When the school bus arrived at Moon Lake High, Tad got off the bus and waited for Connor and Ryan to get off. He had wondered why Amy wasn’t at the bus stop that morning until he got a text from her saying that she had a doctor’s appointment and would be at school later.
When Connor and Ryan got off the bus, Tad waited for the two of them so they could walk into the school together.
"So you two have Algebra together first thing in the morning, right?" Tad asked.
"Yeah," Connor said. "Then I've got English with Mrs. Harper after that. We're in the same class, so we can talk a bit then."
"Cool, I'll see you then," Tad said. "I've got to get to class a bit early today. See you guys later."
"Bye Tad," Ryan said as Tad went in a separate direction.
~ ~ ~
When Tad's first class of the day ended, he quickly made his way to the next class. Since he had Connor in his class, this would be his chance to observe Connor closely and see if what Amy said had some truth to it. Tad arrived in the classroom and took his assigned seat. A minute or two later, Connor walked in and took his seat right in front of Tad. When the bell rang, Mrs. Harper stood up from her desk.
"Good morning class," she said in her usual cheery tone. "Today is going to be rather simple. All I need you to do is annotate this short story by the end of class. If you don't get it done in class, then it's homework." She then picked up a stack of packets from her desk and began to pass one out to each student.
When Mrs. Harper handed a packet to everyone, the class got to work. As Tad worked on his packet, he kept a close eye on Connor to see what he did. Every now and then, he would look away from his packet and begin to look at a few students. At first, he briefly looked at two female students that sat in the front row, but then, he quickly began to look at the male students in the room, only giving the occasional short glance at one of their female classmates.
“Damn, Amy was right,” Tad thought to himself. Amy had told him yesterday that she had noticed Connor looking more at the male students than female students in the class that the two of them had together. Tad took this lightly, chalking it up to Connor just trying to figure out who was and wasn’t a Were, but now that he was seeing it with his own eyes, Tad started to think that Amy was probably right. It wasn’t like he doubted her or anything. He just didn’t think that Connor could be gay until she brought it up.
“Maybe I’ll talk to Ryan about this at lunch,” Tad thought to himself before getting back to work.
When the class ended, Tad went to his next class of the day. He didn’t pay too much attention in this class, as he was too focused on talking to Ryan at lunch. The bell for the next class rang, and Tad went to that one for about 30 minutes until the lunch bell rang.
When Tad got to the cafeteria, he was relieved to see that Ryan was already there and had taken a seat at a table over in the corner of the cafeteria by the window. He was worried that he would have to search the large crowd of people to find Ryan so they could sit together.
Tad walked over and took a seat at the table where Ryan was sitting. As he sat down, Ryan looked up and smiled.
“Hey Tad,” he said. “You don’t usually sit over here. What brings you to my table?”
“I need to talk to you about something,” Tad said. “It’s about Connor…”
“What’s wrong?” Ryan asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
“Nothing, nothing,” Tad said quickly. “It’s just that…” He paused. “Connor isn’t acting like his old self. He’s not the loud, confident jokester that I knew growing up. He seems less confident in himself and more closed off. I didn’t really think anything of it until Amy said she noticed that he was looking at a lot of the students in the class she and him have together.”
Ryan took a bite of his sandwich, chewed for a minute, and then swallowed.
“Maybe he’s trying to figure out who is and isn’t a Were,” he suggested.
“That’s what I thought, but then Amy said he was looking almost exclusively at the guys. And once she pointed that out, I started to notice that…”
“...that he’s been giving me looks like that,” Ryan finished.
“You’ve noticed?”
“How can I not? They may be brief, but I can tell when he’s looking at me like that.”
“Do you...think he’s gay?”
Ryan closed his eyes and thought for a minute. “I don’t know...but things would make a bit of sense. He did tend to avoid questions about sexuality when we were talking yesterday, and he was rather fixated on me when I transformed for him.”
“Yet he’s insisting that he’s not gay,” Tad said. “Why would he do that?”
“Maybe he’s in a questioning phase right now,” Ryan said. “I know that some people go through phases like that at different points in their lives. For some people, they know right off the bat what gender they like. Others might not know until a certain point.”
Tad nodded. “So you think that he’s questioning right now?”
“Essentially,” Ryan said, taking another bite of his sandwich.
Tad nodded. He was quiet for a minute before he asked “Would you transform him?”
“Come again?”
“If Connor asked to be a Werewildcat like you, would you transform him?”
Ryan was quiet for a minute as he thought to himself, but he eventually nodded.
“I’d do that for him,” he said. “I know we’ve only just met, but he’s a great guy. I’d happily transform him. Plus, he’s pretty damn cute, if I do say so myself.”
Tad chuckled briefly before asking another question. “You think that we could maybe get him to come out of his shell a bit?”
“Well, this isn’t exactly something we can rush…” Ryan said. “But maybe you and I could have a talk with him at my place after school today.”
“Yeah, I like that,” Tad said. “I’ll be sure to let Amy know.”