Regardless of the truth, I had a reputation that stuck with me as I grew up. Even into my junior year of high school, kids thought I was bad news. It didn't help that I had the worst luck imaginable, unlike Mr. Nickels, who I still had yet to find. Trouble seemed to seek me out. Just the simple act of walking home from school was usually dangerous enough to warrant fear of chaos. Freak accidents were a norm, and they only fueled the fire when it came to the negative light everyone s.h.i.+ned on me. Of course, my dad always had the worst end of the fiascos because he had to deal with the aftermath.

If I had any luck at all, it was spent when I had the fortune of finding my two best friends.

B James was a girl who moved to town after my accident. Her parents were professional magicians, so naturally, I tried to get in good with them. I had hopes of them helping me. It turns out I didn't have to work too hard. BJ was fascinated with my form and impressed with my ability to create my own magic. I told her I didn't mean to transform myself, but I don't think she cared. She wanted to make new spells like her parents, and I suppose she thought I could help her. She overlooked how the rest of the school avoided me, but that might have been easy, considering no one flocked to her lunch table any more than my own. Remember when I said creating new magic was dangerous, well, BJ didn't care. We hadn't even graduated high school yet, but She'd created more spells than a person could count. It's important to keep in mind most of those spells had adverse effects or didn't do what they were meant to, but they did something.

My friend Wesson, a satyr I met in my freshman year of high school, didn't use magic at all. To be fair magical creatures, because of their natural abilities, didn't need magic as much as humans did. Even I had natural powers after my transformation like super hearing and invisibility. Which I'm sure is how Mr. Nickels managed to avoid capture for so long if he also possessed the same abilities. Wes being a satyr, was super fast and super strong, among other things, whether he appeared to be or not. We became friends after I tried to join the school's magical creatures club. There weren't many nonhumans that went to our school, so the club was meant to be a way of letting them all meet one another. Unfortunately, when I tried to join the club, someone pointed out I was born human, and that I was only what I was because I cursed myself. I couldn't join the club. Technically they weren't allowed to exclude anyone, but I thought it best to pick my battles wisely and let it go. Wes, being the best guy in the world, found me the next day and told me he thought the other kids were d.i.c.ks for not letting me join the club. From that day on, I couldn't remember a time I couldn't fall back on the friends.h.i.+p Wes and I had.

It was two weeks till summer break. All of the ends of the year testing was out of the way, so everyone was waiting for the school year to come to an end. That Friday afternoon, I decided to walk BJ home. Despite my being close to Wes and BJ both, they never seemed to like one another. Every day I'd have to make a conscious decision whether to hang out with BJ, who loved playing magician and getting into trouble, or Wes, who was basically the brother I never had. BJ won that day because Wes had a meeting with the princ.i.p.al.

BJ should have taken the bus home, but I guess that would have been less time she got to work out new magic with me. We took a lot of back roads that day that eventually spit us out into the Dead Woods. It was the town's biggest forest, and it sat in the middle of everything. We learned in history cla.s.s that old settlers named it the Dead Woods because back in the early days, when people were still coming up with most of the modern magic, they had to go far away from homes and building so bad magic wouldn't destroy anything. A lot of people died out there. Despite the bad history, it was a beautiful place as long as you knew where you were going.

"So there's this summer interns.h.i.+p I read about," BJ said as we walked under branches while leaves crumbled under our footsteps.

"What kind of interns.h.i.+p?" I asked.

We stopped walking so she could take her spell book out of her bag. The pages of her hand made spiral held weight and took time to flip through.

"For magicians. I thought you might want to go for it," she added.

"You want me to be a magician?"

"You created a working trans.m.u.tation spell when you were 11."

I laughed at her, calling it a "working spell."

"Yea, and I've been trying to undo it ever since," I said with my amused tone still vocal.

"I could help you."

"I don't want to be a magician," I said in my most definitive voice possible.

"But I do."

I took a few steps away. I didn't want to stand too close while her book was out. Some of the stuff in that thing didn't need words to be activated. As she flipped through the pages, there was a danger similar to throwing a grenade into a kid's birthday party. Pages glowed and faded as her hands turned them over. I'm not sure how she managed to carry something around like that without constantly hurting herself.

"Then you should do it," I said as I crossed my arms and leaned against a tree.

She came near, and I knew to expect puppy dog eyes to fluff some kind of catch. That's what people do when they want something

"I need you."

I asked, "why," but she turned away.

"I need your spell," I thought she said, but I couldn't make out her words for sure, and with my big ears, that meant she was really quiet.

"What?" I asked.

"I need your spell."

I stood up straight.

"The spell that gave me fur and left with only eight fingers," I said before I continued with, " the spell that made my feet too big to wear shoes and ears big enough to hear my dad when he gets off at night."

"I have to submit a working spell to be considered."

"Then use one of yours," I said.

"None of mine work."

"What about the one you use to change your hair color?"

"It blinds anyone who sees me cast it."

"Then just use my spell, you don't need me for that, I wrote the words in some book, and I'll give it to you."

I just wanted to get off the subject. Anyone who knew me knew how long I tried to find a cure for my curse. After years of turning over stones to no avail, of course, I gave up hope. That's not to say I didn't wish and dream for a way to change back, but being a bit of a pessimist meant I couldn't help but see the uneasy reality of how unlikely a cure was.

"It wouldn't be right to take credit for your work."

"But, it's alright to strong-arm your friend into an interns.h.i.+p that'll take up our entire summer?" I didn't mean to sound nearly as argumentative or sarcastic as I must have at that moment, but it came out that way.

"There's a chance we won't even get it," she said, basically pleading with me at that point.

"If I say yes, will you leave me out of whatever experiments you're about to do?"

"But I had something special planned for today."

"That's my price."

"Deal, but you have to stick around to watch."

"In case something goes wrong?"

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to," I replied.

We exchanged a mutual grin before she adjusted her gla.s.ses and finally flipped around in her book to find the newly crafted spells. We spent most of the afternoon in the woods. BJ wrote a spell for growing plants faster, but it made anything made of wood burst into flames, including all the papers in my backpack. She tried to put out the fires with another spell meant to create rain clouds, but it summoned a swarm of b.u.t.terflies that flew into the flames. Needless to say, they all died. They died quickly, but at least the fires went out.

By that time, it was getting dark.

"We should get moving," I said as I picked our bags off the ground burnt as they might have been.

"We will never speak of what happened here to anyone, right?"

"Like always," I said with a chuckle before handing BJ her ruined bag.

We started on our way out of the woods.

"Do your parents know you're applying for this interns.h.i.+p?" I asked.

"Not yet."

"Don't you think they should know?"

"I'll tell them once I, " she started to say before I cut her off with, "did you hear that?"

"Hear what," she asked.

There was a sound coming from the bushes ahead of us. It was too big to be a cat, dog, or rabbit.

"Stand back," I said as I put my arm in front of BJ.

"Is someone there," I called out into the distance, but no reply was returned.

Only the rustling of the bushes broke the silence as something or someone came near. It was close. There was a momentary pause of nothing but the bugs around us falling silent, and then whatever it was lunged out at me.

It was Wes. He made me fall backward and rip the arm of my b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt.

"s.h.i.+t," I yelled out.

He tried to catch my arm on my way down, but he was too slow.

"Sorry, dude," Wes said with a laugh as he helped me to my feet.

"What are you doing out here?" BJ asked in a tone more annoyed than me, but I was the one with the ripped s.h.i.+rt.

"I need Pitch."

"Well, he's walking me home from school."

"Schools been out for 3 hours now, and you know how to get home."

"You want me to walk by myself," BJ asked.

"No one ever offers to walk me home, and we're the same age," Wes said sarcastically.

I cut in, "Wes, what did you need my help with?"

"I need your ears," he said.

"Let me get BJ home, and then I'll swing by your place."

Neither of them was even looking at me anymore; they were staring one another down.

"Alright, just make sure 'Bug Burner' isn't with you."

"You saw that!" BJ exclaimed.

"I'll be there, alone," I said as I held BJ back from Wes.

A few uneasy, and unwelcoming glances were exchanged before we took to our separate ways.

"I don't know why you hang out with him," BJ argued.

"Wes is cool," I said.

"Wes is just short of being a toddler. He doesn't use magic."

"I don't use magic."

"That's different; you can't afford it."

"That hurt," I said.

"You know what I mean."

By the time I got BJ home, it was getting late. With it being the weekend, I knew Dad wouldn't mind my staying out a little longer, but it's not like I could walk any faster. I spent a long while trekking from one side of town to the other. BJ and her family stayed in West Point while Wes lived down the street from me in Opic on the east side of town.

Creatures were normal in everyday society, but it was always like wandering into another world when I got to visit Wesson's house. His family had a home with doors, windows, and walls, but those were the only normality's clearly present. Of course, a family of satyrs lived differently from a family of humans. Their house appeared to be carved from a single dark wood tree with bark strong enough to stand changing weather. Their plants grew like a garden on steroids. Sides of their walls were covered in vines, moss, and overgrowth. There were always wild animals like squirrels or racc.o.o.ns in their bushes. Most satyrs were animal-loving, light-hearted, naturalist, so it made sense that they preferred to live in a place similar to the wilds of a forest. Even the inside of their house seemed similar to outdoors. The floors were a type of lush gra.s.s that imitated carpet. They had electricity and running water, but it was sparingly present throughout the house. I loved visiting Wes at his place. Hanging out in his room was like going camping without giving up WIFI.

When I made it to Wesson's place, he was waiting for me on the front porch. He let me inside and took me to his bedroom upstairs. His parents didn't own cars, so I wasn't sure whether or not we had the place to ourselves. Once inside his room, he shut the door behind us.

"You said you needed my ears for something," I asked as Wes jumped into his bed and laid in it stretching out while I took a seat across from him in a wooden chair at his desk.

"Yeah, man," he sat up before he continued. "So I have this snake in my wall," he said.

I'm sure there were several animals throughout his house, but how he spoke told me the snake was an irregularity.

"Why is there a snake in your wall?"

"It got out of its tank," he said as if he'd answered the implied question.

"Since when do you have a pet snake?"

"It's not mine. It's the schools."

"Why do you have the school's snake?"

"They were gonna cut him open in biology cla.s.s."

"Ok..." I said, waiting for him to continue.

"Ms. Harper told me to bring him back, and if I don't, they'll expel me from school."

"There's only a week left in school, though."

"My dad won't care if it's one week or 10," he said.

Wesson's parents weren't strict by most standards. They let him go to school without wearing pants after all, but the standards magical creatures held their kids to in our town could often be high. Or so I was told.

"I've never hunted anything before," I said as we stood up.

"You can hear really well, though, can't you?"

"Yea, but you can talk to animals."

"I have to know where it is before I can talk him out. Come on, man, I'll owe you."

"Alright, Alright."

I didn't want to promise I'd find his snake when I still hadn't seen my pet rabbit after six years. Unsure of where to start, we both stood around waiting for me to do something. It felt awkward, but eventually, I did the only thing I could logically think of. I put my ear to a wall and tried to listen.

I usually tried to tune things out. Always hearing stuff at such a high level could be annoying, so in most situations, it was best not to focus on the noise around me. That may have been my first time legitimately using my ears like sonar. It was a little surprising how well it actually worked.

I could hear the sound of pipes first. The AC was the next thing to catch my attention before I started to notice things moving around. Every home had some amount of bugs in its walls, and some houses even had rats or birds that could go completely unnoticed. I had to tune everything out before I could focus and make out the sound of slithering. I followed the sound throughout the housekeeping, my ear to the wall. Wes stayed behind me, watching me work. He tried to be supportive but couldn't follow how I was making progress well enough to know when actually to cheer or stay silent. After a while, we ended up in the hallway outside of Wesson's bedroom. I took my ear from the wall and held my hand to the spot the snake was resting.

"It's here," I said

"It's there?"

"Yea."

"Ok, watch out," he said as he moved me out of the way.

"What are you gonna do," I asked, but I received my answer just as quickly.

Without any hesitation, Wes punched a hole in the wall. It wasn't my place to tell him what not to do in his home, but I was pretty sure no one's parents would be happy to come home to holes in the wall.

"Wes," I said, still shocked at how reckless my friend was. I laughed, but I was concerned.

"Don't worry, the house is made of living wood, it'll fix itself," he said as he reached his hand through the hole and dug around.

"If you say so," I replied as I watched.

He must have found it because he started speaking in some language that mimicked snake hissing. Before long, he pulled the scaled creature out and held it around his arm.

"Thanks, man," he said as he turned to me.

"Any time."

He tried to hug me, and I might have let him, if not for the snake jumping from his arm and biting me. I should have seen it coming; of course, a snake would see a man-sized rabbit and think, "that's my next meal." It wasn't venomous, but it was big. As it sank its fangs into the palm of my hand, I thought for sure it was going to come off.

"s.h.i.+t," I exclaimed as I threw the green reptile away.

Wes scolded the snake as if it were a child while I held my hand, trying to stop the bleeding. That's when I heard Wesson's mom yell up at us, "boys." So they were home. Wes put the snake away in his room before walking me to the bathroom and helping me clean and wrap my hand. He thought it was funny.

"I hope they cut that thing open twice," I said.

"He didn't mean anything by it."

"It was going to eat me."

"Harold was not going to eat you."

"You named the snake!?"

"No... he already had a name."

I couldn't help but crack up. I was still p.i.s.sed about my hand, but the way Wes was with animals was nothing short of endearing if not adorable.

"Sorry about the jacket," I said, noticing I ruined it with my bloodstains.

It's a good thing it wasn't his usual jacket. He always wore the same hoodie I got him a couple of years back for his birthday. Come to think of it; I don't think he wore clothes before I got him that jacket.

"It's cool, man. You mind if I take it off?"

"You know I can see your d.i.c.k every time you stand up or stretch, don't you," I replied in a joking tone, but I was serious to some degree.

His fur usually acted as covering enough to forget he didn't wear anything below the belt, but sometimes things would slip through or be easier to notice depending on how he stood or walked.

"Sorry, nature endowed me so well my natural coat can't hide it all."

He shed the extra layer, and for a moment, I couldn't help but realize we were sitting in a bathroom together. He was naked aside from his fur, and we were basically holding hands while he helped me with the bandages. I didn't mean to spaz out, but I yanked my hand away to finish wrapping up on my own. I don't think he was bothered by it, but he must have noticed the unusual tension sitting in the air because he broke the silence. Satyr had a reputation for being a very s.e.xual creature. You couldn't look them up online without finding p.o.r.n or stories of s.e.xual exploits. Wes never tried anything with me, and we were friends, but knowing what he was, I figured it was best to avoid provoking any of his natural instincts. I felt a little racist for thinking Wes would be so stereotypically s.e.xually charged that he'd suddenly do something like that, but it was better to be safe than awkwardly sorry, in my opinion.

"What were you and Bug Burner talking about earlier?"

"BJ wants me to apply for a magician's interns.h.i.+p with her," I said while we left the bathroom together.

"I thought you hated magic," he said.

"I hate being a rabbit."

"But rabbits are cool."

"No one wants to f.u.c.k a rabbit."

We went back to his room. I stood by the window looking through it up at what might have been stars or satellites. My dad had to have made it home from work by then.

Wes came and stood by my side before asking, "Is that why you're doing the interns.h.i.+p?"

"I don't know if I'm doing it yet. BJ said even if we apply, there's no guarantee we'll get in."

That tension was still present, less dense, but still floating around. I didn't think a jacket mattered much when Wes never wore pants, but it made a difference. With his chest and abs out, he was more naked than usual, and I'm not sure how I felt about it.

"For what it's worth, I hope you don't. There's this festival coming up in a few weeks. It's supposed to be one of the longest ever held, and if my parents let me go, I was thinking maybe you could come too."

"What kind of festival?"

"STR," he said as he left my side to find the laptop on his desk. He pulled up a website with information and brought it to me. The first thing I noticed was the lack of humans in all the advertising pictures.

"Isn't that a magical creature type thing?"

"Which we both are," he said, taking a seat in his wooden chair while I leaned my back against his bedroom window.

"I'm not."

"No one would know unless we told them, and if you're trying to get some action, maybe you'll have better luck if you're open to more than human options."

"You mean date an elf, or a troll?"

"Or a satyr."

"Maybe," I said with a grin, "but let's worry about getting the snake back to school first."

It was around ten at night when I made it home. Dad's car was outside, and I missed curfew, so I couldn't just walk inside. I had an extraordinary ability that might have made sneaking in more accessible, but it came with a high risk. Being able to turn invisible, I might have been able to walk inside without worry had my ability also allowed me to make my clothes transparent. But I couldn't. I didn't feel like stripping naked just to break into a house I lived in. Not to mention, I didn't have a perfect handle on my particular skill, so there was always a chance of my becoming visible again too quickly. It was easier to try sneaking in through the back door and hoping Dad was already asleep.

Unfortunately, the back door was locked. The back door was never locked. He was waiting for me.

Walking back around to the front door, I noticed the lights in the living room were on. I put on my best golden child smile and readied myself for what I predicted was on the other side of that blue door.

As expected, Dad was sitting on the living room sofa. Still, in his greasy work clothes from the car garage, he sat in his usual scent of motor oil. With his back turned to me, I honestly believed I still had a chance of sneaking to my room unnoticed. That was until he spoke, of course. I had big ears, but my dad could hear a dime drop in the ocean.

"Where were you?" He asked without standing or even turning his head.

The sound of his voice made me freeze, and the question had enough weight in it to force my legs to move forward as if I were being summoned further into the room by my misdeeds. I stood at his side, and he glanced up at me before returning his gaze to the screen.

"Hi, it's nice to see you too, how was your day, my day was good," I said in an attempt to smooth things out before they started.

"Were you with a girl?"

"No, I was with Wes."

"That's ok too, just remember to use protection."

"Dad, he's my friend, not that."

"There's nothing to be ashamed of," he said jokingly.

I couldn't tell whether or not he was mad. It was 10:05, which was only 30 minutes past my curfew. I'd made the mistake of staying out much later than that in the past, so there was a chance he wouldn't be as miffed as I a.s.sumed.

"You're not mad?" I asked.

"You're going to do what you do, son. Your mother and I were the same around your age. Just be safe, and don't bring home children before your 25."

"So I don't have a curfew anymore," I asked with a slight grin.

"The next time you miss curfew without calling home, don't expect your phone bill to be paid."

My grin quickly dissolved. "I'm going to bed," I said.

"Wait."

He caught my wrist with his hand before I could walk away. He didn't say anything about my ripped s.h.i.+rt or the bandages on my hand, but I suppose my bad luck made injuries less of a surprise in our house.

"There's something we need to talk about."

"I don't need another s.e.x talk, I haven't gotten in trouble at school in almost a week, and I ...," I said trying to a.s.sume and avoid anything else my father might have had in mind, but in the end, I was cut off.

"You need to start looking for a summer job," he said.

"A job," I exclaimed.

"I let you go without one for so long because of your condition, but it's time to face the fact that you may never find a cure or a spell to fix you. You cant let your bad luck be the only thing in your life."

"It's not," I said.

"I don't want you sitting around the house sulking or wasting away."

"Dad, I won't. I already have plans for this summer."

"Really?" He asked as though the idea of my having a life was a surprise.

"Yes, really. BJ and I are applying for an interns.h.i.+p, and Wes wants me to go with him to a festival."

"An interns.h.i.+p? And a Festival?"

I didn't want to be an intern, and going to a festival that seemed less than human-friendly was less than ideal. Desperate to keep my Dad from thinking I was lifeless, I had no choice but to toss the ideas out into the air. If not for my friends, I might have spent my summer watching TV and contemplating my existence as a rabbit.

"Yes, dad. I'm not gonna sulk or lay around the house or whatever."

"I just worry sometimes."

"I'm fine, I promise."

I expected yelling or rage, but Dad was giving me worry and fear. There's nothing worse or quite like the feeling of knowing your parents are afraid of where your life is going. It's not the same as disappointing them, its something else entirely. To be honest, after my transformation, I was alone for a while, and I would sulk and feel sorry for myself. Then I met BJ and Wes. It would have been a lie to say I didn't feel less than or alone and helpless at times, but having my friends made it a little easier to crawl out of those slumps when they came over me.

"One more thing," he said before I walked away.

"Yes?"

"Your mother called she wants to see you next weekend."

"Do I have to?"

"You know it's your decision, but your mother is finally trying."

My day finally came to a close when I went to my room. Like usual, I checked the carrot traps I set for Mr. Nickels, and like always, the carrots were gone. It wasn't even Summer yet, but I already had plans. I never understood why, but despite the love I had for my friends and how much I needed to spend time with them, there was always this feeling I had that made me believe I was better off staying home. After telling Dad I was definitively spending the summer as an intern or going to a festival, I had no choice but to do one or the other. That was unless I wanted to get a job. As I got into bed, I weighed both avenues.

A magician's interns.h.i.+p could have given me new ways of going about transforming back to human. My goal of changing back was set to the side after I realized I lacked the necessary skill to reach it. When I was 11, all I spent my time doing was working to change back, but as I got older, I guess I gave up hope.

Going to a festival with Wes would have been fun. There was the potential of meeting people who could look past my appearance. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about dating anyone who wasn't human, much less anything else, but it would have been an excellent opportunity to find out.

Going with the interns.h.i.+p meant signing myself up for something where serious risk would be a norm. Going with Wes to the festival would only be fun for as long as no one realized I was born a human. There were goods and bads to both options, but first, I had to make sure they were viable. If BJ didn't get into the interns.h.i.+p, that meant I couldn't either, and if Wesson's parents didn't let him go to the festival, it was the same dilemma. Of course, I wanted my friends to be able to do the things they wanted to, but at that point, I had more motivation to help them if I intended to tag alongside them. Thinking about it made me feel like a bad friend. If nothing else, I had every intention of helping Wes and BJ from that point on, regardless of whether or not my wanting to avoid a summer job was a motivation.