# HNTBL 16: Tie Your Shoes

By: TheDragonBoy

## Content

How Not To Become Lunch: 16 - Tie Your Shoes

Jack was… a bit tired, physically and emotionally, but still he looked forward to the rest of his day with a sort of relief. Though he wasn’t quite enjoying it, there was a strange calmness in the methodical, well ordered schedule of school. He could settle into it and focus on his study- putting last night far out of his head.

It was a bit of a relief, but that didn’t mean it was easy or fun. Not today, at least.

Take his first class: science. Jack normally loved science. Not only was it usually very interesting to him, but it was also one of the few classes with a human teacher. But presently, as Jack walked out of the classroom, he frowned and wondered how much of the professor’s teachings had actually made it into his weary head. The fact that it had been a long talk about the inner workings of the digestive system had not done anything to help the boy’s state of mind.

About a minute later he and Fiona caught each other in the halls. The werewolf walked toward him, giving a small greeting smile. She always was happy to see he’d made it through another class. Jack returned it in kind.

“Whoa!”

Something suddenly interrupted his stride and Jack tumbled forward. He closed his eyes instinctively, but instead of the hard floor coming up to smack him, he felt two firm, fluffy hands against the fronts of his shoulders. He reopened his eyes as they pushed him upright again. Fiona’s worried muzzle greeted him. He looked down at his shoes.

“Thanks,” he said, a bit embarrassed. He bent down on one knee to tie a new knot.

“No problem,” she replied quietly.

“How was class?” he asked absentmindedly.

“Pretty bad,” came her blunt reply. “I gave the wrong answer to an equation in front of everyone and looked like a total dork.”

“Geeze, that’s almost as bad as tripping on your own shoelaces,” he said with a half-joking, sardonic snort.

Fiona gave a small chuckle of agreement.

“You have… language arts next, right?” Fiona asked. She knew most of his classes by now on account of her escorting him most of the time.

“Yeah,” Jack answered, standing back up. “And you?”

“Science,” she replied unenthusiastically.

“Well, hopefully it’ll be better than math,” he offered as they started walking.

There were a few more spurts of idle chitchat on the way, but the room wasn’t far. After only about a minute Fiona had seen him to his desk and then departed for her science class. She used to wait around until class was about to start, just to make extra sure he was safe, but they discovered that once he was sitting at his desk, most kids- pred and prey alike- rarely took notice of him. By that point he was just another kid sitting in class, the real danger was in coming into the room.

“Whoa!” came a familiar sounding cry. But it wasn’t from Jack this time; it was from another kid, a human Jack didn’t really recognize, who had just walked in. He’d tripped and stumbled forward, arms cartwheeling, and Jack winced silently as he saw the boy crash into a desk in the front row, knocking school supplies to the floor.

“Hey, bug off!” barked the vixen sitting there.

Ooo, that’s not good, Jack thought. You don’t want to piss off the front row students.

The fox girl growled and shoved the boy firmly off her desk. Frankly he was lucky she was sitting down, otherwise she probably would’ve done far worse. Then again, I wouldn’t call this boy lucky just yet. He stumbled backwards, keeping on his feet just long enough to trip over the tail of a lengthy naga who had slithered into the room after him.

“Watch it!” the serpentine girl hissed, turning to face him with bared fangs. But he was already out of sight; he had tumbled straight back through the classroom door and out into the hall. Jack watched uncomfortably but with rapt attention, as if it were some great tragedy. And he knew that for the boy it very likely would be; he’d managed to anger two predators in about as many seconds. Jack was just starting to wonder why he hadn’t heard a loud thud, when a different sound reached his ears.

*grrr*

It was a quiet, but hair-raisingly deep growl.

“Ahhh!” The poor kid came hurtling back into the room like a projectile. He landed on the floor face first and skidded to a stop. His luck was so comical at this point that a few students started to laugh. The vixen stood up, and the naga shifted in his direction, both seemingly intent on teaching the clumsy kid a lesson, but they both stopped abruptly when a large, menacing form stepped into the room after him. The laughter stopped as well.

Oh no… Jack thought.

Grizz, the huge, brown, bear boy, stomped inside with a snarl. His steps were slow, but massive. By the time the kid had started to pick himself up, Grizz was already standing over him to finish the job. He grabbed the boy’s shirt and hoisted him a few feet off the floor.

“*EEP*!” the boy squealed.

“I already had a little breakfast, but I can always go for brunch,” the bear said in a deep, intimidating voice. “Thanks for volunteering.”

Grizz reached up with his other clawed hand and tore the pants clean off his brunch, knocking off a shoe in the process. But nobody got much of a view, because not a second later the brute had shoved the unlucky kid into his enormous maw.

To Jack it seemed almost as much a cave as a mouth. A relatively small opening in the massive mountain of fur and muscle that was the bear boy’s body. Adorned with long, pointed teeth in place of pointed, dripping stones. And the predator’s meal fell through it almost as much as they were swallowed. A large, wriggling bulge in the thick, brown neck signaled the child’s end as his feet slipped hurriedly out of sight and into the furry muzzle.

His prey had hardly settled into his belly before Grizz began to turn back toward the door. This wasn’t even his class; he had just barged in to grab the kid that had bumped into him in the hall. But before he left, and as he was turning, it seemed the unlucky kid in his belly, now bear food, had one last thing to say.

*URRRP*!

A loud, rumbling belch rattled the room, sending out a spatter of saliva onto the students in the first few rows, and with it came something else. It flew through the air and landed with a thud and a splat quite near to Jack’s desk.

It was the boy’s other shoe, and the laces were untied.

That’s it, from now on I’m only wearing Velcro! Jack decided.

Grizz thudded out of the classroom.

…

A small wave of Fiona’s hand caught his attention across the busy hallway. They locked eyes and he started over to her, his shoelaces triple tied.

“Hey,” she greeted. “Another ‘boring’ class?” He knew when she said it like that, what she was really asking was if any hungry predators had been involved.

“Not quite. Grizz showed up right before it started.”

Fiona’s expression grew serious for a moment.

“He wasn’t interested in me, though,” he added quickly.

She relaxed.

“There was this other kid, a little too clumsy. Some guys have the worst luck…”

“Tell me about it,” Fiona huffed.

“Crud, was science class as bad as math?”

“No, not quite,” she admitted. “I didn’t do anything stupid this time, but that doesn’t mean I understood anything.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” He thought back to the period just past, where a girl had read something with so many ‘art’s and ‘thou’s that he hadn’t been able to follow a word. “Don’t sweat it, though. I can help you with science if you really need it, and you’re pretty good in your other classes, right?”

“Yeah…” she replied, then she gave a small chuckle.

“What?”

“Werewolves don’t sweat, science guy.”

“Oh yeah, I guess that expression only works with humans.”

…

“Whoa!” breathed Jack. But this time it was with relief, rather than fear, as a ball narrowly flew past him to bounce against the wall behind.

Dodgeball: it wasn’t Jack’s sport of choice, but he was good at it- well, half of it anyway. He didn’t have the best aim, but he had a lot of experience dodging predators. Compared to that, balls were easy.

“Oof!”

That said, he didn’t exactly have the best track record with dodging preds.

But just then there was a loud whistle, signaling the end of the game and phys-ed as a whole. All the students began streaming lazily off the playing field- all humans, since even the preds running the school had to admit that mixing predators and humans in the same PE class was a bad idea.

Rubbing his arm, Jack walked back inside with the rest of the kids, who gradually dispersed through the branching halls. Jack trudged toward a familiar intersection. Fiona would be getting out of pred class about now, and that was the spot where they usually met. It also happened to be the spot they had first reunited; the first time Fiona had saved him from a hungry predator.

When he got there, he was surprised to find the werewolf already waiting. Well, he wasn’t surprised that she’d beaten him there, but he was very surprised to see her slumped against a wall with her muzzle toward the ground and her ears flat, her tail limp and motionless. He got much closer than he usually did before she looked up at him. She put on some semblance of a smile.

“Hey Jack,” she greeted.

“Are you okay?” he asked, a bit worried. He rarely saw her upset.

“No, I’m a huge jerk,” she replied contemptuously.

“What?” he asked, more from surprise than as a legitimate question. But Fiona answered anyway.

“I totally blew up at this other girl for no reason,” she said with a hand to her face, clearly angry with herself. “I’m such a jerk, I-”

“Fiona,” Jack interrupted firmly. He took a moment to push through his own tiredness. He could tell she was being serious, so he spoke to her just as seriously. “You are not a jerk. I don’t care what you did.”

His tone and the fact that he’d interrupted her so bluntly made it clear he wouldn’t hear otherwise. She looked up at him.

“You spend every day of the week looking out for me, just cause you care,” he continued. “You sit on the human side at lunch just to keep me company. You take your little sister out to explore in the woods, even when she insists on trying to eat your best friend. You’re the nicest pred I ever met… probably the nicest person I ever met.”

Fiona was a bit speechless for a second. She saw the compassion and admiration in his eyes, staring into hers as if they were casting a line to pull her out of her inner turmoil. It was striking. She couldn’t help but start to smile.

“Thanks…” she said quietly. “That was really nice.”

“It’s the truth,” he said with a slightly self-conscious grin and a little shrug. He saw her relax just a bit.

“You know, I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said, starting to shake things off.

“What you’d do without me?” he asked, exaggerating a bit for levity. “I’m definitely the one who needs you around. I’d be lunch; you’d be just fine,” he encouraged. Though he was clearly still trying to cheer her up, something in his voice also told her that he did believe that.

“No… you really help me out a lot. You always say the right things, and you’re always there… You’re a really good friend, Jack.”

Now it was Jack’s turn to be taken aback by the honesty in her eyes. He’d always just… talked with her, he’d never really thought it was a big deal, but… Now that he saw it, it made him feel happy; knowing that he’d been able to do something for her, especially with everything she’d been doing for him. He smiled and looked away, a little embarrassed.

“Thanks, you too,” he muttered back.

The air around them began to lighten. In fact it felt lighter than it had all day. Fiona nodded with her muzzle down the hallway, and they started walking towards their next classes. Feeling the urge to make some more conversation, only one thought sprang to Jack’s mind.

“So… what did happen in pred class?” he asked tentatively.

“Well…”

Originally Published: 12-Nov-2020