P a r t 0 1 : O f H u m a n s

۞

There's hair on my bed. It clings to my sheets, my comforter, my skin. My navy blue sleep shirt is riddled with it: straight, white clumps of hair, maybe 4 cm long.

It's not mine.

When I stand in front of the full-body mirror hung on my armour door, the distinction between the foreign white hair and my thick dark coils is blatant. "Mom - " I begin, my voice a deep croak.

At the same time, a knock sounds at my door. It's her; I can tell it's her because the knock is quieter than my dad's and unlike Seph, she only knocks once.

I open the door to meet her eyes. They're naturally wide, like she's seen a ghost. "I made bean cakes. . ." She trails off, her gaze moving to my bed behind me, no doubt taking in the splatter of white hair. Then, she plucks a single strand off of my shirt. We're about the same height, so with her head bowed, I can't tell what she's thinking.

Suddenly and abruptly, she advances, forcing me back into my bedroom as she closes the door behind her. Then, she grabs my head, a palm cupping each cheek. Her eyes meet mine, deep dark eyes -- almost black -- boring into equally deep eyes. Whatever she sees, she must not like. "You'll be okay," she says, stepping back, but her voice is measured. Her eyes dart to my bed once more. Then she gives me a once over. "Food's there. When you come down."

She leaves.

I wait until her footsteps recede down the stairs before leaving my room and walking across the landing to Seph's.

"Seph!" I call through the door, using the side of my curled fist to knock. I don't bother trying the handle. When Seph turned thirteen, he started locking his door whenever he was in his room. He says its represents his God given right to privacy, but my family doesn't believe in God and I think locking his door every minute of every day is a little overboard.

"Give me a damn minute, Youth." He grumbles as he opens the door. I'm too angry to even threaten to tell mom he used the word damn.

"What?" He says, bored.

"What is this?" I hold up a tuft of hair, inches from his eyes. Seph leans back so he's not cross-eyed, but then shakes his head.

"What is it?" It's not rhetorical; he's genuinely asking me. Seph meets my eyes, his questioning and bewildered.

I search his gaze, but I find no secrets there. Besides, Seph rarely plays pranks anymore, and when he used to, he couldn't wait to gloat about them.

Without another word, I turn around and stalk back to my room. I can feel Seph's eyes on my back, but eventually I hear his footsteps on the stairs, heading down to grab breakfast.

I lay the tuft down on my desk. I shower quickly, washing myself clean of the white hair. Then, I get dressed and change my sheets. I bundle the old ones, wrapping them carefully so I get all the hair, and stuff them into the back of my closet. Finally, I return to my desk, staring down at the hair on my mouse pad.

I don't know where the hair came from. I don't know why there's so much of it. And I don't know what it means.

It wasn't Seph. It definitely wasn't mom or dad -- neither of them have the bandwidth to play this sort of trick. But mom knows something, I realize. The way she looked at me. The way she didn't even ask questions. We don't have a dog. With all the hair, we'd have to have at least five. But we don't. Have. A. Dog.

Even more concerning, the hair was isolated to my bed. To me.

I don't know what this is, but I'm hungry. Leaving the tuft behind, I head for the kitchen. I wonder if mom told dad -- no, I know she'll tell him. It's only a matter of when.

My dad's in his study, a small room divided from the rest of the house by a heavy sliding door. Right now, the door's been slid back and my dad has a good view of the dining nook and kitchen. Yet, he's typing away on his laptop, only his closely shaved head visible. Still, I round his desk to give him a hug.

"Morning, dad," I whisper, squeezing his shoulders.

He doesn't look up, but murmurs a greeting in response. I can only assume mom has yet to break the news, because he doesn't seem any different than he usually is.

I find Seph eating from the plate of bean cake at the kitchen island. He has a cake in his right hand and the spoon from his bowl of porridge in the left. He's looking down at something on his phone, a slight smirk on his face as he takes a bite of porridge.

Mom is next to the oven, where she's left another porridge bowl perpetually warming for me. She's been staring across the way at the study -- at my dad -- but now she looks down at me as I retrieve my bowl from inside the oven.

"Your birthday's this weekend."

I nod, but walk around the island to take a seat one down from Seph. I'm close enough to reach the plate of bean cakes, which I eat absentmindedly as mom stares at me.

"Seventeen." Mom says, but I'm acutely aware that her statements are just that. Not questions. Just statements -- facts that I already know myself.

"Seventeen is a big birthday. A pretty important age." Her eyes return to the study. "Things change when you turn seventeen."

"Not really." Seph has tuned in. "It's not like she can buy fireworks. Or get a tattoo. Or enlist in the military. Or... or... or vote." Seph rolls his eyes, looking at me. "You have to be eighteen. Now, eighteen is a big birthday."

Mom stares at him now, and the look in her eyes reminds me of how she looked when she grabbed my face this morning. She's searching for something in him, but I have no idea what.

۞

Sam and Sarina are waiting for me on Monday.

Courtesy of their mom's insomnia and general early-riser lifestyle, they're awake every morning at 6 am and out the door by 7. That gives them just enough time to grab breakfast from the bakery that sits halfway between our houses and roll up to my house by 7:30.

Today, they have egg and cheese croissants. Sam has two stacked in one hand with another sandwiched between his lips. He hands the pair in his hand to me as I get in the backseat. He silently offers me coffee, but I shake my head and reach for the water bottle in the mesh side of my backpack.

"What's poppin?" Sarina meets my eyes in the rearview mirror as she pulls away from the curb.

My mind immediately goes to the growing pile of hair in my bathroom trash can. I've woken up to the same sight three mornings in a row now.

"Nothing much," I quip instead. I take a bite of my croissant sandwich. Sarina can't make me talk if I'm chewing.

Luckily, Sarina has never had a problem with silence, if only because she can fill it all by herself. "This weekend was hell, Youth. Dad's back from visiting auntie Vilma and he wants to go camping." Sarina pulls up to a stoplight and glances back at me. "Camping, Youth. When the trip didn't happen last year, I thought we were over this shit. But, I'm seriously thinking that something about auntie just gives him so much anxiety and the only way he can get it all out is camping."

Sam sighs. "I'm going to hide all the traps so he can't ask me to go rabbit hunting again. I don't get the point when we just let them go in the end. I mean, I'm not saying we should kill them. . . I just think the whole thing is pointless."

"Imagine if he decided you could just do it old school. Makeshift traps are always an option, you know." I am happy we're discussing a subject far removed from my incidents.

"Please, don't," Sam groans, splaying himself across the dashboard.

"Sam!" Sarina scolds. She pushes him back into his seat with one hand, eyeing his greasy fingertips and the imaginary smudges on her leather.

"Oh, chill out, Sarina." Sam twists back into the divide between the front seats. "Don't worry, though. Dad's planned for next, next weekend, so we'll still be here for your big seventeen." His smile is warm and wide, but I feel a chill down my back.

Usually, I can't wait for my birthdays; they're a day all about me, after all. I can do anything I want with whoever I want. My birthday is the one day a year that mom and dad are really lenient and loving.

Yet, something about the past few days makes me wary of this Saturday. A big birthday, mom said, but she'd made it seem like. . . like a death sentence.

When we arrive at school, Sarina heads off to gym while Sam and I walk over to B building for advanced calc. As we walk, Sam runs his hands repeatedly through his hair. It's rather long, a light brown mop of waves that hides his ears. If his hair gets any longer, he'll probably look almost exactly like Sarina. The two of them are already as identical as fraternal twins can be.

I know he is only primping himself because his current crush has Calc with us. Sam sits right behind her, and every now and then she turns around for one reason or another. "Do you have an extra pencil, Samuel?" She says his full name despite the fact that everyone else on earth calls him Sam.

"You look fine, Samuel." I smirk at him when he startles, his face heating slightly.

He bumps my shoulder as we enter the building. "Quit it."

And I do, but only because I almost crash into someone coming out of the stairwell next to us. I scoot away from the newcomer, pressing Sam back in the process.

"Sorry," I murmur to the stranger, and he looks up, locking eyes with me.

He has maybe the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen. They're a light milky brown, almost like melted chocolate. They stand out perfectly against his skin, a deeper brown maybe two shapes lighter than mine.

"No issue." His voice is low, so low I almost have to strain to hear him. He doesn't smile, and his affect is light, breezy.

He doesn't move, and neither do I. But then Sam wraps a hand around my forearm and pulls me further into the building and towards our classroom. "Keep it together, Youth."

When I think we're out of earshot, I whip my head towards Sam's face. "Did you hear that? 'No issue?'" I'm embarrassingly breathless.

Sam shakes his head. "Yes, I heard. Who says that? 'Issue'? It's 'no problem'." He mimics the stranger, correcting him at the same time.

I stop myself. I was going to gush about the sound of his voice and how hot the guy was, but Sam picked up on the wrong aspect of the exchange. Sometimes I forget that despite how much it might seem like it, Sam is definitely not Sarina.

We reach calc and part ways, Sam heading towards the back while I take a seat in the second row. I like to be somewhat up front. Close enough to show my teachers I'm a dedicated student, but not close enough that my classmates think I'm a teacher's pet -- despite how much I actually like being a teacher's favorite.

Mr. Sydell is setting up the projector in the middle of the room. He usually arrives only a few minutes before us students, so despite the fact that the bell rings at 8, we actually start around 8:10. In the meantime, Mr. Sydell always asks that 'we get our minds running' but most of us just use it to talk or scroll on our phones.

The chair to my left and front are empty, and to my back and right are kids that I know, but I'm not really buddies with. Every morning, I always think about how much easier it would be if Sam didn't insist on hanging out in the back row. He's just as driven as me, but prone to downplaying his strengths.

My mind is drawn to other things, specifically the elephant in my mental space. The hair isn't one of Seph's pranks. There's no way mom and dad put it there. Too many days and conversations have gone by for Sam or Sarina to admit they've been sneaking into my room and dousing me in animal hair. Which, rationally, means that it's me. I'm the one leaving the hair. But I'm extremely sure I don't sleep walk, and there's never anything amiss that points to that idea.

But I'm the one leaving the hair. A delirious vision of me shedding straight, white tufts of hair out of every pore comes to mind, but it's laughable.

Someone takes the seat beside me. Stairwell stranger.

I meet his eyes again and freeze. I literally just saw him, but he's just as striking as the first time. Yet, he looks old. Older than me. Older than a seventeen, maybe eighteen year old should look. He could practically be twenty.

Without being too obvious, I try to turn around and catch Sam's eye. I cannot believe that stairwell dude is in calc with me right now -- obviously a new student -- and sitting right next to me, no less. Sam is looking down at his phone, however, and after a few awkward seconds of just boring a hole into Sam's head, I give up.

Unlike Sarina, I'm not particularly good at filling awkward silence. I search for something reasonable, and it takes me longer than it should to come up with the obvious.

"Hey. I guess you're new! What's your name?"

I watch as his eyes turn to mine again. "Amaris," he says.

Strange name, I think, but then again, I've never met another 'Youth' before. And I'd give every single one of my classmates ten bucks if they could find another 'Seph'.

Abruptly, I realize Amaris has his hand out. . . to shake. Throwed, I hesitate before giving him mine. Shaking hands with another teenager is foreign. I only shake hands with teachers and adults. I don't seem to mind it so much, though, not when a thrill runs through me at the feeling of his palm pressed to mine, his fingers over my skin.

"Youth." I say, my voice foreign in my ears. "My name is Youth," I clarify.

He nods, and then turns to face the front of the class. Sydell has finished with the projector.

۞

Amaris has class with me.

Actually, let me be clear. Amaris has every single class with me. Every one. By 6th period, I catch him in the hallway to ask about his 7th and 8th. His eyes light with something I can't pinpoint, but when I mention that our schedules are identical, he nods and then excuses himself.

Literally. He says, "if you'll excuse me. . .", trailing off with a bow of his head. His hair is longer than Seph's or my dad's, but due to the nature of his coils, it's grown upwards instead of down. He has a clean, edged cut, something I know Seph would want if he was here to see Amaris. Freshmen only have classes in C building, sometimes A, but never B.

I'm kind of disappointed when Amaris leaves. I was kind of hoping he'd suggest we walk together to our next class. I am actually kind of hoping Amaris likes me, or even sees me as someone he could like. When Sarina finds me at my locker later that day, I'm practically sulking.

I tell her about Amaris as we walk to 8th period, promising to point him out. He's not hard to find, despite his inconsistent seating. I just tell her he's the 'hot, quiet one', and when we walk into sociology, she bumps my shoulder in approval. Amaris is sitting ram-rod straight in the seat behind mine.

I can barely concentrate during the period. I swear I can feel him staring directly at me.

۞

I get back home an hour and half after the final bell rings. I have mathlete practice, but with Sarina at soccer, the twins are still able to give me a ride home.

Mom is home. I figure she has the night shift at the hospital today, as her car is parked in the driveway when I walk up our concrete pathway. What's weird, though, is the black Bentley next to her BMW. It's not dad's; his is in the style of an SUV and always parked in the garage.

We don't usually have guests, if ever. Mom and dad don't really have friends. When I used to prod them about it, they would say they were each other's best friends, which was cute in theory, but seemed sad sometimes. I don't know what I would do with myself if I didn't have Sarina and Sam, even if I had a boyfriend or a husband.

When I open the front door and get through the foyer, I look to my right, but the door to dad's study is shut. I almost head for the stairs, but pause when I see figures standing in the living room ahead.

It's mom, dad, and. . . Amaris.

I bite the inside of my cheek hard. I'm suddenly not sure what to do with my hands, so I grip the straps of my backpack as I move forward. "Um, what's going on?" I'm asking my dad, but I'm looking at Amaris.

"Youth, have a seat," dad says, gesturing to the couch opposite him, but he's standing, and so are mom and Amaris, so I don't sit.

I stand with them instead, my grip around my straps tightening. Amaris is to my left, while mom stands on dad's right. I look at her now, at the way her wide eyes are tight at the corners.

"Youth," dad says again in his no-bullshit voice. I sit.

Amaris follows, then my mom, and then my dad.

"Your birthday's this Saturday," dad says slowly.

I blink.

"It's a big birthday."

I suddenly want to scream, but I know better than to interrupt dad.

"Your 17th dawn. It's a big birthday." He repeats. His voice wavers, something I've never, ever known it to do, and he looks to mom.

She reaches out and puts a hand on his knee.

"Youth, I hoped it wouldn't come to this, but I should have known, really. You've always been so strong-willed, so brave, so smart. So much like me when I was your age. So much like your grand-" Dad pauses, his eyes darting away from mine. "- your grandfather."

Red flag. Mom and dad don't talk about their families much. When I was younger, mom would reminisce about her own mom and how much she would have liked to see me at my first dance recital or ride my first bike. I always assumed her parents had passed before she'd had kids. Dad never spoke about his family at all. After a while, I almost sort of believed they didn't exist, that dad had just materialized out of thin air and come to find mom one way or another.

"But you're going to be seventeen soon and it's become clear that you're as much a Laenyei as I am. You must have noticed some changes recently. The hair."

My eyes widen. I'm pleading with dad to stop. Not in front of Amaris. Even in as bizarre a situation such as this, I'm trying to protect any possibility of the future we might have together.

"Youth," dad says, his tone measured like he can read my thoughts, "you've been shifting. Into what, I'm not sure, but considering the fur and my own lineage, your wolf is most likely rising. We'll see on Saturday."

Despite convention, I croak out a response even though dad's not done. "My what?"

Dad doesn't seem to mind. "Your wolf. Your form. Your embodiment. Your. . . animal."

My vacant stare triggers an added response.

"Youth, you're a Shifter. A. . . a shape-shifter. Just like me."

My eyes drift to mom, but she gives a slight shake of her head. "I'm a Protector. Your dad's protector. The same way Amaris is yours."

At this, I realize that Amaris is still just sitting there. Staring at me as I've been absorbing my parent's words. His brown eyes have a sort of calming effect to them, as I pour all my confusion and anxiety into his gaze and am left with stark clarity.

"What does that mean, exactly?" I turn back to dad.

"It means you'll come into your true form more often as the days go by, and on your seventeenth dawn, it might not be isolated to your bedroom. You'll shift maybe anytime, anywhere. That's dangerous, Youth." Dad's voice deepens here, as he checks that I'm listening closely.

"We cannot let the humans find out about who you are. . . or what you can do. That includes Sarina and Sam. This is a secret, Youth, one that has been carefully kept for a century, and will continue to be kept long after we're gone."

I read the subtext in his words. If I'm keeping this from 'the humans', that means that I am not, in fact, human. Even though I've thought I was for close to seventeen years. I'm not.

Dad continues. "That's what Amaris is for. He's going to teach you control. He's going to teach you secrecy."

No Sarina and Sam. Got it.

Stay close to Amaris. No problem.

When I don't say anything for a second, Dad nods. "Do you understand me, Youth?"

"Yes."

Satisfied, he stands. He looks to Amaris, who stands and shakes his hand like he shook mine this morning. This morning. This morning seems like a lifetime ago.

"I'll leave you two to get acquainted." Dad looks at me, his face tense. I almost want to tell him that Amaris and I have already met, but looking at him, I realize he probably already knows that. Looking at him, I think my father wants to say. . . sorry. I think he wants to apologize for this -- all of this. Dropping the bomb that I'm not who I thought I was and never will be again. That things are going to get hard before they get somewhat less hard, but never easy, and I'll have to live with the way things are and the way things will be for the rest of my life. That I'll have to lie to the people I love for the rest of my life, just like he lied to me.

I think all of this in the span of a second, but I also know that I've never once heard my dad apologize to anyone, ever, and I don't think he's going to start now.

"You'll be okay," he says instead, almost like he's trying to convince himself. It's the same thing mom said to me when she found the fur. . . when she probably first realized I was changing.

Dad begins to walk out of the living room, mom in tow, but I suddenly have a ridiculously intrusive thought, and I can't help but ask.

"Will. . . Will I have to marry him?" I ask mom, my voice quiet as I turn my back to Amaris.

She smiles softly, almost amused despite our current situation. "No, Youth, you don't have to do anything you don't want to."

Dad takes a step back towards us, overhearing our conversation. He looks slightly confused before he glances back at mom and then at me. "Oh," he sighs. He takes mom's hand and squeezes, a rare display of public affection. "Your mom is. . . one of a kind."

Hand-in-hand, they resume their journey towards the study, but before Dad shuts the door, he fixes me with one final look.

"Youth. Other than your friends, you must keep this from Seph. If we're lucky, he'll never have to know. If we're lucky, he'll never be like us."

When the door slides shut, and I'm staring at the bleached wood, I realize what dad means.

That in becoming a Shifter, I've got the worst luck of all.

۞

n o t e s :

wrote this in a single evening. very, very excited for the future of this story. leave questions, comments, and a like if you'd like to support me. i'll respond to everything.

it's worth mentioning that i have yet to edit this chapter; i'm posting because i'm hilariously restless.

thank you for everything.

- gift.