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CHAPTER NINE: FULL PINK MOON - PART ONE
Dawn rushed into Principal Axford’s office. She’d been cleaning up after class, when the office had called, saying Bobby, one of her werewolf students, had been involved in a fight with some older kids.
Frowning, she saw Bobby standing in the corner with his head hanging down and his hands behind his back between two school resource officers, while three older boys sat in chairs across from Principal Axford’s desk. They all looked like they’d been rolling around in the dirt outside, blood and dirt staining their clothes. One of the boys, blond with freckles and a pretty nasty busted lip, looked vaguely familiar but Dawn couldn’t pin down why. She frowned as Marci handed the boy a tissue and wondered what the librarian was doing here.
“What happened?” Dawn asked, moving to stand next to her student, only to be held back by one of the officers.
“Miss Meadows,” Principal Axford said, “Robert Griffin is one of your students, correct?”
“Yes,” she said, her frown deepening as she kept her eyes on the small boy. “Is he handcuffed? Why is he handcuffed?” She turned to one of the officers. “He’s a six-year-old child!” She reached for Bobby, pulling him close. “Take these off. Now!”
“Miss Meadows.” Principal Axford’s voice was stiff and loud. “Mr. Griffin was caught assaulting Mr. Cloughton outside the building.”
Cloughton? As in Jenny Cloughton, from her class? Had Bobby gotten into a fight with Jenny’s brother? She turned and looked at the boy dabbing his bleeding lip with a tissue. He had Jenny’s blond hair and the same green eyes. “How did the fight start?” She looked at all four boys, who refused to meet her gaze. She looked at Jenny’s brother. “Does this have anything to do with your sister?”
“Jenny didn’t do anything,” both he and Bobby said at the same time.
Which might be true, but also meant she was likely the reason the fight had started. Dawn sighed. “Where is Jenny now?”
Bobby blushed and looked away. “She has soccer practice.”
“And he was watching her,” Jenny’s brother spat out accusingly.
“She said I could!” Bobby stared directly into Dawn’s eyes. “She asked me to.” He shook his head, his tiny body thrashing with the effort against his bonds, when the other boys began to grumble. “She did! I wasn’t doing anything. I just wanted to watch her play.” His lips trembled into a frown. “She wanted me to watch her play.”
“It’s all right, Bobby.” Dawn laid a supportive hand on his shoulder. “I believe you.” She turned to meet Principal Axford’s gaze. “Jenny’s in my class as well; they’re friends.”
Jenny’s brother pointed a damning finger at Bobby. “He wasn’t just watching; he was creeping on her.” He said the words like it was something unquestionable, almost as if it was something he’d heard from someone else – some trusted adult – and was repeating it without fully understanding it. When the adults in the room just looked at him questioningly, he continued, “He was running along the sidelines of the field, following Jenny wherever she went.” He turned to glare at Bobby. “Like some big, bad wolf.”
One of the resource officers nodded. “We were called to the field because it was making some of the girls on the team and a lot of parents uncomfortable, him running and howling at them like that.”
Bobby balked. “I was just cheering her on.” His brow furrowed as his cheeks flushed with humiliation. “I thought that was what you were supposed to do.”
Dawn patted his shoulder but met the officers’ eyes. “Okay, so Bobby was behaving a bit too exuberantly.” That happened with children all the time. It didn’t usually call for police enforcement, but she knew that the werewolf children – especially werewolf boys – were subject to harsher discipline than the other ones. “But how did that lead to a fight?”
All the boys turned away, none of them willing to meet anyone’s gaze, much less Dawn’s.
Marci sighed. “Once the officers showed up on the field, apparently, the boys retreated to the side of the building, where I saw the altercation from the library window.” Her brow furrowed. “I saw Mr. Griffin wrestle Michael here,” she said, gesturing to Jenny’s brother, “to the ground and pummel him repeatedly.” She shook her head. “And, when his friends tried to pull Mr. Griffin off him, Mr. Griffin turned to strike them.” She shook her head. “By the time I made it outside to break it up, the fight was in full swing and Mr. Griffin was partially shifted.”
“I didn’t mean to!” Bobby insisted, his voice almost like a puppy’s whine. Blinking back tears, he struggled closer to Dawn as the officers grabbed him by the arms. “I didn’t try to.” Dawn could see Bobby’s nails begin to grow, his teeth length into the beginnings of fangs. “Please don’t tell my mom or my dad or Alpha Wright.” Fur began to sprout on his face and arms and his wet eyes became almost feral. “Please, Miss Dawn.”
Dawn tried to soothe the young boy. “Bobby. Bobby!” She turned to the grown men attempting to restrain the tiny, now weeping boy. “Please stop; you’re scaring him.”
Still keeping a hard hold on the child, one of the officers said stoically, “When he calms down, we’ll let him go.”
Dawn fought the urge to scream. “He can’t calm down, if you’re scaring him!”
“Miss, this is for your safety as well as ours—”
Surprised, Dawn jerked when she felt a hand gently but firmly push her aside. With a sigh, Marci knelt down in front of the boy, her gaze piercing, even behind her mirrored, wraparound glasses. “Stop and take a breath.” Almost immediately, at her authoritative tone, Bobby’s yipping yowls quieted into sniffling hiccups as he stared into his own eyes in the reflection of Marci’s glasses.
After several shaky breaths, Marci nodded. “Good.” With a slight lift of her head, she focused her gaze at the officers, her hair slithering about her head. Even Dawn – even from behind Marci’s dark, shielding glasses – bit back a gasp as the woman wielded her gaze like the sheathed weapon it was, making the uniformed men let go of Bobby and take an instinctive step back. Satisfied, Marci turned and mercilessly met Bobby’s tear-filled gaze. “I know you’re overwhelmed. Scared. But we’re monsters, right?”
Dawn cringed at the term. She didn’t like that word. Bobby was a child. So were all her werewolf students. Same as the human children. And she absolutely refused to see any of them as monsters, much less treat them like them. Ready to step in, she looked to Bobby, expecting him to be hurt or offended.
But he wasn’t. Instead, he nodded very seriously at Marci, who stared back at him just as meaningfully, with an understanding between the two that Dawn just didn’t grasp.
“When we’re scared, we scare others,” Marci continued. “And that just makes everything worse. We cannot afford to lose control, can we?” When Bobby shook his head, she nodded sagely. “That’s right. Because when we lose control, they will do whatever they think they must to control us. And not just to you. To all of us.” She gripped Bobby by the shoulders, but in a way that seemed to hold him up, not down. “That’s why we have to be stronger. Better. Not just for ourselves, but for everyone like us. So we don’t cry. We don’t lash out. We maintain control.”
Bobby sniffled and tried to wipe his face but, when his bound arms couldn’t, he stood straighter, puffing his still slightly shaky chest out bravely, and nodded.
Marci grabbed a tissue and held it to Bobby’s nose, letting him blow into it. “That’s it.” She looked up at the officers. “Can we at least get him a chair to sit in?”
Dawn watched as chairs were silently, obediently shuffled, so Bobby, with his hands still cuffed behind his back, could sit down. As the children’s parents began to file into the room, Dawn tried to meet Marci’s gaze gratefully. But, even with her eyes hidden, Marci steadfastly refused to meet Dawn’s gaze, making Dawn frown.
Was Marci mad at her? Why would she be angry with her? What had she done to offend Marci? It made it hard to concentrate on the discussion – even though she knew she really should, as Bobby’s and Jenny’s teacher. But all she could think was that she still needed to talk to Marci about Tucker.
Before she knew it, the meeting had ended. All the boys had been suspended and were scheduled to take conflict resolution sessions with the school counselor. Bobby was banned from going to any after-school activities, like sports games, until the counselor cleared him. And Jenny’s parents requested a transfer for their daughter to a new, less disruptive class. Dawn held back as they all filed out of the principal’s office, watching the parents and students grumble as they made their way out of the school. Left alone with Marci in the now empty hallway, Dawn turned, taking a step toward her. “Marci?” She bit her lip as the other woman paused but didn’t turn around. “Can we talk?”
Without turning around, Marci shook her head. “About what?”
About what, indeed. Dawn ought to ask her more about the fight. She needed to talk to Marci about Tucker. Instead, she asked, “Did I do something to make you mad at me?”
Her back stiffened as Marci scoffed. “What makes you think I’m mad at you?” She shot a glare over her shoulder. “What makes you think I think about you at all?”
Dawn flinched at her cutting tone. “I thought we were friends.”
Marci turned to face her with her arms crossed over her chest. “You think because we work at the same school, that we drink the same dirt-cheap coffee in the same break room, that makes us friends?”
That shouldn’t have hurt, but it did. Dawn didn’t have many friends here in town and she’d thought Marci might be among them. Guess she was wrong. “I’m sorry if I did something to offend you.”
“Offend me?” Marci let out a harsh bark of laughter. “What do you think you’ve done to offend me?”
Dawn shook her head. “I don’t know but, whatever it was, I sincerely apologize.”
Marci laughed again. “You apologize? For something you don’t even know you did.” She shook her head. “How sincere do you think that kind of apology is, really?” She walked closer, her serpentine hair swirling around her. “You think, because you’re screwing one of us, that you know what it’s like to be one of us.”
Dawn’s brow furrowed. “One of us?”
Marci shot her a scathing glare. “Monsters. Predators.” She shook her head at Dawn’s shocked reaction. “You may not be human, but you have no idea. You have no clue what it’s like to have people be afraid of you, not for anything you did or said, but just for being you. To have people, with one look at you, think they know everything they need to know about you. To have them, at best, run away from you and, at worst…” Marci huffed at Dawn, gesturing in the direction Bobby and his parents had gone. “You have no idea what it’s like to live your life terrorized by other people’s fear. To have it used against you. Unfairly. Without reason. And to have everyone around them just believe them, believe the absolute worst of you, no matter what you say or do. The world, to protect those like you and little Jenny – those who the world sees as sweet, pretty, and by dainty default innocent – will burn us to the ground. And, as everyone stands around the fire, they’ll pat themselves on the back and call themselves heroes for making you feel safe, regardless of whether you were actually ever in danger.”
Dawn shook her head. “Jenny is innocent; she didn’t do anything.” She furrowed her brow. “And I was trying to help Bobby!”
“You want a medal for that?” Marci scoffed. “But just look at what the administration, those parents, those resource officers, even her brother and his friends — literal children — are willing to do for Jenny’s perceived safety.” Her hair hissed and twitched in irritation. “Look at what your management, the cops, even the pack — who should know better — are willing to do to protect you.”
“Me?” Dawn’s eyes widened with surprise.
Marci took a step closer to her. “Did you know that they kept Tucker in the hospital, for hours, questioning him. Threatening his job. His home. Threatening to charge him. Practically accusing him of attacking you. While he was in the hospital.”
“He did attack me,” Dawn insisted. “In my home. He—”
“He kissed you.” Marci rolled her eyes — her whole head — before leaning closer to Dawn. “He really liked you, you know. Thought you liked him too.”
Dawn held out her hands and shook her head. “I never—”
“You wrote him letters. Baked him treats. Flirted with him.” When Dawn stiffened and frowned, Marci shook her head. “What was he supposed to think? Then someone you like better comes along and, instead of being an adult and just letting him down nicely, you used him to make your new guy jealous!”
What? Dawn balked. No. “That’s not true. I never flirted with Tucker.”
Marci raised an eyebrow. “So you didn’t bat your eyes and share cute, little banter with him? You didn’t leave little notes and lemon bars at his door?”
“I—” It wasn’t like that. “I told him I wasn’t interested.”
“No, you said you didn’t have time,” Marci pointed out. “So he gave you time. He made time for you.” She gave a mystified laugh. “He put together picnics for you. Searched the grounds to find your lost things. Swept in like some freaking white knight to help you, when your clumsy ass got injured. He did all the things the rest of us only dream someone would do for us, and you treated him like some toy you could play with until he breaks!” She sneered at her. “Like some monster you needed to be rescued from.”
Dawn stumbled a step back, feeling Marci’s words like a slap. No. That wasn’t— It wasn’t— She hadn’t— “Is that what he told you?” Why would he tell her that? Why would he tell anyone that?
“Afraid your damsel in distress act won’t hold up when people start listening to the dragon?” Her snakes hissed about her face. “So, no,” Marci said, turning away, “we are not friends. And, sincerely, I don’t want your apology.”
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