Of Fur and Ice

by Andrea Marie Brokaw

  Of Fur and Ice A Werestory

  by Andrea Marie Brokaw

  Also by Andrea Marie Brokaw:

  Pride, Prejudice, and Curling Rocks

  I'd Rather Not Be Dead

  Of Snow and Whiskers (Werestory 2)

  Of Fur and Ice

  Copyright © 2014 by Andrea Marie Brokaw

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Digital Edition

  ISBN: 978-0-9847021-5-2

  Hedgie Press

  www.hedgiepress.com

  Covert art by Melody Daggerhart.

  Author photo by Andrea Brokaw.

  Hedgie Press logo by Amanda Ulevich.

  For Sommer,

  the best near-sister a girl could have.

  Chapter One

  Our footsteps echo through the empty halls as Mrs. Bentley drags me to the office, her hand so tight on my arm that my hand tingles from lack of circulation. She half-flings me through the door in front of her, loosing the bruising grip but keeping close in case I try anything. If I had any idea what she thinks I might do, maybe I would try it, but since I don't I let myself be yanked up to the reception desk, where I stand and look meek. I let my long brown hair fall forward to cover the sides of my face in an attempt to seem abashed.

  Everyone pauses their work, amazed to see me here. They know me, but as an easy to ignore, Honor Roll student, not as someone expected to be manhandled into custody.

  Folding her arms but not looking too alarmed, Principal Reeves nods to us. “What's going on?”

  Mrs. Bentley puffs up in self-righteousness. “What's going on is that Michaela just desecrated a textbook with a knife!"

  “A knife?” Principal Reeves stares at me, seeming to expect me to say something, but all I can do is shake my head in mute denial as I stand before her with my arms wrapped tightly around my torso.

  “Don't you dare lie!” Mrs. Bentley waves the book in front of me like the prosecutor in a particularly melodramatic courtroom drama. “I have evidence!”

  The part of me that would usually point out no one saw a knife is completely absent, leaving me fully controlled by the part of me in charge of blinking stupidly and the bit in charge of feeling nauseated, which is working extra hard.

  “She looks like she's in shock,” Mr. Weston, the school counselor, says in the most reasonable of voices. “And you're yelling at her in public.”

  “Did you see what she did?” Mrs. Bentley thrusts the book toward him in a way that implies she'd rather hit him with it.

  Principal Reeves chooses this as the moment to intervene. “My office. Now.”

  Mrs. Bentley gives Mr. Weston a disgusted glower before charging across the room to the principal's door, and the counselor puts a gentle hand on my back to guide me after her. “Someone get Michaela some juice, please?”

  One of the office aides springs up to go find me something to drink, as though orange juice has the magical power to save me.

  They have me sit down, and Principal Reeves waits until Mr. Weston closes the door to ask, “What happened, Michaela?”

  Mrs. Bentley makes a sound like she's yearning to cut me off, but she falls silent fast when Principal Reeves shoots her a glare of intimidation.

  “I got angry,” I whisper. “I tore up the book.”

  “Tore?” the principal repeats. She holds a hand out for the book, which Mrs. Bentley hands over with a derisive snort and raises her eyebrows at its condition. “You're telling me you used your hands to do this?”

  I swallow, knowing no one will believe me. My stomach swims in acid, but I keep breakfast down as I force my eyes to meet Principal Revees's. “Yes, Ma'am.”

  The adults trade looks and Principal Reeves sighs. “Michaela, it's obvious this book was cut. This will go a lot easier if you cooperate.”

  I consider telling them the truth. But they'd think I'm crazy. So, I just shake my head and repeat, “There was no knife.”

  This provokes a harsh laugh from Mrs Bentley. “Do you think we're idiots?”

  Tears of frustration spring up in my eyes. “Of course not.”

  With a look of calm, Mr. Weston clears his throat. “Did you see her destroy the book, Yolanda?”

  “No...” Mrs. Bentley admits. “But no one else could have done it!”

  "Uh huh." Mr. Weston folds his arms. “And did you see a knife?”

  “She won't give it to me!”

  Looking to Principal Reeves, Mr. Weston raises his eyebrows. “Sounds to me like there's no evidence Michaela did anything.”

  “She admitted it!” Mrs. Bentley counters.

  My self-appointed defender shrugs. “We'll leave aside arguing about the value of a confession made under distress for the moment and say she did admit she damaged the book. But she didn't confess anything about a weapon even with you harassing her.”

  The word weapon breaks through the wall of fog clouding my thoughts. Destroying a book is bad. It could get me suspended. But bringing a weapon to school? That's expulsion, if not arrest. “I want my dad,” I blurt.

  Principal Reeves sighs again. “Yes, I think he needs to come in.”

  She looks at Mr. Weston. “Gene, take her to your office, please?”

  Dismissed, I rise on shaky legs and follow the counselor out of the room. He waves me to one of the plush chairs in his office and motions for me to open the bottle of juice I'd been handed when we walked back through the main office. “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Fair enough.” He sits down across from me anyway and watches me as I drink. He waits a few minutes before asking, “What could have happened to make you so angry?”

  I consider pretending the question is rhetorical, but it would be easy enough for him to get someone to tell him exactly what went down in homeroom. “Bad breakup,” I condense. “Someone came to school wearing my boyfriend.”

  “Bad way to start the day,” Mr. Weston comments sympathetically.

  “No kidding.”

  “I can see why you'd be angry about that.”

  “Yeah.” Angry isn't really a strong enough word. As I'd sat there watching Troy and Kim, a tsunami of aggression crashed over me. I tried to calm down – I really did. But there weren't enough mantras in the world to kill the rage.

  “So you took it out on the book?”

  I shake my head and stare at my juice. “It seemed like a better idea than attacking either of them.”

  “Probably,” he agrees. “But did you really just tear it?”

  “I don't even own a knife,” I whisper, rubbing the label on my bottle and trying not to cry. The statement's true, though it doesn't really answer the question honestly. Because I didn't just tear the book; I cut the thing to shreds. With my claws.

  Chapter Two

  “It wasn't your fault I let myself get attacked,” I tell Dad. His feelings of guilt over the incident have etched new lines into a face that isn't old enough to be wrinkled yet. His sigh brings his shoulder back to push into his seat, and his eyes hang around the speedometer. They're the same shade of hazel as mine, although his are partially shielded by glasses.

  “Maybe not,” Dad says, as close to admitting he wasn't to blame as he's gotten. “But what I've done since then is my fault.”

  Huh? I squint at his profile, at a loss. “What you've done since then? What do you mean?”

  “I've tried to be there for you, but obviously I'm doing something wrong, Mike.”

  An affronted sound of disbelief rushes from my lungs. “You're not doing anything wrong! You have gone above and beyond the call of duty, Dad!”

  He shakes his head, then ignores my
words. “Your mother and I...” He turns into our subdivision, a characterless little community of cookie-cutter dwellings and white picket fences. “We've been talking. Before today.”

  “I do not want to go live with Mom,” I state in the adamant tone I always say this in. “I belong with you.”

  The faintest of smiles crosses Dad's thin lips, deepening the faint lines around his mouth. “Thank you for that. But...”

  “There's no but about it!”

  “Micheala...”

  It's never a good sign when he calls me by my full name. Never.

  We make a left onto our street, and I see a massive SUV sitting the driveway. Jet black and with tinted windows, it looks like it could hold an entire secret government organization, though the mud on its tires and the dust coating its side suggest it might be tougher than that.

  No one in my family owns an SUV. Not even my mother's obnoxious fiancé. He has a cherry red BMW convertible. Its roof would come up to the bottom of this thing's license plate.

  My dad curses. “I thought I had more time than this.”

  “More time for what?” I ask, a feeling of dread inching toward me from the distance.

  The door of the SUV opens and a woman hops out, sticking a perfect landing despite being far too short for a vehicle as tall as this one. Red hair glistening in the sun, she beams at us, her freckles adding a level of cute she's never tried to hide behind makeup.

  But what is Vivianne Fox doing here? Like my father, she works for the National Forests. Unlike my father, she spends most of her time actually in National Forests rather than typing data into the computers at the regional headquarters office. She should be wandering somewhere in the North Cascades right now, not sitting outside my house. Even if she's heard her co-worker was having a family crisis, why would she care?

  Oh.

  “You and Vivianne!” I blurt. “You're dating!”

  Dad looks at me like I'm crazy, almost as if I'd just told him I was a werewolf. “We're not. We're just friends. She's here because...” He takes a deep breath, refusing to meet my eyes as he shuts off the engine. “You're going to boarding school.”

  My first impulse is to laugh, the statement is so ridiculous. “Yeah, right. Of course I am.”

  “I'm serious, sweetheart.” Now he does meet my eyes, and I wish he wouldn't because the anguish in them cuts me.

  “No.”

  He just looks at me, his lip trembling ever so slightly.

  “What's that have to do with her?”

  “Her kids go to the school you're going to.”

  “No, they don't.” I saw them at the department minor league hockey night two weeks ago. They looked like a pair of mini-Vivians, though one was a boy.

  “The younger two still live at home,” Dad clarifies. “The older two... The older two go to North Sky Academy.”

  I stare at him, realizing he honestly means to send me away. The tears that have managed to stay away all morning start to swell in my eyes, accompanied by a healthy dose of panic. "Daddy?"

  “This isn't about today.” He's not looking at me at all anymore. Dad could never stand to see me cry. “Like I said, your mom and I... We've been discussing this for a while now.”

  “And it didn't occur to you to ask my opinion?” How could they make a decision about this without talking to me about it? “This is my life!”

  “I planned to talk to you about it soon, but then this morning...” His hands spread helplessly.

  “Then this morning,” I repeat. “I guess I finally gave you an excuse to get rid of me, huh?”

  “Mike!” He grabs my hands with moist palms. “It's not like that. You know I love you. But this is what's best for you. You have to believe I think that."

  There are so many things I could yell at him right now, so many hurtful words right there on the tip of my tongue. But I let the air flow from my body and wall the hurt away to deal with later. “Of course you love me.” He does. I know. Mom, I'm not so sure about, but I've never doubted Dad. “So, what is this North Sky place? Military school in Siberia?”

  “No. It's a really nice place.” He's trying to get someone to believe that, but I don't know which one of us it is. “Vivianne is an alumna and, like I said, her own kids go there. She vouched for the place when the principal called us.”

  “Called us?” I ask, my nose crinkling up. “Why would the principal call you? Private school principals don't recruit, Dad. At least not students who aren't worth millions.”

  Dad looks thrown by that, as if it had never occurred to him something was strange. “Viv says they're on the level.”

  Great.

  “Her kids go there.”

  Yeah, this is the fourth time he's said that. If he repeats it often enough, will I accept it as proof that North Sky's an academic version of Disney World and that every student in the world is dying to go there? “And where is there?” I ask again.

  He takes another breath before answering, giving me time to brace myself for an answer I'm not going to like. “Alaska.”

  “Alaska!” I shriek.

  "Don't freak." Dad looks at me now, his eyes widening at my expression. Freaked is understating my condition. "I've already applied to jobs up there, and the house will be on the market as soon as I can get the yard cleaned up some. I'm not exiling you. We're both moving. I just won't be going to the school."

  He tries to smile at the little joke he slipped into his mad declaration, but it does nothing to calm me. Who picks up and moves without even having a discussion about it? Doesn't he see this affects me at least as much as him? I throw the door open. “Alaska!” I yell at the short little redhead, who doesn't seem half as adorable as she did a few minutes ago.

  “Michaela, stop.” Dad rushes out of the car after me, but I ignore him and advance on his dear friend Viv.

  “So, what? You want me out of the way so you can put the moves on my dad or something? Because he's coming too.” I grind out. She meets my eyes, not intimidated in the least. Oh, if only she knew how I destroyed my stupid text book. Then she'd be intimidated all right! “Alaska!” I bellow again in the face her calm, sympathetic, regard.

  “It's a beautiful country,” she says as Dad walks up behind me. Her voice is gentle, but it does nothing to soothe me.

  “It's frozen!” I yell back.

  “Not all the time. It's not as cold as people think. It's really hot in the summer.” She starts reaching a hand toward me, and I let out a wordless scream of outrage, swatting her arm down.

  “I do not want your comfort,” I growl.

  Her smile is sad as she nods. “That's understandable.”

  With a little cough to clear his throat, Dad commands, “Let our guest inside, please, honey. I'll get your stuff.”

  Our guest.

  The same trembling anger I felt earlier shakes my body. The fingers that dig into my pocket for my house key are aching, starting to shift into weapons.

  “Let me get that.” Vivianne takes the key chain from me the second it's visible. She has to have noticed my hand is malformed now, but she remains cool as she slides the key into its hole. “Get inside before you shift in front of the neighbors, and your dad's forced to spend his last weeks here avoiding the National Inquirer.”

  In an instant, the shock of her words halts my changes and returns my fingers in a flash back into those a completely normal American girl. My nails become their regular chewed-to-the-quick selves, which are about as capable of ripping someone apart as a plastic spork.

  “What did you just say?”

  She glances back at my father before answering. “The school is for weres, Mike. Weres. Like you and me.” Her brown eyes flash for just a second, their shape shifting to something that isn't human.

  Mind spinning, I let her into the house before me. “Weres?”

  She holds out the keys with an apologetic air. “The thing that attacked you wasn't a dog.”

  “I know,” I whisper back. “It was a werewol
f.”

  Her teeth press down on her lip in hesitation. “I don't know. You don't smell like a wolf. We should know next full moon.”

  “No.” I shake my head again. “I don't change at the moon.” Last time the moon was full, I waited locked in my bathroom all night, but the only thing that came of it was that I failed a math test because I was so exhausted from sitting awake in the tub.