Cassie pov

Summer!!! Star yelled excitedly in my head.

Ok settle down, Star. We aren’t ready to go yet. I replied holding back my own excitement.

The sun shone brightly on my recently cut shoulder length brown hair, cut for just for the summer. So much had changed over the year and it signified for me the transformation I had gone through. It was the first day of summer vacation and I was already missing out on the fun at the Lake cabins. I was helping my dad pack the car, hoping it would speed things up. But it didn’t seem to be making their departure time change to my dismay. I dropped my reading bag in the back seat and yelled “Mom, come on! We’re burning day light.”

I had one place I wanted to be right now, and it was not here. I wanted to be at our annual cabins by the lake. Every summer we spent the whole vacation with my parents’ friends and their kids, my friends, our werewolf friends. This summer was going to be different, I had finally shifted, the last one of my friends. I had diligently spent my free time practicing; I could not wait to show off my newly acquired skill and finally get to join in the werewolf games.

Seriously. We spent all this time to help. It seems like they drag out leaving more and more each year.

Star, come on. They are getting old you know.

Very true. Star and I laughed together unconsciously a chuckle left my lips as mom and dad approached the car. They eyed me questioningly. I just shrugged it off and acted like it didn’t happen.

“Someone is excited. I wonder why?” My mom asked as she raised her an eyebrow and side glance at dad as they slid into the front seat

“It doesn’t have to do with you being able to shift, does it?” My dad taunted me with a half-smile and a brief eye roll.

“Well, yeah of course. But more so this is the only time of year I get a break from my studies and have teenage fun.” I work hard all year, only getting minimal social time, just enough to blend into the crowd to avoid being classified as a nerd. I have some school friends that I study with and meet up with on occasion. I attend a few clubs integrating into fundraisers and meeting. But you nothing that will distract me or take my time away from being an exemplary student. My studies are my priority making it hard to make any deep close connections to those I go to school with. But my summer friends know me they are closer than any friend I have ever had or will have.

“Well, from the looks of your backpack, I don’t know how you would find time to have any fun.” My mom said to me, winking. She liked that I spent more time with books and papers. It kept my mind off boys I suppose. They were always on me about me having the choice that they never had. And I wasn’t quite sure what they meant. Us being werewolves living on the border between a wolf pack and human town, so our neighbors were human, and my high school had more humans than werewolves. I wondered if that was the choice, they wanted me to have living a human life with a career or a wolf life in a pack. I didn’t see much difference between the two. Not to the extent they seemed to.

“Oh this, this is just some light reading.” I tossed my hair to the side, playfully.

I grabbed the book on top and cracked it open, being a long drive, I knew I would get a chance to make a good dent in it before we got there. Being a werewolf has it’s benefits like running fast and for some of us we can read just as fast. I fell asleep halfway through my book and was woken up at the last rest stop before the cabins. I could feel star stirring and making me antsy in return.

Star, can you just heal. Geez all this pacing is making it hard to concentrate on my book.

I felt he stop and heard a brief huff as I am sure she laid down unwillingly pouting slightly leaving me with silence which I preferred especially while engrossed in a good book.

My dad broke the silence, making me huff at the nerve he had to interrupt my reading “So how has shifting been going? I am sorry we haven’t had much time to help you.” Not a question I anticipated from him, but I decided it was one worth putting my book down for. I slipped in a bookmark and carefully returned it to my backpack on the top of the pile.

“It has been good. You don’t have to apologize. Not soon after I had my first shift, I heard that the pack house was offering wolf training classed for the teenagers. So, I have been going for a few months now. Been learning lots of things. “

“Wait! WHAT?!!!” My mom turned her body fully around, eyes narrowing on me. “Why is this the first time I am hearing about this?”

“I told you guys I was going to the pack house I assumed you knew about the classes.” I shrug innocently. I don’t need to tell them every tiny detail of my life, do I?

Absolutely not. Star answered my internal question. Thank you star. But I don’t think he support would easy my mothers’ current mood

“No, we did not honey…I think you should stop takin them.”

Is she serious? Dad just apologized for not helping train us and now mom is telling us we can’t have training. Star was fuming and returned to her pacing but not the gentle kind.

“You don’t have time for things like that, there are more important things you should focus your attention on.” My mom said to the windshield as she returned to her forward facing position. Her disappointment and controlling tone bouncing off the glass leaving me warm and irritated. I hated how she did that, how she could turn being a werewolf into being an inconvenience and a waste of time. I felt most at home and myself around werewolves, and that is why summer was so important for me to be around my kind with no expectations or pretensions. Granted I didn’t know much about my friends as we never talked about our lives outside of the time we spent together during summer. To think of it I had no idea what their parents did as jobs or what pack they came from.

Why don’t we know? Star poked at me with her question and brushed it off. Obviously, they all wanted to get away from their lives and just enjoy their summer. I loved that they didn’t ask about the rest of the year because I didn’t have much to talk about. My life was pretty boring and predictable. So, I could see why they wouldn’t want to talk about things from their other life.