by DJ DeSmyter
She sighed and behind it there was a hint of distress and possibly sadness.
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s going to happen when your parents find a place to stay? Will you still go to school? Will I still get to see you?”
“Besides the fact that I won’t be sleeping down the hall from you, nothing is going to change. You don’t think I’m going to break up with you, do you?”
She buried her face in her pillow, which muffled her voice when she spoke. “I don’t know. Maybe?” She rolled back over to face me, to see my expression.
I gazed at her intently and with a soft smile, one that I hoped would ease her mind. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Lily. I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true. No girl has ever captivated me as much as you have. You’re creative, smart, and extremely adorable.” I bent my head down to kiss her. The feel of her lips on mine sent a rush of feelings through my body and she must have felt the same because her heart started racing. The soft pounding filled my ears and mixed with the rhythm of my own heart.
“You should go to sleep. It’s already twelve,” I said when I pulled away from her. “Don’t you want to get up early and catch a glimpse of Santa?”
She chuckled and snuggled into the sheets once more. “Santa’s not real.”
“People think werewolves aren’t real,” I reminded her.
Her eyes widened with surprise and wonder. “Are you saying Santa’s real?”
I laughed and brushed the back of my finger across her cheek. “No, I was just playing with you.”
“You’re cruel.” She tried to act mad, but she couldn’t stop herself from grinning. “I’m going to sleep now so you can’t trick me into believing the tooth fairy’s real.”
“Oh, well, she is real.”
She rolled her eyes before closing them. “Goodnight, Alex.”
“Goodnight, and Merry Christmas.”
27. Lily
Christmas day was interesting to say the least. Before Alex’s family came over for breakfast, Dad, Alex, and I exchanged gifts. Dad gave me a new digital camera, which I started using immediately, and I had bought him the greatest hits CD of his favorite band that had five unreleased songs. Dad had told Alex not to get him anything, but gave him the money to buy me something. That ‘something’ turned out to be a leather-bound notebook filled with blank sheet music. I loved it and couldn’t wait to start writing some of my songs down. Not wanting to spend too much of Dad’s hard-earned money, I made Alex a collage using photos I had taken. My knee bounced in anticipation as he unwrapped the framed collage and as soon as I saw his lips turn up into a smile that reached his eyes, I breathed out a sigh of relief.
Alex’s family arrived an hour later with the news that they had found an apartment and were set to move in after the holidays. After shoes were removed and coats were hung in the closet, we sat down to eat the delicious casserole Dad and I had made. I was worried that breakfast with Alex’s family would be awkward considering they were all strangers to Dad and I, but I found myself genuinely having a good time and enjoying their company. I tried to contribute to the conversations, but I enjoyed observing the Moreaus and learning what kind of people they were.
Mr. and Mrs. Moreau were both reserved and pensive, but knew how to tell a good joke. James, on the other hand, was loud and always the first to deliver the punch line. Despite his playfulness, his strong build made him seem like someone you didn’t want to mess with. Like Alex, I felt safe around him and knew he would gladly give anyone who gave me trouble a black eye.
Summer wasn’t as loud as James was, but she was just as funny. At one point, she started talking to me about books and we compared notes on some of our favorites. Alex’s family ended up staying for the whole day and by the time dinner was over I had made four new friends. Who knew wolves could be so friendly and so much fun?
Q
“I forgot to ask this earlier, but where’s the new apartment?” Alex asked his dad, who was helping clear the table.
“Not too far from here,” his dad answered.
I was rinsing the dishes before loading them into the dishwasher and when I heard his dad’s answer, I blushed. My face grew redder and hotter when his dad handed me a plate and winked.
Alex saw my cherry-red cheeks and chuckled. “Is it near the woods?”
“No, which I think will help keep the hunter away. It’s a fairly new complex, and we’re on the ground level, so it’ll make it easy for us to slip out.”
“For what?” Alex asked, handing me the last glass to be rinsed and loaded. Our fingers brushed, making us both smile.
“For whenever we shift.” His dad looked at him like he should’ve known the answer.
“But I thought we decided not to shift until the hunter is dealt with.”
“Right,” his dad said while nodding his head. “It’ll be hard getting used to that, won’t it? Well, I suppose being on the ground level will at least help during the full moon.”
“What do you all do when you’re in your wolf forms?” I asked.
Alex came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me just below my collarbone. “Hunt, sniff things, chase our tails.”
“And we pee on trees,” Mr. Moreau added with a grin.
“Sounds exciting,” I managed to say between laughs.
Mrs. Moreau came into the kitchen carrying her coat. “Oh, indeed.” She smiled and playfully hit her husband’s chest before turning to him for a quick kiss. “We should get going.”
“Would you all like to spend the night here instead of the hotel?” I asked, breaking away from Alex’s embrace.
She turned to me with a warm smile. “Your father asked the same thing.” She paused and stared at me intently. Breaking her stare, she cleared her throat. “It’s very nice of you to offer, but the few things we brought are over there.”
I glanced at Alex and saw him give his mom a questioning look. I looked at her for a response, but she merely smiled at him and walked towards the front door where Summer and James were waiting.
Summer glided over and hugged me. “It was so nice spending some time with you and getting to know you a little better.”
“Thanks, you, too,” I said over her shoulder.
“We should go to the bookstore sometime,” she suggested when she let go of me. Her invitation touched me more than she probably knew. In a short amount of time, I went from having no friends to five.
“I’d like that.”
James swooped in and gave me another tight hug. He didn’t say anything, but his hug was enough.
Somehow, I managed to laugh in his hug of death. “Thanks, James.”
Dad, who had been leaning against the wall watching me be showered by hugs, reached out and shook everyone’s hand. “Please call if you need anything and don’t forget to let me know when you’re moving in. Lily and I would be more than happy to help.”
“We certainly will but we don’t really have anything to move,” he said with a laugh.
Dad laughed, too. “True.”
“Would it be alright if Summer and James came over here tomorrow while Peter and I go out and pick up a few things?”
“Of course. You’re all welcome anytime.”
“Thank you.” She gave Dad a quick hug and then turned to Alex. “Staying here?”
He looked at me and then nodded.
“Then hold on a second.” Mrs. Moreau quickly went outside and returned with an acoustic guitar. “It was cheap and it’s not nearly as nice as your normal one,” she said to Alex, he took the guitar and stared at it with excitement burning in his eyes. He looked like a bright-eyed kid who just received a gift from Santa.
“Thank you!” He gave both of his parents another hug and after exchanging our last goodbyes, his family left.
Dad yawned and stretched his arms towards the ceiling. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m exhausted.” He started up the stairs. “It was really nice spending time with your fa
mily, Alex.”
Alex didn’t even look up. He was too focused on the guitar. “Thanks, John. I know they had a good time.”
Dad mumbled a goodnight and then disappeared.
A yawn escaped my own mouth. “I guess I’m ready for bed, too.”
“I’ll play you something while you go to sleep,” Alex offered.
I nodded enthusiastically. “I would love that. Give me, like, ten minutes to get ready, okay?” Before he could answer, I rushed upstairs and completed my nightly routine in record time. I was so fast I thought I deserved an award. Alex was already in my room when I returned from brushing my never-going-to-be-perfectly-white teeth. He sat on the edge of the bed plucking at the strings of the guitar. Sweet vibrations of sound floated through my room. Grabbing my new camera, I turned it on and quickly took a few shots of Alex playing. The guitar looked so natural in his hands and the way he gently swayed to the music was adorable. The photos came out great and I couldn’t wait to remove the color and make them black and white.
Shutting off the camera, I climbed into bed. “What are you going to play?”
He pulled his legs up onto the bed and sat cross-legged so he could face me. “Anything you want.”
“Play me one of yours.”
“Alright.” Taking a deep breath, he began to play. I knew enough about the guitar to know he was finger picking and watching him play was mesmerizing. His fingers moved with ease and elegance. The song was soft and sweet, like a lullaby. He switched to playing chords, but he strummed them quietly in an effort not to disturb Dad.
“That was beautiful,” I whispered when the song ended. “Really, that was amazing.”
“I’m glad you like it, especially since it’s for you.”
I didn’t hear him right. “What?”
“I wrote it for you,” he said.
My ears must’ve been clogged with earwax.
“Lily?”
He wrote me a song, I thought dreamily. I can’t believe he did that. “You— you wrote that for me?” My heart started to beat with excitement.
“Yes.” His smile seemed to illuminate my entire room.
“When?”
“While you were in the bathroom. I have been wanting to write you a song for awhile.”
He wrote an entire song in ten minutes? It took me days to finish writing one. Jealousy aside, I was rendered speechless. By him, the song, the fact that he wrote it for me. “Thank you,” I finally managed to say.
“I should be thanking you,” he said as he set the guitar down on the floor. He moved closer to me and held my face in his hand. “I feared I would never see my family again, that the hunter had killed them or I wouldn’t live long enough to see them. But then I met you and my fears died.” He seemed like he wanted to say more, but something came over him. Leaning in, he cupped the back of my neck and kissed me. His lips touched mine with an intense, but tender passion and unlike our other kisses, this one literally left me breathless.
“I love you, Lily,” he murmured. His sweet, warm breath teased my ear.
Just like his song, those three words left me speechless. There was no doubt or hesitation in his voice and he had spoken with such certainty and confidence. Alex was my first real friend, my first boyfriend, and was my first kiss. And now he was the first boy to tell me he loved me.
Me, the girl who sat in the back of the classroom with her nose buried in a book.
The girl who sat on the piano bench playing songs to a photograph of her dead mom.
The girl who felt like the most important person in the room, in the world, whenever he looked at her.
The girl who knew he was a werewolf and didn’t care.
Me, the girl who was sure she loved him, too.
28. Lily
I never expected to fall in love so soon. Would any seventeen year-old expect to? Maybe what I felt for Alex wasn’t the real ‘I want to be with you forever’ kind of love, but I was sure it was, if not, something close to it. I had felt something when we first met, something electric and amazing and I knew he felt it, too. Most girls would find his furry, possibly smelly nature to be a problem, but I honestly did not care that he was a werewolf. To me, it was no different than someone being, as Dad put it, ‘ethnically diverse’, and he certainly wasn’t a monster like in the movies— he would never hurt me. Still, a cloud of doubt I desperately tried to ignore lurked within me.
How could he be so certain, so sure in how he felt about me? At times like these, I really wished I had a mom to talk to about these things. She would have told me all the right words to calm my worries. Being with Alex made me unbelievably happy, but were we going too fast? And what if I was the one rushing into things? I was new to the world of relationships. Dating was as foreign to me as Europe.
Dad and Alex’s family were all fine with our relationship. I think Alex’s mom was the happiest about it. She regarded me with such kindness that I felt like I was part of their family, which was something I didn’t really have. I even was on a first name basis with Alex’s parents. Dad even let Alex continue to spend the night at our house even though his family had moved into their new apartment. At night, Alex would play me lullabies on his guitar and every once in awhile he’d softly sing a wordless melody. He had lied when he told me he couldn’t sing. His voice was like honey— smooth and sweet. Always the gentleman, Alex never slept next to me and always kissed my forehead before leaving to go to his own room.
But while Alex and I continued to explore our relationship, the hunter was killing more wolves. Only a few of his kills made the headlines, but Dad was certain he was still slaughtering innocent wolves. Dad and Peter went out almost every night to track the hunter, but always came home frustrated and with nothing to report. Sometimes, though, Alex would stiffen and look outside, searching for something, or someone. I asked him about it once and he said he felt like we were being watched, but there was never a trace of the hunter. Once, though, I thought I saw a figure hiding amongst the trees.
Q
“What was it like being shot?” I asked Alex as we trudged through the crunchy snow. Our holiday break didn’t end until the following week, but we were tired of being cooped up inside from the cold. To rid ourselves of the locked-up feeling, we decided to take advantage of the sunny day and take a cautious walk through the woods.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I added. The last thing I wanted was to cause him pain by reliving the experience.
He shook his head and dug his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “No, it’s fine.” He paused and looked as though he was searching for the right words. “It felt like— like being— ripped apart, to be honest. And since the bullet was made of silver, I felt like I was on fire.”
“So silver is your worst enemy,” I said.
“Yes. One of the few parts of our mythology that is correct.”
“Hmm,” I still craved for more answers.
“If you’d like to know more, all you have to do is ask. It’ll be like Werewolves 101.” Alex laughed and kicked the snow, sending flakes into the air. The sunlight reflected off them and they looked like tiny jewels as they danced back down to the ground.
“That’s just what I need,” I said. “Okay, well, do you have any special abilities?”
“Sort of. We have heightened senses, like hearing and smelling, and we can also run really fast, even as humans.”
“So no super-strength?”
“We’re stronger than most people, but Superman could still beat us up.”
“What about your body temperature? You are aware that you emanate heat, right?”
Alex chuckled. “Yes, I am.” He gestured at his jacket, which I noticed, for the first time, looked pretty light considering the January chill. “A werewolf’s body temperature runs slightly higher than normal humans. Don’t know why, just another mystery of the mutation.”
I let his answers sink in before asking another question. “If female werewolves are rar
e, does that mean your mom isn’t one?” I hadn’t wondered that before.
“No, my mom is like yours, one of the few women to have inherited the gene from their father. Same with Summer. I know, it doesn’t sound like a rare thing, does it?”
We took a turn and my house came into view. I continued asking questions to help solidify my understanding of werewolves, but I soon ran out of them and Alex and I walked in blissful silence. His fingers were laced with mine and we both took quiet comfort in each other’s presence. When we got back, we found Alex’s family sitting in the living room with Dad.
“Hey, guys,” Alex said as we removed our shoes and jackets.
I waved at them with a smile. “Hi.”
Peter, Amelia, and Summer all returned the gesture, but James barely acknowledged me. That’s odd, I thought. James seems incapable of being in a bad mood. I tapped Alex on the shoulder and nonchalantly gestured to his brother. “What’s wrong with him?” I mouthed.
Alex shrugged and went to sit down. “What are you guys doing here?” he asked.
Amelia answered. “Just stopping by for a quick visit before heading to the store. How are you doing?”
“We’re doing fine,” he said, looking up at me happily as I sat down next to him. I liked it whenever he included me in an answer, making us an inseparable team, one that couldn’t function without the other person.
I blushed and looked to the floor. Before resting on the floorboards, my eyes caught James’, his expression confusing me even more. He wore a combination of anger, annoyance, and hurt on his face and it didn’t take a genius to know it was all directed at me. What could I have done to offend him? Just the other day we were joking around while playing a game of Checkers. I couldn’t recall ever doing anything to upset him and his icy behavior was beginning to make me uncomfortable. Even Alex’s mood began to darken as a result of James’s.
Alex’s family stayed over until dinner and then they all left, including Alex. Alex had only gone back to the apartment with them a few times. I thought it was odd he didn’t spend more time with his family, but he didn’t seem to care. Maybe that’s why James is so upset. Maybe he thinks I’m taking Alex away from them.