Chapter Text
Enid is six years old when she hears about it for the first time. She’s seated on the floor, surrounded by her classmates. No one in particular is talking to her, their focus on the teacher sitting at the front of the room.
“Teacher?” One of the boys in her class demands her attention from where he sits. “What does it mean when you dream about someone?”
The kid- Enid didn’t know his name- asks with a bouncing leg. The teacher leans up, pausing to rub her hand across her face. She didn’t answer for a long time, long to her classmates anyways, and impatient whines spread across the room.
Enid could tell, by the pause in her breath, by the hesitance in her voice, that this was something the teacher had to think about. Something bad, maybe? Her dad told her she could read people well, even at six. He told her it was impressive. She listened quietly.
“The person you see is your soulmate. Someone that’s supposed to be your best friend, that you spend the rest of your life with,” she pauses as if she wanted to go on. Another student interrupts.
“Like love?” Silly, innocent giggles spread throughout the group. A few “ew!”s are yelled.
“Something like that. Your dreams will change as you get to be my age. You should go home to your parents and ask them instead,” she answers, effectively ending the conversation there.
When she goes home that day, she does exactly what her teacher had said.
She finds her dad sitting in the living room, in his big brown recliner he had gotten years before. Enid doesn’t remember a time that it wasn’t there, in the coziest corner of the living room. There is a movie playing on the television, giving a quiet hum to the background. Her bag is dropped by the entrance of the room and she sprints to jump onto him.
“Dad! Dad!” She tries to climb up the chair, but she finds her legs are too short. She can’t extend her claws yet, either. Her dad, watching the struggle, lifts her and sets her in his lap. “What’s a dream?”
She listens intently as her dad describes what her teacher had said earlier that day. A soulmate. The word holds so much power; Enid feels her veins jump in excitement.
“Everyone will have their dreams one day,” Murray finishes, looking down at Enid, sitting firmly between his knees.
“Even me?” she asks, tilting her head up to look her father in the eyes. Her father chuckles, a quiet but long noise, one that shakes into his chest and bounces Enid up and down. He is rarely a loud person, and Enid likes when he laughs, especially if she’s the one to cause it.
“Even you,” he replies. Her eyes widen and a fluttery feeling fills her chest. She decides that she will cherish her dreams, whenever they come.
“When will they start?” she asks, almost breathless. Her dad's chest finally slows, and Enid can feel his heartbeat return to normal.
“It’s different for everyone,” he replies. Enid turns away and looks towards the television. She watches as two people pull together in a hug, romantic music swelling in the background, and she feels the fluttery feeling rear its head once again.
“I just hope it’s soon,” she breathlessly states out loud. Her dad says nothing, only softly smiling at her.
The dreams tell who you are meant to be with.
The magic of the dreams becomes Enid’s favorite thing to think about. Her dad explains that no one is quite sure how they work, or why they exist, but she decides it’s magical and romantic and everything that she wants ever.
A belonging. She’s too young and naive to realize life isn’t as simple and clear cut as a dream.
She smiles, curling tighter into her dads lap and returns her mind to the movie. Enid, six years old and heart full of magic, can’t help but believe.
Enid is nine years old when people in her class begin having dreams.
In between class and recess- when her teacher has lost control of the kids, too excited to run outside and away from the stillness of the classroom- she hears her peers discussing them.
“I got my dream last night,” one of the taller boys in her class says.
“Do you know who it is?” a shorter boy with dirty blonde hair asks.
“I think it was…” he starts to reply, pointing off to another classmate who had slipped onto the playground.
Enid tunes the rest of the conversation out. Most of her classmates are running outside already, but she stands in the doorway.
She hasn’t had her dream yet, and she watches with an ache as she sees her classmates start to pair off more and more every day. The envy that swells in her chest can’t be helped.
Hasn’t become a werewolf either.
Her dad says they come at different times for everyone- both the dreams and the werewolf thing- but by her mother’s disapproving gaze, she guesses she should’ve already had it. Should’ve transformed too. The fact that dreams are the hot topic for gossip at school doesn’t help either.
She feels a deep sense of something. Her vocabulary isn’t big enough, and the understanding of her own emotion is just out of reach. It’s low, and hurtful, and a little ugly, she realizes, but it sits in her gut. It’s a feeling she easily assumes her classmates don’t relate to.
It stays in her chest until she arrives back home, where her parents turn indifferent looks at her.
The disappointment is thick.
She’s ten when she feels a distinct difference between her and her classmates.
The word ‘outcast’ is unknown to her, until she’s standing in the cafeteria line. There are two girls behind her- girls that aren’t in Enid’s class. She’s good at learning everyones' names in her class, but it’s harder to know about others outside of that. Her school is larger than normal, according to her cousin Lucille.
“My mom’s friend is married to an outcast. My grandparents said their kids weren’t allowed to come to my party,” one of the girls explains to her friend.
An odd word. Enid isn’t the smartest in her class, but she can pick out the words that are familiar: out, outside of something else, and cast, like cast away. And with the inflection of their voice, she can deduce that being outcast isn’t a positive thing.
She decides to ask before her curiosity eats at her mind. After all, the best way to learn more is to ask.
“What’s an outcast?” She turns to look at the girls. They blink at her.
“You know, people who aren’t normal,” the friend answers. “Like us.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, still not understanding.
“Have your parents told you about werewolves and vampires and all those other crazy people?”
“I’m a werewolf, though,” she blatantly states. The judging look the girls give her is not understood.
“Oh,” one girl mumbles out, quieter than before. They both take a step back, and before Enid can ask why the sudden change, the lunch lady is calling her forward.
Her dad always says she is confident and outgoing. Something in her mind tells her that’s not always the best thing. She wishes she never asked.
Not a dreamer, not a werewolf, not a normie.
Enid is twelve when she has her first dream.
When she wakes in the morning, a very bright and lovely Sunday morning, she can only remember two things.
A pale, narrow face and twisting hair, colored an ebony black.
She leaps from her bed, shoving off her blankets and jumping in joy. Over the last few years, the idea of her dream coming at all faded into the background.
She had more pressing things to worry about, for example, her inability to shift into a werewolf on the full moon. All her siblings have, despite some of them being younger. She knows her parents worry about her.
She runs down the stairs, careful not to trip over her own feet. Her excitement slips out, and a squeal of joy vibrates from her chest. Her parents stand in the kitchen, making breakfast, and her siblings sit around the table.
“I had my dream!” She blurts out, not waiting for anyone to turn and address her.
Her dad turns from the stove and offers her a kind smile. He’s even quieter than he used to be, but the gleam in his eyes tells Enid everything she needs to know.
He’s proud.
Her fingers flinch with a pride she hasn’t felt in years and she has to control herself from jumping up and down. Her siblings congratulate her, howling and cheering before devouring the food on the table.
She awaits her mothers response, one she can’t help but hold in high regard.
After a few moments of silence, her mother turns from the sink where she was washing dishes. She sets a towel on the countertop.
“Well done, Enid,” she replies quietly and without emotion on her face.
That’s the most approval she’s gotten from her mom in years. Her eyebrows raise without command, slightly shocked that the approval is real and verbal and truthful, and a smile softens on her face.
“Thank you mot-“ she begins.
“But I don’t expect you to slack now. The full moon is in a week. Maybe then you’ll be a true part of this pack,” her mother interrupts. Before Enid can process the reply, her back is turned and she’s washing dishes once again.
The silence rings in Enid’s ears. Of course this is her mothers response. She shouldn’t feel hurt, but she quickly feels tears welling in her eyes.
Her feet return her to her room without another word, skipping out on the breakfast that is left on the table, too nauseous to eat.
The dreams happen every night after that first Sunday. And every morning, she wakes and stares at the ceiling above, recounting what she reaches to remember.
It’s always the same, still lacking in any sort of discerning clarity.
Pale, narrow face. Dark twisting hair.
She can’t even decide if it’s a boy or a girl. It doesn’t matter to her. She still wakes every morning feeling a tingling warm feeling that she holds in her heart each day. While it frustrates her to no end, she feels the swell of joy over the fact that there is someone out there.
Someone for her and her only. Someone she will belong with.
Not even her parent's, or truly her mother’s, disappointment can tamper with this feeling.
Enid is fourteen when she learns a vital piece of information about the dreams. Something that she, quite frankly, isn’t sure how she missed before.
“They disappear when you know who your soulmate is,” her brother tells her. How he learned this, she has no idea. Her brothers would be the last people on Earth to care about stuff like that. But what does she know to say otherwise?
She decides to head to the library one weekend, not particularly interested in spending it at home roughhousing with her brothers. The desire for a sister, or at least a friend that isn’t into wrestling as the only form of hanging out, is growing.
She dyed her hair last weekend by herself. There’s only so much self-care you can do alone, she realized.
The library is fairly empty and very spacious. Shelves line the walls and near the back of the building, there are floating aisles. Deciding not to spend ages looking, she marches up to the old lady at the counter.
“Where can I find books on dreams?” she asks, smile on her face.
The old lady smiles back, and slowly brings her hand up to point. Enid thinks the lady looks way too old and frail to be lifting and moving books, but hey, if it's her passion, then why not?
Enid hasn’t felt particularly drawn enough to anything to have that sort of respectable hobby.
“Towards the back, aisle E2,” the old lady answers. Mindy, her name tag reads.
“Thank you, Mindy,” she says, and walks to the back.
She scans the books, running her hands across the spines. She’s never been an avid reader, too excited to sit still through the slower parts of a book, but something about being in a place filled with quiet readers, with the author's life’s work, with the smell of fresh paper and pressed ink, makes her want to read all day.
She finds the section on soulmates, a small section, with only three or four books to catalog.
She grabs one and starts reading.
The soulmate dream is an unexplained phenomenon. Scientists still search for the reason as to how and why these dreams occur. However, a graduate student from the University of Kentucky discovered that the dreams are linked to the physiological and mental state of the person.
“The closer you get with your soulmate, the more vivid the dreams are,” he says. “Similar to the psychology behind friendships, the closer you get with someone, the more you reveal yourself. More memorable details will come up as you, one, get to know your soulmate better, and two, want your soulmate to know you.”
Makes sense, Enid decides, despite her lack of knowledge on psychology (And, honestly, her lack of close friends).
“Once the dreams reach a certain point of clarity, the dreams will stop almost instantly. Most people know who their soulmate is at this point, and the relationship can begin…”
Well, her brother wasn’t lying. She chooses to remember it as a game of hot and cold, but with way, way more rules. Enid isn’t one to give up when something gets challenging, and she decides to learn everything she can about the dreams.
She spends the rest of the day reading the small collection of books, sitting criss crossed on the floor with the books open around her. No one bothers her for hours.
On her 15th birthday, her parents decide to announce her transfer to Nevermore. She’s opening her last gift when she stumbles across a small bag with a stack of papers inside.
“What’s this?” she asks, holding out a pack of brochures that were tucked in the bag, naive to the fact that her parents would do anything like this on her birthday of all days.
Nevermore is spread across the top, with a picture of a very large and gothic castle beneath it.
It doesn’t register in her mind, as her parents explain the details of the boarding school, that they are sending her away because she still hasn’t transformed. She can still remember with clarity what the last doctor said:
She might just be a late bloomer.
Even with these treatments, she may never transform.
Never transform.
The lycanologist her mother last took her to spoke with a firmness that she may never shift, despite the fact she can slip out fangs and claws on command.
The realization hits her like a truck. She feels the warm sting of tears behind her eyes as her mom continues to describe the school for outcasts.
“-and you will finally be able to spend time with other werewolves outside of our family. Maybe then you’ll decide to finally transform, or find a mate, or-"
“Just stop!” Enid feels the tears roll to the front of her eyes. Her mom shuts up abruptly, surprised at the outburst. Enid's eyes widen for a moment, stunned by her own voice. She feels her claws extend, ripping into her skin as she clenches her fists.
It takes her a moment to gather what she wants to say, unsure of why she yelled. Neither of her parents speak, but stare with wide eyes and parted lips. Her siblings stop wrestling in the living room and turn their attention to the scene unfolding.
She wills herself to calm down, feels her claws slip back to her normal nails, and then she speaks.
“You want me to go to another school, away from San Francisco, away from my friends?”
She chooses to not mention how no one at her school considers her a ‘best friend’. She isn’t exactly unpopular, but the amount of times she’s overheard the words ‘too much’ or ‘dramatic’ or ‘loud’ used in conversation about her gives her a good idea of where she stands with her peers. That doesn’t even include the ‘outcast’ part of it.
Her mother already thinks she’s a failure outside of her social life and she doesn’t need another thing added to the list.
“Honey, we are only doing this out of love. Being with kids like you can help with-“
“That’s not why. This isn’t love! You just want me out of this house because you can’t believe that a Sinclair isn’t perfect!”
She’s heard the whispers at family gatherings. She knows her family is held fairly high in the eyes of other werewolves. She knows her existence is a strain for her parents. Her mother doesn’t even refute the claim. Her dad doesn’t even defend her. Her claws slip back out.
“Fine. Send me away. I don’t want to be here with this family anyways,” she growls as she wipes the stray tears from her face. “Happy birthday to me.”
Her mother doesn’t reply. She drops the brochures on the table and storms to her room. Her dad doesn't speak. As she steps up the stairs, she can hear a long sigh coming from the living room.
She flings herself into her bed, letting the tears finally roll down and the sobs to come full force.
Her cries are clawing their way out of her throat, but despite the throb of anger and sadness, she feels a tiny bit of pride. A smile slips onto her face, as she relives the conversation with her parents. She never even realized how much she’d bottled up, and letting herself just yell like that is giving her a peace she didn’t know she needed.
Once she calms down, after a few hours, she relishes in the feeling.
Despite her negative feelings towards her parents sending her away, she can’t deny the beauty of Nevermore.
She can tell the buildings are old and built with a special architecture. New England has a very different history and culture than she grew up with, but she appreciates it nonetheless. The bricks are rusted, dark, and scratched. It’s less colorful than Enid would have chosen, but she quickly finds a new peace in the muted colors and spanning forests surrounding the buildings.
It’s nothing like California, nothing like her hometown. She’s charmed.
Her parents walk with her to meet the headmaster and to move her belongings into her new room. She says goodbye to them outside the main gate without as much as a smile on her face.
Good riddance, she thinks, and immediately feels guilty. A little time away from them will help her rekindle their relationship, she convinces herself.
A student named Yoko gives her a tour of the campus. There’s an immediate connection, between her and Yoko, and she decides that she’s going to give this place a try.
If her parents are going to spend the time and effort sending her here for high school, she might as well be the best she can be. She decides her reputation here will be the true her and only her. No more half bullshitting her classmates with who she is.
The tour consists of a walk through of all the main hallways and buildings, with a very concise summary of the school’s history.
“The school was built in 1791 after…”
Less interesting to Enid, but if she’s going to be fully invested in school spirit, she decides that she should know the nitty gritty of the school’s history. Yoko then gives her the rundown on the social scene, something that does interest her, explaining the main outcasts that attend and what to expect from certain teachers.
She sees a group of werewolves running and jumping together in the quad, the final stop on the tour. A flicker of jealousy makes her brows knit together, but she quickly pushes it down.
I’ll go and talk to them later, and maybe I can make other, less judgmental, werewolf friends.
She sees a boy sitting near the water fountain in the main quad. Something about him screams familiar, but she can’t decide what. His hair is kept up in a gray beanie, fully showing a long and pale face.
“Come on, Enid,” Yoko says enthusiastically, grabbing her arm and pulling her. “I’ll take you to the greenhouse!”
She tears her eyes away from the boy and follows after her new friend.
The memory hits her like a truck.
It isn’t until she’s back in her dorm room, laying in her bed and staring at the ceiling, that she realizes he looks just like the person in her dreams.
His name is Ajax, she learns from hearing him talk in class. They share two classes, but sit nowhere near each other.
She learns he’s a Gorgon, with twists of black snakes for hair, and she feels a pull in her gut.
Ebony, twisted hair.
It doesn’t help that her dreams aren’t fully clear, but the thought of twists made of snakes is oddly comforting. And to top it off, his pale, narrow face is also one she’s seen before. It just works.
Enid feels immediately drawn to him, although he doesn’t speak to her.
Old Enid would have marched right up to him and asked if she was who he dreams about: a romantic meeting, a kiss after uniting for the first time, and half of her life would have finally slotted into place.
New Enid, however, with the same confidence masked by a tiny bit of ‘what if I’m getting my hopes up’, decides against it.
She wants to wait and take it slow. Let it happen naturally, she supposes. She’s had practice with patience, and if she can wait to shift into a wolf, if she can wait for her parents’ approval, she can wait a little longer for her soulmate.
Halfway into the first semester, she decides to start a blog. She is considerably more popular here than the normie school she attended. With the uniqueness of everyone here, she must be less estranged in their eyes. There’s something- a connection, a feeling, she isn’t exactly sure what- that makes her miles more comfortable here than any of her other schools. She can tell the other students feel it too.
Her social media blows up and she decides to dedicate her time outside of school or extracurriculars to spreading any and all information about the social status of any and everyone.
She tells herself she does it so that everyone’s included in the school's most interesting events. She, herself, has never felt this much community before.
She meets more people. Xavier and Bianca are by far the most interesting. Their on-and-off relationship gives her blog a good amount of gossip. She wouldn’t say she’s close with either, but it’s good to know there are other people her age that will chose to converse with her.
The headmaster is nice enough, checking in every week to ensure her transfer has been smooth. She’s appreciative that at least one adult in her life actually seems to care.
She meets some of the other students in her grade through her multitude of clubs.
Yoko becomes her best friend. They spend each day together, and even though they share one class, Yoko actually makes time to hang out with her outside of it. She’s her first friend that she doesn’t feel like she has to use a filter for. She had become talented at controlling herself in normie school, but here, she feels the need to only be herself.
It’s the best friend she’s had… ever.
She finds herself dreading the upcoming winter break. Returning to the bleakness of San Francisco is not appealing in the slightest.
She hasn’t talked to Ajax, but Yoko tells her that Gorgons tend to be more reserved than the other groups.
Her patience persists still.
Her first semester comes and goes. She’s considerably happier, and despite the negative energy that surrounds her hometown, she finds herself on cloud nine.
The break isn’t as terrible as she expected. It’s a relatively short break, compared to summer, spanning a little over two weeks. She keeps a reminder on her phone to tell her how much longer she has left at home.
Her mother, while being initially vocal about her disappointment to find that she still hasn’t transformed, has quieted down after the first few days.
Her dad, who hadn’t spoken more than a few words since dropping her off at Nevermore, is willing to converse with her and actually seems to care. Something he hasn’t been since she was six and curled up in his lap on movie night.
Christmas is nice, and the morning she spends with her family feels normal. She doesn’t have any remaining, true friends from normie school, so she opts to spend her time either hanging with her siblings or running errands alone.
It’s not the worst way to spend a break, but still, she longs to leave.
She can hardly sit still on the car ride, currently riding in an Uber from the airport to Nevermore. It’s colder than it was before, now early-January. She’s never cared much for weather, but the air here feels so much more refreshing than it does at home. Her breath fogs against the glass, and she draws a smiling face into it.
She’s excited to see most of her personal things again, like the piles of plushies she couldn’t fit in her duffel bag.
She’s excited to look out the stained glass window every morning.
She’s excited to see Yoko, and her other classmates, and return her blog to its former status.
When she arrives at the school, she drags her bag to Ophelia Hall slowly, giving everyone she passes a wave. She says hello to some of the sirens, all seated at the fountain in the Quad. Even Bianca gives a wave.
She waves at Xavier, and then at the beekeeping kid. Eugene? She thinks that's his name. Ms. Thornhill greets her as she enters the building and gives her a hug. Even Weems gives her a smile and a nod as she trots past her office.
Yoko is waiting at her door when she arrives, and the two greet in a jumble of hugs and screams and cheers.
When she finally enters her room, she checks the time. She arrived at Nevermore at 2:25 p.m., and the clock reads 3:19 p.m.. With a quiet laugh, she calculates that it took her almost an hour to walk through the school and to her room.
She spends the rest of the afternoon in her room, rearranging her goods. She knows once dinner comes, she’ll be swept away by her friends. As she unpacks her stuff, something settles in her chest.
Hope.
The weeks go by. It isn’t boring, Enid wouldn't describe it like that.
It’s mundane. Simple. Comforting.
The days are routine and the weather warms more and more. She watches Ajax from afar. Her dreams continue, revealing nothing more than a pale face and twisting hair. Nothing more than those two facts she's been familiar with for years now. She’s learning a little more about him from Yoko and a few others, but she has yet to talk to him.
In time, she will. She’s never been one to avoid confrontation, so she knows she’ll break eventually. For now, the days pass in a warm and swelling blur.
“Have you had your dream?” she asks Yoko one afternoon.
They are studying in the library together, books skewed across the table. It’s almost the end of the second semester, and final exams are creeping up faster than Enid can study for.
Despite being obsessed with gossip, she knows it’s generally rude to ask about other people's dreams. She feels that as she gets older, it becomes more of a tightrope walk, bordering the line of intrusive and curious.
Yoko and her have become inseparable, though, and Enid feels it’s an appropriate time to ask. Besides, she’s been studying for so long that the text of the book begins to blur in her eyes.
“Yeah, I’ve had them for a while now,” Yoko replies. “What about you?”
Enid closes her book to look Yoko in the eyes.
“Me too,” she replies curtly. “Do you… do you know who it is?”
Yoko pauses her reading and looks up.
“Maybe,” she drags out with a twist of her brow, a cocky smirk playing on her face. Her glasses slide down just enough to reveal a glint in her eyes.
“What! Oh my god, spill!” Enid leans in closer. Her heart thumps in her chest.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” she retorts with a chuckle. “Besides, why do you care so much?”
“Because, as your best friend, I have to know more!” Enid shrieks. “Is it someone we know? Or is this, like, a secret relationship you’re keeping from me? Like a Romeo and Juliet story?”
Yoko pushes her back and she’s forced to sit back down. Her eyes are still wide. Yoko stifles a laugh.
“First of all, keep your voice down,” she points to the librarian giving them a glaring side eye. Enid waves in a remorseful way; the librarian turns away. “Second, if I tell you, you have to promise you won’t tell anyone.”
Enid holds out her pinky, and Yoko links hers.
“Out with it,” she states firmly.
“You know Divina..,” Yoko starts slowly.
Enid shrieks again, and the librarian tells her to leave.
It takes a few days for the conversation to come back. Enid’s gossip-loving mind has become consumed with Yoko’s blossoming secret relationship.
She said she hasn’t taken any steps to talk to Divina about it, and she wants to wait until the other girl is ready.
The hopeless romantic in Enid swoons.
She respects Yoko's decision, and decides to hold off on writing anything in her blog about it. The joy she feels from her friend alone is all she needs to satisfying her craving for drama.
They are in Yoko’s dorm this time, painting each others nails. Final exams have ended, and in two days, everyone will return home for summer break. Enid soaks up every minute of being away from home. Winter break was good, but it was significantly shorter than the upcoming summer.
There is music playing in the background, Enid’s K-pop playlist, and the girls are humming quietly.
Yoko speaks after a while.
“So… what about you?”
Enid looks up after finishing Yoko’s index fingernail. “What about me?”
Yoko gives her a knowing look.
“Your dreams,” she simply says. “Do you know who it is?”
Despite the music playing in the background, the silence seems loud. Enid takes a moment to respond.
“I’m not sure,” she says quietly. “I still haven’t talked to the person that it could be, so…”
“Can I guess who it is?”
“How do you know it’s someone here-“ Enid starts.
“Ajax?” Yoko asks, raising her eyebrow.
“How did you guess?”
“You’ve asked me about him a total of six times this year. You’re not exactly subtle.”
“Well, what if I was just trying to get to know more people?” she reasons with a shrug of her shoulders.
“Please, you’re one of the most outgoing people I know. You’ve managed to dig out gossip from Bianca, the resident queen bee-“
“I’m totally using that for my blog, resident queen bee, are you kidding me-“
“And!” she reinserts her voice. “You haven’t gone up to Ajax for a simple hello all year.”
“Oh.”
“What are you so afraid of?”
“I-“
“You’re one of the few people at this school that doesn’t try to fake half your personality. That's why I consider you my best friend. So, why is he stopping you?”
“I don’t know,” she slips out a partial truth. She really doesn’t know why she hasn’t approached him yet. There’s just something in her gut, deep, deep down, that is holding her back.
“I think you do,” Yoko adds. “You just need to go inside that colorful, cheery, confident head of yours and figure it out.”
The conversation is dropped. Enid, for a singular moment, is glad that there’s only two days left of the semester. She has a feeling Yoko isn’t going to give this up.
She’s standing outside the main gate, along with half her school. Her belongings are at her feet. Her Uber is scheduled to arrive any minute and with it, she is headed back to her family.
Yoko has already walked away, going to talk with another friend across the road before they left. Enid didn’t let herself cry at the goodbye, but she felt the telltale sting of warmth on the back of her eyes. She made sure to hug for as long as possible, until Yoko had to pry her arms off.
Now, waiting alone at the entrance, she spots a familiar beanie. She’s thrown into her conversation from two days ago.
What am I so afraid of?
Before she has time to think of an answer, or do anything else, the boy looks up and makes eye contact.
Shit!
Her arm swings up and she waves, a cheerful thing, and flashes him her favorite smile and wink combo.
What the hell am I doing?!
She knows Yoko is watching her. The Uber is two minutes away.
“Might as well make this count,” she mumbles under her breath. Ajax is walking over now. He’s struggling to carry his bags, two large duffels hanging near his feet. Call it her ‘wolf’ senses, but she realizes the boy is about to trip and fall two seconds before his brain catches on.
She’s close enough now to grab him as he’s falling, and she does just that. Except, he’s a foot taller and her hand ended up extended straight out onto his chest instead of a stabilizing support to his arm.
She hears Yoko laughing in the distance. If she wasn’t cringing at her own behavior, she’d flash the girl a lovely fuck you glare.
“Having a hard time with those bags?” Really, Enid?
“A little,” he chuckles, clearly embarrassed about the ordeal. “My family’s almost here though.”
Her hand falls from his chest and she goes to put it behind her back.
“Are you excited for break?” An innocent question. I’m so out of practice.
He smiles at her. “Yeah, I’ve been ready for a break for a while. I’m excited to see my family.”
“Yeah, me too,” she replies. Not fully true, as she could definitely go longer before seeing her family again. A break, though, she can get behind. Nevermore is definitely more extensive and hands-on in its education than her old high school.
Ajax looks like he’s about to say more, but then he’s peering behind her shoulder. Enid can hear a car pull up, and puts two and two together.
“That your ride?”
“Yeah, my dad is here,” he answers, looking back at her before bending down to grab his bags. He gives a small shrug. “See you around?”
“Bye, Ajax,” she says, watching as the boy walks away.
“Have a good break, Enid,” he says, giving her a shy smile. “And I loved your blog, I’ll be looking forward to reading it next year.”
And then he’s gone. She can feel Yoko staring at her, flashing a thumbs up in her peripheral vision, but she chooses to ignore the girl for a moment. Her heart feels hot and she hasn’t had this much adrenaline since coming to Nevermore. A few deep breaths help her to calm down.
She turns to Yoko, flashes her middle finger, and mouths ‘thanks a lot’. She isn’t actually mad at her friend for laughing. Besides, the embarrassment in her stomach is immediately squashed by the sight of her Uber pulling up.
There are more pressing issues to focus on, for example, her upcoming family reunion. She knows it’ll be particularly draining based on the way her mother is. She guesses it’ll take 5 seconds of her walking in the door before her mother criticizes her.
She loads her bags in the trunk and sits in the front seat, offering a kind greeting to the driver.
Enid 2:02 p.m.
he knew my name and saw my blog
he told me to have a good break!!!!
i feel amazing
Yoko 2:02 p.m.
idk how you haven’t realized yet, but people actually like you
how about a thank you to mama yoko
Enid 2:02 p.m.
you wish
Yoko 2:03 p.m.
wow after i inspired you to. be brave and all :/
ever heard the saying, treat your elders with respect?
Enid 2:03 p.m.
how about you talk to me once you talk to div ;)
Yoko 2:04
shut the fuck up.
Enid 2:04
<3
Yoko disliked the message.
Enid, despite heading back home, lets out a laugh.
Her father greets her at the airport. She spends a few moments looking around for her mother and brothers, but quickly realizes that they didn’t come. Her dad, watching as she scans the area, flashes her a sympathetic glare.
It could’ve been worse, she tells herself. Better to start off with estrangement than argument.
Her dad picks up her bags, and she feels her mind blur the time until she pulls into the driveway of her house.
It takes her mom ten seconds before she asks about transforming. Better than she expected.
Her dreams start to change.
It’s nothing groundbreaking in the mystery of the person’s identity, but it’s enough to cause her to spend time writing out what she remembers before going downstairs for breakfast. She scrounged through her closet and found an old unused diary, donning it her ‘Soulmate Journal’. She’s even found colorful pens to calligraphy the title across the front.
It stays sitting on her nightstand, and every morning, she rolls over to quickly write down everything before the memory fades.
Instead of simple dreams that show the two facts she’s gathered (pale face, twisting hair), her dreams are becoming more…tactile. She dreams of holding hands with someone, hands smaller and smoother than her own. Her fingers gently grace the opposite hand, and the touch is light and tender. The feeling of warmth she gets when she holds hands with her soulmate is something that sticks with her every morning.
It feels so intimate, even for a dream.
She wakes every morning with a blush across her face and the urge to either take a cold shower or wolf out. And, given she still hasn’t wolfed out, she opts for the former.
It’s not a bad routine, she reasons. Wake up, spend ten minutes journaling, take a shower, go out for the day. It gives her what feels like control while being stuck in her childhood bedroom.
Even though the dreams seem to be giving her more, she is still miles away from getting the clarity she needs to be sure of who it is. Ajax is really her only suspect at this point, and despite the progress at the gate, she isn't planning on making any definite moves.
That was, until her most recent dream.
After a particularly taxing day dealing with her mother, she lays in her bed after dinner and her eyes slip shut faster than she can help. Immediately, she’s sucked into a dream-
Her hair is tousled and her sweater feels so heavy on her skin. There is someone in front of her. Pale face and twisted hair, not a part unfamiliar. She’s holding hands with them, and before she knows it:
soft lips touching- a peck so light that it feels almost nonexistent- a hand grazing across her cheek, a hot breath intermingled with her own-
She wakes up with her heart clenched and her breath taken. Air flies in and out of her nose and her eyes pop open. She launches out of bed, pressing one hand to her beating heart and another to her head, ridden with beads of sweat. Her sheets are strewn across the floor.
The clock reads 02:51.
It’s the most feeling she’s gotten out of a dream. She doesn’t even want to try to describe this in her journal.
Too intimate, even for me.
She decides not to tell Yoko about the dream, despite promising to tell her everything new that happens. It’s a feeling, an intuition, of protecting her soulmate's privacy more than her own.
She doesn’t go back to sleep, opting to stare at the ceiling and count her heart beats instead. After spending the rest of the day reeling from that dream, she makes the decision to ‘wolf up’, as her mother would say, and talk to Ajax once she returns to school.
Summer passes slower than she wishes.
She texts Yoko daily, posts social media updates when she can. She follows most of her class and feels more connected to them through every online interaction, even though they are all over the country. She feels a little less lonely.
Her mother only asks a few times about transforming, usually following a full moon. She stays at home when her family transforms, and tries to avoid them for a few days after.
She dreams and she journals, but she also feels herself slipping into habits that she thought she left behind.
Bad habits.
She does less for herself, opting to lay in bed and scroll online. Anger and jealousy are common feelings now, just like it had been before Nevermore. She never realized how being away from her home changed her in such a positive way.
Uncharacteristically, she spends a lot of time in the library, reading anything from cook books to diy books to romance and mystery books. Anything to keep her out of her house.
She counts the days until fall semester.
Moving back into Ophelia Hall is both comforting and ostracizing.
For one, she’s away from her family (thank goodness, another minute in San Francisco would cause her to rip her hair out), and the comfort of her own space is overwhelming.
But, it’s also leaving her chest with an aching sort of loneliness. Last year, rooming alone never truly bothered her between her large amount of extracurriculars, new friends, and new classes. Now that she’s well and settled, however, she realized how sucky it is to be living alone. It’s not like Yoko doesn’t live down the hall, only a few doors away.
It’s just… different.
She’s organizing her stuffed animals into place when there’s a knock at her door.
“Come in,” she shouts over her speaker, currently playing some song from the Top 40 list. The door swings wide as she stands up off the ground, clicking pause on her phone.
“Yoko!” The girl in question is rammed into by Enid, engulfed in an overbearing hug.
“Enid! It’s so good to see you!”
There’s a warmness in Enid's chest. A friend who missed her. She doesn’t know how she survived this long without one. Every inch of her appreciation is squeezed into the hug, until she feels Yoko trying to take a deep breath.
“Sorry! Sorry I just- I’m so happy to see you again!” She lets go and steps back to examine her friend. “This summer was so boring without you.”
“Trust me, I was ready to be back here the day I got home,” Yoko replies. “I actually do have a surprise though…”
Her voice trails off, and she pushes the door so that it swings fully open.
Divina stands there, arms crossed, looking less reserved than Enid has ever seen. There’s a light blush across her face.
“No way,” Enid slips out quietly, star struck at the scene unfolding in front of her.
“It’s official,” Yoko starts, quickly silenced by the werewolf.
Enid yells, runs out the door and frets around them, spewing questions that go unanswered until Yoko grabs her by the shoulders and pushes her into the room. The questions fly out faster than she means.
“When did you start dating? Yoko, did you actually make the first move- I mean, you were so shy and nervous-“
Yoko buried her face in her hand, “Please stop-“
“And I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! How did it happen? I need answers!”
They spend the rest of the evening unpacking with Enid and discussing everything that transpired over summer break.
She’s so unbelievably happy for her friend, but there’s something deeper in her chest, below all the cheers and happy praises.
An ugly thing that rears its head. An ugly, green thing.
Yoko isn’t leaving me. She isn’t like that. Calm down.
She has a hard time sleeping that night.
She follows through with the promise she made with herself over summer. This year, she shares three classes with Ajax. On the first day of class, she chooses to sit next to him in two of them. The third she saved to sit with Yoko.
“Hello,” he greets her, pointing to the seat next to her. “Is this seat taken?”
“Nope, you can sit!” she replies, pulling the chair out from under the table.
She gets to know him slowly, learning more about him and his family. She learns he has one sister, younger, and a father that looks just like him.
She wouldn’t consider them friends by any stretch, but they talk and do work together in the classes they have. He eventually starts leaving likes and comments on her posts.
The first time he requests to follow her, she was in Yoko’s room. They both saw the notification, and Yoko decided that this newest step calls for celebration.
She’s happy, truly; it's always nice to make a new friend and Ajax is easy enough to be around. He engages with her and their conversations never feel one sided. He’s a little air-headed, but as the saying goes, ‘Gorgons are too busy getting stoned.’ He’s cute and funny in a different way. Enid’s only had trivial crushes before; it’s not like she has anything to compare it to.
As Yoko celebrates around her, something that she never unpacks, something so vulnerable and reserved that she doesn’t even recognize it herself, starts to grow.
That feeling, whatever it is, doesn’t last long. Enid thinks he’s her soulmate. Only time will tell.
“Good morning, Enid,” Principal Weems stands tall over her desk, and Enid can’t help but feel slightly intimidated. The day started out like any other, a slight chill in the air as August leaves and September approaches, and Enid had just arrived at her first class when Weems called her in.
“Good morning,” Enid replies, unsure of where the conversation is going.
“How’ve things been for you this semester? This is your second year here, yes?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s been going great so far,” she replies, hands firmly crossed behind her back. She decides to be direct, after all, she has classes to get back to. “Why did you call me in here?”
“I actually wanted to discuss the potential of a new roommate. Her name is…”
Enid feels her heartbeat flutter. This was what she’s been waiting for! A new best friend, a roommate, someone to share all her secrets and gossip and experiences with. They could do their nails together, watch movies, sneak out- everything Enid’s seen from shows and movies but has yet to live.
“…be a bit strange, I think I’d be nice if you gave her a try.”
“Yes!” she all but barks out. If she could transform, she knows her tail would be wagging. “I’d love to have a roommate!”
“I know you’re used to living in that huge room alone, so I’m glad you’re willing to share,” Weems finishes, flashing her a kind smile.
“When will she be here?”
“Probably in the next few weeks. She’s transferring mid-semester, so hopefully you can be a fantastic guide for her,” Weems replies. “You are one of Nevermore’s best and brightest. Thank you, Enid.”
She feels herself blush. The rush of approval gives her a different kind of high.
It isn’t until Weems sends her away, until she’s halfway done the hall and about to enter class, that she realizes she forgot to listen to what the girl's name is.
Wednesday. Her new roommate's name is Wednesday Addams. Certainly an odd name, Enid thinks, but she is more concerned over the rumors she’s been hearing.
It’s all anyone can talk about.
How she apparently almost murdered some of her school's swim team with bags of piranhas- how someone would even obtain that, she doesn’t know.
How she apparently has transferred to 8 schools in 5 years.
How she apparently already has a controversial, to say the least, family legacy at the school from years back.
Enid takes everything she hears with a grain of salt, but she can’t help the growing speck of concern. She still listens to it all, the gossiping girl inside of her absorbing every bit of information she gets.
The night before her new roommate is set to arrive, she doesn’t have a dream. Or rather, she does have a dream, but not one pertaining to her soulmate.
She’d classify it more as a nightmare rather than a dream.
She’s baring her claws, and there’s a pain so searing that it travels through each of her veins and makes her hair on her arms stand up. She tries to take a deep breath to relax herself, but the hair still bristles. The chill of the wind doesn’t help either.
The smell of iron is heavy in her nose- a red, dark iron. There is red smeared up and down the walls of an unfamiliar place.
Someone, dressed in black, croaks in the corner.
“Enid…”
The voice is unfamiliar, laced with a strange monotone pronunciation as well as a groan.
“Hello?” She asks whoever this person is.
Suddenly, there’s a gust of wind and she feels a large hand with long fingers grace her back, gripping around the thick, pink coat she’s wearing.
She grabs the hand and throws it off with a shriek.
Her eyes open to her blankets being thrown off. Her heart is racing and her breaths are short.
Whatever that strange dream- nightmare was, she can figure it out later. It’s not like she’ll forget it easily. She’s awake, already standing, and she might as well get ready for the school day.
It’s a very important day.
She has a roommate coming today, specifically one named Wednesday Addams.
“Howdy, roomie!”
Her own voice echoes in her ear as she uses her most cheery voice. The joy she has is truly unbridled.
She was adding some rumors about her roommate to her blog, updating her followers. Gossiping about someone she hasn’t even met, bold- she knows, but she thought once her roommate arrived, she can clear up some of the more... concerning rumors, and Enid can make changes.
There’s a knock on the door and Weems steps through, followed by three people. There’s a girl standing between two older people, presumably her parents.
She stares at the girl that is her new roommate.
The figure in front of her is not what she expected at all. She’s shorter than Enid, dressed in clothes that make her look like she came straight from an old black and white comic from the 1900s. Everything about her look is prim, proper, and symmetrical.
Something about the unhinged rumors, the crimes her roommate has potentially committed, gave her the impression of someone a little less… put together.
That’s a good sign at least.
Weems gives her a formal introduction, and she has to clasp her hands together to hold back from immediately hugging the girl. Wednesday’s eyes are a little wide, making Enid feel a twinge of worry. Switching in mid semester can’t be easy, and she hopes the girl isn’t abnormally anxious.
“Are you feeling okay?” she asks, letting the worry spill for a moment. Maybe her roommate just needs to know that someone cares.
“Wednesday always looks half-dead.” The reassurance from her roommate's father that she just, apparently, looks like that, puts her worries to rest. She goes in for a big hug, unable to hold back any longer. The girl flinches and steps away.
Her roommate does not like hugging.
“Not a hugger, got it.” She can work with that. Boundaries are a good thing, she thinks.
Her roommate is allergic to color?
The statement about her color allergy surprises her a little bit. The description Wednesday gives grosses her out. She didn’t think anyone like this truly existed- a truly gothic girl-, but hey, if anywhere, that person would be at Nevermore. Even the inflection of her monotone voice gives off serial killer vibes. Maybe the rumors aren’t all false.
Before she can blink, she’s skipping along with Wednesday at the request of Weems: “Go to the registrar's office to pick it up”- it being her special, colorless uniform- “along with a copy of her schedule.”
Neither of them speak, and Enid remembers the tour Yoko gave her when she first arrived.
Knowing some boring facts about the school did help me understand it more. Maybe she wouldn’t even find them boring, given her… well, whatever's going on with her personality.
She doesn’t mind if her roommate is a little shy; It might take time, but Enid feels the determination to have another great year and to make a new best friend.
She begins to spit out some widely know facts about the school, and once they reach the end of the stairs, her roommate finally speaks-
“You can save the sanitized sales pitch.”
Okay, so maybe she does find it boring. Noted.
“I don’t plan on staying here for long.”
Oh.
That wasn’t what she expected. Everything about this day is turning out different than expected. She feels herself deflate a little.
“Why not?” she asks, upset at the idea of losing a roommate she barely had.
“This was my parents’ idea,” Wednesday replies.
Oh.
Again, not what she expected, but something she understands. Maybe Wednesday’s parents have insane expectations, choosing to send her far away to learn some important thing about herself that she needs to be able to do in order to fit in with her pack and truly be a werewolf-
“They’ve been looking for any excuse to send me here,” the girl finishes. Enid watches her face, looking for any sort of flash of emotion. She’s good at this, reading others, and by extension, comforting others. Maybe her roommate is a little odd, but everyone deserves to be comforted.
There’s nothing noticeable.
Her roommate either has really good control of her face and/or she doesn’t care about her parents’ disapproval.
Both of which are scary. The subject seems to drop, and Enid takes the silence to ask some questions. The rumors have been eating at her since last week when she started hearing them.
“Perhaps you can clear something up,” she says, and turns to walk to the quad. Wednesday follows, posture stuff and arms crossed. “Rumor’s been swirling around that you killed a kid at your old school, and your parents pulled strings to get you off.”
Wednesday's reply of it was two kids, but who’s counting should’ve concerned her more than it did.
She leads her roommate into the quad, where she gives a run down of the social groups, similar to the one Yoko gave her when she arrived. She tries to shoot some of Wednesday's sarcasm back at her, but it falls flat when the girl just glares at her.
When the topic of her blog comes up, she jumps at the opportunity to share something she’s passionate about. Before she can dive deep into it, Ajax is running up to her.
He’s spilling some weird rumor about Wednesday eating her victims, similar to what they talk about in class together, asking if she's written about it yet. She watches one of his snakes slither out and feels a twinge of-
Pale face, twisting hair.
There's a moment where she steps to the side of Wednesday, letting Ajax see her. She stares at the girl, dressed in black and white with two long and dark braids laying gracefully down her chest, and something like deja vu is spinning in her mind. She has to blink it off.
Wednesday quips back at Ajax’s rumor. Enid shoves him away, making an offhand comment about Ajax being cute- kind of accidental- and for some reason, she hopes he didn't hear. Wednesday says something angsty like social media is soul sucking, and turns and leaves without another word.
Her mind feels completely twisted, and for the first time since coming to Nevermore, it isn’t in a good way.
That night, she dreams of a pale face with dark, twisting hair.
Always the same.
In the morning, she still has no clarity.