( SHE WOLF. )
CHAPTER ONE.
welcome to monday.

KATIE PULLED UP to the tall brick school on her cobalt blue bike, the same one she'd been riding to school daily since the ninth grade. It was just after seven o'clock in the morning. One of the downsides of being a lacrosse player was the weekly early morning practices. Despite the early hour, it was already bright out and Katie found the morning dew that sprayed up onto her light-wash jeans as she rode through the grass to be quite refreshing.

"Katie!" her friend, Brennon, called from where he and Elijah were standing. There was still fifteen minutes left until they had to get ready for lacrosse practice. She locked her bike up and ran up to them, straightening her backpack straps.

"You should really save up for a car or something," Brennon commented, "Or let me drive you. Y'know, it's not that far for me to just pick you up," he offered for the ninetieth time.

"I'm fine, Brennon. Don't worry," she assured him, "So? What are you talking about?"

"Oh, just the usual; Elijah's repulsive, undying love for Ava," Brennon grinned, earning a punch in the arm from Elijah.

"Wonderful," Katie nodded, turning around to head into the school.

"Wait, wait," Elijah said, pulling her back by her baggy grey hoodie to look at him. "Katie, yesterday she was talking to me. It seemed like a really nice moment, until she started talking about how Jackson would never like her back. It was like she expected me to give her advice or consolation or something but I just ended up getting mad at her and now she won't respond to my texts."

As if on cue, Jackson Whittemore pulled up in his shiny silver Porsche that he liked to continuously remind everyone only he could afford. Katie winced at his custom license plate, the letters JCKSN paired with his high school lacrosse number, 37.

"Don't worry, Elijah. I'm sure if you just apologize it'll be alright. Besides, Whittemore's peaking in high school. He only has two more years to live out his glory days and after that it'll be all you," Katie grinned.

"Yeah? Well, for his sake I hope that's not true because that kid has some serious issues," Elijah commented with a quiet laugh, stepping up the cement stairs towards the doors of Beacon Hills High School.

✶

After being yelled at by Coach Finstock for a long thirty minute practice, Katie pushed out of the locker room, still pulling on her sneakers. Her white shoes hit the checked tiled floors as the hallways began to fill up with students, each one of them sentencing themselves to a full day of sleep-inducing classes. Katie sighed before walking up to her locker, half-heartedly clicking in her locker combination. She opened the dark cyan locker and pressed her head against the door in anguish after seeing her schedule for the Monday. Every Monday was spent doing an hour of chemistry, then physics, and a grand finale of mathematics. Somehow Katie always forgot about how gruelling the Monday mornings truly were for her.

"Excuse me," Katie heard a voice say. She lifted her head quickly, stepping back.

"Oh, hi Erica," she smiled when she saw the origin of the voice standing there in a baggy sweatshirt with sleeves that fell over her wrists and her wide, innocent brown eyes. "Sorry, I was just –" Katie paused, "I was just banging my head against the locker door." Her voice trailed off as she realized how strange it sounded out loud. Katie nodded her head awkwardly as Erica stood in front of her. After a few seconds that seemed to stretch into minutes, Katie spoke again. "Sorry, I'll move." She stepped to the side, pulling her locker door closer to the middle as Erica made her way over to the locker beside it.

"So, chemistry test today," Katie commented as she grabbed her books, looking at the blonde beside her. "Excited?" she asked jokingly. She didn't think she'd ever met anyone who looked forward to Mr. Harris' chemistry classes.

"Not at all," Erica cracked a small smile.

"Yeah, me neither," Katie chuckled lightly. She pushed the last textbook into her backpack before slamming the locker door shut and locking it. "Well, I'll see you in class," Katie waved, heading towards the chemistry room.

Elijah was already sitting in the middle of the class when she arrived. She slid into the seat beside him and pushed her heavy backpack onto the table.

"Did you study?" Elijah asked her.

"Yup. All night. If I fail this test it's gonna be pretty hard for me to even get a passing grade in this class. And on top of that, Coach isn't allowed to let me play first line if I'm failing more than one class, which, spoiler alert, I am," Katie explained, taking long breath of air.

"You've studied, you'll be okay," Elijah reassured her, patting her shoulder.

"Yeah, well, my brain doesn't work like yours. It's not an instant fact organizer it's more like . . . a one thousand piece puzzle box."

"I thought you liked puzzles?" Elijah joked.

"Not when they have anything to do with chemistry," Katie laughed. She pulled out her notes to hastily read over them once more before the moment came when she'd have to rely solely on her puzzle box memory.

"All right, class. Welcome to Monday," Mr. Harris announced from the front of the class, a stack of crisp white papers in his hands. "Today we will be having our unit three exam! Everyone should now pull out a pencil and put anything else away until you complete the test. This test will cover everything we've learned in the past two weeks. You'll have an hour to complete it, after that there will be no more time given."

There was a collective groan that rippled through the room. Mr. Harris made his way through the class, putting a test in front of each student. "There will be no speaking. The test begins as soon as you receive the paper."

Mr. Harris slapped a paper down on Katie's desk. She felt her heart drop once she read the very first question. What the hell is a colorimetry?

"Is there gonna be any retests for this class?" Katie asked suddenly, looking hopefully up at Mr. Harris. A few people around her sniggered lightly. Whether it was because they were making fun of her or because they felt her pain, she really didn't know. She didn't care either, in this moment all she cared about was passing her sophomore chemistry class.

"Ms. Ritchie, I said there was no speaking. Need I remind you that this is a unit test? And for future reference, we don't do retests in this class," he stated, voice laced in annoyance.

Katie nodded quickly, looking back down at the paper. She bit her cheek tentatively, racking her brain for the answer. When she couldn't figure it out, she moved on to the next one. She was secretly hoping that somehow when she returned to the first question, she would magically know which bubble to fill in. She continued doing this with all the questions she didn't know, leaving them for the end. I'll be older, and therefore wiser, right?

Once Katie reached the final page of the test booklet she was feeling pretty confident in her answers. It was only when she looked back on her answers that she realized she'd only filled out approximately a third of the questions. Her eyes widened as she looked up at the clock that hung on the front wall of the room. Twenty minutes remained. Katie's eyes darted to Elijah's test beside her and to her dismay, she saw that he was almost done.

"Shit," she muttered aloud, garnering a few looks from surrounding students.

Mr. Harris opened his mouth to give her detention, but somewhere in his cold, apathetic body there must have been a sliver of a heart because he decided against it.

She tried to rely on common sense, picking the answers that made the most sense to her. For the ones that she couldn't decide on, she just went with C since a teacher had told her once in seventh grade that C was the most common test answer.

"Time's up. Hand in your tests at the front of the classroom. After this you're free to leave," Mr. Harris said lazily once the clock struck ten o'clock. Elijah looked worriedly at Katie as she hurried to fill in a few more answers. After everyone else had already gotten up, Katie put her test on Mr. Harris' desk, eager to get out of the classroom. Even the bright-coloured posters on the room's walls were causing her anxiety.

"Ms. Ritchie!" Mr. Harris called, just as she approached the door.

"Yes?" she groaned, quickly clearing her throat to cover up her tone.

"Come see me after school today," he ordered shortly.

Katie felt her stomach drop. She let out a puff of air before answering. "Okay," she nodded, turning on her heel and heading for the door again.

"Wait, Ms. Ritchie!" She turned around again, wishing she could just run freely all the way back home. "Bring Ms. Reyes with you. I need to talk to the both of you."

"Will do," Katie nodded. She left the room before he could say another word. As soon as she was out of sight of the chemistry classroom, she let her head fall into her hands. Katie let out a heavy sigh. She knew she blew it.

It wasn't even the chemistry grade itself that she cared about. Ever since Scott McCall had become a lacrosse prodigy overnight (and subsequently, since her spot as co-captain of the lacrosse team was taken from her), she felt like she was slipping through the cracks. Having an older brother who was a both a genius and a masterful charmer left Katie feeling like lacrosse was her only real place to stand out. Now that her place on the team was in jeopardy, she was more worried about losing her escape from the rest of the world: lacrosse, than of not acing a high school science class.

Katie shook her shoulders to get rid of some of the nerves and cracked her knuckles against her palm before continuing to her next class.

✶

"Hey, Erica," Katie tapped the blonde on the shoulder, leaning forwards in her history class desk. It was the last block of the day.

Erica turned around, a nervous look on her face. Katie smiled warmly. "Sorry to tell you this, but Mr. Harris wanted to talk to you after class." Katie noticed Erica's eyes grow even wider and she wished she would've told Erica at lunch when the pressure was lower. "Not just you though, me too. I doubt it's about the same thing considering you're smart and I'm failing his class," Katie laughed, trying to ease the tension.

"Ms. Ritchie, is there something you'd like to share with the rest of the class?" her balding, skinny-tied teacher called from the front of the class where he was sitting.

"Uh, no? Not really," Katie answered.

"Then I suggest you keep your mouth shut," the teacher stated monotonously.

"Okay. Got it," Katie nodded. This time, she resisted the urge to slam her head down on the wooden desk in front of her. Wow, Katie, today is just not your day.

Katie heard a small giggle coming from the girl in front of her and looked up with a smile. Katie looked at the way the girl's small shoulders shook lightly and the way her blonde hair was messily tucked into a low bun, the way that the sun from the window reflected off her pale skin and the way that her history notes were covered in small red-inked doodles. Katie then decided that it wasn't so bad that she got reprimanded by a teacher for what felt like the thousandth time that day if it meant she got to make Erica Reyes laugh.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
okay so, i'm really sorry to everyone who already read the first couple chapters i posted the other day. i realized that i was just making katie follow scott and stiles around which was going to be pretty boring to both read and write.

anyways, the beautiful and insanely talented argentsvogue helped me with a new plot that you are now reading <3. i'd also like to say thank you to -screweyes for making me this sign off gif, i love it!