by Sky Winters
He nodded once in response, and then walked into Grey Mountain High without a backward glance. Savannah brushed off the strange moment and made her way to her first class. She walked through the door to find herself face to face with Marissa.
To Savannah’s amazement, Marissa gave her a smile. “Hello, Savannah,” she said. “How was your first day of school?”
“I…it was…nice,” Savannah said, stumbling over her words a little.
“The girls and I wanted to welcome you to Grey Mountain by taking you out yesterday, but you disappeared right after school ended,” she said. She was smiling pleasantly, but Savannah could sense an undercurrent to that smile. “Anyway, we’re going hiking this evening and we were hoping you would join us?”
Savannah was more than a little taken aback by the sudden turnaround, but she was forced to admit she was sorely tempted to accept. Still, she could not forget Marissa’s threat the previous day, which was still fresh in her mind.
“Considering I joined mid-term, I have lots of work to catch up on,” Savannah said. “I don’t think I can spare the time.”
“Oh, come on,” Marissa said. “I’ve looked at your transcripts, Savannah. You're a straight A student with a squeaky clean record. You’re probably ahead of all of us.”
“You’ve seen my transcripts?”
“My mother’s the principal,” Marissa said with a wink. “And she doesn’t always lock her office door.”
“Listen, it’s nice of you to offer--”
“I get why you’re a little…hesitant,” Marissa interrupted. “And I’m sorry about yesterday. I know I came on a little…strong-- I can be like that sometimes. But it’s only because I care about Xander. He got out of a bad relationship recently and he got his heart broken, and I don’t want to see that happen to him again. Still, it was wrong of me to make assumptions about you.”
Savannah wrinkled her eyebrows in confusion. “What makes you think he’s even interested in me?” Savannah asked. “I’d only just walked onto campus. We hadn’t even said two words to each other at the time.”
“When you’ve known someone for as long as Xander and I have known each other, you just sense things,” Marissa said. Savannah felt a little jolt at her choice of words. “I saw the way he looked at you yesterday and I just knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That he liked you,” Marissa replied calmly.
“So this has nothing to do with the fact that you and Xander are--”
“Oh, God, no,” Marissa said, laughing as she tossed her beautiful blonde hair away from her face. “He’s not my boyfriend and he never has been.” It was impossible for Savannah not to believe her. “So are we good now?” she asked. “Can we put this bit of awkwardness behind us?”
“I…sure,” Savannah said, biting down on her doubts and throwing them to the wind.
“Excellent,” Marissa said, looking genuinely happy. “Then it’s settled. Come on, I saved you a seat next to us.”
She led Savannah to the back row of the classroom where three other girls were sitting. “This is Bianca,” she said, pointing to a skinny, dark-skinned girl with brown hair, brown eyes, and exotic features. “This is Meryl,” Marissa said, looking toward the girl with unsettling jet-black hair, and large brown eyes.
“Finally, this is Suzanna,” Marissa introduced, nodding towards the short blonde girl with soft blue eyes, and freckles lining the bridge of her nose. “But everyone calls her Zanna.”
“Hi,” Savannah replied as they smiled at her.
“You wear a hearing aid, don’t you?” Meryl asked bluntly.
“Geez, Meryl,” Marissa said.
“What?” Meryl asked defensively. “I’m just asking a question.”
“No, it’s okay,” Savannah said quickly. “I don’t mind talking about it. Yes, I wear a hearing aid. I was born deaf.”
“Born deaf?” Zanna said with raised eyebrows. “That must have been hard.”
“Not really,” Savannah said with a shrug. “You don’t miss what you've never had.”
“But you can hear us fine, now?” Meryl asked.
Savannah nodded. “Because of my hearing aid, but even without it, I’m really good at reading lips.”
“Does that mean you know sign language?” Bianca asked.
Savannah nodded. “I could sign before I could speak.”
“Wow!” Meryl exclaimed. “And when did you start to hear sound?”
“Around the time I was fitted with my first hearing aid.”
“How old were you?” Zanna asked.
“Seven.”
“And how–"
“Guys!” Marissa interrupted. “Don’t make her feel like a monkey in the zoo. Let’s change the subject, shall we?”
The girls exchanged glances. “Sorry,” Zanna smiled. “We can get a little carried away sometimes.”
“No, that’s all right,” Savannah said quickly.
“In the spirit of changing the subject, how are you finding Grey Mountain, Savannah?” Bianca asked.
“I like it,” Savannah replied. “It’s different from any other place I’ve been to.”
“I bet.” Zanna laughed. “It’s boring as hell.”
They fell into an easy chatter and Savannah found herself enjoying the company far more than she would have imagined. She had never been a part of a group of girls before, and she was starting to understand what it was about. There was a camaraderie there that she had not experienced before. It made her feel like she belonged somewhere--it was a heady feeling.
Especially considering she had never felt as if she really belonged anywhere.
Chapter Seven
Savannah spent the rest of the day with Marissa and the girls. By the time the last bell had finally rung, any doubt she had about them were gone. They left school together, and Savannah couldn’t help but look around for Xander.
“Savannah?” Marissa’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Are you ready?”
“Oh, sure,” Savannah nodded. She got into the white car with the rest of the girls. “Do you hike often?” she asked as they started driving away from the high school.
Bianca nodded. “Almost every week together. Sometimes more when we’re on our own.”
“Wow,” Savannah said in a breathy voice. “You guys are really into hiking, then?”
Marissa nodded from behind the steering wheel. “Very much. All our parents were really into hiking when we were growing up, and I guess it rubbed off.”
“Except mine,” Meryl piped in. “My parents hate nature. I don’t know why they chose to settle down in this town.”
Savannah smiled. “Do you guys follow the regulated hiking paths?”
Zanna nodded. “We used to when we first started hiking together, but now we go off on our own a lot of the time. We know those woods like the backs of our hands.”
“Really?”
“Have you been to the glade yet?” Marissa asked. Her eyes caught Savannah’s in the rear-view mirror.
“The glade?” Savannah repeated, wondering if she should let on that Xander had taken her there.
“Yes…big clearing, high up on the mountains?” Marissa described. “There’s a perfect lake sitting in the center of it.”
Savannah nodded, having made a split-second decision. “I have been, actually.”
“Ah, so Xander did take you there.” Marissa smiled. “Well, it saves us from hiking all the way up there to show you. Did you like it?”
“It was perfect,” Savannah said. “I loved it.”
Savannah searched for some sense of jealousy or hostility coming from Marissa, but couldn’t seem to detect anything obvious. Her tone was calm and conversational, and the girls filled with car with a constant stream of chatter. It was the most noise Savannah had heard in a long time, and she couldn’t help but enjoy being at the center of it.
Marissa finally pulled up by the side of the road where a few parking spots had been drawn out for hikers. She parked th
e car and everyone got out, leaving all the books and bags in the vehicle.
“No one’s taking anything?” Savannah asked.
“We’ve got our cell phones on us,” Meryl replied. “That’s enough.”
“Do you have a cell phone?” Marissa asked.
“I do.” Savannah nodded as she patted her jeans pocket.
“Great.” Marissa smiled. “Then let’s get going.”
The trail was a little different from the one Savannah had traveled with Xander. It was less wild and less dangerous. There was a narrow, winding path that led up the hill, and far fewer trees, which meant there were far fewer animals as well.
Savannah struggled to keep up with the girls. Within the first five minutes it was obvious how practised they all were with hiking. They breezed up the first hill in a matter of minutes, leaving Savannah panting her way up, pain shooting up and down her sides.
“Guys, slow down,” Bianca said from the top. “Savannah isn’t as used to hiking as we are.”
They slowed down slightly, after Savannah was able to catch up faster. They kept walking for another half hour, and by the time the girls had finally decided to take a break, Savannah was truly exhausted. Her legs were hurting and she sat down with relief.
“I can’t believe you guys do every week,” she said, panting.
“You get used to it,” Zanna replied. “I would have thought you’d be okay, considering your hike with Xander yesterday--”
“Oh, I guess it was less strenuous than this one,” Savannah admitted.
“What else did you guys do?” Meryl asked.
“Nothing, really,” Savannah replied. “Just a short hike.”
Marissa was very quiet, and Savannah’s doubts started to creep back up to the surface. She looked up sharply and caught Marissa staring. She smiled slowly and her eyes softened, making Savannah wonder if she was just being paranoid.
“Savannah?” Marissa said, looking at her. “Do you like Xander?”
It was far more direct than Savannah had expected. Taken unawares she hesitated a little. “I…don’t know him all that well.”
“Yet you went off with him yesterday,” Marissa pointed out. “All alone.”
“Is there something I should know?” Savannah asked, uncomfortably aware of everyone’s eyes on her.
“This morning I told you only half the story,” Marissa said. “Xander is my friend. He did just get out of a bad relationship, and she did break his heart. What I didn’t mention was that he broke her heart right back.”
“What?”
Zanna spoke up before Marissa could. “What Marissa is trying to say is that Xander can be a little…temperamental. He can be a little…dangerous. He’s a typical bad boy and there’s no changing him. I’d be careful if I were you.”
“What exactly are you saying?” Savannah asked.
“The girl he was seeing? Her name was Zoe,” Marissa explained. “When she broke up with him? Well it hit him hard. He tried to convince her to take him back and when she refused, he got violent.”
“Violent?” Savannah gasped in disbelief.
“He didn’t actually hurt her,” Zanna clarified. “But he scared her pretty bad. She left town because of him.”
I looked around at all of them. “Is this true?”
Marissa sighed. “I’ve known Xander my whole life,” she said. “He’s a good guy, but he’s had a hard life. His father was…very volatile, and Xander suffered the most for it. It left him with…a few problems.”
Savannah remembered the scars etched across Xander’s chest and back and she felt a shiver run down her spine. She reminded herself of how fiery his aura had been, burning with passion and intensity. She had thought it had spoken more to his character than his temperament, but now she was not sure.
“I…I just can’t believe he would do something like that.” Savannah said.
“You yourself just said it, Savannah,” Marissa said with solemn eyes. “You don’t know him.”
I looked up at all of them, hoping that one person would refute the others and tell me it was a lie. I looked hard at Marissa, wondering if I should trust her. There was something about her that I simply could not place. She was like Xander in that way--they all were. All four girls had incredibly bright, burning auras, and she could sense something hidden beneath them, a motive that she was missing.
Savannah tried to make sense of it. If Marissa were jealous, she would have cause to taint Xander’s character so that Savannah would want to keep her distance, but why would her entire friend group be in on it, too, unless they were just that loyal.
“Savannah, I know this is a lot to process, but you need to understand that we’re looking out for you here,” Marissa said. “And Xander, too.”
“Perhaps he just needs someone to talk to,” Savannah said slowly.
“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” Marissa demanded. Savannah felt a wave of hostility billow towards her. She looked at Marissa and wondered if she had been blind to the obvious. Savannah wondered if she had let her desire to cloud her better judgement.
“Sometimes you just need to talk to a stranger,” Savannah said, wondering why she wasn’t backing down.
“He has me,” Marissa said. Savannah heard the possessiveness in her tone.
“He has all of us,” Meryl said, and Savannah heard the same note in her voice, too.
She realized that all four girls had auras tinged with hues of dark red and deep green. The wisps of color danced around them, taking the shapes of their bodies and making them seem otherworldly.
“We should get back home,” Savannah said standing up. “It’s getting late.”
She thought for a moment that they might prevent her from leaving, but then Marissa nodded in agreement. “Savannah’s right,” she said. “We should start heading back. Let’s take the East route, though--it’s faster.”
Savannah had no choice but to follow Marissa and the others on the alternative path. The comfortable contentment that had surrounded her that morning had disappeared in a puff of bitter smoke. She was starting to feel uneasy, and the difference in the girls’ auras was starting to bother her a little.
They walked for about fifteen minutes and before Savannah knew it, it was dark. She hadn’t realized how much time they had spent on the hike and on their talk atop the hills. The darker it got, the more pronounced the girls' auras became. Savannah had never seen anything so bright and wild before. It felt almost like a possession.
The girls raced ahead of her. This time no one looked back to see if she was keeping up with them. She tried calling after them, but no one seemed to be able to hear her. Panic started to kick in when she walked into something hard, and tripped over her own feet.
Savannah landed on the muddy forest floor, narrowly avoiding knocking her face against a sharp rock. She glanced up, breathing heavily, and realized the last spotlights of sunlight had disappeared and darkness had well and truly arrived. She also realized she was completely alone. The girls were nowhere in sight, and her senses were telling her that something dangerous was coming her way.
She reached for the cell phone in her pocket only to discover it was no longer there. She looked around, trying in desperation to see if she had dropped it in the fall, but it was nowhere to be seen. The wind picked up and on its tail came the same, strange scent Savannah had smelt from the window of her bedroom.
She froze in place and stared off into the dark trees. She saw nothing yet, but she sensed something was coming--a large animal, maybe more than one. Fear gripped at her throat and she could not bring herself to make a sound. She turned on the spot, trying to find some way out of this, but all she saw were the silhouettes of trees against a great canvas of black.
Then she heard it, a scraping, scratching sound that promised pain. It was a rasping, clawing, grating sound that had the hairs on the back of Savannah’s neck standing at attention. She saw its eyes first--they looked almost red, but as it came closer, she realized th
ey weren’t red at all. They were a stony, steely blue that had an intelligence Savannah couldn't even begin to fathom.
She could only stare at it in shock and fear before she realized that the beast was not alone. Behind it, Savannah spied three more pairs of bright eyes, all of which narrowed, hungrily, in her direction. They moved forward, together, in beautiful synchronization. The light of the moon hit them all at once, and Savannah’s breath stilled as her body grew cold.
They were mammoth, larger than she had ever seen before. They were beautiful, terrifying monsters, and Savannah knew she was completely and hopelessly trapped.
“Wolves,” she whispered, knowing that no one would hear her.
Chapter Eight
They stared at her calmly, and Savannah felt almost as though she were being studied. She took a step back, and a low rumble of growls went up among the wolves. The largest wolf bared its teeth, and Savannah froze.
Slowly, the wolf at the head of the pack started moving forward, toward her. It was so deliberate a move that Savannah's fear increased, tenfold. She sensed she was not dealing with normal wolves here, and that something was very, very wrong. She could feel it too, that these wolves were playing a game, and she was stuck in the center of it.
She felt a chill run down her back when she realized the wolves had surrounded her. She had been so focused on the largest one standing in front of her, that she hadn’t even noticed how quickly they had moved to encircle her, closing ranks so that she had nowhere to run.
“This isn’t right,” she whispered to herself. “This isn’t normal.”
The blue eyed wolf in front of her starting growling fiercely, and Savannah had no choice but to stand there, still and silent, with no way of defending herself. The animal’s teeth were long and large; they glinted threateningly under the light of the moon. The wolf advanced, and Savannah felt the other wolves mimic the leader’s movements.
The wolf in front of her hunched down into a position of attack, and Savannah knew she was staring death in the face. She closed her eyes, having no alternative left.
Then there was a howl, and Savannah turned toward it to see a massive creature speeding through the trees towards them. For a moment she thought it was coming straight for her, but then the creature changed course and flew at the wolves that had encircled her.