Chapter 1

Life was good, it was June, and the weather was finally sunny and warm instead of grey and wet like it was most of the year. I was doing well at school, exams were still a blip on the horizon so no need to worry about them yet, or so I told myself. I had some great friends and to top it all, a beautiful girl friend.

Just thinking of her made me smile. Lisa was a petite red head with a pale freckled complexion and green eyes hinting at her Irish ancestry. Her face always seemed to have a hint of amusement on it like she was just on the brink of laughing. Her smile just made me melt. She had curves but nothing was exaggerated, she was just cute and sexy and to go along with her physical appeal, she was funny and smart.

How an average height not particularly handsome brown haired brown eyed chap like me could get so lucky was a source of constant amazement to me.

Lisa was also sneaky; she would slide up next to me before I noticed she was there and press herself against me. Sort of like how she was doing now as I walked in the school gate. "Hey handsome," she grinned up at me.

We kissed and then arm in arm, made our way up to our classroom for morning registration.

"How was your weekend?" I asked.

"Oh it was a drag. We went to my aunt's to help her move some stuff out of her attic. I missed you." That earned her another kiss, "How about you?"

"You know me, video games till the wee hours."

"You boys and your toys," she smirked.

"I did miss you though." She gave me a half hug as we made our way up to the second floor where our classroom was.

When we walked in the room and were met by our small group of friends. Vicky gave us a sour look, "Oh, the love birds are at it again!" she said then broke into a smirk.

Vicky was tall with raven black hair in a very short spiky feminine cut. She had pointed ears and people used to call her pixie till she grew tall. She was somewhat mischievous so the nickname Pixie still popped up now and again. She was very pretty with dark brown eyes and a fabulous figure, all curves and legs that went on forever. We'd had a thing for each other a while back, but she'd broken it off before it really started. She'd felt a romantic relationship would ruin our friendship. We were still very good friends and had been for years. I sometimes caught her looking at me and Lisa when she didn't think I was looking and she looked almost jealous, though it might have just been me reading into things too much.

"Aren't you too tired of all that kissing and hugging after a whole weekend of it?" asked Dave, a short boy with thick glasses. He was a dog hybrid though it was more hidden than anything else. His eyesight had become poor but his sense of smell and hearing had increased dramatically. Other than that, he looked normal.

"We haven't seen each other all weekend!" I replied.

"Damn they're going to be worse than usual!" exclaimed the last of our group, Charlie, who was a frog hybrid. His skin was slightly odd looking, as it was adapted to being underwater, where he could absorb oxygen through it. He could also shoot his tongue out and grab things, which was really cool to see. He also had slightly webbed feet and hands which made him an excellent swimmer. He was also a really low power electrical elemental, he could shock you a bit like one of those Van de Graff generators they had in the science labs. He was a bit disappointed with the low strength of his ability but it was more than the rest of us had.

As took our seats we chatted about our weekend. Vicky had been to a lan party (a networked PC gaming session) with some clan she was in. She was a real hardcore gamer, so good she had won a few local competitions and wanted to try out for the cybergames. The thought of her making a living as a professional gamer was interesting. She was good enough that's for sure. Last time I played her at something she won 100 to 3 which didn't do my ego much good. What made it worse was I was pretty sure she threw the last few games just so I wouldn't feel too bad, because it had been 95-0 before I finally won one.

Charlie had gone to a lake with his family for some water sports. they were big into their sailing and swimming. Charlie reckons that's why He'd turned into a frog hybrid, he spent most of his life in the water and MORFS just made it more practical.

Dave had just lounged around, enjoying the time off, which I could certainly understand. Sometimes it was nice to have some time to just do nothing. I'd enjoyed my own leisurely weekend, except that Lisa hadn't been with me.

Pretty soon Miss Adams, our house teacher rushed in. She was an intense woman called who was also a P.E. teacher, and always wore a track suit. She seemed to have little time to mess around and never seemed to smile, only scowl. After a swift run through the register and a few announcements, we were dismissed and sent off to our next lessons.

I gave Lisa a kiss good bye and headed off for science class with Vicky, Dave, and Charlie. Lisa was in a different set than the rest of us, which meant we were in different classrooms at the moment. I would get to see her at break though, and besides, sometimes having her there with me was distracting.

We muddled through learning about the Haber process, then headed for our classroom to hang out till our next lessons I chatted with Vicky while we waited for Lisa to show up. When it got to be about half way through break and she still hadn't showed, I began to get a little worried. I wandered over to one of the people in her class. "Hey Betty, did Lisa get held back after class or something?"