“It's … a documentary?” I hazard.
Her eyes give a martyred roll. “No, it's a movie. One of the best movies ever made. Come watch it with me.”
Why not?
Turning off my light, I close the door to my room, feeling weird about not locking it. Warren is up the hallway, talking to someone I don't know. He looks down at me, and I shiver, wishing I could secure my door.
Sam doesn't notice anything. “I can't believe you've never even heard of The Cutting Edge,” she's babbling. “It is seriously one of my favorite movies. Ever since I was a little girl.”
“I only watched cartoons when I was little,” I tell her. “Then I never really had any friends who were willing to watch things more than a year old.”
“Bizarre,” she says, cringing. Maybe she's right. I never really thought about it before.
Warren's eyes are on me as I slide into Sam's room, and I remind myself again that he isn't a threat. The community here is tight enough people would know if he was psychotic. I'm sure he's just curious about me, like everyone else. I'm reading the sinisterness into things because I have an overactive imagination, that's all.
Still oblivious, Sam takes a DVD from a shelf of them and pops it into her player while I make myself comfortable on the couch in front of the TV. Her room is about twice the size of mine, large enough for a futon sofa and coffee table to form a sitting area my room lacks.
The film turns out to be a romance centering around a pair of bickering skaters preparing for the Olympics. It's cute and does, indeed, explain the difference between the skates. Figure skates have claws on the end, toe picks, and hockey skates do not.
The movie says absolutely nothing about speed skates.
As the credits roll and we discus what to do next, there's a frantic knocking on the door. “I think you should answer your door.”
She laughs at me. “You know what? I think I should answer my door!”
She stops laughing once the door is open, and a banshee runs through it. Slamming the door shut behind the newcomer, Sam shoves her body against it to hold it closed a second before another pounding starts. “Go away!” she screams over her shoulder through the wood.
“Give me my sister!” comes the answering demand.
“No!”
“You send that brat out here right now!” bellows the girl in the hallway.
“I'll call Mr. Atherton!” Sam counters.
“This isn't wolf business!”
“Fine!” Sam snaps. “I'll call my brother then. Do you want me to call my brother?”
The other person doesn't answer.
Interesting. It never would have occurred to me that Tod could be used to threaten people. He's about as scary as a stuffed animal.
There's another bang on the door, and then the person moves off down the hallway, yelling at other people about her evil sister and her evil sister's allies.
“Thank you?” The banshee, who is no longer screaming – thank God – peers out from behind the bed, looking like Aliah now that she's stopped wailing.
“No problem.” Sam smiles at her friend. “Your ex-ing sister is heading my list of least favorite people today anyway. Don't hold Alysia against her, Mike.”
“That was Lyly?” I try to reconcile the ugly rage-filled voice with the overtly attractive body I saw earlier and have difficulty doing it. That figure's voice should be sultry and sophisticated, not harsh and grating.
“Yes?” It's Aliah who answers, in a timid whisper. “We fight sometimes?”
“You should tell Tod.” Sam has the air of someone who has said this many, many times in the past.
Aliah shakes her head and curls up one of Sam's pillows. “He's in love with her,” she whispers sadly. For once, she doesn't make the statement into a question.
“Yeah, I know he's an ex-ing idiot.” Sitting beside her, Sam runs a hand through the other girl's hair. “But it's his job to protect you, even from her.”
With a soft sniffle, Aliah pushes her head into Sam's hand, rather like a pet would. “It's not stupid for him to want to be with her. Considering they're destined to be together anyway.”
Destined? I frown toward Sam, who scrunches her face and lets out a huff of air. “Destined, smestined. He doesn't need to mate into the east; he can have the west. I don't want it.”
Huh?
“You should,” Aliah whispers.
Sam ignores her to give me a shrug. “It's just politics. We're in line for a throne, so to speak.” Her hand motions in a dismissive wave as she quickly adds, “But it doesn't mean anything.”
Aliah shakes her head, but instead of arguing asks, “Can we talk about something else?”
“Sure, sweetie,” Sam coos. Her eyes go to me. “I heard a rumor one of us was seen hanging out with Seth today.”
“Oh?” Aliah looks eagerly at me.
Turning to my side to fully face my companions, I shrug. “We had coffee.”
“You had coffee?” Aliah asks, trading a look with Sam. “You and Seth?” she clarifies.
“Why is everyone so surprised?” I want to know. “He's nice. You guys said as much at lunch.”
“Yeah...” Sam admits before taking a deep breath. “But he's nice in a distant sort of way. Doesn't mix with the commoners much.”
“Or maybe you don't mix with him.” Folding my arms, I find myself glaring, wanting to defend Seth. “He's not even remotely snobby. And I think he's lonely. Maybe if people gave him a chance, he wouldn't be so distant.”
Sam's staring at me. “Lonely?”
“Yeah.” Putting my feet on the sofa, I pull my knees up and hug them to me while I think about it. “He doesn't like the other leopards much, but they're the only people who try to hang out with him. Because everyone else is all, 'Oh my gosh, it's a leopard!' aren't they?”
“You may have a point,” Sam admits slowly, looking thoughtful. “That's kind of like what I was saying yesterday about how lucky you are not to know what you are, isn't it?”
“But you had coffee with him?” Aliah asks me.
Nodding, I smile. “And he helped me get to my lesson when I couldn't remember how to carry my skis. He was incredibly sweet the whole time.”
Then I remember I had something to complain about. “And why didn't anyone warn me how gorgeous he is?”
“His eyes are great,” Sam admits.
“And his hair!” I'm annoyed anew that no one mentioned that. “He has the most amazing hair I have ever seen!”
“His hair?” Aliah sits up to blink at me. “You like his hair?”
“Of course I like his hair!”
The other two girls look at each other.
“Oh, come on,” I moan.
Sam clears her throat. “It's just... Well, everyone's hair is related to their fur. Aliah's fur is white, mine's red... But to have marking show through is unusual. I mean, my ears are black in fox form, but you don't see streaks of black in my hair now.”
Streaks of black would look unbelievably cool in Sam's hair, but I get the feeling saying so will get me labeled insane.
“It's something like a birth defect?” Aliah tries with a tiny wince. “It's not exactly gross or like it makes you a bad person, but it's not something to be proud of?”
“Then why does he have so much of it?” I ask instantly. “If he's ashamed of his hair, why grow it so long? Why not go with a crew cut? Or dye it? Why leave it natural and so unavoidably there?”
Aliah's head tilts to the side and her eyes narrow in thought. Sam frowns in a very similar way. “That's a good question. I never thought to ask about that.”
The question is the first thing that pops into my head when I see Seth the next morning, sitting in my English class, but I keep it to myself. I just can't look at something that glorious and say something that implies there's a problem with it. That would be like asking a supermodel why she lets people take pictures of her. Besides, there's something timid in the way he looks at me when I walk in, som
ething almost frightened. I think he expects me to yell at him, or at least snub him, because of the way he left yesterday. Instead, I smile and ask if it's alright to sit next to him.
The smile he gives me in return does all sorts of interesting things to my insides and it occurs to me that sitting near Seth is probably not conducive to learning anything in this class. But at least if I'm directly beside him, I can't spend too much time looking at him, right?
Luckily, Simone is not in Junior English, on account of being a sophomore. The leopard Amber is there, but she sits quietly on the other side of Seth. She even gives me a tiny smile before she sits down. She doesn't say anything to me, or to anyone else. I can see how people could find the behavior aloof, as if she thinks she's too far above everyone else to talk to them, but something in the way she looks at me makes me think she's just shy.
Simone, who is not at all shy, is in my afternoon class on Wednesday. As are both Sam and Aliah. And a lot of other sophomores. Chemistry is a sophomore class here. I had biology my sophomore year. Oh, well.
My first week passes in a rush, until Friday afternoon hits, bringing with it my hunting and tracking class. Then the tempo crashes to a painful form of slow motion.
Warren is in my class.
Well, not exactly in it. It's a freshman class. He's the instructor's assistant. So, yeah... Warren is teaching my hunting class, and gets ordered to tutor me the instant class starts. Great.
He shuffles over, his eyes snapping between my face and his toes in a pattern that repeats for the whole time he's walking toward me. When he approaches, he grunts in the direction of the ground, “Michaela.”
“Warren,” I answer, proud of my voice for not shaking.
His gaze goes up to my face, and I do my best to meet it. His eyes are a different blue from Seth's, although they're also pale. Where Seth's eyes remind me of polished gems, Warren's are more like less precious stones. There are no glittering facets, but blended veins of purples and aqua.
There's something in them that chills me more than the air or the snow covering my boots up past the ankle, something that reaches straight into my heart and coats it with ice. But it's not normal, lifeless ice. It's a living, breathing form of it. Like winter personified.
“Let's do a tour,” he mutters, melancholy. Like he doesn't want to be doing this, but he's sad about it rather than angry. “Put your feet in my footprints. That way you won't hit a drift and sink down.”
Without making sure I leave with him, he starts away from the class and begins to tell me about the grounds.
The wolf is talented. He manages to ignore me for two hours straight, while talking to me the whole time. I follow, numb and cold, and try to listen to his words while ignoring him back. But I'm not as skilled as he is, so I spend more time watching his back and wondering what's going on in his thoughts than I do listening to what he's saying.
What I wouldn't give to know what's in that wolf's head....
Although, then again... Considering all the things that could be in there, maybe I'm better off not knowing.
Chapter Eight
Saturday morning, I wake up completely lost. The sense of urgency that propelled me through the week has evaporated, leaving me floating without direction.
What am I supposed to do all weekend?
A bunch of people have headed up to the ski slopes, but I slept too late to go with them even if I wanted to.
Sam's skating, but I don't feel like flopping about like a fool on the ice while the others perform art.
Cuddling Leo, I bring up my email. There's a message from my dad, nearly identical to the email I get from him every morning, saying he misses me and hopes I'm doing well. I write back and try to sound cheerful. I miss him, too. I'd call, but I'm too scared I'd wind up crying, and I don't want to put him through that.
My mom wrote too, babbling about the wedding and complaining about how much more difficult my dress fittings are going to be with me way up here, hundreds of miles from the seamstress handling the wedding party's dresses. I consider writing back that I wouldn't mind being dropped from the list of bridesmaids. In fact, I would dance around in cheerful bliss if she let me off the hook on that. I feel weird as anything being part of her wedding and only agreed to it because Dad told me it would hurt her feelings if I didn't. The main motivation was to not disappoint him. When I do respond to Mom's message, though, I manage to keep myself from volunteering to be fired and from ranting about how, “Oh, you caught me. I got expelled from school and shipped off to Alaska just to inconvenience you.” Instead, I calmly point out that I will be home for a whole week at the end of March and then again for an entire month before the wedding, assuming Dad doesn't get the house sold.
There's still nothing from Troy. Not that I've written him either. Outside of my dreams, I've been doing a good job of not even thinking about him. Inside my dreams... When I'm not having nightmares about wolves, I'm dreaming about Troy. Sometimes we're back together. Sometimes I'm killing him. Either way, I'm left feeling bad.
There's only one mail from anyone at my old school. I was cc'ed on something about going to the mall today. They're probably still there. I'm not sure if I was cc'ed by mistake or if the sender hasn't noticed I'm gone.
I'm still not willing to check my Facebook account. Seeing posts about the mall trip or who asked who to what movie wouldn't make me feel any better.
Wading through a mire of angst-riddled apathy, I put Leo down with a pat and slink into the shower before forcing myself into jeans and stomping off to the library to find something to read.
The library is smaller than the one in my old school, but much larger than the size of North Sky would usually warrant. It's also somewhat higher on the the fantasy and mythology scale than most libraries I've been in. The walls are decorated with scenes from lunar myth, the largest space being given to an original painting of a pale man driving a team of dogs across the sky. The plaque under it identifies the driver as Mani, the Norse god of the moon. The artist's name causes me to blink in surprise – Michael Atherton. My eyes go over the painting again, taking in the brush strokes and composition. I don't know much about art, but it seems really well done for a high school principal.
Wanting to escape into make believe, I drift over to the fiction section to hunt out something fluffy. But before I can settle on anything, my attention is grabbed by a sound drifting down the hall.
Haunting music calls to me from a room I haven't been in yet. I follow the rich, Gothic melody along the corridor, but stop at the doorway it leads to, scared to step in lest I break the magic spell Seth is constructing.
He doesn't notice me watching him as his fingers charm sound from the piano. He's too focused on his song, which flows from him without the aid of sheet music.
No one ever bothered to mention he was musician. There's a lot of things no one ever says about Seth. Surely they aren't all shallow enough to think driving a cool car and being feline is more important than being able to make people cry with music.
And there literally are tears sliding down my cheeks.
The song goes on and on, never becoming dull.
When Seth's fingers fall still, I sniffle to control my nose, then clap slowly.
He whips to face me, startled and embarrassed.
“That was beautiful,” I whisper, my voice choked with emotion.
Eyes wide, he pales noticeably. “Thank you.”
He lowers the cover over the keys, staring down at it. “I didn't know anyone was there. I usually don't make people listen.”
“Make people listen?” What world does this guy live in? “Seth, you could charge people. Go on tour. Sell t-shirts and everything.”
Laughing, he rises from the stool and takes a few steps towards me. “I don't think pianists sell much swag.”
I shrug. “Well, they have people to do it for them, sure....” Trailing off into a grin, I find myself staring into his eyes yet again. The grin falters and fades.
Seth looks down to his feet. “So what are you doing today?”
“Reading.” I wave down the hall. “I was in the library looking for something when I heard you.”
He frowns slightly. “Are you completely sold on the idea of reading all day?”
My eyebrows go up. “Not really,” I say slowly, my stomach rolling in waves of nerves.
Looking up to meet my eyes, he takes a breath and asks, “Have you seen town yet?”
Swallowing, I try to keep my wits about me even though all I can clearly focus on are those eyes. “There's a town?”
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