Steve didn't want to think about it. Not at all. Life had been nothing but a series of disasters recently. Mom had come to visit, and had ended up being carried out of Dave's house by two emergency personnel after she passed out. And that was his fault. He'd tried to get her to reconsider, since she knew what kind of reactions she had when he was around, but she had insisted on being there for his birthday, even though the pack didn't even think about those sort of things. Because he was being raised by a human (or something of the sort), he followed human customs, and that meant birthdays, which required a bit of motherly presence.
But then he had tried to conjure up some sort of antidote for her, or at least a potion that would alleviate the symptoms for a little while. It had been going well. He had his textbook open the whole time, and had skipped ahead several chapters to the one on potions that no one even touched until they were seniors in high school, but it hadn't been too hard. He had been almost halfway done...when Dave got home.
And then Dave had come upstairs and caught him right in the middle of trying to put everything away without making it blow up on him. He'd broken Dave's favorite potion bottle, earning him not just the normal lecture, but a second one on experimenting with Dave's prized equipment, and then two weeks of dinner duty as well as a week of being grounded.
That had just been the beginning of the week. Now it was Thursday, and they were starting a new section in gym class. This one was the equestrian unit, since their teacher, and the principal come to think of it, were of the opinion that no self-respecting youth could go through life without learning to ride a horse and control it properly. This, of course, caused Steve far more problems than it was worth, though he would never be able to convince Dave that he had good enough reason to merit a written excuse from his "guardian."
Never mind that the horse they had assigned to him refused to get near him. Never mind that the rest of the horses in the class went wild whenever he passed by them. Never mind that two of his friends had been taken to the infirmary for injuries after being thrown from their horses because they were spooked by him. No, that didn't matter, because it was "something he would have to learn to live with," like many other things in his life.
It didn't even help when he explained to his teacher that even if he could get his horse to stand still long enough for him to mount up, he would never be able to do it. All he really wanted to do with the damned creature was chase it across the practice field and take it down eventually, preferably in his other form rather than the one he wore to school every day. That one would do if he couldn't weasel his way out of the stupid restraining field that they put up around the school, except that he would be the one in trouble if he tried to hunt one of the horses, and that would mean more lectures from Dave, and more grounding.
Instead, he'd have to be content with the stupid F in the unit, because he would never be able to get the stupid beast to stand still long enough for him to get near it. As it was, the closest he had gotten had been just a day or two ago, when he managed to sneak up to the horse's side, just in time to see the legs starting to move as the horse turned to face away from him and then sent two very powerful legs straight at his midsection. He had twin hoof print shaped bruises on his stomach when he finally got the chance to look, and they'd probably be there for the next week or so.
But that's why someone came up with the idea of skipping class, now wasn't it?