Free The Mayfair Moon by J. A. Redmerski

rest of the way by myself.”
    “Let us take you home,” said Isaac, laying his warm hand gently upon my wrist as I grabbed the back of Zia’s seat.
    I looked at him and for a moment wanted to listen. His eyes were magnetic. There was a sort of intensity and concern in them that I couldn’t place, but there was no time for trying. I wanted to go home and I wanted to do it alone.
    “Please....” I said one last time.
    Damien stopped the Jeep and Isaac got out. He walked around to get my bike down for me.
    “I understand,” said Zia. “Look, I’ll see you in school if you want. I hope we didn’t offend you or anything.”
    “No, not at all,” I said. “Thanks again for the ride.”
    I looked back once before riding away and when I did the only set of eyes I saw looking back at me were Isaac’s. The red light from the brakes cast an eerie glow upon the street. Finally, the Jeep faded from sight and I could hear the humming of its engine in the distance. I stopped there in the street, one paved rather than covered with gravel, and I held firmly onto this moment. A streetlight burned and hummed gently overhead just feet away. A mailbox shaped like an old-timey red barn was at my left, its owners far up the driveway where tiny white dots I recognized as lights, glimmered through the darkness.
    I was cold, but I didn’t care. I was also hungry and had a headache, but none of that mattered either.
    Had I become Alex in that moment? I didn’t feel angry, or hateful, or capable of treating those who loved me, with contempt. Guess I assumed that if I was in Alex’s realm now that I was supposed to feel that way. I just felt different. When I made it home, I went straight up to my room. I searched the internet for anything on werewolves I could find. I searched and read until I could no longer keep my eyes open and sleep took me sometime after four in the morning.
     
    ~~~
    “You fell asleep there?” Beverlee was standing somewhere in my room. “Adria, why don’t you get in your bed for an hour; you’re going to get a crick in your neck.”
    I was barely awake and it took a minute to understand who she was and what she was talking about. I lifted my head from the desk and felt a cool draft of air brush my face where drool had pooled under my cheek. I closed the laptop where there had to be twenty web pages open, which I didn’t want Beverlee to see. She probably would’ve thought nothing of it, but I was panicked by privacy as if her seeing a simple web page would give everything away.
    “Do you want some breakfast? I made pancakes.”
    I looked over at the clock and then the window. The sun much higher than it usually was. I was late for school. I jerked awake fully then and started to rush around getting ready.
    “Adria,” Beverlee said, “dentist appointment at nine, remember? I’ll drop you off at school afterwards.”
    I went through the entire day in a haze. I sat with my regular friends at lunch and they noticed I wasn’t myself though I tried not to make it so obvious. It was easy to dodge their questions simply by nodding Yes or No and faking a yawn every now and then to make it seem like I just needed some sleep. But as the days wore on, hiding my issues became more unavoidable. A little more than a month and already rumors were going around about me, which made it to Beverlee’s ears at the grocery store.
    “I don’t want you to hold a grudge against me for asking you this, Adria,” Beverlee said standing in the doorway of my bedroom one Saturday afternoon, “but it’s important that I talk to you about it.”
    “I’m not on drugs, Beverlee,” I said, a step ahead of her. “I’ll take a drug test if you want me to.”
    I sat on my bed with my back pressed against the headboard, a pile of books beside me, the laptop on the other side and a spiral tablet in my lap.
    She walked further inside and sat on the end of my bed.
    “I believe you,” she said, “and a drug test isn’t necessary