Chapter Text
The light on the horizon was fading rather quick tonight. It was a silly thing Enid noticed, and maybe it was simply because this meant that the full moon would be here sooner than expected, but whatever the cause, she found that she was exhausting several nervous habits as the time passed. Pacing back and forth across her side of the dorm, biting at the tips of her rainbow-painted nails, texting her friends excessively about nothing at all.
Tonight would be only her second time wolfing out. It’s not that she didn’t want to shift—just the opposite, actually. Since her first full moon transformation, she’d felt a strange sense of security in herself. She no longer felt secretly ashamed passing by the fur’s table on the quad or bringing up common werewolf things when talking with her friends (the same way Yoko spoke about her vamp problems and Bianca and Divina would gossip about their endless flow of siren drama).
What was truly weighing her down was how quickly everything in her life was changing. One minute she was a late-blooming, hollow shell of a werewolf smiling her way through all of her life’s chaos. The next she’s practically the hero of the school, having wolfed out for the very first time to save her dorm mate from near death at the claws of a hyde. Not just any hyde, either. It had been that lying “normie,” Tyler.
Enid had known from the start of it all that there was something off about that coward. The general aura of lies and mistrust following him had been so thick it was like she had smelt it. She just hadn’t been able to place the cause for her suspicion until it was too late. Perhaps if she had figured out his dirty little secret sooner she could have been there for Wednesday before he ever laid a finger on her . . .
She despised the idea of that sick monster touching Wednesday.
Enid’s thoughts were spiraling. That always seemed to happen when her mind tracked its way back to her gothic roomie.
Wednesday had that sort of hold on people, it seemed—though the homicidal girl hardly noticed this herself, perceptive as she was. It’s not as though she did it on purpose, anyway; everyone simply seemed attracted to her presence for one reason or another.
Wednesday was a magnetic force. A dark kind of magnetic force that quietly desired to stay as far away from living beings as humanly possible.
Maybe if she wasn’t so perfect . . .
This thought stopped Enid right in the course of her mindless pacing cycle. She let go of the bracelet she’d been anxiously fiddling with, her arms slowly falling back to their sides. Stealing a glance in the direction of Wednesday’s side of the dorm, her eyes made their way to the focal point of the notably colorless other half of their room. The desk where Wednesday would normally sit, the vintage black typewriter, the chair that was, for once, unoccupied. Wednesday was out with Eugene taking care of what he had called a: “Hive code red! Serious bee emergency!” (“Bee . . . emergency . . . beemergency! ”)
It was odd that Wednesday wasn’t here; the antisocial girl almost never went out. Of course, Wednesday wouldn't hesitate to help a friend, but usually if her help was needed elsewhere, Enid would also be out and about—instead of being stuck inside this hellhole of stirring thoughts. Meaning while both girls were preoccupied, Enid’s mind could catch a break from all things pertaining to the complicated Addams girl and her werewolf-isms.
What had previously been a quick glance in the direction of Wednesday’s side turned into a prolonged stare. Barely paying attention to herself, Enid soon found that her legs were carrying her over to the chair that Wednesday herself should have been sitting in. Oddly feeling as though she could sense the black-and-white girl’s gaze fixed on the back of her head, Enid hesitantly sat on the cold, hard wood where Wednesday’s inspiration apparently struck. She slumped over, gripping the seat of the chair until her knuckles lost color and letting her knee bounce up and down like a spring. She threw yet another glimpse out of the stained-glass window to her left.
Enid noted that the sun had almost entirely melted beneath Nevermore’s old castle buildings outside. Soon, the moon would begin its ascent into a mocking void of black that was sure to be sucking the last traces of color from the sky within the coming minutes.
Enid had been on Wednesday’s side of their shared space plenty of times before, but it somehow felt colder now with the absence of the other girl’s physical presence. She shivered in her pink and purple striped sweater, feeling the weight of what would shortly be her future slam into her chest. She let out a heavy sigh, which quickly gave way to a series of sharp, rapid breaths as she tried and failed to calm her nerves.
Her hands began to shake. She firmly shut her eyes and threw her head back as she felt her face beginning to grow warm. “Don’t be such a cupcake , Enid,” she told herself aloud, the words sounding forced coming from her tightened throat. She had pressed her palms into her eyelids in desperation—white stars dancing around the edges of her vision—when her claws slid out unexpectedly, nearly scratching through her skin. “ Shit! ” she gasped, briskly drawing back in alarm. Her body was preparing to transform. In less than an hour at most she’d be back on all-fours, in her full-on werewolf form again . . . but she wasn’t ready. She pulled her claws back in, stunned.
Curling into a ball and still sitting on the wrong side of the dorm, Enid tucked her head to her chest and let herself cry. Her sobs came muffled by the sleeves of her sweater, the heavy tears practically dragging themselves from her tear ducts and down her cheeks.
Why does it all have to be so hectic? Why is everything moving so fast, yet still so slow?
She asked herself these questions internally. Her chest was beginning to ache as her pitiful whimpers echoed around the now-shadowy space enclosing her. Only the twinkly lights above her bed and the lamp sitting just beside her on Wednesday’s desk lit the interior of the tower dorm now.
Why does it feel like I can’t control anything in my life anymore? And Wednesday? What if I never know how she feels . . . ?
Ever since Enid had ended things with her platonic bestie, Ajax (the gorgon and herself had agreed they were better off as friends after all), she had been positive that she no longer considered Wednesday . . . a friend.
Not anymore, at least. Not deep down.
Wednesday, on the other hand, seemed completely fine keeping things distant between them as usual, even after they’d finally shared their hug in the forest that night. Enid had hoped that something inside of Wednesday might have clicked after that moment, as it had for herself, but it appeared not. That was just the psychic girl’s way, she had concluded. Cold and concealed.
Still, Enid had known long before then that she felt something for Wednesday, but at the time she’d still been with Ajax. She simply assumed that having another person to share her dorm room with, another person to share her life with, had caused her to feel such strange things for Wednesday. Enid had never quite opened up to another person like she had, and still did, with her polar opposite.
She no longer denied that she had very real feelings for her best friend.
Another sob shook her body and she let out a soft growl of anguish just as her sensitive hearing picked up on the faint click and ensuing squeaaak of the door cracking open behind her.