SCOTT WAS PANICKING, SEARCHING HIS ROOM FRANTICALLY. Both of his friends had called him about a thousand times, but he could not find it. After his umpteenth request, Stiles finally sighed, "It's not here. Okay, so you lost your phone. Why don't you just get a new one?"

"I can't afford a new one, and I can't do this alone,"he responded. Derek had been gone for a while at that point, and there was almost no doubt that the Argents had him. "We have to find Derek."

"Well, A, you're not alone, you have me—" Stiles told him.

Wren added, "And me!" She and the Stilinski boy were not exactly the dream team, though. All they had to offer was random facts, arguments, and sarcastic comments, and, in Wren's case, either extreme energy or constant complaining.

"—and B, didn't you say Derek walked into gunfire? He sounds pretty dead," the sheriff's son continued. It was true. Getting hit by a bunch of bullets was not usually something you came back from. Wren did not know how much that rule applied to werewolves, though.

"Argent's plan was to use him to get to the Alpha," the McCall boy informed them. "They're not gonna kill him."

Wren shrugged. She did not really give a crap what happened to Derek, and they wanted Peter dead. So, they could kill a bunch of birds with one stone. "All right, so then, just let them do what they're planning, you know? They use Derek to find Peter, problem solved.

"Not if Peter's going after Allison to find Derek! I can't protect her on my own, which means we either find Derek first—" he tried to tell them but he gave up about halfway through and just exclaimed, "Just help me!"

The blonde girl stood up and began searching around the room, but Stiles stayed where he was, continuing to complain. "You know, you probably lost it when you two were fighting. You remember that? When he was trying to kill you? After you interrupted him trying to kill Jackson? Are you starting to see a pattern of violent behavior here?"

"He wasn't going to kill anyone. And I'm not letting him die," the McCall boy replied, shaking his head. He owed Derek since he had kind of helped him with his transition into being a werewolf, even though he completely lied about the Cure.

"Could you at least think about letting him die? For me?" Stiles begged, causing Wren to giggle a little bit. Suddenly, Scott did that thing where he perked up, which meant that he heard something. "What?"

"My mom just got home from work," he answered, and they winced because they were all supposed to be at school at that moment. She was not going to be happy when she came home and found them all there.

But he seemed to be more worried about something else as he continued to listen in. Wren furrowed her eyebrows, concerned about her practically second mother. "Is she okay? What's she doing?"

"Crying," he told them, and he looked like he was about to cry as well. He had saved his mother from Petere, but he ruined her date. Wren knew that he wanted to tell her everything, but he couldn't.

He sat down on his bed, and Stiles moved to sit next to him Wren simply racked her brain for soemthing that she could do to help. She hated seeing Scott like that, helpless and stressed. Stiles told him, "Scott, you can't protect everyone."

"I have to," he sighed. Wren thought about what she was doing for a second, weighing the cost benefit analysis in her head. She then walked toward the door. Scott looked up at her in confusion. "What are you doing?"

"Your mom is in desperate need of a girl. I'll be back in a minute. Be ready to leave," she informed hi, and she headed downstairs without another word. She went out the back door of the house and walked around to the sidewalk so that she could pretend like she had just been walking down the sidewalk. She stopped when she saw te woman get out of the car, noticing her puffy eyes. "Hey, Melissa. Is everything okay?"

Her head shot up, like she had been caught stealing or something. She wiped her face, smiling at her son's friend. "Hi, Wren. Yeah, I'm fine."

"Is this about your date? Did it not go well?" the blonde girl asked. She realized in that moment that she had not spoken to a girl about a date since middle school, so she had no clue what to say.

Melissa sighed, knowing that her son must have told her about the awful experience. "Scott told you?"

"Just that you went on one, and he interrupted it," Wren answered, not mentioning anything about Peter or everything else Scott and Stiles had told her. She figured the woman would be embarrassed, and she didn't want to put her through that.

The Carter girl was honestly surprised when she began talking about it, but she immediately felt bad when it looked like she was about to cry again. "Well, it didn't even happen, really, and I just made an idiot of myself trying to call him."

"Boys are idiots," Wren sighed, although that was common knowledge.

"He didn't even do anything. It was just... " Melissa trailed off, and then she stopped, realizing that she was telling a sixteen-year-old about her dating problems. Wren had probably just been trying to be nice. "I'm sorry. I should not be complaining to you."

The blonde girl shook her head because she wanted to hear about it. "No, you're fine. Sometimes you just need a girl to talk to." She laughed, thinking about Scott trying to talk to his mom about her date, "I mean, Scott's not exactly an exception to the idiot rule."

"I just thought I could go on one date and try to get back out there, and of course, it all comes crashing down." The tears were forming, and Wren did the only thing that she could think to do. She hugged her best friend's mom, and surprisingly, she hugged back. Scott watched the two from his window, glad that his mom had someone to talk to but upset that he ruined her date.

As Melissa was wetting Wren's shirt while crying, she muttered, "Shouldn't you be at school?"

《❀》

MELISSA WALKED INTO HER SON'S ROOM THAT EVENING WITH A SMILE. Wren was sitting on the bed, using a mirror to adjust her makeup. Her dress was dark green, and her hair was in a half-up half-down style. She was looking forward to dancing and thanking God that she was in a good mood that night and actually wanted to go to the dance. "Wren, you look beautiful!"

"Why thank you," she replied with a grin.

The woman nodded and then picked up the jacket on the bed, picking it up and examining it. "This is really nice! How did you afford a — Oh." She must have noticed that it was duct taped together.

"No! Don't say that. I just got him to stop freaking out," Wren sighed, shaking her head. She had spent the past ten minutes assuring him that his suit was fine and that no one was going to notice. It would be fairly dark in the gym anyway, and it wasn't like he had a bunch of friends to impress or anything,

He began panicking again, and Wren flopped back onto his bed. She was going to leave it to his mother to clean up the mess this time. "It's not gonna work, is it?"

"No, no, it's fine, it's fine. No one'll notice," she assured him with a pat on the back before turning back and whispering to the blonde girl, "No one legally blind..."

"I heard that," Scott announced as the females giggled behind him. He glared at both of them because he was extremely nervous, and neither of them were helping him in the slightest. Wren felt kind of bad, but she did not really know what to do.

"Okay, well, you just come in here, and we can try it. Let's do this," she said, and her son exited the bathroom and held his arms out. She helped him put the jacket on, and Wren shot him an impressed look when he looked really good. "See? I actually think this is gonna work..."

The McCall boy was about to get really excited when Wren noticed something on his ass, and she began giggling before realizing that it was her friend that she was laughing at. "Oh, God."

"What? What?" he asked, and he threw his hands up in the air when he saw the hole in the butt of his pants. Wren was close to telling him to just paint his ass black, but she knew that he would not appreciate the joke. "I don't have time for this! I can't buy new ones, Mom! What am I gonna do?"

"Okay, don't panic, all right? Take them off. Pants off. Now," Melissa ordered, and he complied. The three of them sat side-by-side on the bed, watching as she began trying to fix his pants. "So, is she coming here? Because you know I need the car tonight, and are you really making Wren third wheel?" she asked them.

The Carter girl shook her head, slightly offended that she had assumed that she did not have a date. "I've got a date, and he's a loser without one."

"No, I'm going stag. There's a difference. Sort of," Scott defended, but both of the females were clearly unconvinced. He was going alone, but he had high hopes for what was going to happen once he got there.

Melissa nodded. "I'm sorry, I'm just a little, you know, surprised that, you know... you don't have anyone else to ask other than Allison." Wren didn't notice it because she was distracted, but the McCall woman's eyes landed on her for a moment after saying that.

"There are no other girls besides Allison," he groaned.

Wren scrunched her face up in disgust. She had heard enough about his undying love for Allison and how amazing she was. "That's just gross."

"You really feel that way?" his mom asked him in shock, continuing to sew the pants as he stood up and paced back and forth in his underwear. It wasn't anything Wren hadn't seen before.

"I can't help it. I mean, every time I look at her, I get this-this hollow feeling in my chest, and it's like-it's like someone literally took a shovel and dug a hole in me, and it's the worst feeling I've ever had in my life, and I didn't — I didn't know anyone could actually ever feel this bad."

Wren pursed her lips, not responding. She glanced up at him and saw this look of complete love in his eyes. And she didn't know why, but it made her sad. Melissa asked, "Have you told her how you feel?"

"She knows," he responded, shaking his head. He had made an idiot of himself a few too many times to do it again and get rejected.

"Come on, she knows? Listen, dumbass, I'm gonna let you in on a secret that most guys don't even have a clue about, all right? You ready? Women love words," Melissa explained. "I'm surprised Wren hasn't told you to man up already. You need to tell her how you feel. Just say it. Say it again. Say it differently. Learn to say it better. Learn how to sing it. You know, just write it in a poem and a letter attached to flowers, carve it in a tree, in a sidewalk with cement, tattoo it on your arm..."

He looked at her with a confused expression. "Really?"

"You dumbass," the blonde girl muttered, looking at him with a disappointed expression. He was a bit too excited by the prospect of tattooing his love confession on his freaking arm.

"No. Not really." Melissa was quick to stop him, shaking her head. "Just... tell her the truth. Tell her anything and everything you want."