Page 1 of Pack Nightmare

Chapter One

Layla

The new professor holds my gaze for several long, painful seconds before he withdraws and carries on looking around the classroom, continuing the explanation of his sudden and surprising presence.

The surrounding room is muffled; I vaguely hear Jared trying to get my attention, but it’s as if he’s behind a clear plastic wall. My brain dumps memories in front of my eyes in quick succession:

Derrek the first day I met him, mere hours after I ran away from foster care. Looking like a regular street kid, perhaps a bit older and wiser. Offering me a safe place to stay, taking me to what becomes my street family.

Derrek a couple years later, in a group sitting around a barrel fire, appearing absolutely perfect through the rose-colored glasses of my adoration. He looked out for me from day one, the same as he treated all the other kids. I wasn’t special to him, but I liked to pretend I was. In my head every glance, every smile had meaning. I’d do anything if he asked me.

And then Derrek above me; his expression panicked while I lay on the ground. The memory is flooded with pain and confusion; the pain of course from my injuries. Confusion because, as concerned as Derrek was when he found me, I never saw him again in over a year.

Now he’s turned up in Smoky Falls—practically the opposite side of the country from where I’d last seen him—and it’s like he’s a completely different person.

This Derrek isn’t a street kid; he introduces himself as Professor Derrek Westin and he looks the part.

My Derrek kept his hair buzzed short, and usually had on some combination of baggy, holey jeans, with a dark t-shirt and flannel under an old, beat-up leather jacket he wore everywhere. He could pass as a regular kid from a distance, but if you looked closely, it was easy to spot the street on him. His shirts were dark to conceal the dirt, and the buzz cut wasn’t perfect; it was done with an old pair of clippers owned by a 12-year-old, Chacho. Chacho’s dad was a barber before they shot him in a drive-by, and Chacho ended up on the street. With us.

No, this Derrek is some kind of hipster professor 2.0 version of the Derrek I knew. Instead of jeans, he wears navy blue slacks with tan leather shoes, a skinny brown belt, and a tucked in plaid shirt with a corduroy blazer on top. His outfit is like the completely grown-up version of Milo’s style, slightly more professorial and a little less edgy.

But most surprisingly he’s got hair. No more buzz cut; it looks as if Derrek has been growing it out since I last saw him. To my shock, he has sandy-colored curls, brown at the roots but nearly white at the tips. Based on the shade of his buzz cut, I always assumed he had dark hair, like me.

Assessing him now, I can’t imagine why I thought I recognized him in the hall. The man before me is nothing like the boy I knew on the street. It must have been a feeling that told me I knew this person, because it certainly wasn’t his appearance.

His eyes, of course, haven’t changed. They were always a brilliant shade of green, so similar to my own that we sometimes passed as siblings. Even from this distance, they stand out against his fair complexion.

“Layla!” Jared’s hand grasps my shoulder and gives me a little shake, startling me into hearing his desperate whispers again. “What the hell is going on? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

I swallow thickly. “I kind of feel like I have,” I whisper back. “The new professor… I knew him. On the street, in LA. What’s he doing here?”

Jared’s dark eyes narrow in suspicion and he glares down at the whiteboard, where Derrek is writing details about the upcoming reading.

My gaze travels over the other students, wondering if they’re suspicious about this new professor as well.

But the more I look, the more I wish I hadn’t. The girls are watching Derrek with moony eyes, giggling and whispering behind their hands or texting rapidly.

Glancing back at our new professor, who has now removed his jacket and rolled his sleeves up to write on the board, I understand the reaction. Of course, I’d always had a crush on the older boy I considered my savior. I’m sure a few of the other girls did, too, but we were all street kids. Skinny, hungry, and not the cleanest. Normal people didn’t look twice at us, and Derrek had never acted in a way other than brotherly toward us, despite my desperate fantasies about him.

But I am no longer a skinny street kid, and neither is Derrek. He’s bulked up quite a bit since I last saw him, in fact. His shoulders are broad and muscular, and even though he’s still lean, he definitely fills out those blue pants well. His round butt wiggles slightly as he writes on the board, and I catch a nearby classmate filming him with her bottom lip pinched between her teeth.

A surge of jealousy rips through my chest, and I force myself to take a long, slow breath.

Whatever Derrek is doing here, I’m not sure I want to know. It can’t be a coincidence, but he didn’t even bother to check on me in the hospital after my attack. It was like losing my parents all over again. Seeing him now, I feel echoes of the heartbreak I tamped down for the year in LA. It still hurts that he never came.

“Milo and Landon are going to meet us here after class. They want to get a load of this guy,” Jared whispers, tucking away his phone.

“What? Why?”

“It’s weird that he turned up here, don’t you think?”

“Well obviously, but I don’t think he’d go through the process of becoming a Lit professor just to hurt me. Unless he makes us read Tess of the D’Urbervilles and analyze the symbolism of syphilis,” I snort. “In that case, I’d definitely argue that he’s out to hurt me.”

“What?” Jared is mystified by my rant.

Clearly, he’s never read Tess of the D’Urbervilles. If he had, he’d agree with me.

“Nothing. I just don’t think he’s here to hurt me.”

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