~~

It was completely unsurprising that the new medication came with extreme and frequent bouts of nausea. Lydia ended up missing the next two weeks of school. Though she was able to get work packets from her teachers to keep busy and on track.

She spent much of the second week being apologized to as her wild self hid in the corner of her mind and Lydia tried to stay busy to keep her thoughts off the situation. Her side effects were too strong to do any running, and schoolwork only helped until it was gone.

Lydia was never patient enough to watch much TV or read, so she kept busy in her mother’s flower garden. By the end of the second week, she had single handily picked every bit of weed out of the grass. This was no small feat as they did not use fertilizer in her yard.

The last few days of the second week there was a light brown dog that resembled a husky or Shiba Inu that sat across the street under a tree and watched her curiously. Her wild self wanted to say hello, to go and run and play but she scolded herself strongly and ripped up the weeds more diligently.

When she was only puking once to twice a day by the end of that weekend, Lydia asked if it was alright for her to return to school Monday.

As Lydia got out of her mother’s car, there was a familiar face waiting earnestly just outside of the main doors. Seeing her climbing out of the car he approached quickly.

“Oh, who’s this?” her mother teased.

Typical of any teenager, Lydia rolled her eyes and said, just a friend Mom, just a friend.” Hustling herself inside quickly, she brushed past Darryl, intent on the sanctuary within the school.

“What were you doing out there?” she asked him, frowning. “My mom is going to be all over my case when I get home today!”

“It’s not like we are an item,” he said, shrugging “What’s there to worry about?”

“She won’t see it that way, I don’t really have people that wait on me,” She straightened her bag.

Darryl surprised them both when he moved his face in toward her shoulder and sniffed, “You smell different,” he said, then pulled back quickly and blushed, frantically covering his mouth and nose. “Sorry, sorry, that wasn’t appropriate!”

“It’s fine,” Lydia ground out, rubbing her forehead, her inner self started turning circles when she smelled that brief woodsy scent that occasionally wafts from him.

“I- just- I need-” she said helplessly, hands floating aimlessly.

Darryl nodded, “Let’s get you to class, we can talk later.”

Lydia greatly appreciated his lack of questions. Though she was sure most of it was his embarrassment. She would have been embarrassed too if it weren’t for her inner struggle.

~~

Darryl seemed to appear between classes much more often than usual and insisted on taking her bag. Lydia was ashamed that she didn’t resist, but obviously not enough to start. However, by the end of the week she couldn’t take his respectful silence.

“Aren’t you gun’na ask?” her voice sounding more irritated because of her exhaustion.

“It is rude to pry,” he said in his rare sheepish voice.

“Asking isn’t prying, prying is not dropping it when I don’t want to say more.”

He seriously thought about it for a few moments before his face brightened back to its usual animated levels.

“I thought you said it was just a checkup, where did you go for 2 weeks?”

“I, was sick,” Lydia said, with slightly too much hesitation, and Darryl picked up on it.

“Why?” he asked, head tilting in interest.

Lydia found herself wondering why she wanted to talk about it. At least in some regard. Talking meant acknowledging. Acknowledging meant drawing attention. Attention meant less control.

“I had to switch some medication and it is hard to adjust. It is clearing up and shouldn’t take much longer.”

“Medication? You have a sickness?” he asked as they came to a halt outside of her last class. She lowered her voice and leaned in closer to his ear to avoid being overheard before replying.

“A condition more like, nothing a maintenance dose can’t handle, I just have to change it after a few years, or I get all mixed up.” Her voice tapered off at the end and the bell rang. She took her belongings and entered her class, shooing him off. If Lydia felt the strange stares aimed at her from her classmates, she showed no outward sign of it.

~~

Other than the initial draw, Lydia’s wild nature eventually calmed down. There was less moping the more she hung out with Darryl and after unsuccessfully asking for her conditions name, he didn’t ask again. Quickly finding other things of interest to happily jump around her feet about.

She enjoyed the distraction and her medication seemed to slowly mute the inner sounds and damped her strange impulses so she could relax a bit more.

“Hey,” Darryl asked, “You’re feeling better enough to walk home now, right?”

“Hum? Yeah, the last 2 days have been fine. Why?” Lydia’s mom stopped getting her when the transition was complete, and Lydia reported a diminishing amount of side effects.

“I want you to meet someone, could you stay after school with me for a few minutes?”

“Who?” Lydia asked, curious, Darryl hasn’t mentioned anyone before, for all his exuberance he seemed just as solitary as her.

“My older brother who comes to get me,”

Lydia was confused but remembered that he mentioned he lived with his brother and his sister-in-law, “Okay,” she said slowly, giving him a strange stare.

“It’s nothing weird, I just-” he shrugged.

Lydia hefted the bookbag she had and headed off to class. “I’ll see you at the front then.” As she was walking away, she realized that she didn’t actually know where his locker or classrooms were, he just appeared all of the time.

After school Lydia was leaning on the wall, trying to stop from acting as restless as her friend.

He was flitting around like a bee, and she just wanted to be finished with this.

The loud roar of a diesel truck rolled up and Lydia looked as he shouted, “Terrance! C’mere!”

His brother got out of the idling truck, and he stepped around with a ‘What the heck do you need’ posture, coming to a stop a few feet away.

Lydia got hit with a stronger version of Darryl’s woodsy scent and grew very dizzy as her other self let out a small cry of desire. What the heck was it with this family and smelling like the outdoors, catches me off-guard. But Lydia was brought out of her musings as Darryl introduced the two of them, there was a strange rumbling sensation that she couldn’t quite hear over the roar of the truck’s engine. Lydia flicked her eyes to Darryl who was possessively stepping in front of her.

Lydia looked up again and the eyes she had thought were light brown like Darryl’s, were now almost completely black. ‘Strange’ she thought.

“What is with you Terr?” he was asking his brother.

“You’re mistaken,” he ground out in a rough voice that fit his dark expression.

“Well maybe if you’d c’mere and introduce yourself-” He trailed off.

“There is no need, you came here to avoid issues like at the other school, please stop involving others where they don’t need to be involved.”

“Terr-” Darryl started,

“Leave the poor girl out of this, there’s no reason for you to be imprinting onto some bystander because you can’t control Lapu!”

“Lapu has nothing to do with this, I am certain-” Darryl’s usually soothing tones were taking on sharp edges that made Lydia instantly uneasy. More so than the rejection of his brother. She placed a hand on Darryl’s shoulder, stepping out from behind him while ignoring the forlorn cries in her mind.

‘I’ll take you running today, ssushh’ she bargained with it. There was a slightly faint ‘but-’ before it grew quiet.

Looking Terrance in the eye, she mustered up her firmest voice and said, “Don’t talk like I am not here and have no stake in this,” he opened his mouth to argue, and she lifted her hand, blinking slowly. “Darryl doesn’t bother me. We are good friends. He’s kind and considerate and does not pester me about anything I show disinterest in. Give him credit. We don’t talk about each other’s pasts, and that’s just the way I like it. He just wanted us to meet.” Lydia turned sharply to Darryl, “We have met. I am going home-” Lydia cut her final word short, Darryl’s eyes seemed darker than usual for all the bright light.

She started walking off, passing between the two brothers and letting her hand finally slide off his shoulder as she drew away. He grabbed her dropping wrist with the opposite arm as she passed by, “Lydia, please wait.”

“My Mom will worry if I take too long, she is waiting for me this week minding the circumstances.”

“Circumstances?” came a deep voice.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Darryl,” Lydia ignored Terrance and left for home.

She could hear the two begin arguing again but couldn’t make out the words over the still loud engine.

It was for the better that Lydia couldn’t hear them, Terrance was beginning a lecture that Darryl had heard a million times. “Not to get close to people at this school.” “He was only here for his safety and shouldn’t be dragging others into it.” When Darryl tried to argue back, he was unceremoniously tossed into the truck and heard his brother mention under his breath about needing to pull him out.

Darryl fumed the whole way home, what overprotective nonsense did his brother have in his head.

Other than a brief apology, the two friends didn’t bring up the situation again.