The Hybrids

Chapter 1

6:15 A.M, June 12, 2015

I awoke with a banging noise at the front door. I grab my pillow that I am laying on a pull it over my head blocking out everything around me, and groan. The banging stopped for a while, then continued. The knocking got louder and I couldn't help ignoring it.

How could my mom sleep through that?

I gave up and started to head down to the first floor, while I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.

"Coming!" I said while stumbling down the stairs like a drunk man, well I guess you could say drunk woman. The knocking continued and my ears are buzzing. Then the door bell goes off along with the knocking.

"Better get it before mom wakes up", I thought to myself. When I open the door there is nobody there just a small package that was the size of a box of jewelry. I open it up, but there is nothing in the box but a slip of thin parchment. I pick up the small piece of paper out of the box, being careful not to rip the fragile paper and squint my eyes to see what it says.

 "Surprise", Is all it says and suddenly I hear footsteps. Someone who is trying to be very agile but not trying hard enough. I calculate my next move before anything else happens. Somebody grabs my arm hard and fast, but I am faster I saw this from a mile away. I grab their arm and flip them over on their back, without even trying. He is breathing heavily since I knocked the wind right out of him, and he is also staring straight up at me while trying to laugh. He is tall and has dark brown curly hair with dark blue eyes, it's Charlie. He's been one of my closest friends ever since I moved to Oregon, we've always done this kind of stuff sneaking up on each other, play fighting, it's the kind of stuff that best friends do. But it's not fun and games anymore, now it's to train. For what you might ask, you'll find out soon enough.

"Hey, I think you're getting better at this." Charlie says, then groans in pain.

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3:56, April 10, 2015

I made a mad dash upstairs to my room, running up the stairs to the second floor. One, Two, Three rooms to the right and I opened my door. I just got home from a fairly short walk from school, and was getting ready for the special vacation that the whole school gets for acing a huge test. We get this break for everybody getting higher than an 85% but we also had to give up our spring break, to study and work on it. In return we get 3 weeks off, 3 glorious weeks! I threw my bag that weighs as much as my mom and me combined down on my bean bag chair, then I heard a knock at the front door. It was locked!

"She's here!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. I was so excited today was the day that I had been waiting for years. I slid down the railing of the stairs, like in the movies. I unlock the door and swing it open, there she was, my best friend, Kimberly. She brought her luggage in with the help of my mom, then ran straight into the kitchen like she was running from something, and grabbed a Pringles can. I haven't seen her in person for 5 years since she moved to Arizona, even though we Face- time it's definitely not the same.....

"Oh my god I was starving, and I can't believe I am actually here right now, what should we do tonight?" She asks. " Nicole! " Startled out of my thoughts I suggest,

"Well there is a full moon tonight so we can have a little light along with a bonfire outside. We can also jump on the trampoline and go swimming." Since we are Sophomores we are not usually invited to big senior parties anyways.

"Great, let me just call my parents to tell them I got here safely." She says, and without waiting for my response she walks into the next room. My mom then walks in and starts packing her work bag, which is unusual since she doesn't have work on Fridays.

"Mom where are you going?" My face fixed with a puzzling glare.

"Oh just an extra shift." she exclaims in a hurry while packing chains into her bag.

"Why are you bringing those chains?" She gets a worried look. She laughs, kisses me on the forehead, says bye, and hastily leaves the house. Kimberly then comes in and shoots her Pringles into the garbage but fails, and I do a rebound. I can't stop thinking about the way my mom acted, but I decide to forget about it, because if Kimberly sees something's wrong she won't stop pestering me about it until I give her an answer. While we wait until 7:30 P.M, when it actually starts getting dark, we decide to get our homework out of the way so we have the three weeks free. Right now she's on spring break so she had to pick up 1 weeks of homework since she will be staying for 3 weeks. After, we decide to practice our instruments, it took a while getting used to since we have never practiced together, but we got pretty good. Her on her violin, and me on my alto saxophone. When it was 5:30 we couldn't wait any longer so we started the fire then got some hot dogs and roasted them. We didn't talk too much since we update each other about what's new on Face time. We went swimming for a while, then when we got cold we warmed up by the fire, and roasted marshmallows. At the time it was 7:25, we started jumping on the trampoline. At around 7:55 we were off the trampoline and sitting by the fire, eating s'mores , then we heard some howling, but we ignored it.  Since I live out in the more spacious country land and have a big backyard with no fence we started getting pretty scared as the howling got louder.

Then out of the dark we could see it, a huge wolf, its glowing neon green eyes could be helicopter lights. Bigger than any other wolf I have ever seen(which isn't saying much), sounds pretty normal right? Until it stood on its hind legs and sprinted towards us, we screamed loud enough to deafen anyone in a mile radius of us. Then a tall shadowy figure lumbered out of the dark and stabbed the, dare I say it, werewolf with a stake. Not the steak you eat, a wooden spike. Who carries a wooden spike around with them? After that I'd had enough and ran back in the house, with Kimberly who I hadn't noticed, had ran back in a good few minutes ago. We tried to go to sleep after that, but failed miserably. After a half an hour of trying to calm down, we gave up and called my mom, no answer. We decided maybe it was all in our head and watched some family TV shows to get our minds off it. After we had watched a couple episodes we went to bed. Kimberley's breathing became slower as she fell asleep, but I couldn't sleep. I was too suspicious, I was starting to think maybe all that garbage about werewolves, vampires, witches and wizards wasn't garbage after all. Maybe it was the truth, maybe my mom was a werewolf. As I think about it more I add up my suspicions, chains, going to work on a non-work night on a full moon, the wolf having same green eyes as her without the neon, and a missed phone call. The only way to prove it's true is waiting until tomorrow, to see if she has a wounded shoulder or worse, she doesn't come back at all. With the excitement of tomorrow mixed with a lingering fear I slowly drift off, slowly swallowed into the darkness.