Palace of Wolves

Chapter 10 -- M&Co

When I first saw Ester Trohman she was sitting at the lunch table half heartedly spinning her fork through her foul smelling pasta pot. Dora’s tour of the school was so thorough I never got to go to the cafeteria at break. Esters mousey brown hair was like a hedge in the way it poofed outwards and, like me, she wore glasses.  The eyes behind those spectacles where trained on the couple at the next table.

“Look at them.” She muttered to the girl beside her. “It’s disgusting the way she’s looking at him.  Those fluttering eyelids sicken me. And that smile! It’s so cheesy, it has to be out on hasn’t it Mia?”

“I guess so.” Sighed the other girl who I assumed was Mia. She had her hair in a tight ponytail and wore a wide fabric covered hair band in St. Jude maroon. Her silver badge was pinned to the hair band so it looked less like a sign marking her out and more like a fashion accessory.

I looked at the same table as Ester. I didn’t see anything wrong; they were just a regular high school couple. The boy had a black beanie over his blonde hair and the girl had her bright red dyed hair in pigtails. She had piercings up one ear and on her lip and both of them wore dark hoodies. They leaned forward and kissed.

“Gross!” moaned Ester, “Why are they even doing that in a school?” 

“You’re starting to sound like Harrison.”

“Who?” I asked

Mia’s head turned round. “Oh, your the new girl. Mr Harrison  is the head teacher.”

“What’s he like?” I thought back to my old head teacher, silver haired Mrs Miles a gentle soul who somehow managed to run Dally Academy like clockwork.

“He can be a bit intimidating in the lower school but he’s really a pretty good guy if you stay on his good side.” Said Mia, as she, used her perfectly painted pink nails to straighten the tin foil from her lunch.

“ That’s because you’re smart.” Said Dora who sat down at the table, she and the Asian girl who she had appeared with were each carrying a pot noodle and a can of irn-bru, they must have left the school for food. “He’s not liked me since first year.”

“Didn’t you punch Darla Mace?”

“She deserved it. She called us weirdo’s.”

“Well aren’t you a bit? I mean your all—”

“Where perfectly human,” Announced Mia, “Ninety-eight percent of the time. Besides, Ester’s human  one-hundred percent of the time.”

“I looked at the badge that Ester was wearing. It was the same design as the others but instead of being silver it was black.”

“It’s compulsory for you lot to wear the silver pin but the black pin is voluntary  marks out people who know about and support werewolves.”

“How do you know about them then?” I asked

“Long story, I try to forget. But I’ve been supporting these guys from the start.”

“That was like twelve years ago wasn’t it? I know it was for Dora anyway.  How old must you have been? Three? Four?”

“As Ester said:  long story.” Announced Mia and the table fell silent.

“Anyway,” exclaimed Dora, stretching the word and shattering the silence, “You’ve to be introduced to the rest of the clan, Sandra.”

“Clan?”

“It’s a joke.” Muttered Ester, “Dora always has her dumb jokes.”

“So you’ve met Ester and Mia. This is my buddy Lana,” she pointed to the Asian girl sipping her irn-bru. Her skin was dark and her black hair was wavy and glossy –Sandra knew girls who would kill for hair like that– and her uniform was fairly neat as she wore a pink cardigan.  The most unusual thing about her was the eyes. Throughout the conversation she had kept them half shut and close to the ground, I wondered if she did that a lot, to hide them, but when she looked up she saw the unnatural bright yellow. She had seen unusual eyes before, hazel’s that where close to yellow; my own eyes were so icy blue they looked white in some lights; but Lana’s eyes where different –the where almost not-human in appearance.