Although they were friends and neighbors, Ben Twist, Nate Anderson and his boyfriend Alex Ramsey only had one class together during the fall semester of their Junior year at Moon Lake High School: Gym.
The three of them were gathered around the "boy's half" (since it was the closest to the boy's locker room) of the gym, listening to the coach discuss upcoming events for the class.
"With this being the start of November*, we will be learning about a new sport this month. So today's lecture day, which is why everyone is in their street clothes, but I expect you all back in your gym uniforms tomorrow," said Coach Nix, a were-grizzly bear who was currently in his human form like the rest of them.
All the students nodded in agreement with his statement. "But what better choice for this time of year than football?" he asked with a smile on his face, to which all the students cheered.
"Weather permitting, we will be going out to the practice field for hands on experience as much as possible, but we will be discussing both the traditional game, and the safer version known as flag football, which is what we'll be actually playing," said Coach Nix, as he continued his lecture. "Of course, with a lot of us being..." while making a V with both hands before bringing the fingers together to form a W, "Moon Lake doesn't field any public teams in any sports," which got a brief moan from the students. "Besides the fact we'd have an unfair advantage against normal players, we certainly don't want anyone to have an accident and have a sudden increase in the overall were population, let alone risk exposing our secret before the rest of the world is prepared to acknowledge our existence," he said, which got a lot of agreement from the assembly.
"So I do want to remind everyone that if you're ever asked why Moon Lake doesn't have any school sports teams, our public answer is that it's a question of insurance, equipment, and other financial issues that keeps us from doing so," said Coach Nix, which got a chorus of "Yes, sir," from his audience.
"Now then, that doesn't mean we can't play and have fun, which brings us to the annual Thanksgiving Day scrimmage game," the coach revealed, which received some brief applause from the students. "The two teams this year will be PREDATORS and PREY, but if anyone asks, the names were chosen because it sounded a lot better than US and THEM," to which a lot of the boys chuckled.
"Whichever team you wind up on will be determined by how many interested players we have qualify. I'll try not to put a predatory were on the prey team or vice versa, but if one side comes up short..." and then he just shrugged his shoulders.
"One important announcement about this exhibition," said the coach, which got everyone's attention.
"It's been decided that from now on the game will be played by flag football format and rules because of the... incident last year," he added, recalling the normal who accidentally got scratched by a were and gained a fursona. Luckily, the student was seriously considering joining were society anyway, after his older brother joined to comply with Moon Lake's "Mandatory Were Law"**. Granted, he wasn't sure what variety of were he wanted to be at the time, but had since grown to love being a weretiger.
"Now then, any Juniors and Seniors who want to play, the sign up sheet is on the wall by my office door, but see me before the end of class for your parental permission slips unless you can prove you will be 18 before Thanksgiving. I will need those signed and returned by the end of the week. Anyone under 18 without one is ineligible to participate. Mull it over while I hand out the study packets concerning the basics of football and flag football," said Coach Nix, while going over to a rolling cart and grabbing a bunch of xeroxed copies.
"So, ready to play?" Alex asked Nate.
"Yeah," replied his boyfriend, before noticing Ben staring off into space.
"Something wrong Ben?" asked Nate.
"That you two want to play? No. It's the part about permission slips that bothers me," admitted Ben. "I haven't had a chance to tell my moms I was interested, let alone would be signing up for the game, so I don't know what their position on this is. They both seemed off this morning before I left for school, but I have no idea what might have caused it."
"Maybe it was the police shootout on the other side of your house yesterday,***" surmised Alex.
"THE WHAT?" said Ben, which got everyone's attention.
"Is there something wrong Twist?" asked Coach Nix, who paused handing out info packets to look at Ben.
"No sir. Just hearing about something that happened yesterday I was blissfully unaware of until now," explained Ben.
"On Wood Street?" asked the coach, to which Ben nodded.
"Then you're one of the lucky few," Nix replied, before going back to handing out papers.
"How could you not know?" Nate asked.
"I was with Kenya all weekend," said Ben with a smile. "Didn't get back home until after dark last night."
"Lucky lady," said Nate, playfully nudging Ben.
"I'm the lucky one to have her in my life, but what happened?" asked Ben.
And as his friends recount previous events for Ben the best they can, we turn our attention to...
(OPTIONS BELOW)
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*Monday, November 2, 2015; since this series began in September of 2015, real time.
**One member of a newly arrived family must join were society so that the entire family has a stake in protecting Moon Lake.
***That happened in previous episodes of our companion series Moon Lake, Tad.—tmw.