Page 3 of Zodiac Beasts

As I backed out of the text, trying to forget the fact that it was Friday, and I had Physics today and would be seeing Adrian in approximately one hour, I noticed something far more unusual than another night of bad decisions.

A missed call.

No one called me. Like, ever. No one except…

Mom?!

I tapped to call her back immediately, then held my phone to my ear as it went through the first two rings. On the third ring, my anxiety was hitting a new peak, and I was physically shaking. I should never feel this tense and stressed just calling back my own mother, yet every ring was a death knell, growing in volume and immediacy.

Four rings, five. One more and it would go to voice mail. Don’t you dare send me to voicemail, Mom.

And then…

She picked up.

“Lila, sweetie, sorry I called so late. We just got back from Fiji, and my sleep schedule is such a mess.” She professed so nonchalantly, like she hadn’t wrapped me in bacon and thrown me into a shark tank without telling me. “Jetlag is a real monster.” Her wording elicited an involuntary eye twitch.

So the question now was, as I sat in stunned silence, shocked I’d finally gotten in touch with the one person who could clear up everything I was dealing with, ‘do I explode or do I ask about what’s been on my mind with calm rationality?’

“Are you there, Lila?” She asked after a solid twenty seconds of me breathing nervously into the line.

“Yeah, I’m here. You’ll have to tell me all about Fiji, but first, I have something I really want to ask you.” Oh good, the calm approach. Look at me being so tough and composed. “Why. The fuck. Did you enroll me in a school full of monsters without telling me that I’m not fucking human?” Oh nope, never mind. It’s going to be full psycho for me. Good luck everybody!

“O-oh.” She stammered through the line.

Don’t hang up. Don’t you DARE hang up.

“I have mate marks on my skin. I just turned into… something under the full moon. Apparently I’m a Shifter? And Astrology is real and oh my god, how could you not tell me any of this?” I was bordering on hysterics, and I was yelling, and I could barely breathe, and her silence wasn’t helping. “Are you a shifter too? Is Dad? Are you all magical beings, or was I adopted, or what?”

“No, you weren’t adopted.” She spoke calmly, clearly unsurprised by my inner and outer turmoil, while I was borderline crushing my phone in my shaking hand. “To be honest, Lila…”

She paused for too long, so I responded. “Honesty would be great, yes. Thank you. Carry on.” I was so tired of everyone lying to me. Of total strangers being more honest than my own family. Of so many things. I wouldn’t say my time at Graves had been bad because… well… if I was being the honest one, it’s been one of the most exciting experiences of my life, but the fact that being traumatized by multiple monsters on the regular was an improvement over Pre-College Lila’s day-to-day was sad on a level I didn’t need to voice to anyone.

I would like to be traumatized AND knowledgeable now, thank you very much.

Another deep breath and long exhale helped curb my crazy.

“I didn’t know you had any gifts. I was starting to wonder if the way you were conceived had negated our traits, since you’ve never shown any signs of shifting even when you hit puberty. I was going to give you the talk when you got your first menstrual cycle, but when we had that full moon picnic for Grandma Joan’s birthday, and you were still the same as always, I thought better of exposing you to something that would only alarm and confuse you. Imagine my disappointment when I’d set up a whole room full of balloons to celebrate, and you never got to see them at all.” She punctuated with a pout.

Oh cool, so I was so unspectacular and bland my whole childhood, my mother deprived me of a room full of balloons. That’s not upsetting at all. Just because I didn’t shift, didn’t mean twelve year old “Human Lila” didn’t want to party.

Neglect. Neglect all around.

Deep. FUCKING. Breath.

“So you just casually sent me to Graves Academy?” I was damn near shrieking I was so beside myself. That wasn’t better at all. It was worse. Way worse. “You just thought, ‘oh, hey, my daughter has no magic at all. She’s a totally defenseless little human. I guess I’ll just enroll her at a school full of incubus and vampires and who-knows-what-else and see what happens.’” Oh, I was not handling myself at all now. “That made sense to you?”

“You encountered an incubus?” Her gasp was audible and pronounced and focusing on the completely wrong thing. “Lila, please, tell me nothing happened. Tell me he didn’t—”

“I’m not the one on trial here.” I snapped back, immediately not wanting to answer that question. “I need to know what I am. All I know is that I’m a Virgo Shifter, and something else, and I don’t know what’s happening to me, and I need my Mom.” My once aggressive shouting was slowly breaking down. I drew my knees to my chest and clenched the phone against my ear. As angry as I was, and as hard as I was trying to be strong, the reality was that I’d never felt more lost in my own body. I’d struggled with loving my own skin from the first time I got nicknamed ‘chub tub’ in Kindergarten, and I resented myself every time I was called ‘frog face’ and a troll afterwards. But casual insults against my appearance didn’t have to define my inner existence.

This though. I didn’t even know who I was anymore.

“Let’s slow down.” My mom’s voice was filled with the kind of concern that made me love her. She wasn’t my enemy, and I needed to remember that. She’d always comforted me when I’d been bullied. She’d always been there for me to offer a shoulder to cry on, and told me that I didn’t deserve to be treated that way. That it was somehow her fault, and one day, someone would see the real me and fall in love.

Wait, what if it was her fault? What if I was something repulsive to humans because of her bloodline?

DEEP BREATH, LILA. IT’S FINE.