Marked by Moonlight, page 9
“Well, I guess I should finish my run,” I said lamely, stretching my legs one more time and taking off at a light jog.
It was official; I wasn’t getting anything out of him the honorable way. Instead, I’d have to do something more drastic. On the way home, I thought about what I knew about Zac and how I could get more information. I had been noticing that my hearing was much better than it was before, and if I concentrated, I could sometimes hear things going on in rooms I wasn’t even in. I could use that, and my speed, to my advantage.
Because of our conversation, I knew Zac was going to be at the guys’ football team practice that night, since he was filling in as the coach. I also knew that sometimes girls would hang out to watch their boyfriends practice. My plan was to tag along with Leah, who’d be going to cheerleading practice and tell her I’d wait for her to give me a ride home after. Then, I’d sit on the edge of the track, pretend I was doing some homework, and examine Zac’s movements while hoping he slipped up and say or do something that he shouldn’t have.
If I didn’t get any information out of him at practice, which was likely, I would follow him until I figured something out. I’d be the first to admit that it wasn’t the smartest plan I’d ever had, but I was getting completely desperate for more information.
When I told Leah I’d be tagging along to practice, she told me that it was probably just to watch Elliot get all “hot and sweaty.” Since that was the perfect cover, I wouldn’t deny it.
The worst thing about becoming a teenage werewolf was how hungry I was all the time and how hangry I’d get when I felt like I was starving. The anxiety I was feeling about what I was going to become at the next full moon was worse on paper, but in practice, being hungry all the time was rough. I was scarfing down my third protein bar before lunch when Morgan showed up, seemingly out of nowhere.
“Don’t eat too many of those, you wouldn’t want to get too fat to fit into your homecoming dress,” she said. Kylie and Jess were behind her, giggling, as always. They really were like the evil Three Musketeers.
“Excuse me?” I asked, turning around and closing my locker. I would usually just ignore her and remove myself from the situation, but I was tired of the way she was constantly treating me.
“You heard me,” she said in a cold voice. “If you’re a cow, Elliot will just come crawling back to me, like always.”
“Please,” I said, pushing her aside and walking toward my next class. “I have to get to class. I’m late.”
“He never leaves me for long,” she said again, more loudly this time. “Especially not for someone so average. You’re not worth his time.”
Truly, I did not want to deal with Morgan or her insults. It wasn’t even that she hurt my feelings, it was just annoying. It was enough that we went to the same school together and I had to see her every day; I needed her to back off. I could feel my anger rising and felt tears stinging my eyes, as they always did when I got angry. All of the feelings on top of one another including the embarrassment from the tears that were about to start to flow were too much for me. Just when I was about to snap, turn around and say something to her, or maybe even hit her, I was saved by the proverbial bell.
“Speak of the devil,” I hard Vanessa say in a quiet voice, pulling Morgan back a bit by the arm.
The devil in this case, apparently, was Elliot, who was walking toward us in a blue button-up shirt that brought out his eyes and dark jeans that accentuated all the right features. I felt myself start to blush a bit just from looking at him and then blush even deeper when I realized what my face might look like at the time. Still, him walking up made me smile.
“Hey,” he said to me once he got to my locker. “I have to get to class, but I really wanted to see you.”
He was acting like his ex-girlfriend wasn’t right next to us, looking at us with a completely unbelieving expression on her face. Elliot pulled me close and gave me a sweet and slow kiss on the lips right there in the hallway in front of both of us. We’d been texting quite a bit, but neither of us had had the time to hang out one-on-one. He’d said he was busy with football and I’d been busy studying with Tyler. Of course, I didn’t tell him that, fearing how he would take the fact that I was spending so much time with a different guy. And Tyler and I were just friends, anyway, so there was nothing for him to worry about.
I noticed that Morgan was turning around to remove herself from the situation, so I decided to lay it on extra thick. I knew I was being petty, but it was also entirely her fault for treating me the way she had been.
“You’re so sweet,” I said to Elliot more loudly than was necessary. “I’m going to your practice later. Do you want to hang out after? We can go back to my place and Netflix and chill.”
I didn’t know what had gotten into me. There had never been a point, in my entire life, up until that point when I had uttered the phrase “Netflix and chill” unironically. Plus, if I didn’t get what I needed out of Zac at football practice, then I didn’t know what I was going to do about following him if I had Elliot planning on coming over later.
“Absolutely, I do,” Elliot told me with the most adorable smile on his face before leaning down to kiss me again. He pulled back and headed in the opposite direction as the late bell ended. “I’ll see you later!” he called, winking.
It turned out that I didn’t need to worry about not getting information from Zac. In what felt like incredibly lucky timing on my part, I got to the field a bit early and found that Zac was on his phone. On top of that, I was more than 99 percent positive that he was talking about me.
I ended up in a spot about 30 feet away from where Zac was set up for the day at the very edge of where I could sit without interfering with either cheer practice or football practice. I sat down and leaned against the fence near the entrance of the field. Thanks to my new heightened senses, I could hear everything Zac was saying on the phone perfectly, but I worked to make it not super obvious that I was paying attention to him.
“Look, I know he screwed up, but she’s going to be ready in time… She’s going to be ready, don’t worry about it,” I heard him say as I opened up my trigonometry book. In a move that I thought was pretty clever, I printed out some pages of research about werewolves and hidden them inside the book so I could study them somewhat inconspicuously. “She’s so strong already, you really don’t have to worry. And I’m pretty sure she has a gift for endurance or something. I’ve never even seen her break a sweat.”
He paused and listened for a minute or so. I took the time to get a pen out of my backpack to take some notes on my research. Today’s goal was to learn more about what the transformation felt like and looked like. All I’d read at that point was that it wasn’t a walk in the park and was generally awful. In reality, most of the sources said that it’d be disorienting and mostly painful.
“He knows that she wasn’t the intended… If you’d just listen to me, you’d understand why I’m insisting that everything’s okay,” Zac said into the phone. I was instantly concerned when he said “wasn’t the intended…” was he really talking about me? Was I not supposed to be bitten or something? On top of that, I was concerned because I read that the pain of the first-time transformation can actually put the body into shock and, in some cases, resulted in death. I was choosing to refuse to believe that, however.
“Look, you need to trust that we know what we’re doing. Unlike some people, we own up to our mistakes and take care of them when we can,” Zac sounded extremely frustrated. It was hard to blame him though. He’d repeated the same few sentences multiple times, which made me think whoever was on the other end was a jerk who didn’t like to listen. “Tell him we’ll be completely fine. I’m going to get her ready. She trusts me, and we can get her to help.”
I thought about everything he’d been saying as the football players and cheerleaders made their way onto the field. If Zac had been talking about me, then it was possible I wasn’t supposed to have gotten bitten. It was also entirely possible that he thought I had a gift for endurance and that would help with whatever he needed to have done. But, if it had been a mistake to bite me, then who was the ‘he’ Zac had been referring to? And who had he been talking to? I wished I could have heard the other end of the conversation. I really wanted to know what Zac meant by “do what needs to be done.” I couldn’t help but stare at him and try to concentrate on the phone to see if I could hear the other end of the conversation.
“My plan is to explain everything to her very soon, but I need to be careful after what happened last time,” Zac said, then paused. “No, he’s too close to her. I can’t risk him being there… I know, no one will ever truly replace Sadie. I only wish that we had… You’re right,” he looked around at the players arriving and realized that he needed to get off the phone and start coaching. The team was already on the field stretching, and the cheerleaders were on the other end of the track getting ready for practice. Zac glanced in my direction, and I couldn’t look away quickly enough for him to avoid making eye contact with him. He stayed on the phone for a few more seconds and kept looking me in the eye. Then, he had the nerve to actually smirk over at me.
I had no doubt that he knew exactly what I was up to.
“I have to go, and I’ll see you Wednesday. Don’t do anything stupid,” Zac said into his phone, finally turning away from my gaze.
I watched him slide the phone into his pocket as he walked toward the team. He glanced back one time, and the concerned look on his face caught me a little bit off guard. With what I assumed was some extra effort, Zac shook his head and smiled at me. I waved at him in acknowledgment that he’d caught me but also that I’d caught him, even though I still felt like I didn’t know that much more than I’d known coming into my special operation. Looking around, I noticed Elliot was looking at me as well, which gave me some butterflies in my stomach.
“Oh my God, stare much?” I heard Morgan say. I’d almost forgotten she was on the cheerleading squad for a moment. Usually, Leah’s presence was enough to keep her from approaching me, but my sister was currently talking to Tim on the side of the field, probably making more plans for their homecoming date. “Are you too insecure to let him even practice on his own? Are you worried that he’ll just watch me the whole time?
I sighed, looking up at her. She was standing in front of me with Jess at her side. Each of them was dressed in nothing but the shortest, tightest shorts I’d ever seen and sports bras. Morgan brushed her long blonde hair behind her shoulder and laughed.
“You need to let him go already,” she said quietly. “You’re just holding on to something that will never, ever be yours.”
“Thanks for the advice, Morgan,” I said confidently. She wasn’t getting to me with that kind of talk just hours after I’d bested her in the hallway. She wasn’t even a real threat at that moment. “I’ll keep it in mind later, when we’re on our date.”
“Is there a problem here?” Leah asked, walking up to Morgan. “Or can we get to practice? Your splits need a little work, Jess. And Morgan, didn’t Coach say you needed to practice your toe touches today? Let’s go.”
It was unfair that everyone liked Leah and listened to her. No one would even dare to talk back to her. Meanwhile, I was just her weird twin sister who didn’t make the cheerleading squad in eighth grade and then got left behind.
Unfortunately, there was no speeding along the hour and a half of practice that I had to sit through that day, despite my best efforts. I texted Tyler to tell him that I’d have to reschedule our get-together since Elliot was coming over after practice, and he told me that he was going to use the time to meet up with his mom and do some recon on the older pack, though they seemed to be operating on the down low lately. His mom apparently thought she knew who a few of them were, but she wasn’t sure that their pack was actually the threat we needed to be worried about. She was more concerned about a pack further out, Tyler told me.
C: I think I heard Zac talking about me and saying he was going to tell me everything soon. I may or may not have been eavesdropping.
T: May have been? What did he say?
C: Something about being strong and possibly gifted in endurance. That would make sense with the long runs I’ve been taking every morning…
T: I could see that. Did he say anything else?
C: Not really, just that someone would be ready to do “what needs to be done,” and they said something about a Sadie? Do you know anything about that?
T: My mom thinks that they lost a member of the pack recently, and it would have been a woman. He could have been talking about her.
I heard a throat clear behind me, and it nearly made me jump out of my own pants. I hadn’t heard anyone come up behind me, and I was also hoping that whoever it was hadn’t been there for long enough to read my texts. I quickly pressed the lock button on my phone, closed the ‘book’ I’d been reading, and then looked over my shoulder to see Zac standing behind me. It wasn’t clear if he’d been there long enough to see what I was doing, but I’d bet on the fact that he was if I had to guess.
“Are you hiding something?” he asked quietly, but I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not, so I decided not to be too serious with him. Besides, I didn’t want anyone to overhear anything important, and everyone was still running drills. His gaze, however, was piercing.
“Are you hiding something?” I replied, smirking up at him. My answer worked: he laughed.
“What brings you to football practice?”
“What brings you to football practice?” I asked him, laughing when he rolled his eyes playfully. “I’m just kidding. My sister’s a cheerleader and the guy I’m seeing is the quarterback. We’re hanging out after, so I thought I’d wait and catch up on some research.”
“Cool,” he said after a pause, looking out at the field. “I should get back to it, see you in the morning?”
I nodded, telling him I’d be there as long as Luna was there, and he laughed as he walked away. I found myself sighing as soon as he stepped onto the field and away from me. My heart rate slowly returned to normal, and I looked down at my phone to reply to Tyler’s text message.
T: I can look into it.
C: You don’t have to. I can find a way to bring it up somehow.
T: Don’t worry about it. I have nothing better to do.
C: Sorry again that I bailed for tonight.
T: Don’t worry about it :)
I felt confident that I’d gotten all I could out of Zac by just eavesdropping and our short conversation when it was convenient for me, and I was feeling excited to spend some more time with Elliot after that quick kiss in the hallway this afternoon.
I stood up, getting ready to go back out to his truck to wait for him. Of course, the cheerleaders were leaving at the same time, and Morgan couldn’t help but bump into me on her way out, calling me some rude names under her breath.
I couldn’t believe we’d ever been friends.
***
“Have you ever dated Morgan?” I found myself asking Elliot later. We were sitting on the couch in the basement with Netflix on in the background, but we’d been talking and doing an equal amount of not talking for most of the night.
“No,” he said quickly. “We went on one date over a year ago and it was weird. She only ever talks about herself. Why do you ask? Did she say something to you?”
“Only every day for the past two years,” I said, laughing. “Morgan hates me ever since I didn’t make the cheerleading squad in eighth grade. I don’t know what I did to her personally. Lately, she’s just been saying a lot about how you’re hers and always have been.”
He rolled his eyes and pulled me closer.
“Right now, I’m all yours,” he said sweetly. “How’s your leg, by the way?”
Again with the legs. He asked about it at least once every day lately, it seemed. Even when I thought I explained it away well enough, he’d ask about it the next day. It was starting to get very frustrating. I needed to know what was going on with me before I told anyone else what was going on with me. Anyone other than Tyler, I mean, who would have probably ended up finding out without my explicitly telling him, seeing as it was his job to know who was a werewolf and who wasn’t.
“My leg is fine,” I said, and then, just to make him stop, offered to let him see the scar.
I pulled my leg out from under the blanket and offered it to him in what felt like an awkward way to just put my legs on his lap. He traced the scar with his fingers, much in the same way Zac had that morning on the trails.
“This scar is super white,” he said. “Are you sure it healed okay?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t hurt at all. It’s like it never happened, I promise,” I told him. “That healing salve worked wonders.”
He eyed me skeptically, but he also seemed to accept my answer, which was good because at that moment, the door to the basement opened and Leah, Taylor and Ana all came downstairs.
“Oh, hey guys,” Leah said. “Do you mind if we join? We were going to watch a scary movie and have snacks.”
I rolled my eyes because I was more than 90 percent sure they’d planned to come down so they could witness Elliot and I hanging out together. They still had a hard time believing that we were together, which would have been insulting if I hadn’t had a hard time believing it myself.
“Sure,” I said, scooting closer to Elliot to make room for them on the sectional. Thankfully, there was plenty of room for all of us. Elliot reached out, grabbing my hand under the blanket and smiling at me when I looked at him.
Taylor scrolled through the horror movies on Netflix and Leah offered us some M&Ms from her personal stash. Taylor, however, was not so inconspicuous.
“So, Elliot, when did you know you wanted to ask our wonderful friend Chloe here to homecoming?” she said. He cleared his throat before he answered her.
