Stealing Butterflies

Chapter One

Being a werewolf is a lot like milk.

Not in the sense that we're white (we're Native American after all), creamy and delicious (this one's actually debatable), but in the sense that... well... here, let me give you a scenario:

Me, 13, strolling down the street all innocent and naïve being a good son. Mom had asked me to get something at the store for her. Well, really she just slapped a twenty in my hand and said go while I begrudgingly agreed. But anyway, here I was.

I'd always thought there was just one milk. Mom went to the store, came back, and ta-dah: milk. No questions asked. I mean, the bottle never changed, so how was I supposed to know there were actually different types of milk? Exactly. I didn't.

So I get to the store and go to the aisle all happy as a clam because I'll probably have money left over to buy bubble gum and BAM! My perfect little innocent bubble that involved only one bottle of milk is shattered.

There was a whole aisle dedicated entirely to the different types of milk. So I stood. Staring. I don't know why, maybe I was waiting for the Milk Fairy or something, but she didn't come. So I waited for forty-five minutes straight trying to figure out how this could have happened or even been possible until some chick who worked there just picked one for me and sent me home.

I walked back and got caught in the rain, all the while pondering how this world could be so incredibly wrong and messed up until Mom got upset because I got the wrong kind. But I couldn't really take the fall for that. After all, I didn't even know such things as Low Fat and Two Percent milk even existed. And I didn't even get bubble gum for my trouble and heartache.

Here's where the werewolf bit comes into play.

Me, 16, strolling to school all innocent and naïve about the world around me. I had a fever, knew that. I mean, you can't just miss something quite so obvious, but my mom's a spaz and would've hospitalized me if I so much as sneezed too much. So I opted to go to school rather than getting bowls and bowls of soup and hot everything shoved down my throat. No thank you.

So here I was. At school even though my face was melting off. I'd managed to pull this whole trick-mom-go-to-school-anyway thing for a week or so. Because, well, her soup is really nasty. And hot. Very hot.

Paul and Jared, in the grade above me, were staring at me funny, but that was nothing new. My best friends, Jacob and Quil were worried about me and all that, but I just lied and said I was fine.

I knew I looked awful, felt horrible too, but I didn't really feel like going to the doctor and all. And mom's spazzing. Anything is better than her freak out sessions.

I only made it through first period before Paul and Jared's creepy staring got to me. Usually I just seethe to myself and go on my merry little way, but not that day. That day I got mad, so incredibly angry.

I'd never been so mad in the entirety of my life put together, but it rolled through my bones and woke my whole body up. Then I was shaking. Then I was outside. Then I just snapped.

Then I had paws. And claws. And BAM!

My happy little bubble that involved normalcy and humans and no vampires except for in horror movies shattered.

So really, werewolves and milk are very similar. Or, at least, that's just how I think about it, in some sorry attempt to make sense out of all of it.

Quil's got this whole "theory" thing based off of the stories, Sam's ideas, and his own "intuition" (he was really proud of that word when he said it and none of us knew what the hell he meant. Cocky son of a gun took his sweet time explaining the definition too). It sounds really smart coming out of his mouth and never fails to make me feel exceptionally stupid.