I close the notebook and put it back. The lasagna was too good to throw up. It’s a new place. I told myself. It will be okay. Just as I closed my eyes, the door creaked open. Luke stood at the doorway in his superman pajamas. 

“What happened, buddy?” I sat up.

“Um, I can't reach the window and I’m cold,” he said. I followed him to his room. A cold breeze sent shivers down my spine. The window had somehow opened. Joshua and Luka slept peacefully without any problem on their bunk beds. The high window latch was impossible for a little person like Luke to reach. 

“I told Joshua but he didn’t listen.” he frowned as he sat on his bed.

“With a sleep like that, I wouldn’t have either.” I reach for the latch and notice a movement in the distance. The window opened towards the neighbourhood. Mrs Flores' house was visible across the street. Trees emerged from the backyard and combined with the other’s house. As the trees rustled in the wind, a figure jumped from the rooftop and made his way towards the bushes. I looked closely and realised the guy jumped out from Mrs Flores house. Luke joined in to see the odd view. My hand tightened at the window latch. His face was white as it could get as if he had seen a ghost. He didn’t just run, he was shouting something too for a brief moment. Something I couldn’t hear clearly. 

“Is he okay?” Luke asked as he stood on his tiptoes. The guy disappeared from my line of sight. 

“Yeah, he must be having nightmares.” I close the window and push him towards his bed. 

“That’s Mrs. Flores' house, was he her grandson that she mentioned?” 

“I hope not.” I blurted out. “Just go to sleep.” I put the blanket over him and go back to my bed. Miraculously, my mind starts to drown in sleep. Maybe I needed to see a wild person to bring about sleep.

—----------------------------------------

The crisp cold air filled my lungs, awakening all my senses early in the morning. I nestled my hands deep in my jacket. There was no sight of the sun as thick clouds took all over the sky. Tall trees lined the road as Nigel, Enzo and I walked down the road. Light dew spread all over the road making it look like it had rained the night before. I took a look around. A group of older people were walking their dogs. More students like us were also walking down the road. Our school is on the south side of the town. We have to cross the whole residential area to get to school. It seems like a long way but I don’t mind the extra walk. 

 “This is a hundred percent my chance to be popular.” Enzo said energetically. 

 “I said that last year too. Look where I am now.” I sighed.

 “Try not being a nerd, Jason. A lot of things will change.” He gave me a side eye glance. 

 “And we are in the same boat.” I put him in a headlock and rubbed his head with my knuckles. 

 “Aye, Don’t mess with my hair!” he yelled. Our voices echoed around. We started to walk around normally when a group of people walked past us. I heard a few of them giggle too. 

 “You know the town doesn’t look as bad in the morning.” Nigel spoke. 

 “Yeah, I like this place now.” Enzo agreed. 

“Besides whatever mantra they were saying at our house.” I added. I had to agree with them, a part of town made me feel at ease but when we moved in, the old lady from our neighbour circled our house with a sage incense whilst saying some kind of prayer. We could only watch her do rituals from the window. 

“No, she was being nice in her own way.” 

“By that logic, I’ll hit you and that would me being nice, Enzo.” Nigel reasoned. I nodded along with him. Enzo tried to say something but stammered instead. We were close to our school building now. The crowd of students grew even more. Enzo grew more excited as he looked at everyone else. 

 “This is so cool.” he said as he shook with excitement. 

 “Don’t go around being a dork. Get a drop on them first.” Nigel whispered to him.

 “Don’t teach him weird things.” I elbowed Nigel. “You’ll be fine, Enzo.” I reassured him. 

“This is not fine.” I said in exhaustion as Nigel and I exited our class.

“What the hell was Mr.Rodriguez going on and on about?” Nigel complained. 

“I can’t believe they hired a conspiracy theorist as a history teacher.” I rubbed my temples.

“What conspiracies?" Enzo said as he joined us in the corridor. 

“Our history teacher related the whole depression era with the illuminati!” We both said in an unsynchronised way.

“I wish I had slept like the girl in the back. My brain would have stayed intact.” I nearly cried.

“I’m hitting the woods as soon as school ends.” Nigel pushed his hair backward, clutching his head as if he were to go insane.

 I opened the door to the cafeteria. A smell of hot cheese and bleach hit my face. I sucked in my breath and found my way through the crowd. The cafeteria was stuffed with all the students like a potato. Nigel threw his bag at the empty seat. A girl holding a tray stopped as she saw his bag plop on the table. She went to remove the bag but Nigel beat her to it. The girl looked at him with a stunned face and turned around pouting. 

“Very chivalrous of you,” I teased.

“You’re sitting in the same seat.” He pulled out the brown sandwich bag from his backpack. Dad 

 “It was so hard to talk to my classmate. I said hello and smiled but then they were busy and didn’t hear me and I was looking like an idiot who was just waving in the air.” 

 “I told you.” he made a face. 

“It’s only the first day. Things will take time.”

“Stop repeating Dad’s words.” Enzo rolled his eyes. “Hey I collected all the flyers at the orientation.” Enzo pulled a bunch of papers from his bag and put it on the table. Multiple colored posters spread on the table. Some were written in black monotone writing while some were written with every possible colour available. I picked two posters out of the bunch. One was a math club poster, written in black ink with math symbols drawn in the corners. The other was for the music club. The words If you care about music only then you can join us. was written in electric writing. Nothing much was written on it except for the meeting date. 

“They were distributing flyers?” 

“Forget about clubs, Enzo. We will chill in the woods with good weed.” Nigel intervened.  

“You will manage to find time to get stoned even when the world's ending.” 

“Look, we all enjoy resting in the woods but we have to do something during the day. We can’t just loiter around.” Enzo leaned to take a closer look at the poster I was holding. “Music club fits both of you a lot.”

“You’re definitely going to choose the nerds.” Nigel took the poster from my hand. 

“I don’t know. I might think about it.” My voice came out muffled as I took a bite from my sandwich.

“I’ve already decided on theatre-” Enzo stopped as a hand slammed on the table. My heart stopped beating for a moment at the sudden intrusion. 

“Boy, I’ll give you something better than the theatre.” The girl spoke enthusiastically. “Let me introduce you to the Supernatural’s club.” 

“Penny,” Another girl rushed to her side, whispering to her. She held a poster, much bigger than the rest. She nervously put the poster in front of us. Supernatural’s club was written in bright bold letters on the yellow paper. Pictures of werewolves and fangs pasted all over the poster. “Sorry for the disturbance,” she said shyly. 

“I’m Penelope aka Penny and this is..” 

“Izzy.” she waved at us. I remembered the two from math class. They were sitting together during the group activity. 

“And we run the Supernatural’s club where we hunt anything supernatural and out of this world. It can include aliens too if you are into area 51 stuff.” she stood proudly. 

“You guys do Ouija and stuff?” I asked. A concerned look came over my face. I heard stories about kids trying to connect to spirits and demons in the previous school but I never thought I would come across it. Just hearing the word hunt made me hold my breath.

“If it is necessary for the case.” Penny put one hand on her hip.

“Is it true that you have seen a werewolf?” Enzo looked at them with sparkly eyes. 

“We have,” Izzy nodded. 

“Well you wouldn’t possibly have evidence?” Nigel leaned in with a smile. 

“OH don’t ask for more,” she slid out pictures from her kangaroo pocket. Clawmarks on trees and dirt were visible in the light of dawn. I took a big gulp. Nigel stared at pictures with a surprised look.

 “How do I know they are real? You could have faked it. It could be an animal too.” Nigel shrugged his shoulders. Penny gave him a look. Not just any look. But where she knew she was being challenged. 

 “You know what I’ll show you, it's real.” Penny folded her arms. “Let’s meet at the abandoned house by the creek at 8 today.” Izzy looked at her with a horrified look. 

 “You can’t just summon a whole werewolf in a short amount of time.” I tried to intervene. 

 “Don’t worry, you’ll be home before curfew.” she teased. Nigel gave her an offended look.

 “It’s on. Let’s make it 10pm and if you fail to show us, you owe me 100 dollars for time wastement.” 

 “Nigel,” Enzo whispered. 

 “Deal and if we turn out right, you guys are joining the club.” Izzy gave Penny a more horrified look. She slightly nodded no to her as her face grew white. Izzy grabbed her arm and dragged her away.

“Are you crazy? You did that one thing we weren’t supposed to do.” I whispered to him in exasperation. 

“Relax, Jason. No one is going to find out.” he fist bumped my shoulder. “This is going to be such a good prank.” A devious smile came on his face. 

Both Enzo and I gave each other a worried look. The girls hadn’t gone far and a violent force hit me on the side. A guy’s body slammed onto our table. His shirt stained with water and water droplets fell from his hair. He let out a wince as he dragged himself up. 

“You okay, dude?” I asked. The guy didn’t answer. He only stared ahead. Laughter erupted from behind. I looked back to see. A student in a varsity jacket snickered with his friends. 

“Why aren’t you screaming? Turn into a little demon, Go on!” he teased. Ethan’s face turned pale. He looked at the ground, averting the gazes of everyone around us. A hurt expression shadowed his face. 

“What’s your problem, man?” I said angrily.

“Wow, you made other demon friends?” One of his friends laughed. He flicked at his forehead. 

“F*** off, Trent!” Penny pushed his hand away. 

“Stay outta my business,” Trent scoffed. He came closer to her but stopped as I came in between. My arm created a distance between the two. All eyes were on us. A crowd had formed around. Some had their phones out and others just felt entertained.

“Unless you have problems understanding things, then back off.” Trent looked at me up and down and smirked.

“You guys are new here! Look I’m not going to say anything to you because you don’t know how good of a friend we are so mind your business. Things work differently here.” Trent dusted my shoulder and patted me up with a smug smile on his face.

“I would have if you weren’t being an asshole.” He gave his friends a look and let out an exasperated laugh. He lunged his fist at me. I grabbed his fist and twisted his arm towards the back. He leaned down to the ground and yelled. Howls went throughout the cafeteria. I let go of his arm. Breaking his arm would be too much for the first day of school. He stumbled to his feet and threw another punch at me. I swayed to the side and dodged. He threw another fury of punches. Just as his arm fell, my fist connected to his cheek. Before I could dodge another, his elbows hit my nose. A burst of pain exploded in my head. The surroundings blurred around me and all the shouting and voices drowned in the ringing sound. It was one hit. Only one hit and my vision started to blur. He has to be taking steroids or something. No way a hit can hurt me like this. I moved aside as I saw Trent attacking me again. He crashed into the locker. More booing sounds emerged from the back. 

“Jason! Get it together man!” I heard Nigel yell from somewhere. I squinted my eyes and my vision slightly cleared. Everyone was shouting and recording. The shouts made it hard for me to think. Whatever I have to do, I have to do it fast. 

 

 Trent smirked in embarrassment as he stood up. All of a sudden he moved to punch me again. I dodged him and he stumbled. He punched again in a fury and I stepped back, dodging his punches. His face turned red by now. One more punch by him and my fist connected to his chin. His head on the locker as he fell down. A trail of blood followed after through his nose. My head was pounding too but there was no warm feeling. I unclenched my fist, red speckled my knuckles. The adrenaline rushed through my veins. One of Trent’s friends attacked me but Nigel knocked him over from behind. 

             “Asshole, That's a one to one fight,” he screamed as he crashed into him. A second later, he was headlocking him in his arms. 

             Trent yelled and crashed his shoulder onto my abdomen. Both of us fell over. I grabbed his wrist and pinned him down with all my strength. Just as I raised my arm, there was a shout from behind. The shouting stopped and people were making way for someone.