Micah checked his phone for the fortieth time that day, then put it away in disgust. Zeke had not spoken to him since the first day of school, and now it was too late. The full moon would rise in twelve hours, and anything that had been left unresolved would be put to the test. Micah pulled out his phone one last time, and sent Zeke one more text.

Full moon tonight. My mom’s place. BE THERE.

He sent it and put the phone away with a scowl. The empty desks in front of him predicted a long, torturous day of endless anxiety. Tonight, unless he had gotten extremely lucky, he would become a monster. A real live, legitimate, fairy tale monster. He sipped his coffee as his hands shook. The closer it came, the more real it seemed. He wished he had watched someone turn just one time, just so he could have a vague idea of what would happen that night. If he could see it, he could put himself within the scene, he could start to feel it. The classroom began to fill up, and he had a flash of inspiration. He erased the practice that he had already written on the board, and wrote something new. When each seat had a butt in it, he turned to the class.

“Good morning, students! Today, in honor of the coming full moon, we are going to do a little paranormal exercise. How many of you have read a book featuring a werewolf?”

Nearly every kid in class raised their hands, which surprised him.

“Did I miss a memo or something?” He asked. “What is it you’re all reading?”

“Well, not currently,” Stephanie, the mouthiest of the morning bunch corrected. “But there was that professor in that kid’s book, and then the love interest in that young adult novel. They were both super popular.”

“Oh,” Micah said, slapping his forehead. “Right, I forgot about those. Well, great, excellent, now how many of you have seen a werewolf movie or TV show?”

The same vast majority raised their hands.

“Supernatural stuff is really big right now, Mr. Mitchell,” Stephanie told him patronizingly. “We’ve all seen it.”

“Great! Then you can write it. Today, your classwork practice is going to revolve around werewolves. I don’t want a short story. I want the most imaginative, descriptive, realistic transformation scene you can come up with. Make it scary, or heart-wrenching, or funny. Make me feel something, and go nuts with your imagination. No holds barred, R-rated, NC17, everything is acceptable. You will be graded on the emotional content as well as the grammar, spelling, and syntax.”

“How many words?” Jeremiah asked from the back row.

“As few or as many as it takes to depict the scene,” Micah said. “But you only have ninety minutes to write it, so be sure you pace yourself properly. Meeting deadlines is just as important for a professional writer as writing good stories. Because of that, unfinished scenes will receive a zero.”

This inspired groans from all corners of the room.

“I know, I’m evil,” Micah grinned. “But so is the competition in the literary world. You need to have the imagination, the skill, the drive, and the discipline to create quality work on a deadline. If you miss any one of those things, no amount of luck will save your career.”

“Unless you’re Steph....”

“No calling out other authors,” Micah said firmly. “Especially professional ones. Once you yourself are a professional writer, once you have written and published something that people are actually reading, that you are actually making money on, then you can take other authors to task. As an amateur, those exercises only serve to inflate your head and trick you into thinking that you don’t have to work hard. We are now down to eighty-five minutes. Write those scenes!”

The tappity-clack of keyboards filled the quiet room like raindrops, and Micah leaned back in his chair. It wasn’t fair to put this on them, but they didn’t know why they were writing the scene. There was absolutely nothing unprofessional about his approach, and his reasons and intentions were wholly his own. Thoughts weren’t a crime just yet. Still, he felt a little bit guilty about pulling his classroom into his personal life, no matter how adjacent and obscure the relationship might be. His own visions of a potential scene played out in his head as his students committed theirs to the hive mind of the word processor system. Fingers flew across the boards everywhere except the back left keyboard. Micah got up as quietly as he could, and crept unobtrusively around the room. He knelt beside Jeremiah’s chair and glanced at the blank screen.

“Sometimes the words come faster if you just type,” he said. “Anything, any word. A name works well for me, because then you have at least a basic picture in your head of who you’re talking about.”

“I can’t do it,” Jeremiah whispered.

Micah looked up at his face. He was pale and shaking, and beads of sweat popped up on his brow and upper lip. He rubbed a hand across his face, blasting Micah’s senses with the overpowering body spray that was so popular with boys his age. Under that scent, though, there was another. A familiar one.

“Come back here so we don’t bother anyone,” Micah said, tugging on Jeremiah’s elbow. “I want to talk to you.”

Jeremiah followed hesitantly, casting guilty looks up at Micah as they walked. Micah brought him to the short hallway which set the classroom door apart from the rest of the room. It was coated on both sides with colorful posters, but Micah’s attention was completely focused on the sheet-white kid in front of him. Jeremiah looked as if he might actually be sick to his stomach.

“What’s going on, Jeremiah?” Micah asked.

“I just...don’t like horror,” Jeremiah lied, swallowing hard.

“You liked the zombie challenge well enough last week. You went full-on gore with it if I remember correctly.”

“That’s different,” Jeremiah said fiercely, clenching his fists.

“Why?” Micah asked quietly. “Because it’s not as personal?”

Jeremiah’s head snapped up to stare at Micah in terror, then he quickly looked away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said unconvincingly.

“Jeremiah.” Micah’s tone held no room for argument, and Jeremiah met his eyes. “Look at me. You are going to get back in there. You are going to sit down. And you are going to write. Write the scene over and over again. Write how it feels. What you think. What you see and smell and taste. Write it until it doesn’t hurt anymore. Our words are our power, Jeremiah. Our words allow us to conquer worlds, internal and external, real and imagined. Go conquer it, Jeremiah. You can’t stay afraid of it forever.”

Jeremiah’s eyes teared up, but he pressed his lips together, making his thin, barely-there mustache stick straight out from his face. He wiped his eyes and nodded, swallowing repeatedly against a lump in his throat. Micah patted his shoulder and sent him back to his seat. Of all the papers in the room, that was the one he needed to see the most. Poor kid, he thought. He decided to take it especially easy on Jeremiah for the next few days. It wouldn’t be difficult; Micah himself was going to be half-dead for the next three days himself, he wasn’t about to make his class do anything too terribly demanding. The students wrote all the way up until the bell rang, then sent their work among grumbling excuses and furious streams of curses.

“I’ll let you edit, rewrite, and finish tomorrow,” Micah said with a grin. “Glad you all enjoyed the practice. See you tomorrow, don’t kill your other teachers.” This earned him a few chuckles as the kids filed out of the door, but Jeremiah’s eyes were fixed on him suspiciously. Micah merely waved to him and shooed him out of the room. He would have exactly three minutes before his next class came in, and he wanted to open Jeremiah’s work first. He scrolled through the names attached to the submitted assignments until he found Jeremiah’s. As he clicked it open, his heart skipped a beat.

First period. Jeremiah Hunt. Morning Practice. Title: My Teacher’s a Werewolf.

“Smart kid,” Micah murmured. As he began reading the story, though, his appreciation turned to anger. Jeremiah hadn’t written anything at all that would help him, he had written a note to him.

Mr. Mitchell,

I can smell you, you know. Why do you think I wear the spray? You should really think about buying some. I know you’re like me. I know this is your first moon cycle, and I know that you’re scared. It’s all over you. But I didn’t have anyone around to tell me how it was going to work, and I survived. You will too. Maybe one of the other kids got it right, maybe they didn’t. I’ll leave you to sift through and see which is which, if you can. Good luck, Mr. Mitchell. I like you. But you’re going to have to do this yourself.

P.S. If you fail me on this assignment, I’ll tell everybody what you really are.

“You little son of a bitch!” Micah muttered.

“Woah, Mr. Mitchell! Don’t make me call the principal,” Amanda, one of his second period students said as she waltzed in.

“Hey, I’m a grown up, I get to use those words,” Micah grinned.

“Not in reference to a student,” she said in a stage whisper with an exaggerated wink.

“You don’t know I was referencing a student,” Micah said haughtily. “I could have been talking about a politician.”

“Then you wouldn’t have used the ‘little’ qualifier,” she pointed out. “The diminutive clearly defines your relationship to said son of a bitch.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, amused and on guard. “You’re too smart for this class, get out,” he said, pointing at the door.

“Make me, I dare you,” she tossed back, shaking her head.

It occurred to Micah, maybe a few minutes late, that she might believe he was flirting with her. To his immense relief, the rest of the students thundered in just then, chatting up a storm. He gave them the same practice assignment that he had given to the first period, and watched the reactions closely. No one reacted outside of normal, expected parameters, and he relaxed. As they worked, he began reading over the first period depictions of a werewolf transformation. Some were more adorable than anything; wind swirling around a human, turning them into a fabulous werewolf with the power of soft, sparkling magic. Some were a little rougher; bones breaking, fur sprouting, jaws extending. Some, though, were just absolutely brutal. Shedding skin and eyeballs popping out, wolves eating their own human husks, and even more graphic imagery that he almost couldn’t get through. These kids had taken his directions to heart, and had let every dark, horrific nightmare out on the page. He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants as the bell rang, cuing another batch of horror in his inbox.

The rest of the day was more of the same. In the end, he decided that he would be okay as long as he didn’t have to indulge in auto-cannibalism, and tried to relax. He failed, of course. There was no relaxing with this looming over his head. At the end of the day, he checked his phone one last time, even though the act felt futile. To his surprise, Zeke had sent him a message.

I’ll be there. Got to work out a few things, might have to cut it close. But I’ll be there.

“What things?” Micah exploded in frustration. “What is so terrible that you can’t tell me? Or is it the me that’s terrible? Am I that terrible a kisser? Fucking talk to me, you ass-jacket!” Blowing out hot air six or seven times, Micah calmed himself down. He hit the buttons to reply.

Cool. See you soon.