by Reed, Zoe
After having dinner with my family and stomach heavy from the large meal, I went straight to bed, falling asleep the moment I hit the pillow. One thing I liked about being sick was that I never had trouble getting to sleep. When I awoke the next afternoon I leaned up to glance at the clock, and immediately fell back onto my pillow with a grumble. My paper had been due at ten at the end of second period. It was almost one.
Frustrated but feeling it wasn’t worth the stress, I shrugged. There was nothing I could do about it now. Stomach rumbling I made my way groggily down the stairs and fixed myself a sandwich. The going was slow. My limbs weighed down by sleep I leisurely pulled out one item at a time. It took nearly thirty minutes before my simple meal was made and devoured, and I had my head down on the island trying to convince myself to wake up when a knock came from the front door in the hallway.
Slowly getting up I rounded the corner to see Camille waiting outside. The sight of her woke me up a bit, and a grin expressed my joy. Despite my excitement, once the door was open I stood there, blocking the way inside with a smirk. “Shouldn’t you be at school?”
She laughed and pushed her way through to the hallway, unconcerned about my teasing. “Sixth period just isn’t the same without you. So I brought it here.” She held up a movie and made her way to the kitchen cupboard to grab a bag of popcorn.
“My savior!” I exclaimed happily as I watched her put the popcorn into the microwave and sat back down, energy fully restored. “I’ve been going out of my mind with boredom.”
“You’re feeling better then?” She sat at the island across from me and leaned forward to prop her head up in her hands, resting it tiredly. She seemed just as talkative as she always did, and conversed calmly and easily, but something about her was disheartening. Her usually bright brown eyes had lost their luster.
“Yeah, thanks so much for the soup by the way. It was seriously delicious.” I gave a dreamy sigh like I wished I had more of it. “But I’m still tired a lot. And I was supposed to turn in my essay today, but I didn’t wake up in time so now it’s too late.” I got up and took the popcorn out of the beeping microwave. As I sat back down I could see that Camille was distracted, and now instead of looking at me the blonde was simply staring at the granite counter top. I had to ask what was wrong. It was obvious she wasn’t in good spirits, and I was hoping it wasn’t because of something I had done. “Are you okay?”
Camille took her eyes off the counter and focused on me, giving a small, half-convincing smile. “Yeah I’m fine. Just had a stressful couple of days.” That was all she would say as she stood and motioned for me to follow her to the living room. “What class was your essay for?”
I shoved the movie into the player and sat on the couch next to her, reaching for the remote control on the coffee table in front of us. “Music, Miss Hampton’s class.”
She raised a confused eyebrow, looking just as shocked as I’d been at having to write an essay for a music class. After a thoughtful glance toward the ceiling, a huge smile seemed to put some of the glow back into her eyes. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll pick you up at eight.”
Confused, and even more intrigued, I raised an eyebrow. “Pick me up for what?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Camille told me, making an exaggerated shushing motion with her finger. “The movie’s starting.”
I rolled my eyes, but put my feet on the coffee table and focused my attention on the screen. Camille had rented a science fiction movie about werewolves, and I watched on, slightly skeptical of the enjoyment I’d get. I knew what werewolves were of course, but had never watched a movie or read a book about them. Horror had never been the genre for me and I’d never heard of a werewolf movie outside the category.
This wasn’t, however, the average werewolf horror movie I expected it to be. There were no teens stuck in a forest being picked off one by one. There were no dark castles or wars with vampires. It was simply about a werewolf girl that fell in love with a human and tried to get her pack to approve, despite the legacy that she should marry the pack’s leader.
Fascinated with the story, I stretched my neck a little in an attempt to eye the DVD box, but all I could see on the cover was the word ‘Chocolate’. From my general idea of werewolves before this movie I’d found the horror and gore frightening. The same went with evil creatures that were much too strong for any human to kill. The supernatural had never been something I’d given much thought to, but the idea of a person turning into a wolf just because they were bitten was thought provoking.
There were stories about ghosts and the less frequent things like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. If those things could potentially exist, why couldn’t werewolves? Thinking about werewolves reminded me of the two encounters I’d had in the orange fields since I’d moved here. Even my uncle had told me to watch out for wild animals. Aside from the wolf attack Rob told me about though, nobody had mentioned any stories to me about strange happenings in the area. But I had only been here for less than two weeks.
As the movie ended and credits began to roll, I switched the TV off and turned to Camille. “Is there anything like werewolf legends around here?”
She shrugged thoughtfully, and then shook her head as she turned to face me. “Not that I know of, but I’m sure you could find people in any city who say they’ve seen things.”
“Do you believe in werewolves?” I asked, taking another approach to my questions. A new interest made me hugely curious about what I’d seen and heard.
“Hm,” Camille made an interesting sort of face I hadn’t seen her make before. “Anything is possible. What do you think?”
The sound of that rumbling growl echoed in my mind. “I don’t know. It’s kind of scary to think about, if they are how the movies make them seem. All big and vicious.” I reached into the nearly empty popcorn bowl and grabbed a handful, smiling to myself as I realized it was almost gone and I’d barely eaten any.
“They weren’t all bad in this movie,” Camille pointed out as she got up to put the DVD back in its case. “If you think about it, a werewolf is just a person and a wolf. People aren’t always bad, and wolves aren’t evil or mean. Why would a werewolf be?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I nodded in agreement, and then cautiously, in case she would think I was crazy, added, “What if I told you I heard something?”
She laughed and raised an eyebrow at me, looking at me like I might only be half-crazy. “Should we go werewolf hunting?”
Feeling like she was just teasing me, I rolled my eyes. The growling I had heard made me never want to hear it again. “I think I’ll pass.” Then I remembered my essay, and my curiosity about werewolves gave way to my curiosity about what we’d be doing that night. “So, why are you picking me up at eight?”
“We’re going to turn in your essay,” she told me as she snapped the DVD box shut and stretched. “I got to go. I’ll see you in a few hours. Don’t forget to wear black, makes it more fun.” She winked and headed toward the front door.
“Wait a minute! Black?” I questioned, following closely behind her. I dropped my jaw and in exaggeration took a deep, disbelieving breath. “Are we kidnapping Miss Hampton?”
As she reached the door, Camille turned around and put her hands on my shoulders to stop me from following. “No, because then we’d have a witness,” she laughed at the frightened look on my face. “I’ll see you at eight.”
“We’re going to the school?” I hollered at Camille, who’d turned to leave and just waved goodbye as she got in the car and drove away.
I laughed as I turned away from the front door. The excitement dwindling with Camille’s departure and suddenly exhausted, I decided to take a nap until she came to pick me up. As I lay down though, I was unable to sleep, my mind uneasy about something. I knew it had to do with Camille. Why else would I feel restless right after she left? However hard I thought about it though, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. My mind kept skipping between things so quickly I could
hardly stop to think. The horses. Camille looked bothered today. She has nice eyes. I fell from the loft. The horses.
Then it hit me. Camille’s arm. At the end of last week she had shown it to me and her arm was fine. Where the cut from not even a week before should have been, a light pink scar was instead. I had a deep wound like that before when I was in middle school, and I remembered it taking over a month to even be a surface scab. But in a week Camille’s wound had run a two months course.
I shot up and grabbed my laptop off the floor, opening the search engine once it was booted. I thought about how best to word my search. Any way I put it, it was weird. So I settled for typing ‘super fast healing’. On a page of fifty searches, the first thirty were medical sites explaining the healing process, and most of the others were remedies to help heal faster. I skipped to the next page of results, which showed me the same thing. But there, near the bottom of the page was a word that caught my eye.
Werewolf. I clicked the link to find a list of things that pinpoint a werewolf. Among the list was accelerated healing and incomparable strength. It included other stuff like hairy palms and thick eyebrows. Camille’s eyebrows weren’t bushy and she certainly didn’t have hair on the palms of her hands, but I remembered when she had caught me, and picked me up as if I weighed nothing. She was undeniably mysterious. It wasn’t just the way she avoided certain topics or skipped out on me randomly. It was something I could feel in my gut. That instinct that told me something was different. I also wondered if she was trying to tell me something with the movie she’d brought over today.
What about the animal that had snarled at me the other night? It was definitely canine, and if it had anything to do with the one I’d seen on my first night here, then it was much too large to be a dog or even coyote. So what if Camille was a werewolf? She wouldn’t try to attack me, and I didn’t see why she’d ever growl or snarl at me. This was clinically insane to think about anyway.
I closed the laptop and laid it aside, positive I wasn’t going to get any more useful information from it. I had never even heard of anyone having hairy palms, and plenty of people had bushy eyebrows. Whether or not Camille was a werewolf, the explanation satisfied me no matter how unlikely or crazy it was. It gave me something to explain her odd behavior, and until she would tell me the truth, I’d be content believing some fiction I’d made up as long as I could believe she was one of the nice ones. With my mind somewhat at ease I was able to lie down and drift off to sleep.
The distant sound of knocking on the front door woke me a few hours later. I looked at the clock. 8pm. Those bright green numbers indicating I was running behind schedule made me jump out of bed and scramble into the darkest clothes I could find, dark blue jeans and a black pull over sweater. I opened my bedroom door right as Camille reached the top of the stairs.
“Ready to go?” she asked, receiving a nod. “You have your homework right?”
I pulled the hair tie off my wrist and put my hair into a ponytail as I turned to grab my essay off the nightstand. “Got it. Will you tell me what we’re doing now?”
We started down the stairs and reached the car before Camille decided to give me an answer. “We’re going to the school, and we’re just going to slip your paper into the stack of other essays in Miss Hampton’s room.”
“We’re breaking into the school?” I asked hesitantly, buckling my seat belt as we pulled out of the driveway and started our short trip to the school.
The fact that we could get in a lot of trouble if we got caught made me extremely nervous. Especially since Camille didn’t seem like the type to go picking locks or busting down school doors, which I knew would be considered vandalism. It wasn’t that exploring school afterhours put strain on my increasingly nervous stomach, but the vandalism part did. However, I trusted Camille and pushed away the nerves, telling myself there had to be some explanation.
“It’s not breaking in if you have a key,” Camille smiled, holding up a small silver key. “And besides, if we get caught it will just show how dedicated you are to turning in your homework.”
The fact that she had a key relieved my fear a little, and curious but oddly not surprised, I laughed. “How on earth do you have a key to the school?”
“My brother, Mike, worked janitorial last summer and he figured a key might come in handy someday. So he kept it.” Camille tossed the key into my lap so I could look at it.
I chuckled and turned the piece of metal in my hand as I cranked up the music. I was excited. I never did anything fun or even remotely adventurous like this, and while breaking into the school to turn in homework wasn’t the most badass thing I could think of, it still got my adrenaline pumping.
Minutes later we pulled into the school parking lot and quietly got out. Even though there was no one around the dark lot, we made sure not to slam the car doors so nobody would hear. “Okay, stealth mode, on,” Camille joked.
I giggled and pulled the hood of my sweater over my head. “You’re such a bad influence.”
While Camille shrugged indifferently she smiled and motioned for me to follow her. We crept our way to the side of the school making exaggerated ‘Mission Impossible’ moves, and I could faintly hear Camille muttering the theme song under her breath. When we reached the entrance she stuck the key into the door and turned until there was the quiet clicking sound of it being unlocked. Then she pushed the door open and motioned for me to go in first, relocking it behind us. Quietly, we made our way into the hall, and sticking close to the lockers on the wall we advanced through the first hallway and up the stairs.
Once we reached the top we were already halfway there. A loud clanging sound made my heart drop, and after flinching I froze. When I eventually glanced back and noticed Camille looking blamefully at me, I realized I had made the noise by bumping into a lock, causing it to bang against the metal locker it was attached to.
“Sorry,” I mouthed and patted my chest to try and calm my heart.
Even though I was making some noise, it was still almost too easy to be as exhilarating as I was finding it. After a moment of deep breathing to relax the shock away, I continued down the hall with Camille in tow. I was getting ready to turn a corner and go down another dark hall when she suddenly put her hand over my mouth, and abruptly but gently pushed me against the side of a locker. Once I got over the initial shock of my heart speeding up again I understood. Down the hall we were about to go into I could hear footsteps and rolling wheels. Probably just a janitor pushing a trashcan or mop bucket, but it was best that we not be seen at all.
We waited patiently for the sound to fade, but I had forgotten the janitor moments ago. Camille had pushed us into a small space, and to make us as invisible as possible had pressed me firmly between her and the locker. The warmth of her body pushed so unexpectedly close against mine caused my heart to pound in my chest, and her steady, deep breathing in my ear sent jolts streaming from my head to my toes and everywhere in between. Trying hard to focus on something besides how weak I was beginning to feel, I closed my eyes and followed the paths of the jolts, leading to a strong pressure between my legs. The source of my weakness.
Camille’s thigh was pressed excitingly hard against me, each warm breath against my skin stimulating the rush that now started to turn into a noticeable urge. I was almost positive if Camille paid attention she could feel the pounding of my heart against her chest. Against her thigh. It took every ounce of restraint I could muster not to buckle under the feeling. Not to melt into the girl’s body.
Then she leaned her head forward to rest it on the locker behind me, moving her hot, steady breaths from my ear to my neck. The only thing that suppressed a startled moan from escaping my lips was her hand. Despite the thrill of the feeling, I could feel all the blood rush to my cheeks as my brain finally slowed enough for me to realize exactly what was happening. It couldn’t be happening.
Camille lifted and turned her head, straining to listen for the janitor, and I took the opportunity t
o reach up and pull her hand from my mouth to take a deep, relaxing breath. When I failed to let it go, too preoccupied with the complicated act of breathing, Camille turned her head back and made eye contact with me, her body still pressed tight against mine. I felt my eyes being searched under that intense gaze as she sensed something new.
She could tell what I was feeling. I just knew it. I could see it in the way she looked at me. And that smug, barely visible smile that crept across her lips. Did I think she’d done it on purpose? No. But she certainly wasn’t ashamed of it, and aside from the blood rushing to my cheeks and the embarrassment at Camille knowing, I was completely uncertain even how I felt about it. It had to be all the excitement of sneaking into the school. It got my adrenaline flowing in ways it wasn’t supposed to.
Slowly, as if reluctantly, Camille released me from being pressed against the locker, and when she motioned the coast was clear it took me another second to peel myself from it. We began the short remaining distance to the classroom, and then she stopped at a door to give one last look around before we entered the room.
“Made it in,” she whispered with a smile and sat on the edge of the teacher’s desk.
I could feel her eyes on me as I searched the room for the stack of essays to slip mine into. God, I hoped she didn’t know what had happened. My cheeks were still flaming hot, though with embarrassment, guilt, or excitement I didn’t know or even want to begin to think about.
“Here we go,” I said to myself when I found the papers. Having added mine to the middle of the pile I turned to Camille. “Ready to leave?”
She didn’t answer right away and sat there, still watching me, as if contemplating saying something. Eventually deciding against it she hopped off the desk and made her way to the door. “Yeah, let’s go.”
Exiting the classroom we went the opposite direction to get out of the school, since the back entrance was closer to the room and we could be certain the janitor had already passed that area. We went down a set of stairs, and once we reached the bottom it was a straight shot to the door. We were passing a row of lockers, nearly at the exit, when Camille stopped and glanced around.