1-Exile

He knows what exile means from a movie he once watched on TV. He knows it’s when someone is punished for doing something wrong by forcing them to leave their friends and family and everything they love behind and are driven away with nothing and no one. His mom lets him take his clothes when she exiles him. He doesn’t want to go to LA, doesn’t want to stay with his sister. He barely knows her, isn’t sure that he wants to know her and knows that she doesn’t want him.

But his mother wants him even less.

He walks out of the house without even saying goodbye. He has nothing to say to the woman who exiled him.

2- The Sound and Smell of Angels

He wonders why Los Angeles is called the City of Angels. To big, to noisy, to smelly for him and not just because he’s a small town kid. The blanket of honking horns is like someone screaming in his ear constantly and he breaths through his mouth because all the different smells, many of them he’s never smelled before, somehow combine into the smell of feet and make him dizzy. He can barely hear the adults around him when they talk to him. He has to read their lips, something he’s not really good at and they all get annoyed with him quickly. The entire trip to the city has been a nightmare, but he doesn’t cry. Not in public, never in public, he’s strong enough to wait until he’s alone to start crying.

Thing is, in this city it’s hard to be alone. Everyone’s always watching him, he wonders if there are other werewolves here. Maybe he’d do better there, with others like him, than with Shane. Maybe, but he won’t know until he finds her.

3-Déjà Vu 

He takes a moment to sit on a bench. The city is big, and it smells bad and is noisy but he has to admit downtown is beautiful. He’s never been anywhere like this before and it all makes him a little light headed. His ears have slowly begun to adjust but he doesn’t know if he’ll ever get used to the smell. Still, he stares up in wonder at the towering buildings around him, forgetting about the sensory overload of the bustling city and the strangeness of its inhabitants. His attention is immediately captured by the woman who stops right in front of him to check her ringing cell phone. His first thought is she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, she’s all curves and dark hair and confidence and she smells…almost familiar in an odd way.