by Cheree Alsop
“Merkids?” I repeated.
“In the lake,” he replied. He shook his head. “But I don’t have anyone. Not really.” He gave me a shy glance. “Until I found you wandering the hall, I haven’t had a friend here at Haunted High at all. Everyone’s afraid of me.”
I should have asked why they were afraid, but I was taken back by his honesty. I pushed my concerns away and smiled at him. “Well, Alden, I guess one good thing about my ignorance of monsters is that I don’t know enough to be afraid. I’m just relieved you don’t mind being seen with me.”
“Are you kidding?” Alden said. “My best friend’s a werewolf. What’s cooler than that? I can’t wait to write my dad.”
I laughed and pulled open the door. “I’m glad that makes you happy.”
We stepped into a classroom whose walls were lined with posters depicting skeletal unicorns, winged frogs, and a giant one on the back wall of what looked like a dragon diagrammed with identified parts that I had never heard of.
The bell rang as I took the empty seat next to Alden’s.
A slender, blue-haired man at the front of the classroom started speaking without preamble. “As I was saying in yesterday’s lecture before we were interrupted by the bell, if you dissect the seventh cervical vertebrae of the Equus unicornis, you will see that the humerus actually connects at both the scapula and the vertebrae, thus giving the animal greater stability in flight and allowing the biceps brachii a stronger attachment.”
His droning voice appeared to lull the students around me into a trance-like state. Students stared off into space, doodled pictures in their notebooks, or tossed what looked like folded paper stars when the professor wasn’t looking. The ticking of the clock above the door sounded like the ominous beating of a mechanical heart from a beast determined to slay us with sheer boredom.
One student had folded various creatures out of paper and was making them race across his desk. I searched for the strings or tape he was using to make them move, but couldn’t see anything. I had the disconcerting notion that perhaps he was moving them with his mind. I told myself that was ridiculous and watched the paper races along with several other students.
When the bell finally rang, the desks emptied faster than if someone had pulled the fire alarm. Students raced for the door in a whirlwind of papers and pencils left behind as though in sacrifice to Professor Tripe who watched the fray with a mild expression.
“Finally,” Alden said when we made it to the hallway. “I thought lunch would never get here. I need a lot of food to keep up this physique.”
I glanced at him and grinned when he flexed a skinny arm.
“Don’t worry. Lunch is always worth the wait,” he assured me.
He was right. We sat down with trays of lasagna and salad with fresh rolls on the side. Even the brownie smelled amazing, and I usually didn’t like chocolate. The detached, amused part of me wondered if that was secretly because I was part dog. I grimaced and turned my attention to where the other students were getting food. Vicken Ruvine’s vampire coven pushed to the front of the line, but skipped the door Alden and I had gone through and went into another instead.
“What’s in that door?”
Alden turned to see where I was looking.
“That’s where the specialty foods are. Pigs’ blood for the vampires, liquid compost for the nymphs, hay for the equine-inclined. You know, that sort of stuff. I’m sure if you need a raw steak once in a while, they’d be happy to oblige.”
Vicken came back out holding a clear chalice filled with thick red liquid. The rest of the vampires followed close behind. I noticed that Lorne appeared paler than usual and wondered if he had told Vicken about my mess up with the memories.
Vicken’s lips curled back in a snarl when a student nearly bumped into him. The vampire lifted his chalice and spun with the grace of a dancer in order to prevent losing a single drop of blood.
“S-sorry, Vicken,” I heard the student stutter from across the lunchroom.
“You’re lucky,” Vicken replied. “If I’d spilled it, you’d be replacing it right now from your own veins.”
The yellow-scaled student swallowed and hurried out of the vampire’s way.
Vicken’s eyes flickered to mine. His eyes narrowed with such hatred that my heart slowed. I lowered my gaze to the table, wondering how I had messed up so royally after only one full day at the Academy.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Alden asked.
I focused on my half-eaten lasagna and shook my head. One glare from Vicken had been enough to destroy my appetite. At Alden’s eager expression, I pushed the tray his way.
“Have at it.”
“Thanks!” he said. He set the tray on his already finished one and dug in.
***
Human Interactions was as boring as it sounded. Professor Mantis looked just like her name suggested. She had long arms and legs and stood nearly nine feet tall. The extra joint in her arms gave her a folded appearance that made me cringe. Her large glasses amplified the eerie effect of the many small eyes that made up her two large ones. Unfortunately, the peculiarity of her appearance vanished the moment she opened her green-tinged mouth. A droning flow of words in nearly the same mind-numbing cadence as Professor Tripe came out.
“If you read last night’s required reading, you saw that social media platforms indeed constitute a majority of the interactions between the current political parties. While their present views on racism don’t apply directly to mythical creatures, we can assume that such views will continue to provoke discontent while also emulating similar opinions of the past. If we dissect the most recent public statement by the leading party, we can only assume that such discontent will grow. The current trend toward slandering opposing parties leads to social upset and unease….”
I don’t know why I had hoped Human Interactions meant cool descriptions of men befriending dragons or finding out that the presidency of the nation was made up of vampires, but the continued recitation of the problems with human society felt like my political science class at my old school. I stifled a sigh and attempted to pay attention.
Fortunately, my sixth period class, Monster Identification, was much more interesting. I walked into the classroom in a mass of students who avoided so much as bumping elbows with me, and took a seat at the far corner of the front row. Slides had been put up on the projector screen. At first, they appeared to be simple pictures of blades of grass and leaves. It took me a few seconds to notice the tiny faces. I felt my eyes widen and I sat up, studying the photographs.
Within the blades, eyes peered back at me. It was as though the tiny people I saw were made of grass themselves. The photograph of leaves next to it showed the same thing. It was a picture taken from the ground and focused up at the leaves of a tree. The many shades of green became lost in the shadows of the thick canopy above. But as I looked closer, I saw tiny figures among the leaves, little faces with tiny green hands, wings in nearly the exact shape of the leaves, and green eyes noticeable only from the white of their sclera.
“Are those real?”
I hadn’t realized the words escaped my lips until laughter came from the students around me.
A deep voice rumbled from the back of the room. “Now students, have empathy for our newest student who, if I’m assuming correctly, was unaware of mythical society until just a few days ago.”
Until yesterday, I thought.
I turned to see a huge man make his way between the aisles. He was built like a bear with thick shoulders and a broad chest that threatened to tear the seams of the pressed brown suit he wore. He nodded at students as he passed, bringing attention to the sweeping black horns that sprouted thickly from his forehead. When he gestured, I realized his hands were cloven black hooves. The marker he held was jammed in the cleft, threatening to fly off with the next movement.
Professor Rexus paused by my desk and smiled down at me with curiously flat teeth. “Am I right?”
“Y-yes,�
� I forced out. “You’re right.”
He nodded, barely missing me with his huge horns. He lifted his head to address the class and waved his hoofed hand with a flourish. “So, you see, class. You should never assume that questions are as simple as they seem. Mr. Briscoe here obviously didn’t know about the presence of the fernies. You can’t make a joke of ignorance, you can only strive to correct the problem.”
“I beg your pardon,” a voice said from the back of the classroom.
The sound of Vicken’s voice set my teeth on edge.
I heard a stifled sigh from the professor before he said, “Yes, Mr. Ruvine?”
“You said can’t, Professor,” Vicken replied with mocking innocence in his voice. “You mentioned that you can’t make a joke of ignorance, but that’s wrong. You can joke about the fact that Finn the weremutt is ignorant of our world because it’s humorous. Why didn’t his parents fill him in on his origins, or were they embarrassed to have such a creature for a son? I would be.” He paused, then said, “Perhaps his origins are more along the side of werewolf rape and bastardism than he wants to admit.”
I gripped the corners of the desk so hard the wood began to crack.
“Mr. Ruvine, that is enough,” Professor Rexin said in a tone that echoed around the room.
The wolf inside me surged, trying to force its way free.
“Just the same,” Vicken continued, “I saw the names of the board who protested the weremutt’s admittance into this school, and yours was one of them. Don’t you feel that this is yet another sign that he doesn’t belong here?”
I took a deep breath through my nose and let it out through my mouth, counting to ten in my head as I did so. The truth of Vicken’s words were revealed in Professor Rexin’s brown bovine eyes when he looked back at me.
“I have my own ignorance to overcome,” the professor said by way of apology. He looked back at Vicken. “But that doesn’t explain why you saw confidential forms.”
Vicken lifted his shoulders in a cocky shrug. “I know people.”
“You’ll know the Headmistress even better after you go to her office and explain that you were snooping into things that don’t concern you,” the professor replied.
Vicken’s face darkened with anger and he rose to his feet. “You can’t do that.”
Professor Rexin held his gaze. “I just did.”
Vicken grabbed his books and stalked to the door. He paused and glanced back at me. “You’ll pay for this,” he threatened.
The professor stepped in front of me, breaking the vampire’s view. “You did it to yourself, Mr. Ruvine. I expect a report from Mrs. Hassleton before you come back to class.”
Vicken’s angry stride echoed in my head long after the door shut.
“Welcome to Mythical Identification,” Professor Rexin said when he turned back to me with an apologetic smile. “Hopefully the rest of class will be a bit less eventful.”
“It will without Vicken here,” Jeppy, the purple-haired boy from Professor Mellon’s class, said.
“Don’t let him hear you,” the girl next to him warned.
“I’ll say it to his face,” Jeppy replied, but his words carried less confidence.
“I’d recommend working on peace instead of confrontation,” Professor Rexin told him. He turned his attention to the class. “And now, let’s work on identification of the Plantae Familia, specifically of the Poaceae or Gramineae. As you can tell,” he said, giving me a wide smile. “There is more to grass than you ever imagined.”
Chapter Seven
I slumped in my seat in my seventh period class convinced that I would never get the hang of being a student at Haunted High. The entire world I thought I knew had entirely turned on its head. I felt as though I had lived my whole life in a safe little box. Now that box had been dumped out, leaving me in a world filled with real-life monsters complete with claws, fangs, and a thirst for blood or other even more sinister traits. It was terrifying and unsettling. I wished I could go back to before the accident when Sebastian was still alive, my life made sense, and the word ‘werewolf’ belonged to horror movies and young adult books.
“We have a new student in class.”
I heard Professor Briggs limp toward the front of the classroom. At his words, I felt the expectant stir of the students around me and cringed inwardly. Professor Briggs stopped next to my desk in a swirl of his raven robes.
“Mr. Briscoe, welcome to Black Cat Philosophies.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled. I was tired of being introduced as the new student.
“You don’t sound thrilled to be here,” Professor Briggs said in a tone tinged with dark humor.
I lifted my gaze to him. His dark eyes glittered in the dim lighting he apparently preferred. “I’m beginning to think being the new student isn’t all it’s cut out to be.”
The ghost of an actual smile lifted the corner of his scarred lip. “It’s about to get even better, Mr. Briscoe. You see, you get to answer the question.”
“What question?” I asked. I could hear my own impertinence, but couldn’t help the lack of patience I felt after the extremely long day.
“Ask the wolf!” the girl to my right said.
She had chin-length straight black hair and piercing green eyes that seemed to glow in the candlelight when she looked at me. Her fingernails were black, her lipstick was black, and even the blue of her black and blue uniform appeared subdued.
“He’s a werewolf, Lyris,” the girl on her other side correct.
“So you say, Dara-empath,” the girl next to me replied. She turned her gaze to me again with a flick of her chin that made her hair brush back and forth. “But there is a difference between a wolf and a werewolf, isn’t there, Finn-wolf?”
I was caught off-guard by the question. “I-I don’t know,” I replied.
She nodded as though my answer met her expectations. I sighed inwardly, sure I was the butt of yet another joke, and turned back to Professor Briggs.
“What’s the question that I’m sure I don’t have the answer to?”
He lifted his cane to indicate the room. “This is Black Cat Philosophies, so the question is fitting. Why does a cat land on its feet?”
I thought the question would have something to do with the supernatural or the mythical or monsters, or whatever the people around me classified themselves as. The fact that it involved a normal cat caught me by surprise. I thought quickly.
“To keep from landing on its back.”
“Wrong,” Professor Briggs replied. He limped past my desk to the chalkboard and underlined ‘The Incrimination of Hester Lyman’. “Let’s continue our discussion on why the author of Lyman’s book actually admitted to her werecat abilities by using Hester as a scapegoat.”
The fact that he had stated my answer as wrong without explaining took me by surprise. I was about to raise my hand and ask, but the knowledge that he was probably waiting for me to do just that made me clench my hands into fists and keep them on my lap to avoid drawing yet more attention to myself. At the end of class, I rose with the rest of the students and made my way to the door, more than ready to be done with my first day and maybe the last at the Academy.
“Mr. Briscoe, wait a moment.”
I paused at the door and watched the rest of the students leave.
“Don’t worry, Finn-wolf,” Lyris said when she and Dara passed me. “Professor Briggs-warlock isn’t as scary as he seems.”
“That’s what you think,” Dara replied. She let the door shut behind her when they left the room.
I took a steeling breath and turned.
“You have a question,” Professor Briggs stated from his seat at his desk.
“You asked the question,” I reminded him.
“Ask what’s on your mind,” the professor said. Instead of the annoyance he had shown when I interrupted his reading earlier, he appeared to have all night to give his maddening interrogation.
I couldn’t ask Lyris’ strange ques
tion about the difference between a wolf and a werewolf; it felt too close to home. I wondered if I even wanted to know. Instead, I asked the next one. If Lyris had identified me as a wolf and Dara as an empath, whatever that was, she had also called the professor a warlock. It was worth asking. “What’s a warlock?”
Professor Briggs sat back in his seat. My eyes took on the grays of a wolf to make out his expression in the darkness. His gaze was flat, guarded. “It depends who you ask.”
I crossed my arms and leaned against the door frame, unwilling to give up the proximity to my escape from the exhausting school day. “I’m asking you.”
His eyebrows rose and his lips twitched just enough to indicate humor. “You’re different than this morning. Maybe there’s a bit more bite to your bark than I imagined.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m tired of werewolf jokes.”
“You’re a werewolf. Get used to it,” he replied. At my silence, he said, “Warlocks are the male version of witches like Lyris. We each have an ability or affinity to something. Lyris identifies the true nature of others. She can’t help it. It may even put her in uncomfortable situations, but that’s what she does. It is ingrained in her being.”
“What do you do?” I asked. My audacity amazed me. I felt as though I was at the breaking point. If I didn’t get some answers that made sense, I was going to snap. That scared me more than anything.
“You mean besides trying to get our only werewolf student kicked out before he’s even had a chance to attend our glorious Academy?” he asked.
“I’m not sure you’re wrong,” I replied. The honesty of my words made the pit in my stomach deepen. I held my arms so tight they hurt, but I didn’t let go.
I watched him study me and still I waited. I felt drawn taut like the strings of a violin. My muscles twitched.
“You’re too hard on yourself,” the professor finally said.
There was something in his gaze as he watched me. It was as though he understood me. But if that was the truth, why did he let me stand there instead of banishing me from the school the way he had tried to before I entered?
