Human Town

Fitzavery tugged at his backpack, glancing nervously around his new school. Other teenagers were milling around, talking, and in one poor souls’ case, in the middle of picking up scattered papers and books, that had just spilled from their school bag. 

Fitzavery ignored them, studying his surroundings and the school building instead. It seemed secure enough, none of his supernatural alarm bells were ringing, and as far as he could see, completely normal.

The town he’d chosen this time was small, almost indistinguishable from all the other towns he’d lived in. Except this one was different; this one was full of Werewolves.

He was joining the Pack tonight; he would finally be with others like him. The scent of a few other wolves reached him, he exchanged a few nods with teens that bore the inked image of a shattered moon; he would be given the symbol tonight, for now though it was marked temporarily with black sharpie, letting the Pack’s members know he wasn’t a threat.

The warning bell rang and he made his way inside, finding his first class, and then a seat; for such a small town the building was infernally hot, which was stupid in the middle of September, it shouldn’t be this hot. On top of the questionable temperature, the other students were staring, whispering to each other behind cupped hands.

He had done this so many times, it didn’t even faze him. It was a small town, small towns were all like this, everyone knew each other and he was the new kid.

If he had been listening a little more closely, he might have realized that they were actually completely avoiding, talking about him altogether.

Which made sense, seeing as how, out of every student in the school, only four of them weren’t transfer students.

Fitzavery didn’t know that, neither did anyone else.

Except for those four students.

Fitz glanced up at one point, only to catch someone at the corner of his vision looking away. He turned slightly; it was a boy. For a second, he thought that maybe the boy was also a Werewolf, but the other teen didn’t have the Pack mark, and he smelled completely human.

Fitzavery kept an eye on him, nothing felt off per say. Maybe he was just too paranoid, too many years of running at a moments notice.

But his wariness seemed justified when the kid started to walk towards him after class. The boy, probably around seventeen, had a bright purple bag over one shoulder, and was wearing the brightest pair of high-top yellow converse Fitz had ever seen.

Fitz took a half step back, dropping some of his weight in preparation to fight. The boy waved at him.

“Yo,” Yellow converse greeted cheerily.

“Yo,” Fitz responded, his voice lacking any enthusiasm.

            “You’re in my English class,” Yellow converse conversed, “just wanted to say hi, and say welcome to the school, home of the worst football team ever.”

Fitz half smiled uncomfortably at the dude’s friendliness.

“Oh, okay, I’m sure they’ll do great this year,” he said awkwardly.

High-tops grinned. “Yeah, just as soon as I get a pet dragon, and the school newspapers tops using words like, puerile, incandescence, and unfathomable.” Fitz gathered from his tone, that the school newspaper probably spent a lot of time on thesuarus.com.

“Anyway, nice to meet you, I’m Jeremy Mardensen,” Jeremy said sticking out a hand.

Fitz shook it, “Fitzavery.”

“Oh yeah,” Jeremy exclaimed, “I had a question for you,” as he quieted down, looking serious, almost secretive. Fitz was immediately on alert, what did he know? How did he know? Had the pack turned on him?”

 “Do you want to sit with me or the rest of the people like you?”

A drop of sweat dropped off the side of Fitz’s chin, as sheer disbelief overwhelmed him. How had he been discovered so quickly? He had been here for less than a day, he would have to go to the pack now, he would have to avoid the school, he couldn’t-.

His line of thought ended, when he realized Jeremy was still talking.

“You know how us teenagers are with our friend groups, I just figured, you might be more comfortable with the others like you.”

Fitz gave him a tight smile, “Others like me?” Jeremy stared at him, ‘oh boy’ Fitz thought, this is it, he’s going to exspose me to everyone.

              “Yeah,” Jeremy gestured to Fitz’s leather jacket, then gestured to a group of kids in the hall, all of which were absolutely dripping in leather, chains, buckles, and enough hair dye, that even Rapunzel would have had a hard time using it all.

Fitz sighed, letting the tension go from his wound-up legs. Jeremy thought he was part of the biker/goth kid crowd. Which seeing as how he did have a motorcycle license, wasn’t that far off.

  When he turned Jeremy was gone. Fitz had reacted way too much, had Jeremy really been on to him he would have known in an instant. Fitz had to do better at being able to tell the difference between a threat and a harmless human, especially when someone was just being nice.

Jeremy waltzed through the front door, yellow converse squeaking on the wood as he dropped his backpack with a thud. 

              “Mom!”

              “Whaat?”

              “My class got a new transfer student.”

His mom walked into view her hands splattered in red and purple paint.

  “Another one?!” She rolled her eyes, “Did they have a leather jacket?” He stared at her for a moment, as if to say, ‘are you serious?’

She sighed, “Right, stupid question, I’ll let your dad know, do your siblings know yet? And while you’re here, any guesses?”

“A few, not any that I’ll be sharing, that’s how I lost last time remember? I told Isaac and Kol’s going to tell Psyche, she left before I could catch her.”

His mom sighed, “I hope this one is nicer than the last one, we were stuck in that grocery store for hours when she triggered.”

Jeremy shrugged as his mom called his dad to fill him in about the new “student”.

He wandered upstairs to the balcony, staring out at the little town his family called home. The buildings in the not so distant town square, stood in proud stone and glinting wrought iron edgings. The rooftops, and concrete sidewalks shining darkly, with the water from last night’s storm.

A bird perched atop one of the only two traffic lights in town, which was as always green, seeing as how the farthest thing away was a ten-minute walk to the maple reserve on the hill.

He heard his sister call him downstairs a few hours later.

Everyone was in the living room, his mom and dad were on the floor against the couch, arguing about who was a better whittler, his older brother Kol was brooding in the corner, black laptop in hand.

And his younger twin siblings, Isaac and Psyche were eating five-dollar ramen, with LED light up chopsticks.

Once Jeremy had plopped down on a bean bag chair, Psyche burst out with.

“I met the TS (Transfer Student) he had the jacket, the paranoia, and a tattoo,” she listed off on her fingers as she went. “That’s three of the eight signs, and he looked like he wanted to run away from me the entire time we were talking.”

“Yeah,” Kol remarked dryly not looking up from the screen, “he seems like a smart one.”

Psyche whipped around, “You wanna go? Mr. my eyeliner is so sharp I could sink a battle ship.”

Their mom tapped one of her Nike high-top shoes, against the coffee table.

“Enough, save the arguing for game night, Jeremy could you please go get cheez-its and soda?”

“Why didn’t you get them while you were waiting for me?” He asked annoyed.

His mom beamed her ‘mom grin’ and tilted her head sideways.

Jeremy stood up and went to retrieve the snack food from the kitchen. On his way back in, he passed the family leader board, hanging on the wall next to a huge chart of everyone in town. The chart had lines of string connecting various pictures, along with scribbled sticky notes, bullets points inked in looping cursive, and Isaac’s strange line code, that he’d created when he and Psyche were nine.

Jeremy took a silver pin with two embossed Ws on it, he stuck it in the corner of Fitzavery’s picture, which now rested front and center, next to it Jeremy stuck a post it note, that read;

Temp Pack symbol?

Kol glared at him from across the room, shutting his laptop angrily and throwing his hands up.

“That is, it, I am so done, I never even get to guess anymore!” The rest of the family followed his angry stares too, and the pin now imbedded in the picture.

 “Seriously?” Psyche pouted, “another Werewolf? Why do I feel like we have more of those than anything else!”

His mom shrugged, “I feel like we get more Vamps.”

“No,” Isaac argued, “Fae, it’s definitely Fae.”

Even Kol felt the need to add in his two cents, “What about all the Mer folk?”

Jeremy grinned as his family continued to debate which supernatural species had a higher population in the town. They could have just looked at the records, but those changed all the time, and this was way more fun. They all loved debating stuff like this, after they would have to come up with a game plan for the Fitz kid, just like they did with every TS (Transfer Student), WT (Work transfer), or WL (Wandering Loner).

His family had been doing this for ages, ever since his grandparents had realized that they were the only humans left in the entire town. Everyone else was something other. They had treated it like a game, trying to see how long it would take, before the town figured out that there were only two actual humans living there.

The town still hadn’t, and his family thought it was hilarious, most humans would get a feeling under their skin, when they came near the town. With the sheer amount of Supernatural humming through, well everything, it wasn’t surprising.

But the Mardensens had always been able to get along well with creatures of myth, legend, and darkness.

So here they were, hiding the fact, that they were the only humans in the entire town, letting everyone run around frantically, trying to hide from the “normal humans” and enjoying the fact that, they were actually the rarest of their kind, in a place bursting at the seams with things that aren’t supposed to exist.