#yeah we're back

Curls up into a little ball for actual fucking ever

I remember (Scott Kreamer?) commenting on how they built the whole Camp Cretaceous set only for it to be destroyed in four episodes..but it's equally funny that they built a whole SECOND Camp Cretaceous set, only for it to be used in about six or seven episodes.

It's not an insignificant chunk, but it does show a stark contrast between what this show could have been if it was, say, a sixty-plus episode show where 40 were spent on Isla Nublar with a bunch of day-to-day serialized shenanigans before spending twenty on Isla Nemesis.

Her phone buzzed with a notification. That’d be the werewolves, her pack, all somewhere else, in the group chat. Claire was doing some art, Laura was talking about her pet…ferret? That human boy Manuel was talking about that mangy yellow little thing, too. Sam didn’t even know why Manuel was in the pack now. Sam sighed.

Glen, her boyfriend, poked her in the ribs with his elbow. “Hello. Sam? We got tickets to the football game, not the phone game.”

“The tickets are like…” Sam looked over at him; his scratchy little beard hadn’t really grown in yet, and it’d been a long ‘yet’.

“A ten dollar bill died for us to be here today,” Glen smirked.

Sam flicked off her phone, and her eyes looked down at her reflection for a moment. At her brown skin and light freckles, at her long braided hair. At her eyes that, right now, didn’t seem as excited to be here as she would’ve been last year.

Her ears caught a lot of things; the urgent whispers of huddled players, people shifting in their seats on the long rows of silver bleachers (plenty of room available, no one ever went), hell, even a mouse creeping its way across the track-and-field track that ringed the football field. She knew that field well, ‘cause that’s where the girl’s soccer team played too. And…

Glen’s phone, still playing in his other hand. She stole a glance at it. It was that guy again, Elliott Moss. Some ex-boxer. He was a bald man, who was always sitting next to a sports car or a pile of cash, gesturing. Sam didn’t know much about him, but god, ever since this summer, did Glen want to change that…

“Is Zach playing?” Glen asked, trying badly to look like he wasn’t looking at his phone.

“Nope.”

“God, he’s not even backup anymore. He’s a backup to the backup.”

“Hey, ‘least he’s on the team.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Glen said, and he wasn’t smiling now.

“They’re going for it…” Saved by the announcer’s shitty mic. Down on the field, play resumed. The quarterback, this blonde-haired kid named Shawn Bevins, faked a pass to the receiver, Jabari Morton, before handing it off to the running back, Finn…Finn Stevens. Finn put his head down, barreled forward, and -

Stopped in his tracks. One of the Middleton players, unable or too pigheaded to halt his inertia, slammed into him and knocked him to the ground. The ball fell out of his hands and bounced two or three times down the field, but nobody much seemed to care. The referee whistled, and the crowd around Finn tried to break apart.

‘Cause Finn was still laying in the grass. Was he injured? Did he get a concussion on top of a concussion to entertain forty-odd friends and parents with nothing better to do on a Friday night? No. He wasn’t injured. Sam’s ears heard scratching, tearing. Finn scratching at his skin. The crowd cleared enough to see him writhing, bloody scratch marks across his face, helmet hanging half off his head.

“The shadows!” He screamed bloody murder, as bloody as the flecks of red dropping into his mouth from his frantic scratching. “Oh, Jesus! The shadows, they’re moving!”

Glen looked up on the field, for once. “Is he on drugs or something? He’s totally on drugs, or something.”

“Yeah…” Sam watched as the players, including Shawn, including Zach, including her friends Ethan and Tyler, form a circle around him, look away, not into the crowd, but beyond them into the night, as he was pulled off the field. “Yeah, must be…”

***

CHAPTER ONE

First and Ten

“I won’t be crushed now, will I?”

Gef asked, the mongoose sitting perched on the edge of that big boulder in front of King High, his awful people fingers splayed out for grip. Laura groaned, holding out her backpack.

“I cleared out a pocket for you. Your own personal Gef pocket. It’s safe.”

“You know, Voirrey made me my own personal sanctuary! Why, the Irvings gave me a chair to push around for exercise. They didn’t try to assassinate me with Geometry books!”

“It was an accident, Gef, and you’re like, immortal. You can’t die.”

“Yes - but I can very well hurt! Besides, I love breathing too much to miss it for even a second!”

“Get in my backpack, you little freak.” Laura jiggled it, for emphasis.

Gef jumped onto her backpack, and clambered into the Gef pocket like a mountain climber barely making it up a cliff. “You know, with the Irvings I could have the run of the place - I followed them out into the world, concealed by hedges and walls.”

She zipped up all but a little bit of the pocket, enough for Gef’s head. “Do you see any hedges or walls? This isn’t farm country on the Isle of Man. Over there’s an orthodontist, a vet, and a Chipotle. That way’s the mall. Over there, the stupidly large campus of my stupidly large school. Not a lot of places to hide over here.”

“Hmph,” Gef grunted, and slunk down into the Gef pocket.

“Sorry for not wearing a hoodie for once in my life.” Laura had picked out jeans, a short gray skirt, and a black t-shirt with skeletons on it, doing various skeleton things. Not a lot of Gef-hiding places.

Summer wanted to meet at the big, gnarled tree outside the school; as Laura walked up, she caught sight of Summer sitting underneath the tree. Summer was also a werewolf, and also trans; she was wearing a hoodie, the big gray comforting hoodie of Nothingness she wore when she didn’t want the world to notice her much. The hood was drawn up, and she nodded quickly to Laura as she sat down next to her.

“Hey -”

“I’ve been thinking about things,” Summer said. “Since the House. Thinking about life.”

“Cool…?”

“Thinking about changing it. Embracing it. Getting a new lease on it. Every day I get closer to dying, you know? Every day I feel it…”

You are fifteen years old. “Yeah…”

“So I’ve got to, I’ve got to do something about it, y’know? I’ve got to - God! - I’ve got to do something to feel all alive and shit. To try to be happy that I’m not dead yet.”

“But…what, though?”

Summer pulled down her hood, revealing…a single streak of lavender in her hair. Not even a full lock. Just a jagged streak of purple. Measly, half-hearted purple. “How…?”

“Yeah, how?”

“Huh? No, how do you like it? How is it?”

“I’m…uh…it’s nice.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah. It’s nice.”

“It’s…God. It’s supposed to be a sign of my new commitment to life, Laura. My new commitment to doing things that make me…that make…that do new things and aren’t expected and shit.”

“It…it does that. That thing you said it did, it does that…” Laura smelled another werewolf drawing close behind them; without looking, she knew it was Claire, Summer’s girlfriend. Just from smell? She’d only been a werewolf two weeks… “Hey, Claire,” she said without looking back.

“Hello, Laura!” Claire waved; Laura could hear it? “Hello…oh, um, you dyed it. It looks very…very life-affirming.”

“Thank you! See, Laura.” Summer pointed, a smarmy smile across her face.

***

On the bus that morning, Sam was consumed by curiosity on two points. One: what happened to Finn?

And two: who was this Moss guy, anyway?

Earbuds in. Phone on. Looks like he’s been banned from Youtube - great start - but he’s on Twitter…

“What is happening to beauty?” He was walking around his house without a shirt on. “Everything is ugly now. Buildings, people. All my beautiful cars, they were taken by the cops…” …ahuh. “Someone told me it’s Eurocentric beauty standards. No, it’s called eyes. They’re trying to destroy your soul and make you an agent of the Matrix…”

Sam flicked off the video. What the hell did Glen see in this guy?

Sam got off the bus and walked into school. Summer and Claire were over there by the tree, and she knew she should go over and talk to them, but…she found herself carried in the front door. Found herself at the table by the vending machines where Zach, Ethan, and Tyler had gathered all year, all last year, too, before school. It wasn’t too different from their spot in middle school…

Ethan was a reedy boy with dark hair and pale skin; Tyler was also pretty reedy, with blonde hair and scrappy little sideburns. Zach, though, was as a tackle: wide and with a thick-neck and jutting, acne-flecked jaw and ruddy face. The friends you get as one of the only girls at a sports camp in middle-of-nowhere Wisconsin.

“Yo.” Ethan said, though he and Ty were off to the side, tapping at something on their phones.

“Yo,” Sam said back, and sat across from Zach. “Mornin’.”

“Morning!” He said. “You came Friday, right?”

“Yeah, about Friday…”

“Yeah. We lost. It sucked, dude.”

“Not that…sorry. About that Finn guy…”

“Oh, Finn? Dude. Finn’s good.”

“Is he here?”

“He’s in the hospital, but he’s doin’ fine.”

“But what happened to him? That hit really messed him up.” Her ears caught Ethan and Tyler shuffling a bit, casting furtive glances at the two of them. Sam really could go without knowing how many people were staring at her all the time…

“Eh, who knows? Dude…got hit real bad. Concussions. CTE or something.”

“Don’t you have to be dead to test for CTE?”

“What? No. I said he had that, or something. Or something’s wrong with his head. Not my problem, y’know?”

“Maybe he took something bad,” Ethan said dryly.

“Yeah. Maybe…” Sam nodded goodbye, and ran off to class.

***

Manuel had many problems that morning, but first among them was that Mrs. Lury had assigned the groups for discussing the packet with the reading from A Separate Peace, and Manuel was in a group with, among others, Clarissa Clarke, who…

Slid her packet off her desk and smiled. She didn’t look at it fluttering, because her gaze was fixed right on Manuel, and that fact made his skin crawl, not only because he didn’t like eye contact in general but this was bad eye contact, this was judgmental eye contact, this was eye contact that asked a question and demanded an answer…

He reached down and picked up her packet.

“Why, thank you!” Clarissa Clarke said, her hands folded on her desk…meanly. “I’m relieved this group has a big strong man aboard.”

“Um…thank you, I think…”

“You should feel proud. Look at you. You know, you should go out for sports! 5’2’’, no muscles, no facial hair, they’d be so happy to welcome you in as one of the boys.”

I’m 5’5’’, he wanted to correct, even though he knew that was very much not part of the point Clarissa Clarke thought she was making - though, her point was to be insulting… “Um…no.”

“You’d know better than me though. I’m just a simple girl.”

“Yes…um, no.”

“You agree? Wow. I really wish I could say I’m surprised.” Clarissa Clarke rolled her eyes, and her whole head with her eyes, and flipped through her packet without actually doing anything until the bell rang, though Manuel started gathering his things a few minutes beforehand, so he could make it first out the door.

When he did, he looked at his phone. A text from Jessie, telling everyone to gather at the…

“Art gallery?” It was Alice, wearing her usual red jacket, who had her nose scrunched up in - confusion, Manuel assumed. “We have a dang art gallery?”

“Maybe it isn’t in this school - maybe she means -” Another text: it’s to the right of the library. “Oh. Um. That little room there.”

“Do we go to a rich kid school?”

“Well, we do have a planetarium…”

***

Laura had never noticed that narrow, but long, room to the right of the library. It had windows to either side of the door and everything, and yeah, that was an art gallery. It had paintings and sketches on the wall, and a lot of shelves and cabinets along the walls, and everyone was there. Gef poked his head out of her backpack.

“Where are we?” He slurred out.

“The…district art gallery.” She craned her head to look inside at a better angle; Emily was there, and Summer and Claire, and she caught a glimpse of the back of Steph’s green hair and their blue Air Force jacket. She saw Sam, too, leaning against the back wall, by a mess of blue and yellow swirls titled “my mother”. She popped back and started to open the door…

“Thanks.” A short brown-haired girl in a denim jacket squeezed through the door first.

“Oh - uh, we’re kinda doing a private thing -”

“I’m in the pack. My name is Megan. You’ve met me twice.”

“Oh…uh, I kinda…like…not…”

“You forgot me. Fine. Didn’t even smell me.”

Laura sniffed the air pointlessly. Yeah, werewolf. “Oh. You’re…”

“You’re on the list, buddy. Your pet too.”

“I’m not her pet!” Gef hissed.

“Then why are you living in her stupid backpack, loser? Oh my god. If you were with me, you wouldn’t be around.”

“‘Cause you’d kill him?”

“‘Cause I’m not allowed to bring a backpack anymore,” she said, and pushed her way inside; Laura followed.

***

Everyone was confused, but they were only waiting for a minute before the door opened and their pack leader Jessie walked in, in all their glory: pawprint earrings, red hair, and mint green fleece. Everyone shouted out a greeting, and Sam did too, a little “hey, Jess”.

“Guess who’s gonna be volunteering here part-time from now on,” Jessie said cheerfully. “Figured you’uns could use some help these days, and it’s better than runnin’ off to fight a feral werewolf alone again.”

“...yeah…” Emily murmured.

“In case any of you need an ear to listen to your troubles, or if the Horde’s back, or if any weird stuff’s goin’ on around here. Not that I expect weird stuff to go on around here on a regular basis. But if it is, y’all can come here whenever you’re a-huntin’.”

“I don’t think anything weird’s going on,” Alice said.

“No!” Emily said. “No. Not since the werewolf.”

“Yeah, nothing,” Laura said quickly.

“...no…” Manuel said.

“There is. There was,” Sam spoke up. “Last Friday at the football game, one of the players broke down. It wasn’t like an injury. He was scratching himself and talking about shadows. I tried asking his teammates about it, but none of them will say anything.”

“Odds that that’s normal seem pretty chancy,” Jessie said.

“I’ll help,” Laura said.

“Me too,” Manuel added swiftly.

“I should be the one looking into it. They won’t talk to me, but they really won’t talk to you,” Sam explained.

“Then we’ll tag along. If that’s okay with you?” Laura asked.

“...yeah. Yeah, it’s okay.”

“Sounds good. If you need any help, I’ll be here the rest of the afternoon.”

“Could we use this space even if you aren’t here?” Manuel asked. “We don’t want to risk being overheard…”

“None of you knew this room even existed. You’ll be fine saying anything here.”

“Oh. Right.” The group started to file out, and Sam started to race off, but realized hey, she should slow down and let Laura and Manuel catch up.

“You don’t have to come with me,” Sam said.

“No, but like…we know this stuff,” Laura reached down into her backpack pocket for some reason, like she was petting something. “I hunted a ghost.”

“Yes, and I survived a creepy eldritch House.”

“...I miss out on a lot, huh?”