe shares a similarity with, a family member, or some celebrity. I attend school wearing my usual outfit. A long-sleeved blouse, jeans, and a pair of sneakers. Not in the mood to participate.

Two seventh-graders stormed past me, chasing each other, one attired as a pitbull dog and the other as a ragdoll cat.

Some students don't take the cheer spirit day dress-up seriously, and just a joke.

I met Bryson and his girlfriend Elena along the way as I was heading to my class.

Bryson is attired in a bluish-white costume adorned with fins, and in his hands, he had a triton. Elena chose to match his outfit.

"I thought mermen and mermaids had tails," I said after I stopped to greet Bryson.

Bryson smiled and said, "We're a different type of mermaid that is mostly connected to land than the waters," he said, and I smiled.

"What are you dressed as?" Elena then went on to ask, and I knew she didn't care to know and was trying to play nice just for Bryson's sake.

"Just the plain old person I am inside. What you see is what you get. There's nothing special about me," I said as a joke.

She laughed, and it hurt that I truly was plain and simple. I wish there were more about me. Fun and not clumsy and awkward, I guess.

"It seems someone chose not to join the event as well," mentioned Elana as they walked away. I see who she was referring to, Connor.

He was attired in a dark blue shirt, black pants, and black shoes, styled with a long black coat.

I watched him while recalling the painful memory of yesterday. He caught me watching him, and my body jerked as his eyes went to mine as if I was electrocuted by his stare. He then disappeared behind a door leading to the back of the school.

I followed him without hesitation. When I'm at the back of the school, I don't see him until I look up to see him sitting way up on top of one of the school's large water tanks.

I was stunned at how fast he'd gotten up there.

When our eyes met and I felt caught for following him, I said, "Students aren't allowed back here."

He chuckled, then jumped off the tank. I watched him as he landed on his feet.

"Is that your way of trying to speak to me?" He said with an unsmiling face as he stood before me.

I stretched my neck to look at him and at how little I was in comparison to him. Connor is 6 feet and 7 inches, and I'm 5 feet, to be exact.

"Yes," I lied.

"You can't lie to a werewolf; I can hear your heartbeat increasing when you do," he said

I was frightened by his response.

"I'm sorry," I apologized.

I'm obsessively and madly in love with Connor. I loathed the lie I'd just told him. I want to be good to him in every way.

"Now that's the truth," he stared into my eyes.

As I returned his stare, "What did I tell you to do?" he then asked.

"I can't do it. You're like the only warmth in my cold life," I said, shaking my head.

"Don't you get that I'm saving you? If Kara finds out you know about our kind, she won't hold back in seeing to it that the law is done in killing a human who knows about our existence."

His eyes glowed like the sun as he warned me.

"You won't allow her to kill me because you feel the same for me, too, Connor." I reached out to touch his face. 

He moved quickly, creating a strong wind that blew my hair backwards.

I looked around the area searching for him. It was as if he were never there.

****

In the late evening, my aunt loaned me her car to pick up a chair at a carpenter shop near the woods. The chair once belonged to my grandmother, whom I never knew, and she wanted to bring it back home with her as a reminder.

Some sawdust got on my face as the carpenter was finishing it. As the carpenter carried the chair to the trunk of the car. I went to check my face in the side mirror. I spotted an image of Connor watching me from the woods. I quickly spun around not to see him, and I'm sure it was not me thinking I'd seen him and that he was really there watching me.

The next day, at the end of school, I wrote a small note and shoved it under the bottom of his locker.

As I arrived home, I opened my door to see Connor in my room, standing before my window. He turned around as soon as I entered.

His honey-bronzed skin made my dull room brighter with his radiant beauty.

As if I'm in a trance, I watched him as he gravely walked towards me.

"I'll never go on a date with you. Just give up," he said, crumpling the note I'd slid to his locker. I'd written asking him out on a date this Saturday.

I watched as my note fell to my cream carpet and then back at him.

Angry, he spun around, walking away, and as he was about to leap through my window, I said, "I saw you at the carpenter watching me."

He paused for a while and then leaped through the window, running through the woods faster than lightning.