CHAPTER SIX
When I pulled into the school parking lot and parked next to Matt’s car the next morning, he was waiting for me like we had planned. I grabbed my hair and quickly put it up in a high ponytail so my mark would show. Then I grabbed my bag and got out of the car.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Not yet.” He took my hand in his. “Now I’m ready. Let’s do this.”
And just like that we walked into school, holding hands, heads held high. At first, nobody noticed. Everyone was buzzing around the halls, babbling about one thing or another. It started with a few gasps, and then seemed to grow from there. We just kept walking. Matt stopped at my locker to drop me off. He slid me gently up against my locker and kissed me.
“See you at lunch,” I said, “Text me if you need me.”
“You do the same, okay?” He grinned at me and walked off toward his locker.
I turned to find Lyssa staring at me. “So, what happened to you last night? First you take off, then you leave us with nary a word?”
“‘Nary’?” I said.
“Well, Damian was gonna rub off on me at some point. So what the hell happened?”
“Matt’s a shifter!” Damian exclaimed, coming around the corner so fast he smacked right into us. Jeez, word travels fast.
“Oh. My. God.” Lyssa said.
I couldn’t help but chuckle at the looks on their faces.
Lys and I said see you later to Damian, walked into homeroom and sat in our usual seats.
Lyssa leaned over toward me. “So that’s what was up with him all this time?” she whispered.
“Yep. He was pretty freaked out.”
“And now everything’s okay? ’Cause you two just marched in here like you’re ready to take on the world.”
“Well,” I said, trying to hold back a smile but failing miserably, “I showed him how to phase and—”
“Wait, wait—you showed him how to phase? Did I miss something here?”
“Kinda,” I replied. “Victrixa showed me on Sunday, so I showed him yesterday and, well…” I leaned closer and whispered in her ear, “We phased and ran through Gila for hours and ended up on the beach. Alone.”
She sat up straight. “Seriously? Oh. My. God. Maya, spill,” she demanded.
“We said, you know...that we love each other,” I mouthed.
“Holy shit!”
“Shh. We’re mated. We also decided that we are not going to hide being shifters.”
“Jesus, Maya, that’s....” She stopped talking and slowly looked around the room. I couldn’t figure out what she was doing until I looked for myself and realized that everyone was staring at us.
“Excuse me,” Lyssa said loudly, “This may be English class, but you all don’t have any lines in this play!” Jeez, I loved her.
That’s when the teacher walked into the room. “Neither do you, Ms. Vasquez,” Ms. Mendoza said.
“Ouch.” Lyssa grimaced and turned around in her seat.
We spent the rest of class continuing to study Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” which I kinda like. (I’m Mayan and a shifter. Figures I’d like a poem with a damn talking bird in it.) While we were answering the questions in the text, I looked up and thought I caught Ms. Mendoza watching me. She had the oddest look on her face. When I looked up again, though, she was correcting papers.
I didn’t hear from Matt all class, which I thought was a good sign. Actually, I didn’t get a text all morning. My own day was going pretty uneventfully so far. Well, there was some staring and whispering, and in history I heard Ashley Daniels tell Christy Lee that she didn’t understand how it was possible to turn into a tree. (I should have asked her how it was possible to turn herself into a blond.) But, truthfully, I had expected worse, much worse. Then when we were walking down the hallway by the cafeteria at lunch....
“What is that?” Alyssa asked.
We were both hearing a strange sound coming from the cafeteria.
“I dunno,” I said. I stopped short in the doorway.
“Are they...howling?” Damian asked.
“Oh! Matt!”
The entire jock table was howling wolf calls at Matt, who was standing a few feet away looking like he wanted to pound someone’s head in. I was horrified. I stalked over, took his hand and led him out into the hallway.
“Are you okay?” I asked him. “Maybe we should eat outside today?”
“No way,” he said through clenched teeth. “I can’t believe I thought those douche bags were my friends. Unbelievable.”
“Let’s just eat at our table,” Damian suggested sweetly. That kid had a heart of gold.
“Yeah, let’s just do that,” Lyssa added.
We walked back in and sat across the room at our usual jock-free table. Trying to keep everything as normal as possible, we took out our lunches. But Matt kept looking at the guys from the team. I didn’t know what to say. He looked angry, but I knew his feelings were hurt, too. I tried to eat, but my lunch tasted like a pile of sawdust. Even the twins were totally silent the entire lunch.
Why couldn’t it have been me instead? I mean me, I’m a dork. I totally expected to get the brunt of the bullying. I hadn’t thought that Matt’s friends would turn on him like that. But I should have known. They had only liked him for his status, Matt the Quarterback. Why the hell hadn’t I seen this coming?
At the end of lunch, we headed down the hall and stopped by my locker. I looked up into his eyes and his face softened.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
“Yeah, I’ll be all right.” He sighed. “It’s not like I didn’t see this coming.”
Unlike me, he had expected this? Crap! I wasn’t sure if that made it better for him or worse.
“And, anyway,” he added, “it’s not like football matters much now. I’d never be allowed to play in college, and that’s what I was shooting for.”
Matt was right, I realized with a start. Shifters were still largely unaccepted in a lot of ways, but out of all of them, sports were the worst. They were able to keep shifters out by claiming that they had unfair advantages, like unnatural strength and speed. It was a lie, of course. When we were in our human form, we didn’t have the same abilities we had when we were in our second form. It’s not like avian shifters were flying around in their human forms. What was hiding at the heart of those claims? Prejudice. And as I looked into his face, I could see that he was thinking the same thing.
“Well, you could always just be a geek, like me,” I smiled up at him.
“A gorgeous geek,” he said, and he kissed me.
Lyssa, who had followed us, groaned out loud. “Hey, enough with the PDA. You make me want to gouge my eyes out already.”
I hadn’t planned it, but somehow when I got home, I just didn’t feel like taking my ponytail out. After my first day of school as a shifter, I just didn’t want to hide who I was anymore. Besides, at that point, I had other worries to think about. I still had no idea what the deal was with that weird vision I’d had. What was going on? I had never heard of shifters developing other abilities. And I wasn’t sure who to talk to about it either. My first thought was Grandma. Or maybe Victrixa? No. She seemed nice enough, but she’d only been my mentor for, what, two weeks?
“When did you get home, honey? I didn’t even hear you come in,” Dad said, looking up from his work.
“Um, just a few minutes ago. Could we, uh, talk about something before I start dinner?”
“Sure. What’s up?” He opened the fridge and took out a seltzer.
“It’s...well...it’s more something I need to show you.” I took a deep breath, picked up my ponytail, and turned around.
“What the hell? Did you get a tattoo? Maya, come on, what were you thinking!”
“No, Dad, it’s not what you think.” I took another deep breath. “I’m, I’m a shifter.”
“You’re—you’re what?”
“A shape-shifter.”
He looked at my mark
again. “But, that doesn’t make any sense. Your mark, it’s the Tree of Life, isn’t it? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know it doesn’t. It’s a ceiba tree. We’ve been trying to figure that out. Why I’ve got a tree.”
“We?”
Crap. “Grandma and I.”
“Your grandmother? How long have you known about this? Have you phased already? I mean this is...it’s crazy. You’re not even eighteen.”
“I know. I phased early somehow.” I could see the next question in his eyes, but I didn’t know if he could ask it. It would make the whole thing too real for him. Maybe I had waited too long to tell him? Was I totally messing this up? Balam, please help me make him understand.
“My second form is Jaguar.” I heard him gasp and then suck in his breath. Balam, make me strong, give me the right words. “Dad,” I said as calmly as I could, “I’m still me. I’m still Maya.”
He shook his head like he was trying to shake something out, then he kissed me on the cheek. “I know that, honey. This is...well, it’s just going to take some getting used to. Can you be patient with your old man?”
I smiled at him. “Sure I can.”
After dinner I decided to call Grandma to see if she knew anything that could help me figure out the weird vision I’d had. I walked into my bedroom and plopped down on the bed and dialed. She answered right away.
“Hi, honey, how is everything? Victrixa called and told me how beautifully you phased!”
“Yeah, I guess I did. Something really amazing happened to me last night, Grandma. I found my mate!”
“That’s wonderful, ts’unu’un. Is it Matt? Has he phased?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he loves you! If a Mayan Elder phases, oftentimes the one that is meant for her will phase as well.”
“Whoa, what are you saying? That Matt phased because of me? He wouldn’t have phased otherwise?”
“His soul wanted to be with you,” she said. “And because shifters mate only with other shifters, he made the transformation.”
I thought I was going to puke. I’d turned my boyfriend into a shifter. Or rather my soon-to-be ex-boyfriend. Again. Then something else she’d said hit me.
“But why do you say I’m an Elder? You’re an Elder, Grandma, not me.”
“Why? Because I’m old?” she laughed. “I didn’t start out that way, you know.”
“You’re not old, Grandma.”
“Maya, I want you to listen to me now. It’s not possible to have the strong life force that you have and not be an Elder. In fact, you have more k’ul than anyone I’ve ever known.”
I didn’t know how to take that. I was quiet for so long, she asked if I was still there. All I could say was, “I’m scared, Grandma.”
“The unknown is always scary, ts’unu’un.”
“I know...it’s just that...well, now I’m having visions,” I choked out.
“Are these visions during rituals, honey?”
“Um, one was, but yesterday I had one in the school cafeteria. That’s how I knew something was happening with Matt.”
It seemed like an eternity went by before she answered me. “You know, Maya, that sounds like a different kind of vision. It sounds more like a premonition.”
Huh? “A premonition?”
“Some people have the ability to see the past, present or future. It sounds to me like you saw the present.”
“Is that some kind of shifter or Elder thing?”
“No tribal Elder that I know could do it without first opening a portal into the Otherworld. And to do that, the Elder would need a ritual. I’ve never heard of a shifter being able to have a spontaneous vision at all.” She was quiet for a moment. “Maybe I should speak with Victrixa.”
“Thanks, Grandma. That would be great. I’ll talk to you soon, I love you.”
“I love you, too, ts’unu’un.”
I put the phone down and lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling. I was totally stressing. I was having weird visions that no one could explain. This just wasn’t normal. And it didn’t help that Grandma wasn’t sure what was going on. All my life, she had known the answers. And then there was Matt. I’d turned my boyfriend into a shifter! How would he feel when he knew that I was the reason he had phased? Would he be angry? Something inside my head whispered that he wouldn’t want to be with me once he knew.
And I was an Elder? Jesus, were there even sixteen-year-old Elders? I had seen pictures of the Elders from Grandma’s tribe and they all looked like, well...like Grandma! I mean, there were reasons why they were called Elders! They had lived long lives and had all kinds of wisdom and stuff. I couldn’t figure out how to balance equations!
After a while, I got up, opened my door, and yelled for Dad to see if he’d already left for the lab. No reply. So I picked up my cell again and, trying to control my breathing, dialed Matt’s number.
“Hey, babe,” he said on the first ring.
“Are you busy?”
“Not too busy for you. I’m just doing homework. What’s up?”
“I wondered if maybe you could come over for a little bit.”
“Sure. Half hour sound okay?”
“That’d be great.”
I lay back down on the bed, and I swear I didn’t move until the doorbell rang. I flopped down the stairs and stopped at the door, trying to collect myself. This might be the last time I ever saw him. An image of his tortured face as he told me he was a shifter ran through my mind. I took a deep breath and pulled the door open.
“Hi, come on in,” I choked out.
“Hey,” he said. I started walking in the direction of the living room when he stopped me. “What? No hug?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, snuggling into him. “Do you want something to drink? A Coke?” I asked, more to stall than to be polite.
“I’m good.”
I led him to the couch and we sat down.
I had to speak, I couldn’t just sit there. “Um, there’s something I need to tell you, something I just found out.”
“You’re as white as chalk,” he said. “Maya, what’s wrong? Are you all right?”
All right? “Well, you know how shifters have only one mate and it’s always another shifter?”
“Sure. Everyone knows that.”
“Well, it, uh, it turns out....” Jeez, how could I say this? “It turns out that I’m probably a Mayan Elder.”
“Really? Well, I guess that’s no surprise. Your Grandma Rosa is one. That’s great, My! I’m proud of you.”
“Could, could you just let me finish?” I stammered. My hands were shaking, so I tucked them underneath my thighs. “Usually two shifters find each other and they mate for life. It’s almost always two shifters. But, but I’m an Elder and I phased, so you phased too.” I looked into his eyes and waited, waited for the moment that they showed understanding.
Yep, there it was.
“So you’re saying that you phased and because I was meant to be your mate, I phased, too?”
“Yes.” That was all I could think of to say. I looked down at my lap. The tears that had started to run down my cheeks said the rest. But instead of flying into a rage or walking out, he wiped a tear away with his thumb.
“Did you think I would leave you?”
“Uh huh,” I said, nodding like an idiot. By now, I was just about ready for full-on snot-a-thon.
“Maya, look at me,” he said tilting my chin up. “Maybe this is true, maybe it’s not, but if it is, it just means that we’re meant to be together.”
“But everything you’re going through might be because of me.”
“It doesn’t matter. Don’t you see? My heart wanted you. And it did whatever it had to do to be with you. I love you, My.”
“I love you, too.” I sniffled again.
And then he kissed me. He kissed me in a way he never had before. In a way no one had ever kissed me before. It was hard and deep, hungry. I felt a
rush of pleasure that was different from anything I’d ever felt. I reached up to the back of his neck to make sure he didn’t stop. He put his arms around me and lifted me up, then laid me down on the couch. I could feel electricity everywhere our skin touched. I slid my hand down the back of his jeans trying to pull him against me. He moaned. It was like we were channeling the animal spirits within us. We broke away for a moment, panting, looking into each other’s eyes. And I could see that the Wolf was there, but there was love there, too. So much love. I knew then that I would do anything for him. Anything.