Memoirs of a Girl Wolf

by Lawrence, Xandra

  Downstairs was just as quiet as upstairs. I peered down the long hallway that extended to Mom’s room and noticed her door was closed. I assumed I was right and she had gone back to sleep.

  I scribbled out a note to her on a yellow post it that I had gone into school early with Kristen and then I found a pop tart in the cupboard and dropped it into my backpack which I slung onto my shoulder as I left the house.

  I didn’t know how to get a hold of Reign to ask for a ride to school, so I was just going to have to show up at his front door. Unfortunately, the best way to get to his house was through the woods. It took me a while to gain the courage. I kept walking forward then turning and walking back to the house. I was afraid of running into Phoenix who I know understood to be the black wolf that had been semi-stalking me in the fall.

  Mom and the boys would be waking up soon, I told myself, and in only a matter of minutes Mom would find my note and look out the front window in curiosity and see me hesitating at the entrance of the woods. I was so mad at her that I knew one look in her direction would give me away, so taking a deep breath I charged forward jumping over fallen limbs with amazing height. I sped through the woods along the trail probably the fastest I have ever known myself able to run.

  I slowed down to a walk once I saw his house only a few feet away. I felt so energized. I wasn’t even out of breath. I wondered if this was also due to the whole wolf thing. These “powers” were turning out to be kind of cool, but I still hated it. I brushed a few bugs from the front of my wool pea coat that had met their end during my run.

  I walked up the steps of his house and froze. Suddenly, I felt kind of dumb. I had never been here on his side of the water. We had never been to each other’s houses—he had only picked me up in front of mine and now here I was an hour before school with my hair still wet from a shower when it was nearly cold enough to snow; knocking at his door. What if his dad answered? I checked behind my shoulder to see if I could see two cars, but I only noticed Reign’s red truck. His dad probably wasn’t home and that gave me the courage to form my hand into a fist and knock.

  On my third knock, the door swung open and Reign stood with a confused expression on his face in jeans and no shirt.

  “Mickey?” he asked, stepping onto the porch closing the door behind him. “Is everything okay?” he asked, taking hold of my hand.

  “Yeah, I need a ride to school,” I said, pointing to my back pack.

  Reign dropped my hand and looked up as if he could tell the time by the tint of the golden pink sky. “I could’ve picked you up. We don’t have to be at school for another hour.”

  I blushed. “Right, I’m early.” I laughed nervously. I turned to leave. I didn’t really know what to do. He still made me nervous.

  Grabbing hold of me, he turned me around and with a warm smile said, “Let’s go get breakfast.”

  I beamed. That sounded better than the brown sugar pop tart I had thrown in my bag. He stepped back inside and reappeared quickly pulling a t-shirt over his head and then he shrugged his arms through a blue jacket and picked up his backpack from behind the door before leaving the house and locking the door behind him.

  “Is your dad home?” I asked as we walked to his truck.

  Reign shook his head. “He’s camping with some friends from Arkansas.”

  “Without you?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “If I had gone, I would have to miss school and I love going to school.”

  “Really?”

  He came to a stop and pulled me close to him. “Yeah, I have a locker next to this really cool girl and I like seeing her,” he said, leaning down and kissing me.

  For how sweet he always was to me, I felt really bad for how quickly my mood changed and how awful I was to him before we even made it to school. Breakfast was a nightmare because it took nearly thirty minutes just to get to town, so by the time we arrived at Toasted we only had thirty minutes before first bell at school. The restaurant, being so popular, was busy. A lot of kids went there for breakfast or lattes before school and as it happened Max was there. When he noticed me walk through the front door, held by Reign, he nodded at me and called my name.

  I ignored him. Max was being annoying ever since the day he picked up his sweatshirt from my house. He kept calling and texting me. He’d hang out by my locker when Reign and I weren’t together. No matter how often I told Max to leave me he doubled his efforts to get me to go out with him and this of course irritated Sydney who continued to walk past my locker and glare at me while whispering loudly about me to Kristen or whoever her arms were linked with at that moment.

  Once in the crowded restaurant, Reign and I stood at the front for a couple minutes trying to find a spot to sit, but all the tables were full or so we thought until we spotted a little, wobbly table in the dark back corner, so I headed in the direction of the table. Reign stopped me before I could wander too far. He looked at his watch and commented that he was going to get us a couple muffins and coffee and that’d have to be a good enough breakfast. I nodded that it was fine and so while he got in line behind Max, I went and sat at the table.

  While waiting, I started thinking over the night before and the morning and Mom and then my head stared pounding like my heart and I could feel my blood pressure rising the more I thought about how Mom had lied to me. How could she? Then I had a horrifying realization. My blood went cold and a chill ran all over me as I realized that I didn’t even know who Mom was. What else had she kept from me? A lot, obviously, but maybe it wasn’t that I didn’t know who Mom was, but that I didn’t know who I was and that was even more terrifying.

  Suddenly, I started to shake, but not from fear. Someone had a firm grip on the back of my chair and was shaking it until I nearly fell on to the floor. I removed my hands from my face and looked up to find Max grinning down at me. He released hold of my chair and walked around the table so that he was facing me.

  “You looked like you were asleep,” he said as an apology.

  I stared coldly at him. I was not in the mood and the last thing I wanted to do was talk to him.

  “Game Friday night,” he said. “You wanna go?”

  “No, I don’t want to go out with you,” I said.

  “Another time?”

  “No, not ever,” I said in a firm tone.

  He scoffed but kept that stupid grin on his face then he walked backward not breaking contact with me until he winked at me as he turned around and walked to the front of the restaurant where Seth was waiting for him at the front door.

  I sighed a loud, tired, frustrated sigh which did not go unnoticed by Reign. He set the coffee and blueberry muffins on the table and then taking a seat across from me he took my hand and said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  But his concern only annoyed me. I jerked my hand away and mumbled something, avoiding his eye contact. I didn’t want his sympathy, or so I thought. I was really just looking for someone to dump my bad mood on and he happened to be the closest target. For the next ten minutes that we sat in the restaurant I complained about everything he tried to solve everything I complained about.

  I complained my coffee was too cold, so he gave me his. I complained hid was too hot, so he went and asked for an ice cube. Then I complained the muffin was salty and dry and he once again switched with me and then I complained the blueberry in his were sour. They weren’t. The coffee was great. The muffins were delicious I just needed to be in a bad mood.

  Because I was being such a pill, he finally said we should just get going on to school and this I agreed with. We left the busy restaurant and headed to school in silence. Only the rumbling engine of the truck could be heard. Every time he tried to take my hand I moved it, and after the third time my hand slipped away from his, he gave up and turned up the radio. I spent the drive staring out the window, but I could feel him glancing back and forth between me and the road.

  We got to school late. He dropped me off on the curb before finding a parking spo
t in the lot across from the school. I jumped out of the cab and shut the door a little too hard. I didn’t even say anything to him I just slung my bag over my shoulder and trudged into the building and right to my locker. I quickly changed out my books and went to class, not even bothering to wait for him.

  I spent most of the day in a haze on automatic. I traveled to one class then the next; dragging my backpack behind me with my shoulders slumped and a frown on my face. I wrapped my hair around my index finger while thinking over and over again about how I had spent the night while my teachers lectured about things that seemed so unimportant and trivial compared to what was happening to me at the moment.

  But at lunch I found myself siting once again across from Reign. I was sitting in the back of the cafeteria because it was now too cold to sit outside in the courtyard where we usually liked to sit away from the people and noise. I sat picking at my lunch. I wasn’t hungry and because I left the house so quickly that morning, I hadn’t packed a lunch. I had to buy a school lunch and it just was not appealing or tasty. I mashed the glop of potatoes with the back of a plastic spoon and played with the pale green peas; burying them in the potatoes then digging them out until I heard a chair scratch on the linoleum floor and someone grunt loudly as they took a seat. I looked up and saw Reign staring at me with a hard look which I wasn’t used to at all because he always looked at me with such warmth. I had only seen this type of chilling look on someone else, his father.

  “What?” I asked, nervously.

  “Are you mad at me? Did I do something?” he asked, leaning forward.

  I shook my head and let the long strands of my red hair fall over my face so that I could hide behind them. I felt as if I could burst into tears not because of him, but because I couldn’t tell him. I didn’t know how to. I could barely tell myself what had happened was real.

  He stood and walked around the table in order to take a seat beside me and with one hand he reached for my hand, this time I didn’t pull away, and with the other hand he brushed back my hair and lifted my chin so that we were looking into each other’s eyes and his ember eyes were bright with warmth again. I smiled.

  “What’s wrong? You’re acting like something is wrong. Is it your arm?” he asked.

  I glanced at my left arm. I had forgotten about what had happened yesterday at the beach, but at the same time my arm helped me think of an excuse for my odd mood.

  “No, not my arm, but my little brother broke his arm and he had to stay in the hospital because he has a concussion. I’m worried,” I said

  “Why didn’t you just tell me that this morning?” he asked.

  “I didn’t want to bug you with my stuff.” I shrugged.

  “It’s not bugging me. I want to know about your stuff,” he said with a smile.

  We laughed. This eased the tension some. He went back to his lunch and I went back to playing with mine. I was still in a pretty bad mood and I didn’t pretend for his sake to be in a good mood. I needed my bad mood. I needed to wallow in self-pity and at the same time hold on to the anger, so that by the time I got home that afternoon I would have the courage to confront Mom. Reign let me be in bad mood without expecting anything from me. He just talked on and on and I pretended to listen.

  But then he stopped talking abruptly. I looked up to see him pushing his chair back and walking across the cafeteria. I watched him exit through the side doors into the courtyard before standing and following him.

  Once I exited through the doors, I saw him standing with his arms outstretched. He stared up at the grey sky with a smile.

  “What?” I asked, lifting my eyes toward the sky.

  “It’s snowing,” he said.

  I tilted my head to the side. Was he crazy? I didn’t see any snow. I walked up to him and grabbed hold of his hand. Our coats were inside in our lockers. We were standing in short sleeves in twenty degree weather. The air iced our breath as it escaped from our lips in puffs.

  “Come on. Let’s go inside.” I pulled on him, but he pulled on me and then put his arms around me to prevent me from going back through the doors.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “Reign—“

  “Close your eyes.”

  He placed his hand over my eyes and I stood listening to his breathing and heart beat as I was pressed against the warmth of his chest. I waited as he said and just as I was about to push him away and go back inside, I felt little cold, wet drops on my face. He removed his hand and when I opened my eyes I saw large snowflakes falling from the grey sky.

  “First snow of the season,” he said, excited.

  “How’d you know that?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I had a feeling.”

  “We should go inside. Aren’t you cold?”

  “No, are you cold?” he asked, brushing a snow flake from my cheek.

  At first I was going to respond with a nod of my head, but thinking about it I realized I wasn’t cold at all. We knew it was almost freezing out and it was snowing and we could see our breath, but neither of us felt even the slightest bit uncomfortable.

  We went back in the cafeteria and got the rest of our lunch and sat at our usual table in the courtyard until Mr. Henry came out and yelled at us to go back inside because the courtyard was off limits for the season.

  We at least had enough time at our cement table outside with the beautiful snow falling on us to enjoy each other’s company, and I was able to light up a little and just enjoy him without letting Mom and Phoenix stuff get in the way. That I was saving for that afternoon and confronting Mom was the very first thing I planned on doing once Reign dropped me off at home.

  But at the moment something else bothered me a little. I figured the reason I could sit out in freezing temperatures without a jacket was due to the wolf thing, but why wasn’t Reign cold either?

  21

  All morning I avoided holding Reign’s comforting hand, but on the bumpy ride home from school I kept my hand in his and the closer we got to my house the harder I gripped onto his hand until he jerked his hand out of mine and made a hissing sound through his front teeth as he shook his own hand up and down.

  “Sorry,” I said with an embarrassed frown on my face. “I’m excited to see Josh.”

  He nodded in understanding, but kept both hands on the steering wheel until he pulled into the lane and came to an eventual stop in front of my house. He parked the truck behind Mom’s Toyota. I was happy to see she was home, but suddenly a wave of anxiety washed over me.

  I slowly opened the door, but before I could jump out Reign touched my shoulder and said it was time for us to exchange phone numbers.

  “I can’t believe we haven’t yet. I kept forgetting to ask you,” Reign said.

  I rambled off my number so quickly I had to repeat it twice more for him. “Now, I’ll call you for a ride next time instead of showing up at your house,” I said.

  Reign smiled. “Ah I don’t mind that. You know how ‘bout I just give you ride every morning? I already bring you home.”

  “Okay,” I said. I was in too eager of a hurry to say a proper goodbye. I shut the door on him as he was mumbling something I didn’t hear. I ran up to the house, but paused with my hand on the door knob. I had played this scenario out in my head all day. I imagined walking right up to her and demanding the truth, but now faced with it, I wasn’t sure if I could go through with it. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the truth after all, but what was the alternative? Spending my life pretending to be unaware about where I slept at night?

  Taking a deep breath, I pushed open the door and walked confidently into the house. I noticed Josh’s overnight bag right away at the bottom of the stairwell. I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that he was home. I guessed the twins were both upstairs in the attic or their room. Mom was probably in her own room working at her desk.

  I quietly walked through the house and down the long, narrow hallway toward Mom’s room. Her door was slightly ajar and I was struck with a feeling o
f déjà vu from months previous after returning from Sydney’s sleep over and I walked in on Mom on the phone and I was certain she had been crying.

  She was on the phone now. She sat at her desk with her back to me. Her head was in her hands and her fingers kneaded her forehead as she talked in a weary, tense voice. I was going to push open the door right then and demand her attention when I heard her say, “Viktor.”

  She was talking to my father.

  As quiet as I came, I backed away from the door and down the hallway until I was in the kitchen and I picked up the portable black phone on the counter so that I could listen to their conversation. I had never invaded mom’s privacy before. I felt like I was crossing a huge personal boundary, but then again she had no problem crossing mine.

  Mom: “Why did you send someone instead of coming yourself? When are you coming home?”

  Viktor: “Soon, love,”

  Mom: “You’ve been saying that for twelve years, Viktor. I don’t think—I don’t know that I can keep waiting for you.”

  Viktor: “You’ve been saying that for twelve years.”

  Mom: “Oh, Viktor. This is just too much. What do I do?”

  Viktor: “I sent him to help you to help both of you. You can’t lock her up for the rest of her life. You can’t control this. You don’t know how. Only she can control it.”

  Mom: “No, I’m not gonna give up. I’m gonna find a cure.”

  Viktor: “A cure to what, love? She’s not sick. She is who she was always meant to be.”

  Mom: “I’ve been talking to a woman who knows a voodoo doctor who may be able to bind this. She can just be a normal girl and go to college and have a family . . .”

  Viktor: “I forbid it. That’s not your choice.”

  I heard enough. I ended the call on my end and walked straight for her bedroom where I threw open the door.