My Lycan Boyfriend's Dark Secret

I don't belong

“This is your room,” she says as she opens the ivory colored door, “your roommate’s name is Marge, lucky for us, she’s probably already at orientation.” Orientation!

“Has it started?” I ask nervously.

“Not yet, but it will start soon. We better head over there too.”

I step into the room, my new room, at least for the next 365days and 1hour that I will be here. Perfect... My half of the room is pale in comparison to the one opposite me, which is covered with bright colored posters of boys and bands... and a collage of photos. If it’s not bad enough to look sallow next to the others here, even my half of the room has to pale in comparison. Just perfect... I will have to devise a plan to fix that. I walk in to park my luggage beside my bed and see the courtyard from my window. It is slowly filling up with students. I am told the Full Moon Academy had 622 students, making me the 623rd, the only new addition to the senior class. Blending in should be a breeze... I feel anxious at the unwanted attention I will probably be receiving once curiosity sets in.

“Come, let’s go!” she says starting to sound anxious herself, twirling her long black ponytail around her slender fingers. I obey her immediately and without question, as if she was heeding me an unspoken warning. Come now or else... As we approach the busy courtyard and I feel all eyes focusing on me, I know exactly why I was to be warned. Eek! I hunch my shoulders and try to hide my face behind the map that I still clutched in my hand as some boys look my way as they joked and shoved at each other, like I was a challenge to be accepted in a new game, whereas the girls mostly eyed me in disgust or averted their gaze in indifference the moment I try to greet them. They seem... lovely. I note with sarcasm.

365 days and thirty-five minutes, I remind myself.

The school principal, Mr Robert Cruise, a man with greying hair and stubble and neatly pressed clothes, starts to announce the start of a new academic year here at Full Moon, which starts at the beginning of spring and ends after the winter. He explains that no cellphones will work as the island is protected by a concealment spell that protects its whereabouts and identity. Fantastic, I sigh, so it won’t make a difference that I don’t have one.

“Lastly, I would like to introduce you all to the newest member of the senior class,” Mr Cruise’s booming voice says over the crowd standing in front of the steps he perched himself on, “Miss Oceania Burns, will you come up here please,” he says, almost causing me a heart attack. No, no, no, no, no, no, no... I feel Stephanie’s elbow being shoved into my side, a clear prompt for me to react in some way, any way. I'm dreaming, I must be dreaming... please let me be dreaming! The students standing around us all turn to face me as I resemble nothing more than and awkwardly posed statue. GULP!

“Oceania Burns,” Mr Cruise’s impatient voice commands above the sound of my own heart beating loudly in my ears. My feet start to move involuntarily as Stephanie pushes me forward with both of her hands on the back of my brand new navy school jersey.

“Go!” she whispers. I can't!!

I have never even seen this many people together, and now I had to face their judging eyes head on. As I reach the steps in front of Mr Cruise, he waves me over to join him above the rest. My uncoordinated feet stumble on the second step eliciting giggles from those behind me. Fudge!

“I hear she’s not even a pure werewolf,” I hear a voice behind me.

“I heard she grew up in the dirt with wild animals,” another says.

“She doesn’t belong here...”

“Miss Burns is the granddaughter to one of our biggest benefactors, the late Luna Ivy Burns,” hearing her name sends me back in time to revisit a memory long forgotten, of eight years ago, where I was admiring the set of two new dresses she had brought me and laid out on my small bed, experiencing how soft the material felt under my touch. She always looked so perfect, with her dress suites, high heels and neatly pinned up hair and I remember an almost nine year old version of myself wanting to be just like her when I grew up. She stopped visiting that year after her and my parents had a massive disagreement – as it was later called. She had wanted me to accompany her back to her pack to be enrolled into a school. Education is very important for a Luna, in order to one day be successful in caring for her pack, she insisted from the other side of my closed bedroom door, I will teach her everything Mother Nature had taught me, that is all that is of real value, don’t we all serve her in the end, my mother argued. You foolish hippie, grandmother said angrily, don’t you see what you are doing to your pack, to your daughter, she continued. That’s enough mother, my father’s deep voice commanded, if you aren’t happy with how things are done here, you are free to leave and never come back, he finished his statement with a loud thud, perhaps caused by striking something with his fist. Don’t do this Timbre, don’t set that beautiful little girl up for failure, she pleaded. We are not setting her up for failure, we are protecting her from your kind, my mother cried out. That was the last time I had heard my grandmother’s voice.

“I trust you will all make her feel welcome, as she is now part of the Full Moon family,” Mr Cruise concluded, allowing me to disappear into the crowd, where I felt slightly more at ease. Did my parents set me up for failure? Was that why my father looked afraid? Afraid that I would fail?

How will I survive the next 365 days in my own personal hell? I don’t fit in here, I don’t belong here, and I am going to fail miserably in trying. I say to myself as I hold onto the moonstone that hangs around my neck.