Young and Foolish

Chapter 5: My Kind, the Feral

Theodore Cayden James' POV: 

Even with the windows wide open, the car was stifling. Nearly everything nowadays was stifling. But the car ride was quiet, and I liked quiet. 

I didn't say a word when they dropped me off. There were no words to be said. Not when words fell on deaf ears. 

But I hated it. I hated how liberating it felt to hear the car drive away behind me. I hated how I finally felt like my chest wasn't crumpling in on itself as I stared at the clear skies above me. 

Sure, I was still worried and nervous about Beaufort's Correctional Institution for Troubled Students. Sarah and Nicky tried to tell me that I wasn't some deranged psychopath in a juvenile detention boarding school, but I knew that's what most people thought of me anyways. That's what my dad thought of me. 

All the windows were barred. I'd already gone through orientation the week before, so I knew how things worked. I already had my class schedule and room key. I'd be staying in the West Wing. 

The West Wing was known for its exceptionally rowdy students, the ones with obvious behaviour disorders that society would've like to put in straight jackets. Somehow, that was code for shifters. Specifically, shifters that had problems with their animal side, making them too feral to live among humans, but not wild enough to be left behind in some forest among other animals. 

Feral. I liked that word. I'd had enough people sneer that word to me. That's how too many people saw me, and with the whole fiasco that landed me here, I sure gave them quite a show to solidify their beliefs. Here at Beaufort's, I'd be among other feral individuals. They'd likely beat the feral out of me, if they could. 

I'm just a runt. There's hardly any feral in me.