The Enigma (The Loup-Garou Series Book 1) Read online

  The bell for the next class rang and Katey bolted off the couch to get her things.

  “Don’t forget, the comet is coming tonight, get a good seat out in the park. Be good and don’t miss me too much over the weekend,” Mr. Dubose called out to the class as they walked out the door.

  “So how do you think class went?” Beth asked Katey in her meek, soft voice that still retained the shrill cords of childhood. They probably only had ten seconds before they split off to go different ways to their classes, but they loved to connect anytime they could.

  “It was ok. Most of the stuff I already knew.”

  “You know nearly everything about environmental science.”

  “If I did then I’d be making an A instead of a B,” Katey said as they began to part ways in the hall. In all reality, Katey was acing the class, but she didn’t want to brag about it.

  “I don’t know, but you probably know more than Mr. Dubose anyway.”

  “I doubt it!” she called out to her as they separated in the crowd. They both knew from the way Mr. Dubose talked and his countless travel stories that he was a well educated man and competent teacher.

  Katey made her way through the noisy crowd to her second period English class. Weaving through the throngs of jocks, preps, nerds and outcasts, Katey tried to not let it overwhelm her. Their laughter, the chatter, the total gaiety of the place in general. It unnerved her some days. Especially when she saw a group of girls giggling or a couple holding hands with beaming smiles on their faces. In those moments, Katey wondered why she couldn’t be that happy again.

  The Romeo and Juliet test in English was harder than she expected, even with the little extra time she had studied in first period. Katey knew she flunked it.

  But she took no time in berating herself for it. She was sure, just from overhearing the nervous conversations of other students in the class, that most everyone would fail and Mrs. Kimbrough would administer some type of extra credit to compensate.

  When the dismissal bell rang, Katey gathered her things. She didn’t have far to travel to her third period class since it was conveniently right next door to her second. Standing by the oak panel door, Katey waited for Mr. Keith, the only human geography teacher for their grade.

  The only reason that he was not already in the classroom was because the administration had arranged for his second period class to be all the way across the bus ramp onto the other side of the campus. He had five minutes to travel the distance between one classroom and another, and rarely did he make it on time.

  Mr. Keith was a close second favorite to Katey. He and Mr. Dubose were very similar in their demeanor, except Mr. Keith was much younger and had a more vibrant personality. Katey would guess that he was about mid-twenties in his age, while Mr. Dubose seemed closer to his forties and had a serious approach to learning.

  The tardy bell rang and Mr. Keith still wasn’t there as a pack of students formed around his door.

  “You’re all tardy!” Katey heard his mocking voice call from down the hall.

  Everyone laughed and parted to let him through. Katey loved to watch him struggle to unlock the door. He always talked about appealing to the administration to either fashion him a new key or install a new doorknob that didn’t give him such a hard time.

  “Mornin`, Katey Kat,” Mr. Keith greeted as he opened the door. Katey didn’t know why he liked to call her that. It was a cute name that stuck ever since they met at the school’s open house and she liked it too much to tell him to stop.

  Mr. Keith was about a foot taller than she was, and as hot as hell. He had a scruffy “lumber jack” face with the most gorgeous green eyes she’d ever seen. His hair was deep brown with refined black highlights, and he always gelled it into a stylish tousled look. His muscle structure was about the same as Mr. Dubose’s, but slightly leaner.

  But the most significant thing about his appearance was that he dressed like one of the students. His wardrobe varied between baggy cargos, ripped jeans, hooded jackets, Hollister and Abercrombie shirts, leather jackets. No matter what the situation, he always wore tennis shoes or boots, never anything dressy. He certainly stood out amongst the other faculty and staff of the school and no one seemed to reprimand his conduct or apparel choice.

  On the first day of school, Katey could have sworn he was a teacher’s assistant. He talked like a student too, using slang and translating complicated sentences from the textbook into a language everyone could understand. Human geography became much more interesting than Katey ever thought it would be.

  “Good morning,” she replied with a feigned cheerfulness, as she walked in and sat at her desk near the back of the room.

  The classroom was a little smaller than Mr. Dubose’s with a carpet floor inside instead of tile. There was a dry-erase board in the front, and Mr. Keith’s desk was nestled in the back behind all the desks. The windows across from the door overlooked the front parking lot of the school. Like Mr. Dubose, he used a projector with slideshows to lecture from. The stand with both the projector and his laptop sat in the middle of the room amongst the students’ desks.

  Once everyone was in the classroom and all the authentically tardy students had received their after-school detentions, he finished lecturing about the religion chapter they were studying. Katey was barely paying attention to the lesson.

  Instead, she pretended to be reading out of the textbook, daydreaming about a variety of things. She listened to the sound of his voice, fluctuating with the severity of the topic or the bounciness of his mood.

  Katey froze when he paused next to her desk.

  “You staying awake, Katey?” he asked, putting his heavy hand on her shoulder.

  Katey nodded.

  “Are you taking notes?” he asked, his hand remaining on her shoulder.

  “I typed them last week,” she replied.

  He nodded and made a gesture of approval and stood by her desk, leaning his arm on her shoulder and continued calmly lecturing. His weight buried onto Katey’s muscles and it began to ache. The rest of the class found this terribly amusing as Katey’s face contorted with a malevolent expression.

  He looked down at her and chuckled. “You’re a good arm rest, Katey.”

  Everyone laughed, except for Katey. But, she wasn’t embarrassed or humiliated by the way Mr. Keith treated her. This behavior wasn’t uncommon and after a while, she learned to play along.

  He was a jokester and kept the classroom atmosphere light with his jokes and sarcasm. It was a refreshing experience when most of the other teachers acted like they had a stick up their butts all the time. Mr. Dubose was of course, an exception to this statement as well.

  In addition to the fact that he fooled around in the classroom, Katey had the sneaking suspicion that she was his favorite out of all the rest. It was in the way he hovered around her desk while he lectured and these little humorous incidents that happened almost daily.

  She attributed it to the fact that she was also his student aid for fifth period since the beginning of school. They saw each other more times in a single day and worked closely together while she slaved away helping him grade papers. He once commented how he admired her tenacity and dedication in completing tasks. Little did he know that it had nothing to do with Katey’s genuine work ethic, but with the need to stay occupied and busy. It was the only way to keep her mind off the crippling desolation that plagued her night and day.

  If anyone would have noticed her glumness, it was he. But he never said anything. Instead, on those days when the depression hit her too hard to handle, he made a visible effort to lighten her load. She failed to demonstrate her gratitude for his kindness.

  “I kid, I kid. Relax,” Mr. Keith teased, and then turned back to the slideshow to continue his lecture. Katey rubbed her shoulder blade and stretched it out until the aching subsided. She caught a glimpse of a sly wink from Mr. Keith as he walked away towards the front of the classroom.

  When he was finished lecturing, he pas
sed out review sheets for the students to complete alone or in pairs. Katey worked on it alone as Mr. Keith walked back to his desk and played some old rock music on his laptop.

  Like Mr. Dubose, Mr. Keith had an easy-going attitude about life. He was comfortable and above all, self-assured. Perhaps this was why Katey liked him so much, just as she liked Mr. Dubose.

  The period went by extremely fast and when the bell rang, she heard Mr. Keith mention the comet that would be coming that night.

  Katey knew about the comet only from what people told her. They told her it only came around every eighteen years and that tonight it would be coming back. The coincidence was not lost on her, that this day was also her birthday. That meant eighteen years ago, on the night she was born, the comet made another visit to earth.

  An ache settled in her chest as her thoughts took her places she didn’t want to go. Thinking of the day she was born made her think of the parents she never knew. Being an orphan from near infancy, she knew nothing of who her real mother was. She wondered, if her parents hadn’t died in a fatal car crash like she’d been told, would this birthday have been different? Would she even be in this state of stagnancy? If she had a family that truly cared about her, they would have seen the signs and known that she wasn’t well, she was sure of it.

  Katey’s steps slowed as she made her way down the hall to her fourth period geometry class. Several other students had bumped into her, making her stumble a bit along the way. She heard no apologies or remarks of concern for her. They just kept going as if she were invisible.

  A dark cloud enveloped her mind, but Katey refused to let it take hold. Not again. Not today. She shook her head and quickened her walk to keep with the flow of traffic.

  Arriving to her fourth period class, she found it still only half full of students. Despite her delay, she was still on time. The classroom had a similar layout to Mr. Keith’s, with the exception to a white tiled floor instead of carpet. Many of the classrooms in the school looked just like this one.

  Mr. Myers, her geometry teacher, was a little shorter than Mr. Dubose, but he too looked like he might belong on a football field rather than in a math classroom. He had a rather old sense of style and wore nothing as outrageous as what Mr. Keith did, but nothing as formal as Mr. Dubose. He usually wore earth tone sweaters or bland polos with dress pants.

  He had coffee colored hair that seemed to always fall back into place, no matter how many times he raked his fingers through it throughout the day.

  His eyes were a real mystery. In the classroom, they looked to match his hair color almost perfectly. But when Katey looked close, they were a dark greenish color, like hazel. But when the sun hit them just right, she spotted flecks of gold in his irises that dazzled her every time.

  There was a test that day, but Katey wasn’t too worried. Unlike literature, she was surprisingly good at math.

  Katey sat in her desk near the front on the far side of the room, farthest from the door and took out her supplies. She didn’t like her desk at all. It was too small and would hardly give her any room to have a textbook out and write on notebook paper at the same time.

  Mr. Myers came in from the hallway and walked straight to his desk to take attendance before the test.

  “Ok guys, settle down, get in your seats,” he said placidly. His voice was deep, hypnotic, and laden with a sophisticated southern drawl. It wasn’t the kind of accent from a hillbilly or redneck, but one that reminded her of the movie Gone With The Wind and how they spoke.

  He gave the instructions for the test and passed them out, paying special attention to how many he passed out in each row. He would always be off one or two though, despite his efforts.

  Mr. Myers never quite seemed in his element at the school. He was quiet and reserved. She never saw him talk or socialize with any of the other teachers. He kept to himself, but what struck her most is that he seemed to like it that way. There was never a day when he walked in with a sour or melancholy disposition. But, neither was he cheerful. It was that calm, gentle presence that he brought to the classroom that intrigued her.

  He was out of place, but he was ok with that. Katey was not that way at all.

  Katey was done with the test and had plenty of time to kill. Her desk, although annoyingly small at times, was in the perfect position right next to the big window that looked out on the bus ramp and the strip of woods behind it.

  She stared out the window, letting her mind zone out. It was in these moments that the mask fell down and she could release her solemnity. Heaving a heavy sigh, she watched the tall pine trees sway with the breeze outside.

  Her obsession with the forest was a recent development, a new facet in this incomprehensible trend between sadness and emotionless stupor. The way the leaves bobbed a flutter, the bend of the branches, the little scurrying of squirrels and birds in their natural habitat. It was alluring.

  Katey had never set foot in the woods. As a child, growing up in other foster homes, she was never given a chance to roam so far. As a teenager, she never cared or thought much about it.

  But now, it consumed her thoughts just as completely as the restless yearning for something new and different. The woods could provide that for her if she only had the courage to explore.

  Out of her musings, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Turning her head, she saw Mr. Myers standing by the window. He was staring at the same patch of woods as she was.

  She peered at him for a moment, trying to memorize the coolness of his expression, the tranquility in his pose. It was that same quality she saw in Mr. Dubose and Mr. Keith and she grew angry. Like the girls that giggled in the hallway or the nerds that talked excitedly over the newest video game, she envied the peace her teacher’s had. Why couldn’t she be that way?

  She saw Mr. Myers blink and something strange occurred. His eyes, chestnut brown just moments before, were slowly shifting. She watched as a new color leaked out from his pupils, filling his irises with a glittering golden color. She’d seen that color somewhere before, but couldn’t quite place where.

  Katey leaned forward in her desk to get a better look and a loud creak announced her movements.

  Mr. Myers locked gazes with Katey and she noticed his eyes were no longer golden, but the previous brown. She blinked back her confusion. It must have been a trick of the light.

  He glanced at the test on her desk. She should have turned it in long ago when she finished, but she had neglected to. He raised an eyebrow at her and then walked away to his desk, leaving her still slightly stunned, wondering what exactly it was that she had seen.

  Chapter 2

  The day was almost over. Sixth period was journalism, an elective course that Katey needed the credits for in order to graduate. She had her pick of other electives, but she knew the teacher was very laid back and let his students do practically anything besides journalism assignments. They cranked out a newsletter probably only every other quarter, but even that was a hit or miss. Many of the other students in the class were there for the same reason that Katey was: free time.

  Today, she chose to sit and read To Kill A Mockingbird. She’d already read it three times in the past few years, but it was something to keep her occupied for the next hour.

  When the class was almost over, several of the other senior girls in the class came over to Katey’s desk and sat on the floor or leaned over on the desk. They usually didn’t talk to her so something peculiar must have been going on.

  “Hey Katey. The senior class is having a party tonight outside of town for the comet. You want to come?” said Toni, a skinny blonde sitting in the desk in front of Katey. The others watched her intently, waiting for her answer.

  It seemed very odd for Katey to be approached with such an offer, since she had never hung out or socialize with Toni and her entourage before. Could this be a cruel trick they were trying to playing on her? Her eyes scanned over their friendly expressions and didn’t detect any hint of hidden malice.

>   “Sure. What time?” Katey asked. They gave her both the time and directions with a hastily drawn map just before they scattered at the sound of the bell.

  While sorting away textbooks and binders in her locker for the weekend, Katey wondered what those girls were really up to. Were they truly genuine in their invitation? Katey had a few hours to decide if she would go or not.

  If all else failed, she could go out to the party, scout around for anyone she knew and then take that much-desired trek in the woods.

  As Katey walked out to the parking lot, she saw Mr. Myers there as well, crouching next to his gray Nissan sedan. He was working hard with a manual pump to inflate a tire that was so flat the rim was sitting on the pavement.

  Hardly understanding what drove her to do so, Katey silently walked up beside him with her hands shoved in her hoodie pockets and watched him fumble around and curse under his breath.

  It didn’t take long for him to realize he had an amused audience. Mr. Myers stopped and finally looked up at her. His eyes, once again baffled Katey as they changed shades of brown and gold. But she tried not to show her bewilderment.

  “Hey Katey… Do you need something?” he asked, out of breath.

  She shook her head. “Nope. Do you need any help?” she asked, tilting her head to the side that made him give her a crooked half-smile.

  “I wouldn’t take help from a student. I’m good.” He turned back to his tire and examined it as if waiting for it to magically fix itself.

  Katey didn’t know if she should have been offended by his show of pride.

  “I’ve got a spare in my jeep for my mom’s car. They’re about the same size. I’ve never used it and I’m sure I won’t need it any time soon.” Katey gestured her thumb to her jeep that happened to be parked in the next row. The SUVs from that morning were gone, leaving plenty of room.