Everybody Out, Someone Werewolfed in the Pool - Day 4

Calvin scurried backwards quickly, hit a tree, and then fell on his ass. “Who are you? What do you want?”

The man in the very fancy looking suit remained calmly professional as he repeated, “Tim Kane, business werewolf. We have important matters to discuss.”

“That doesn’t exactly clarify anything for me, no offense,” Calvin replied. “Can I get dressed now?”

Tim nodded and gestured for Calvin to go ahead. Calvin retrieved his clothes from where he had hung them from a tree branch before transforming last night.

“What exactly is a business werewolf?” Calvin asked once he had his pants on.

A slight smile touched Mr. Kane’s lips. He was tall, well over six feet, broadly muscular, with dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard. Calvin guessed he was in his early thirties. “That’s just a title I’ve invented for myself. I perform clerical duties for the werewolves in our region and maintain an office in Seattle. As you can imagine, most of our kind aren’t fond of paperwork and bureaucracy.”

“Right,” Calvin said. He kept both eyes on this business werewolf as he finished getting dressed. “So what kind of paperwork and bureaucracy led you to sneak up on me while I was naked this morning?”

“As the officially recognized Guardian of this area you are obligated to destroy or detain the rogue necromancer that has recently taken up residence in your territory,” Tim answered pleasantly.

“Hold on. Officially recognized what, now?” Calvin hadn’t even known for sure that there was any kind of werewolf organization until this weirdo showed up out of the blue. The werewolves who had beaten him up on that ill fated trip to the Olympics had alluded to some kind of hierarchy, but Calvin hadn’t know any details, much less applied for membership.

“Guardian,” Mr. Kane explained slowly with a very professional smile still on his face. “The werewolves you met in the Olympic National Forest are members of one of the oldest packs in the world. They reported your existence to the Conclave of the Moon and included a positive review of your character as well as a description of the territory you claimed.”

Calvin frowned. “I never claimed any territory. And how the hell did they decide what my character was like? All they did was beat the ever-loving crap out of me!”

Tim looked slightly surprised, but only barely let it show. “You are aware that you are the only non-human in the area you roam while transformed?”

“Well, yes,” Calvin admitted.

“And you did reach an understanding with a nearby werewolf pack as to where your territory ended and theirs began?” Mr. Kane asked.

“I suppose I did, but really they just flat out told me never to come back onto their land unless I had some kind of official business to discuss.”

“Then what part about this matter do you find confusing?” A touch of impatience had crept into the business werewolf’s calmly efficient voice.

“I guess I just didn’t know werewolves were so...organized and official. I thought things would be more loose and tribal. I always imagined there being lots of different pack living in heavily forested areas. I thought maybe there might be some loose confederacy of pack representatives, but I never in my wildest dreams expected a business werewolf to show up to inform me of my obligation to destroy a rogue necromancer. Until last night I didn’t even know there were creatures besides werewolves!” Calvin protested.

“How strange,” Mr. Kane observed. “Did the werewolf who turned you explain none of this to you?”

“I never met the werewolf who made me,” Calvin told him. “He or she mauled me and left me bleeding in the woods until morning. I woke up all disoriented and I passed out for the rest of the day. I woke up right before the change.”

Tim frowned. “Highly irregular. And this werewolf never contacted you after the fact?”

Calvin shook his head. “Never.”

The business werewolf seemed just a little bit impressed. “Interesting. Well, you are a rare case indeed. However, rules are rules, and as the Guardian of this place you must deal with the rogue necromancer.”

“Seriously?” Calvin growled.

Mr. Kane nodded sagely. “Oh yes. We can’t go around making exceptions. There would be chaos.”

“There are evidently already zombies running around and a rogue necromancer, which I can only assume is a person who creates zombies. How is that any different from chaos, exactly?”

“As long as the local humans remain ignorant, you are performing your primary duty as Guardian. Were they to find proof of the existence of werewolves or any other supernatural beings, drastic measures would have to be taken,” Tim explained pleasantly.

Calvin took a deep breath. “Fantastic. How exactly does one deal with a necromancer anyway?”

“You have three choices when encountering a rogue supernatural being in your territory. You may kill them, detain them and report them to the Enclave of the Moon for transfer to our prison, or you may attempt to subdue them and convince them to become your vassal.”

“Vassal?” Calvin asked skeptically. “You mean like knights and barons in medieval times?”

Mr. Kane nodded. “Precisely. Though I caution against that third course of action. You are very young and your neighbors would likely take issue with you recruiting what looks like the beginnings of an army so quickly. Necromancers can be a nasty bunch. I recommend killing it. You don’t seem the type to enjoy all the red tape that goes along with a prisoner transfer.”

Calvin sighed. “That was what I meant. How do you kill a necromancer? Do they have some special weakness? Is there anything I should know besides the raising the undead bit?”

Tim the business werewolf frowned. “I don’t like to get too involved in these matters. A Guardian is expected to take care of problems on their own.”

“You have got to be kidding me. You show up out of nowhere, tell me to kill a renegade zombie maker, and then refuse to give me any helpful information? How do I know I can even trust you? You could be some lunatic or in cahoots with the necromancer! This could be some kind of sadistic trap and I would have no idea!” Calvin shouted. This whole interaction was getting ridiculously frustrating.

Mr. Kane nodded appreciatively. “Caution. That’s wise. You may survive yet. Here’s my card in the event that you need any official Enclave of the Moon business conducted on your behalf. Good day.” He handed Calvin a business card with his name and a phone number, no address or website.

“Yeah, I can tell already this is going to be a great day,” Calvin muttered. He walked out of the woods towards his parents’ house. They were under the impression that he spent full moon nights over at Logan or Harris’ house. He generally came over in the morning to change clothes and shower when he pretended to spend the night at Harris’ house otherwise he got a lecture from his mother about wasting valuable morning bathroom time in a house with five women living in it. Harris had four sisters, which befuddled Calvin greatly since they had somehow failed to murder the chauvinistic bastard in his sleep thus far. After pretending to spend the night at Logan’s house he could go straight to school and shower in the pool locker room, but unfortunately this had been a Harris night.

“I don’t care how many vegetables you ate last night, you can’t have Skittles for breakfast!” Calvin’s mother shouted across the house at his sister Gemma.

“But there are green ones! You always say that green things are healthy for you!” Gemma yelled back.

“Oh thank God, Calvin you’re home! Make your sister eat real food,” his mother pleaded when she saw him come through the front door.

Calvin walked to the kitchen, grabbed two bowls and the Raisin Bran box. He filled two bowls with milk and cereal and set one in front of Gemma. Then he sat down and started eating without saying a word.

“No! I hate Raisin Bran! It tastes like poop!” Gemma pouted. “The raisins even look like little bunny poops!”

“You’ll eat it,” Calvin told her sternly.

“Nuh uh!” Gemma stuck her tongue out at him.

Calvin sighed. How did she not know what was coming? “Yes, you will.”

“Nope! I’m getting the Skittles!” Gemma started to get up.

“Fine. That will be the last piece of candy you ever eat,” Calvin said quietly.

Gemma’s face paled. “No, not this again! You wouldn’t dare!”

Calvin nodded. “I most certainly would.”

Gemma gasped. “But then you wouldn’t get any more candy either!”

“I don’t get any anyway, you eat it all.”

“But...to throw away all the candy and snacks? You’re a monster!” Gemma sat back down.

“Eat your cereal,” Calvin told her.

Gemma did as she was told.

Everybody Out, Someone Werewolfed in the Pool - Day 3

Calvin had never encountered zombies before. In fact, he had never seen any kind of supernatural creature other than the werewolves living out in the Olympic National Forest.

Not knowing the first thing about how zombies worked in the real world, Calvin decided to go with what horror movies had taught him and swipe one of his massive paws at the nearest zombie. Its partially decomposed head came clean off and sailed away into the bushes, but unfortunately the now headless corpse kept shuffling towards the crying girl in the middle of the clearing.

Grumbling to himself about how nothing in the movies had been right so far, Calvin reached out with his jaws and hamstrung the zombie so it collapsed to the pine needle covered ground. Calvin then ripped its arms off and lunged at the next shambling horror.

There were six zombies left and the blonde haired girl had started screaming as they drew nearer to her. Calvin thanked his lucky stars that these were slow zombies and not fast ones, otherwise this girl would have been dead already.

After Calvin attacked the second zombie and left it a limbless lump in the dirt, the other five turned their attention to him instead of the girl. They all lurched clumsily at Calvin and he was able to dodge them easily, the trick was ripping their arms and legs off without one of the others reaching him. There was not a lot of room to maneuver in this little clearing.

Calvin had done very little fighting in his transformed state. He had gotten beat to a bloody pulp by the Olympics werewolves, but that was about it. He hunted deer and enjoyed having the woods all to himself as he roamed around all three nights of each full moon. As such, he felt a bit awkward de-limbing these undead even though they were only slowly shuffling towards him. It felt wrong to be using his werewolf strength for violence. But eventually the job was done and all the zombies were harmlessly writhing on the ground.

Calvin cleared his throat, it was not easy to talk with a snouted maw full of razor sharp teeth. “You are safe now,” he told the girl in his heavily accented werewolf voice.

She rocked back and forth, hugging her knees to her chest. “She always brings them. Every time. I can’t escape. She always finds me,” the girl muttered to herself. She glanced furtively over her shoulder at Calvin. If seeing a seven and a half foot tall half-man half-wolf frightened her at all, she did not show it. “Will you help me?”

“Yes, of course,” Calvin answered at once. “What were those things?”

The girl rolled her eyes. She had one brown eye and one blue. “Zombies, obviously. “She calls them up out of their graves and then they come after me.”

“Who is she?” Calvin looked around warily, but he neither heard nor saw nor smelled anyone.

“Marla,” she whispered and then her eyes darted around wildly as though she expected Marla to appear at the mention of her name.

“And what do I call you?” Calvin asked.

“Nel. I like that name.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Nel. My name is Calvin. Do you have a place to stay tonight?”

Nel shook her head. “I’ve been running. I can’t even remember for how long. She always finds me. She’s chasing me.” She turned around and started rocking back and forth again.

Calvin slowly moved around to the other side of the clearing so he could see Nel’s face.“Why is Marla chasing you?”

“Don’t say her name!” Nel hissed. “She can sense it. She always knows. Always.”

“Will do,” Calvin assured her. He was growing increasingly worried that Nel’s agitated state was not entirely due to the zombie attack. “But still, why is she after you?”

Nel shook her head. “Don’t know. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember. She finds me. The zombies come. Then I run. If I just keep running maybe I’ll get far enough away that she won’t be able to find me. Yes. That’s it. Just have to get far enough.” She shuddered.

“Well you are in no shape to run anywhere tonight. I know an abandoned house that you can sleep in. Why don’t you come with me?” Calvin did his best to seem non-threatening, but that’s a difficult task when you’re a monster straight out of a horror movie.

Whether it was because she was used to being stalked by zombies, because he had saved her, or because she was flat out bat-shit crazy, Nel nodded her head. “I’d like that very much. Will you be near by?”

If he had been in his human form, Calvin would have been frowning unhappily in addition to being terribly perplexed. Why did girls like Sara and Nel seem to think they were safer when the monstrous werewolf was close by? “I’ll prowl around the woods outside the house until morning,” Calvin told her.

Nel smiled. “Good. Lead the way.”

Calvin plodded slowly towards the foreclosed house that was near the neighborhood where he lived. One of the odd perks that came with spending three nights each month roaming was that Calvin knew a great number of excellent hiding spots.

“Have you met any other werewolves?” Nel asked as they walked.

“Yes,” Calvin answered. “A bunch of them live in the Olympic National Park and Forest.”

“Are they friends of yours?”

Calvin considered how to answer for a moment. He wasn’t sure he knew the answer to that question. “We came to an understanding, but I do not think we are friends. They made it very clear that I was to remain in my own territory unless I had official business with them.”

“What exactly constitutes ‘official business’ for a werewolf?” Nel asked the question Calvin had asked himself dozens of times in the last six months.

Calvin let out a sharp bark of laughter. It sounded odd coming out of his werewolf mouth. “I wish I knew.”

Nel chewed on that tidbit of information for a moment. “How did you become a werewolf?”

“I was attacked by another werewolf. He or she bit me and then left me to transform the next night. Evidently, that is not standard procedure for making new werewolves, but I have never got the chance to ask questions. I mostly make things up as I go.” Calvin knew there were about a million vitally important things about the supernatural world that he did not know, but he had no access to more knowledgeable werewolves to give him that information.

Nel nodded appreciatively. “Me too. I’ve been running so long that I sometimes have to make up how I remember things used to be. I think the zombies got my family, but I don’t like to remember it that way. I like to remember them getting out of town before the zombies killed everyone.”

Calvin had no idea what to say. Nel was clearly insane and he wasn’t sure that he blamed her. It sounded like these zombies had destroyed whatever little town she had come from and everyone she knew was dead. He did wonder how something like that had avoided ending up on the news, but some of what the Olympic werewolves had said hinted at a much larger organization or werewolves and Calvin now assumed that organization also included other supernatural beings. Hell, there could be vampires and mummies running around. Maybe whoever was in charge of all the spooky things that go bump in the night had a special team that went into towns like Nel’s and made everything look like swamp gas or some other lame, mundane excuse.

They walked in silence for a time. Then another question occurred to Nel. “What about other things? Have you met anyone who wasn’t a werewolf? Or a human, obviously.”

Calvin shook his head. “Those zombies were the first non-humans I had seen besides those other werewolves. Silly me, I had thought the only monsters that were real were werewolves. Shows what I know.”

Nel’s face screwed up in concentration. “I can’t remember if the other monsters I’ve seen are real. It gets hard to figure out which memories are real and which ones I made up.”

“Well what else do you think you have seen?” Calvin asked.

Nel closed her eyes and started shaking like a leaf in the wind. She bit her lip and hugged herself.

“Or not,” Calvin said hurriedly. It was hard to speak quickly as a werewolf. He always felt like he was gargling marbles. “You don’t have to think about the other monsters.”

Nel nodded. “Thank you. I...I just don’t know which ones were real. You’re real, aren’t you?”

“Very,” Calvin assured her. “We’re almost to the house. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe tonight. I’ve stashed some blankets inside just in case I need to sleep here some nights.”

“You’re a very kind werewolf,” Nel observed.

“Thank you, I try my best. Here we are. Remember, I will be out here in the woods if you need anything. I wish I had some food, but I will have to wait until morning to get that for you,” Calvin said.

“Don’t worry about it, I’m used to not eating everyday. Good night.” Nel went inside the empty house and presumably got settled in. The blankets were in the living room right inside the front door and that was about it. Calvin had cleaned out the garbage that a previous squatter had left. He waited for a while to make sure Nel didn’t need him for anything and then he began patrolling the woods around the house. Curiously, there were still no animals to be found. Calvin had assumed they would return once they left the area with the zombies, but that was clearly not the case. He was going to be very hungry come morning. He almost always ate an entire deer after transforming into a werewolf. Once he transformed he was ravenous.

The rest of the night passed without incident. As the moon began to set, Calvin returned to his home less than a mile away from the house he had shown Nel. He curled up in the grassy area where he had left his clothes and went to sleep. For whatever reason, the change from human to werewolf took place while he was wide awake, but he would only change back if he fell asleep. Luckily, after being up all night it was no trouble to curl up for a quick nap.

When Calvin awoke, naked as always, there was a man standing over him in a sharp looking business suit. He held a business card out to Calvin. “Tim Kane, business werewolf. We have a lot to discuss, young man.”

Everybody Out, Someone Werewolfed in the Pool - Day 2

"Mom, Dad, I think you've met everyone but Sara." Calvin gestured to the blonde girl sitting on the bleachers still glaring at Calvin. "Sara, this is my family."

Sara nodded in their general direction and sort of softened her glare as she did so. It was much better than Calvin had expected. Sara tended to lash out at strangers to make certain she had made a poor first impression, that way she would know for sure that these new people would never talk to her again.

"Ooh, Sara, that's a pretty name! And she's a very pretty girl too." Calvin's mother nudged him with her elbow conspiratorially without lowering her volume.

Calvin rolled his eyes. "Yes, Mom, we all know you think I should date all the girls."

"How do you know Callie?" Mom asked as she sat down next to Sara.

Sara did not like to speak and when forced to by direct questions she would either leave quickly or answer with as few words as possible in a dry monotone. She shot Calvin a sharp glance to let him know that she blamed him for this as well as Logan's earlier flirting and that he would pay dearly for both offenses. "Calvin killed my evil stepfather and now I'm indebted to him forever."

For once Calvin's mother was speechless, but his father snickered at what he thought was a sick joke to make his wife shut up. Everyone else shuffled awkwardly the way they always did when Sara said this. It was the explanation she always gave as to why she suddenly started hanging out with Calvin and they were likely getting worried that it was true, which of course it was.

"Right," Calvin said to break the tension. "Mom, why don't you talk to Kari instead, she actually likes you. We have to get back to the rest of the team."

Calvin, still holding on to Harris and Logan's ears, walked back to the row of chairs on the other side of the pool where the team sat during the meet. He released his friends and the three of them sat down.

Logan rubbed his ear, clearly galled by the injustice of being chastised in the same fashion as Harris. “Ow. What was that for? I was just trying to cheer her up by talking to her! She always seems so sad.”

“So you decided to talk to her about Charles Dickens books? One of the most depressing authors ever?” Calvin shook his head.

“They aren’t all depressing!” Logan protested.

“Yeah, yeah. Books. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever,” Harris interrupted. “Logan, you suck at hitting on girls. Everyone knows this. You should watch me in action instead of wasting your time on Sara.”

“Kari gave you a tittie-twister and then punched you! And Sara just needs someone to be there for her. I’m sure it’s been hard since her stepdad disappeared.” Logan looked pointedly at Calvin.

Calvin rolled his eyes. “Yes, Logan. I murdered him and hid the body.” Funnily enough, Calvin had never once lied about the fate of Sara’s stepfather, but because he was a sarcastic son of a bitch everyone always assumed he was joking. Not that it really mattered, there was nothing to tie him to the killing since he had been transformed at the time and the police were unlikely to consider werewolf as a viable murder weapon.

“Well, obviously not!” Logan said adamantly. “But Sara is still clearly in need of a friend and I am an excellent listener.” He drew himself up proudly.

“Which I’m sure is why you talked at her the whole time you were sitting next to her.” Calvin scowled at Logan. This was not the first time he had needed to explain to Logan that his listening skills were sometimes ruined by his love of hearing his own voice.

Harris snicked. “Oh my god, that is spot on! Logan, you totally do that all the time with girls!”

“I do not!” Logan protested, his pride suddenly wounded. “I am the best listener! Girls can tell me anything and know that I will never divulge their secrets or take advantage of them!”

“And that’s the secret, you damn idiot! They want you to take advantage of them!” Harris smirked knowingly.

“Ugh! That’s disgusting! You are the reason that girls don’t trust nice guys like me! You ruin everything. Calvin, tell Harris how revolting he is,” Logan insisted.

Calvin sighed. “Harris, you are the most disgusting person I know.”

Logan chortled triumphantly. “Ha! I told you!”

“And Logan, you are the world’s biggest dope.” Then Calvin stood and walked away to leave them to their bickering.

“He’s right about us both, you know,” Calvin heard Harris gloat to Logan.

Calvin wandered back to the far corner of the pool so he could stand in the quiet of the alcove that was used when parents rented the pool on weekends for their kids’ birthday parties. A freshman on the team was making with his boyfriend and they both squeaked and scurried away when Calvin jerked his thumb over his shoulder and leveled his patented scowl at the two of them.

“That was rude of you,” Sara said in her usual monotone. “What if I had wanted to scare them off and you spoiled me fun?”

“We can’t always get what we want.” Calvin smirked.

“You mean like how you won’t let me see you change?” Sara asked.

Calvin’s smirk fell into a frown. “Control is a bit dodgy at first. It takes me a while to get a hold on all the different emotions I feel once I’m a werewolf.”

Sara sighed. “Will you at least visit tonight?”

“Sara, he’s gone. Forever. You don’t need me to keep you safe any more.” Calvin looked away so he didn’t have to see the look on Sara’s face.

After a long moment of silence, Sara spoke again. “You didn’t have to come tell me it was you afterwards. I would never have known you were the werewolf who saved me and carried away his dead body.”

Calvin shook his head. “I was afraid you would think you had gone insane. I felt guilty for showing myself to you. I should have waited until he was alone and taken him then.”

“But then he probably would have finished beating me to death. I really do owe you my life.”

“You don’t owe me anything.” Calvin felt his anger about to boil over. Not at Sara, but at her stepfather. Normally Calvin was very calm, not as emotionless as Sara usually was, but when the moon was about to be full he felt every emotion so much stronger. Especially anger. Anger became very difficult to control and it was nearly impossible for him to control his temper.

“Whatever. Just keep Logan from bothering me.” Sara walked away and yelled over her shoulder, “And your mom asks stupid questions.”

Calvin waited in the alcove until his next race. When the meet was over he went with the rest of the team to the pizza place across the street from the pool. They had won by a substantial margin and the guys were all in a very celebratory mood. Except for Calvin, that is. The closer they got to moonrise the more his skin itched. He wanted to be out in the woods hunting already. He ached for the transformation to come.

“Snorting parmesan cheese is nothing!” Harris declared. “Watch this!” He lowered his straw to a line of hot pepper flakes and inhaled sharply. Predictably, the idiot sputtered and coughed as his eyes immediately welled up with tears.

Calvin grabbed a handful of napkins and waited patiently while everyone else at their table hooted with laughter.

“My nose is bleeding!” Harris gasped. “Oh, thank you,” he said to Calvin when he was handed a napkin.

“See, I told you that you were a dumbass and I am an intelligent, sensitive, all around good guy!” Logan gloated.

Calvin just chuckled to himself. He knew that despite his best efforts to the contrary, Harris was no idiot.

“Oh my gosh, what happened?” The tall waitress who Harris had been eying since they walked in asked him worriedly. “Let me go get you some ice!”

Harris grinned from ear to ear and winked at Calvin. Logan’s mouth was hanging open, whether from awe or disgust, Calvin couldn’t tell, but when the girl came back with the ice Harris got her phone number and promised to text her when he got home to let her know he was alright.

“He’s evil,” Logan said at last. “Pure evil. It’s like he made a deal with the devil for his damn good looks and the ability to say any damn thing he wants to women and still have it work out in his favor!”

Calvin patted Logan on the shoulder. “There, there. Why don’t you just work on your listening skills for a bit, eh?”

“Are you telling me to shut up?” Logan asked warily.

Harris snorted back a laugh. “Why would anyone ever want you to shut up?”

Logan glared across the table at Harris.

“Calm down, girls. No need to fight. You’re both pretty. But I think I’ve had enough pizza. It’s time for me to be gone.” Calvin stood and made his exit before the other two could try to get him to arbiter another of their ridiculous arguments.

The cool night breeze blew through Calvin’s fur as he bounded amongst the trees. This was living. The full moon was high overhead and the air was pleasantly brisk. It should have been the perfect night for hunting, but there was a disturbing lack of game in the forest. It had been like this all night and Calvin had the oddest feeling that something was wrong with the woods tonight. He had never experienced a sensation like this before and he wondered if it might be some kind of new werewolf sense that was developing.

Then he saw the zombies closing in on the girl crying in the middle of a clearing.

Everybody Out, Someone Werewolfed in the Pool - Day 1

The one thing Calvin Throbly could not wrap his head around now that he was a werewolf was why the hell he still couldn’t grow facial hair. Weren’t werewolves supposed to be hairy? Calvin couldn’t even grow a decent moustache! In the movies werewolves all of the sudden had hair everywhere, but then again knowing his luck Calvin would have grown a ton of hair, but it all would have been invisible because he had such light blonde hair. Yes sir, he could just imagine how burly and manly he would look from four inches away, which was how close you had to be to see what little chest hair he currently had.

These were the kinds of moronic things Calvin thought about to distract himself while standing on the starting blocks before a race. He needed the distraction, because he always had to pee right before he swam in a meet. No matter how many times he went to the bathroom right before the race, as soon as he hopped up on the blocks he had to go.

“Let’s see some splashes, skinny man!” Calvin’s best friend Kari shouted from the bleachers and then wolf whistled loudly. Kari was a soccer player who did not understand why any sane human person would engage in swimming for recreation or competition, but she came to every home meet and cheered her head off any way.

For perhaps the hundredth time, Calvin silently cursed the team captain for choosing speedos for their team uniform. While Calvin was tall, pale, skinny and would not look any good in a speedo normally, he happened to have played on the tennis team in the fall and his tan lines had not faded yet so he had a lovely sock line, an equally magnificent shorts line, a farmers tan to make any Iowan jealous, and a nifty little V on his chest from the polo.

Calvin swam the first event of every meet, the two hundred yard individual medley. Being as graceful as a moose with a drinking problem, he had trouble with the butterfly, which was the first stroke of the medley, and he had a tendency to swerve during the backstroke which also set him back a bit, but where Calvin really shined was the third stroke, the breaststroke. For everyone else it was their rest before the fourth and final stroke where everyone sprinted to the finish. Calvin would haul ass during the breaststroke to retake all the ground he had lost and hopefully take the lead.

This was their first swim meet of the year and on top of that it was a full moon tonight, so Calvin found himself a little extra tense. This would be his eighth transformation, so it was not as though he were worried about that aspect, but the closer it was to the full moon, the more volatile Calvin’s emotions became.

Finally, blessedly, they were told to take their marks and Calvin got down into position. The buzzer blurted out the start signal and Calvin threw himself into the air and dove down into the pool. He could never tell how smooth his starts were on account of his aforementioned lack of coordination so he forced himself not to wonder if he had bellyflopped or failed to keep his legs straight or any other stupid thing he tended to do on a start. Calvin focused entirely on dolphin kicking furiously towards the surface. Once he reached the surface he threw his arm around for the first arm pull and actually felt like less of an idiot than he normally did when doing the butterfly. He kept himself from looking left or right to see where the other swimmers were until the turn.

When Calvin reached the wall he had only an instant to peek at the lane to his left where the other team’s best swimmer for this event would be. Generally, the two hundred individual medley swimmers were not the very best on the whole team since they were more or less a jack of all trades rather than super fast at any given stroke. During his quick peek Calvin was able to see that he had beat the his main competitor to the wall by just a fraction of a second. Calvin cursed violently inside his head as he pushed off and dolphin kicked again. If his opponent wasn’t thumping him at the butterfly that meant he was a fellow breaststroker and this was going to be a heck of a race.

The next turn took them into the backstroke and Calvin had to focus his whole attention on following the ceiling beams so that he went more or less straight instead of careening from one lane line to the other. That meant he had no idea where his opponent was. He might have been a backstroker instead of a breaststroker like Calvin assumed. Calvin told himself not to worry and focus on not missing the flip turn and banging his head into the bulkhead. He managed not to give himself a concussion and raced back to the starting side so that he could work his magic at the breaststroke.

Calvin excelled at taking a long underwater pull so when he came up to take his first stroke he was nearly halfway down the pool. He could hear shouts of encouragement every time he surfaced.

“GO! SPLASH! WIN!” Kari bellowed each time Calvin came up for air. Calvin had been told that breaststroke was a ridiculous race to watch people cheer for, because they would go silent every time their swimmer submerged and then have time to shout one syllable before going silent again.

At the turn Calvin was delighted to see that he was multiple body lengths ahead of his closest competition. Either that guy sucked or Calvin was about to start the season off with a huge personal best. He kept swimming as hard as he could.

Calvin blazed through the freestyle as quickly as he could, knowing that would be when everyone else would be sprinting after resting up during the breaststroke. He finished first easily and was ecstatic to have knocked nearly ten seconds off his best time from the end of last season. Not quite a state qualifying time, but more than good enough to let out a whoop of joy and have all of his team mates cheering like mad men.

After Kari, Calvin’s next best friends were Logan and Harris, both of whom were on the swim team with him, and both of whom were waiting to congratulate him once all the other swimmers had finished and he climbed out of the pool.

“Well done, buddy!” Logan slapped Calvin on the back and shook his hand. “Blew your old personal record out of the water!”

“Yeah, and you mopped the floor with that other guy!” Harris added just as that other guy was walking past.

Calvin smacked Harris on the back of the head. “You inconsiderate git,” he chided halfheartedly. If Calvin took the time to get upset with Harris every time he stuck his foot in his pretty-boy mouth, Calvin would have died of heart failure years ago.

“Ow! What? Chicks love winners, science has proven!” Harris protested as he and Logan followed Calvin over to the bleachers.

Kari sat on the first row of bleachers next to the only other person Calvin really talked to, Sara. Kari gave Calvin an enthusiastic high five while Sara quietly sat on the uncomfortable metal bench and almost didn’t glare at Calvin.

“Way to splash! You obviously had way more splashes than the other team!” Kari nodded as though this were high praise and splashes were an actual swimming statistic instead of gibberish that she thought was a hilarious cover for not knowing anything about swimming.

Calvin chuckled. “Thank you. We all splashed our splashiest.”

“Wait until you see the splash I make,” Harris winked one of his impossibly green eyes at Kari.

Kari’s hand darted out and twisted Harris’ nipple. “I see you trying to flex your muscles, idiot! You’re such a smarmy little bastard!”

“Ow! Ow! Ow! Let go!” Harris pleaded. “It was Calvin’s fault! He told me you liked the way I looked in my speedo!”

Kari punched Harris in the stomach and then let his nipple go. “And you’re a pathological liar. Calvin doesn’t think anyone looks good in a speedo.” She brushed her dark brown hair back and shook her head at Harris.

Harris never stopped trying to flirt with Kari. He considered it a personal challenge that she was able to resist his charms, which he thought were beyond even James Bond’s level of suave. Little did he realize that other than Kari, the only girls he tried to woo were pretty and dumb. That was probably why his lying worked so well normally.

“...and that’s why A Tale of Two Cities is my favorite Charles Dickens work,” Logan droned on as Sara sat next to him, blatantly ignoring the hell out of him as she stared daggers at Calvin as though this were all his fault.

Calvin winced when he realized that he had been ignoring one idiot friend because his other, more idiotic friend, had been more entertaining. Logan was an entirely different kind of obnoxious as soon as he was around girls and Calvin could never make up his mind which of his male friends were worse. So he grabbed both of them by the ear without a word and started pulling them away from the bleachers.

“Callie! Did we miss your swim?” An incredibly loud voice interrupted Calvin from dragging the boys away by their ears. Calvin’s family bustled noisily down to where he and his friends stood.

“Hi Mom, yeah you missed it, but I got a personal best by almost ten seconds and I’ll have three more races,” Calvin told her.

“Sorry, we had to stop and get Gemma ice cream,” Calvin’s father explained.

“It’s bubblegum flavor!” Calvin’s younger sister Gemma proclaimed proudly as she displayed her ice cream cone. She had pink smeared all around her mouth and some of it had already dripped onto her purple kitty shirt. She was wearing Grinch pajama pants and slippers that looked like duck feet. Gemma was only two years younger than Calvin, sixteen going on four and a half.