I feel a cold sensation and sit up quickly in my bed. My sister, Dawn, stands above me with an empty bucket.
"Dawn!" I yell. "What the hell was that for?"
"You wouldn't wake up any other way," she says with a bitter grin. "Plus, you're gonna make us late for school, so get up."
"Yeah, yeah," I mumble, getting out of bed slowly and reaching for a towel. She grabs it before I can and walks toward the door. "You know, just because you're a wolf doesn't mean you have to act like everything is your property," I roll my eyes.
I'm Anna Smith, and this is the life of a teenage werewolf... Yeah, right. I wish my life was as exciting as all those stories you read about. The ones with the loves that last forever or the cliché stories about werewolves who run around every night, killing people or hunting animals only to turn back into a human the next morning. But really, I'm just like any other teenage girl, other than the fact that I change into a wolf with my father and sister once a month. If my father had his way, I would never change. And neither would Dawn. Dawn is my half sister, the baby my father had with another woman before he was with my mother.
My mother died when I was seven years old. Mom wasn't a born werewolf so the shift wasn't as easy for her. She was bitten not long after my sixth birthday and when she tried to shift, she didn't survive it.
You see, there's this sort of test. If you're strong enough, you'll survive your first shift and be able to shift for the rest of your life, whenever you want. But a lot of us die while shifting, which makes sense especially if you're bitten and not born, considering all of your bones are breaking at once and you have no control over it. When you're a werewolf from birth, your first shift is when you're thirteen. It's the year you become a teenager.
Despite all of that, I still try to be normal. I go to school and attempt to fit in with all of the other students, which mostly just consists of me talking to my best friends, Jessica and Zach, and keeping my head down when walking in the halls or around town. I met Jessica in grade three when we moved to Elora. We both met Zach when we went to junior high. We've been best friends since, but I still haven't told them... There's a lot I can't tell them because it all connects to me being a werewolf.
My family looks normal to the eye but we're broken. My father works most of the time and stays in his room when he's home. I hear him cry himself to sleep sometimes at night. Dawn is the spawn of satan, or at least that's what I like to call her. She doesn't care about either one of us and she makes sure to remind me that the only thing connecting us is our father. She doesn't consider me her sister.
We aren't even part of a pack. I know that there are packs out there though, I hear them at night. I fight the urge to join them almost everyday. I would leave and run away with them but I'd always worry about my father. Dad tries to make sure we only turn on full moons, when we have no choice. He thinks that packs cause too much trouble by running around, shifting and howling all hours of the night. But I envy them. The howling is like a lullaby for me. I feel so isolated in this small town but dad doesn't like it when we're noticed, which is probably why we used to move around so much. We moved five times before we came to Elora. When we got here, he told us that we would stay for a while.
I look at my clock, realize I'm only half ready and it's 8AM. Five more minutes and Dawn will probably come at me with another bucket of water. I shudder at the thought and rush to get ready as quickly as possible.
I arrive at school 10 minutes late.
