Memoirs of a Girl Wolf (17 page)

              “I’m Phoenix,” he started. “You’re dad sent me and I’ve been watching you—waiting to talk to you until I was sure that you are one of us.”

              “What?”

              “He wasn’t sure if you’d take after your mom or him, but after watching you for the past couple months I can say that you’ve been re-born.”

              “Re-born?” I repeated slowly. This guy was crazy.

              “A wolf. Your dad is a wolf, you’re a wolf and I’m a wolf—not related—and Victor wanted me to come out here and guide you through your transformation. Usually the parent is responsible for that, but he’s busy with something and I owe him one,” Phoenix said, laughing a little evidently at an inside joke he shared with Viktor.

              I stared at him with my mouth open. Then looking behind me I tried to judge how fast I could run toward either Reign’s house or mine because it was clear to me I was in the middle of the woods with a lunatic.

              “Okay,” I said. From all the Saturdays I spent watching “Law and Order” marathons I knew to play along with the crazy person. Disagreeing with them would only make them upset.

              “At first, I wasn’t sure about you because I never saw you out, but then I found out what your mom is doing and let me just say it’s not safe. You’re gonna get stronger and the transformations will start earlier and last longer. Right now, they only happen when the moon is out and usually late at night, right? That’s what’s happening and you don’t remember, right. You wake up and don’t remember anything.”

              A chill ran down my spine. How did he know that? I smiled, weakly. Maybe this was a prank. I started to believe that my brothers paid him to freak me out.

              “We need to start training right away. You have to learn how to control it or else you’re dangerous to yourself and others,” he said, taking a step toward me.

              “I have to go,” I said. I started walking forward. I was surprised that he didn’t grab on to me to stop me instead he trailed behind me.

              “You don’t believe me? You’re mom hasn’t said anything to you?”

              “No, my mom has not mentioned that I’m a—a dog or whatever,” I said.

              “A wolf,” he snapped then in a softer tone said, “dog is kind of a derogatory term to us.”

              Once I saw my house through the trees I picked up my pace, but just as I was about to break through the woods into the yard he grabbed hold of my hand again.

              “What happened to your leg the night you were bit? It’s all cleared up now isn’t it? Healed right away, didn’t it? And have you been more emotional lately. Have you realized you’re experiencing the same emotions as people you care about?” he asked.

              I shook my head. “I have to go.”

              He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a switch blade then dragged the blade across my forearm. “As a wolf, we have—I guess you could say powers. The power of regeneration. Don’t believe me watch this heal? And the power of empathy.”

              I watched in horror as blood trickled down my arm. Yanking, my arm away and covering it with my other hand I started to run toward the house.

              “Don’t drink the tea! You’ll see!” he called after me.

              Once safely inside the house, I couldn’t stop trembling. I ran right up the stairs and to my bathroom where I started treating the cut on my arm. After washing my arm under hot water, and then spilling a bottle of peroxide over it, I wrapped my forearm in a white bandage. Cradling my arm, I sat at the end of my bed in the dark and listened to nothing, but my heart beating rapidly.

I couldn’t make sense of what had just happened. I rationalized that he was a crazy wanderer, but there was stuff he knew about me and how could he know? It had to be a prank. My brothers were picking on me, surely. That made the most sense to me and after taking a few deep breathes and calming myself down, I left my room in search of the twins.

They were at the kitchen table playing UNO with Mom. As soon as I walked into the room a timer went off over the stove and Mom left the table to get something out of the oven. I took this as an opportunity to confront my brothers without Mom overhearing. I didn’t want them to get in trouble. If she knew their friend had physically hurt me, my brothers would never be allowed to leave the house again.

I stood at the head of the table with my hands gripping the back of a chair as I glared at them and lowered my voice. “Very funny guys,” I said.

They glanced at each other and then me and said in an innocent voice, “What?”

Crossing my arms, I tilted my head to the side and said, sternly, “I just met your friend, Phoenix.”

“Who?” Eric asked. They were no longer interested in me and turned their attention back to the colorful cards in their hands.

“Phoenix,” I said, taking a seat.

They shrugged. Mom set a plate of brownies in the center of the table and scolded my brothers as they both greedily reached for a warm brownie. She told them wait for the brownies to cool off and then turned from the table for glasses and milk.

“Your friend who I just met in the woods. He scared the shi—crap out of me,” I said.

Josh and Eric raised themselves onto the table with their knees on the seat and their elbows on the table. They leaned as close to the brownies as they could and stared, hungrily at them, licking their lips. I went completely oblivious to them.

“Phoenix,” I said again and studied their reactions.

“Who’s Felix?” Mom asked. She stood behind me pouring us each a glass of milk.

“Phoenix, he’s a friend of theirs,” I said, nodding toward my brothers who were happily devouring the brownies and wincing when the treat burned their tongues.

“I’ve never heard of this friend,” Mom said, looking back and forth at us for an explanation.

“She’s lying,” Josh said with his mouth full.

“We’ve never heard of him,” Eric added spitting bits of brownie.

I was growing annoyed. “Give up the act, okay. He said my dad sent him to talk to me,” I said with a laugh. It sounded so ridiculous.

“What?” Mom said, coughing up the bite of brownie she had just taken.

“Yeah, supposedly dad sent him to tell me about—“

“That’s not funny, Mickey,” Mom said, standing. She walked to the back door and peered nervously into the back, locking the door.

“I agree. It wasn’t funny,” I glared at my brothers, but then my blood went cold as I remembered the guy, Phoenix had known about the night of my party that I was bit and he knew about how the bite left no scar. How could he? My brothers didn’t know about the party unless they had heard from someone else which is possible. I was gossip for a little while. They probably heard a rumor. That had to be it.

“Let’s get back to the game, okay,” Mom said as she sat back down. She pulled her sweater over her shoulders and smiled wearily. Something had spooked her.

“Deal me in,” I said.

When I reached for the cards Mom noticed the bandages wrapped around my forearm. She pointed with a yellow card and asked, concerned, “What happened?”

I followed her gaze and stared at my arm where Phoenix had taken his knife and cut me. He had said I had the ability to regenerate, but my arm hurt pretty bad and I could see faint spots of blood showing up on the bandage so the kid was full of it. It all seemed so weird and confusing. Mom had gotten so upset just at the mention of Viktor that I didn’t feel like dwelling on it anymore. It was just a stupid prank that my brother’s weren’t confessing to, so I sighed and shook my head feigning embarrassment and told her I had tripped and scrapped my arm.

She frowned. “You need to be more careful, Mickey,” she said.

I looked up at her and noticed her arms. They were twice their size, shaped and sculpted. I had never seen her so muscular.

“Have you been going to a gym?” I asked, pointing to her left bicep.

Mom ignored me and instead shouted, “Uno!”

The next day, Reign showed up driving his pickup truck in my gravel lane. I was sitting in my bedroom with the window open doing homework when I heard the familiar roar of his engine. I stood from my bed and peered out the open window just as the red truck came to a stop and then engine cut off. He got out of the cab of the truck and his dog, Phoebe jumped out after him. He turned and snapped his fingers at the bouncing dog and ordered her to get back in the cab. Once she did, he shut the door behind her and then stepped toward the house, but came to a stop.

He had never come to my door before except for our first date when he dropped me off at the house. I didn’t want him to come to the door, not with Mom home, so I opened the screen of my window and leaned out a little waving my arms back and forth. He noticed and stepping backward he blocked the sun from his eyes with his hand and opened his mouth to call up to me, but I quickly held my finger to my lips and pointed down. I would come to him.

He nodded and relaxed a little, crossing his arms as he waited for me.

I shut the window, grabbed my fleece North Face jacket from my bed and ran out of my room. As I ran through the house I shouted, “I’m going to town with friends,” and ran out the door and past Reign to the truck.

“Get in,” I said to him. I wanted to hurry up and leave before Mom had a chance to look out the window and see which friends I was leaving with.

Reign followed me and jumped in the cab of the truck, pushing Phoebe toward me until the dog was on my lap and then reversed out of the lane.

“Where are we going?” I asked, excited.

“Lunch?” he asked.

I nodded. “Toasted,” I said. It was the best lunch place in town. We rested our hands, interlaced, on top of Phoebe as she was so big she was laying practically across both of our laps.

I leaned my head back and smiled, forgetting everything that had happened yesterday. When I was with Reign, I existed in a carefree world of no responsibilities or consequences it was just the two of us and all the bad and worry just slipped away.

We took our sandwiches to go because Phoebe was with us, and we drove over to the lake and ate while sitting on the back of the truck. Phoebe danced and jumped at our feet wanting us to share our lunch which Reign happily did.

Although the sun was out, it was cold and the chilly wind blew off the water. It was almost November which meant the first snow would fall within the next week or so. When I mentioned this to Reign a look of excitement and wonder came on to his face. After living so long in the South, he had forgotten what a “real” snow was like.

“It doesn’t snow in Arkansas?” I asked.

“Sure but not more than a few inches.”

I laughed. “You’re in for a surprise.”

He rolled the paper wrapper that his sandwich was wrapped up in, into a ball and taking my wrapper from my lap he carried the paper to the green trash bin a few feet from us then stood with his back to me and his hands on his hips as he surveyed the lake.

Phoebe barked a couple times from where she sat slobbering at my feet and looking at me with pleading brown eyes that manipulated me enough to toss her the last bite of my sandwich. I brushed my hands on the front of my jeans and jumped onto the paved sidewalk and then walked up to Reign who was still standing watching the rolling waves of the water.

He glanced at me and took my hand then led me toward the water and we walked for a ways along the shore with Phoebe running around us.

He came to a stop when he noticed something sticking out of the sand and kneeling he dug into the sand with his fingers and pulled out a Petoskey stone. With a smile he handed it to me, dropping it into my hand and said, “For you.”

I smiled in gratitude, but the truth was I had jars and jars of the stones back home on a high shelf in my closet. A Petoskey stone wasn’t hard to come by, but the gesture was sweet so I tucked it into my coat pocket.

We came to a stop a little ways from where we had parked and spent some time skipping stones, though he was better than I was, so he tried showing me how to skip a stone, but I failed miserably and sat down with a defeated sigh. We threw sticks for Phoebe to fetch and we talked and laughed until I felt a sudden, sharp and intense pain in my arm.

Clutching my arm, I yelped in pain. Reign looked at me in concern. Before I could explain, I groaned again. The pain was unbearable. I felt dizzy and nauseas.

“What?” he asked, rising himself on to his knees and hovering over me.

My eyes watered. “I don’t know. My arm,” I said through tight lips. The pain was blinding. I swayed a little as my eyes went in and out of focus.

Reign placed his hands, gingerly, on my arm. “Here?” he asked, applying a little pressure.

I nodded. “It hurts so much.”

He pushed up the fleece sleeve of my jacket and saw the bandages that were still wrapped around my arm. He looked at me with concern and confusion.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I fell and cut my arm,” I replied. I told him the same lie I had told Mom. I didn’t want to worry him, but more than that I didn’t want to tell him about my encounter in the woods with the weird guy named Phoenix when I was experiencing so much pain. I really just wanted to go home and go to bed.

He started to unwrap the white bandages. I placed my hand on top of his to stop him.

“It may be infected,” he explained.

Frowning, I nodded and prepared myself to see my flesh grotesquely infected from where I had been cut the day before, but just as the bandage fell away from my arm I turned my head and shut my eyes.

Little bumps raised along my arms, as Reign gently ran his fingers over my skin. He pulled my sleeve back down to my wrist and said, “It must not have been a bad fall after all.”

At the moment, I didn’t check on the cut myself. I was too distracted by the pain I was experiencing and thankful that it was not a gross infection, so I took his word for it and I cradled my hurt arm in my hand and pressed my arm, bent, close to my chest.

“Take me home,” I said. He helped me up from the sand and as I pressed my pained arm close to my chest and did my best to keep it still, he walked with an arm around my shoulders as he tried to keep me close to him and comfort me in this way. I assumed he could tell from how pale, even more pale than usual, my face probably looked and how tight my expression was that I was not making it up, although we couldn’t think of an explanation as to why my arm would hurt so bad.

Worried that I had been bitten by a spider, he wanted to take me to Urgent Care, but on our way the pain eased up and I started feeling better.

“I think I’m okay,” I said, extending my arm. Phoebe lifted her head from my lap and licked my hand.

He glanced at me then back at the road. “Are you sure?”

Nodding, I replied, “It doesn’t hurt as much anymore.”

We passed a sign alerting us that the Urgent Care was only ten miles away and on our right. “What do you want me to do?”

“Take me home. I’m okay,” I said.

Reign pulled into the parking lot of the Methodist Church and turned the truck around. Soon we were headed toward home and away from town.

By the time we pulled into my gravel lane my arm was completely back to normal. I continued to bend and straighten it until he came to a stop and put the truck in park.

“I’m sorry about that,” I said. I felt awful for how the afternoon ended. “I’m gonna ice it and I think I’ll feel better.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay, sweetheart,” He replied. He reached his arm over Phoebe and placed his hand on my shoulder.

Sweetheart. I liked that. We tried leaning in toward each other, but just as our lips almost met, Phoebe sat up in between us and barked. I sat back laughing.

“I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” I said as I opened the door of the truck and jumped to the ground.

I ran up to the house and came to a stop on the front porch. I turned and waved goodbye to him and Phoebe as Reign reversed out of the lane and disappeared around the bend of tall trees.

I entered my house expecting to find Mom in the kitchen working or my brothers running through the house, but instead I found, weirdly, that no one was home. It was especially weird because the lights were on throughout the house, the coffee pot was on, and there was Macaroni in a pot of water on the stove. Although the stove was off, the pot was still kind of warm. It looked like my family had left in a hurry and immediately made me suspicious and concerned especially since that guy Phoenix was probably lurking in the woods.

I  tried calling Mom on her cell phone, but it went directly to voice mail, so I sat timidly on the couch in the living room trying to do homework and with an ice pack on my arm even though it didn’t hurt at all anymore. I waited and waited for them to come home and after about an hour, Mom finally did.

19

Even before she took off her sunglasses and folded them in her hand, I could tell she had been crying. Her face was flushed and her nose was red. She sniffled a little as she shut the door behind her.

I immediately knew something was not right and then I realized she was alone and neither of my brothers followed behind her. I jumped off the couch and lunged toward her which caused her to jump a little. She hadn’t noticed me on the couch. I grabbed hold of her arms, tightly, and looked into her watery blue eyes.

“What happened?” I asked. I rooted myself in front of her and used her for support as I was beginning to feel a little lightheaded. I expected the worst.

“Oh, your brothers,” Mom sighed.

“Both of them?” My voice waivered.

“You know how rambunctious they can get and Josh fell off the deck.”

“How?” I asked.

“He was walking on the damn railing and fell over and broke his arm,” Mom said in a tone blended with anger and concern.

“His arm? Which one?”

“His left arm. We’ve been at the hospital and I ran home to pick up some things for him for the night.”

“Why are they keeping him over night?” I asked, flooded with concern again.

“Concussion. They want to monitor it. He hit his head pretty bad.” Mom walked past me shaking her head.

I followed her up the stairs and to the twin’s bedroom where she pulled out a black bag from the floor of the closet and started packing it with a pair of pajamas, slippers, and Josh’s teddy bear, Paws.

“Are you staying with him?” I asked.

“No, he’ll be okay,” Mom said, zipping the bag up and tossing it over her shoulder.

“Toothbrush,” I reminded her.

She clicked her tongue and headed across the hall to the bathroom the boys shared.

“Where have you been? I couldn’t find you when all the drama happened,” Mom’s voice carried out of the bathroom and reached me where I stood at the top of the stairs.

My hesitation did not go unnoticed. Mom stepped out of the bathroom holding on to a Dr. Who toothbrush. She stared at me with suspicious eyes and her chin raised waiting for a response.

“I told you I was going into town with friends,” I said.

“Oh, right.” Mom shook her head. “I forgot. How’s Kristen? I feel like I haven’t seen her in a long time. Why is that?”

I averted my eyes and played with the zipper on my fleece jacket. Shrugging I mumbled an excuse, “She’s busy with cheerleading and stuff.”

“Cheerleading? You didn’t tell me that,” Mom said. She walked down the hall toward me and started descending the stairs then she came to a stop and turned back toward me. “You know, now that I think of it I haven’t seen or heard much about Kristen at all. Everything okay?”

Nodding with false enthusiasm, I trailed down the stairs behind Mom. “Yup, we’re just both busy this year. She has a boyfriend and cheer and stuff.”

Though I thought it best that Mom not be informed about my drama, especially with Josh in the hospital, I did feel guilty for keeping so much from her and lying a lot lately. In the past, mom was always someone I could confide in, but she would only be concerned if I told her about Reign and she would be even more concerned, probably, about what happened to me socially, so before she could keep digging at me I reminded her she should probably get back to the hospital. She jumped a little at my remark, checked the time on the gold watch that hung from her bony wrist, and hurried down the stairs.

When she noticed me slipping on my shoes, she placed her hand on my shoulder to stop me.

“Why don’t you stay here,” she said.

              “Mom, no. I want to come with you,” I objected in a whiny voice.

              Mom removed her hand and brushed yellow feather bangs back from her high forehead. “I know, but it would help me out so much if you could stay and get dinner ready. I’m just gonna drop his bag off and bring Eric home.”

              “But doesn’t he want to see me? I’m worried about him.” I frowned thinking about Josh in a cold, bleak hospital room.

              “He’s so doped up on pain medication that he probably wouldn’t even remember seeing you.”

              I reluctantly kicked my shoes off and sat, slightly glowering at Mom as she slipped her arms into her North Face coat and laced her feet up in tennis shoes before grabbing her purse and the black duffle bag. She stepped forward and grabbed my face with her small hands and leaning down she kissed me on top of my head.

              I sat there for a couple minutes after Mom left and I heard the Toyota start, until I found the motivation to head to the kitchen and start cooking something for dinner.

              I wasn’t the best cook, but I wasn’t the worst either. I could so some dishes: spaghetti being one of them. The sauce would take longer, so I decided to start on that first.

              The house was so quiet and I didn’t like that. I felt almost like calling Reign over but when I glanced behind my shoulder and looked out the glass back door I noticed all the lights of his house were off, so I assumed no one was even home. A shiver ran down my spine as I looked at the restored house. It still gave me the creeps sometimes. I figured because for so long I believed it to be haunted, it was hard to believe someone I cared so much for now lived there.

              Standing over the cooking ground beef, I started processing the day’s events starting with my brother. Poor kid. I picked at the browning meat with my fingers and dropped some into my mouth. Then I remembered my own arm and the weird pain I had felt today at the lake. Rubbing my arm, I pushed back the sleeve of my jacket to survey the nasty cut Phoenix had given me the day before, but before I could inspect my arm, I realized with nauseating disgust that I was eating raw ground beef and I ran over to the sink spitting out the chewed up pink meat. I ran the faucet and splashed water in my mouth as I suppressed the urge to throw up.

              But after my second glass of tap water, I walked back over to the meat still bright pink and looking down into the skillet my fingers twitched wanting another bite. Instead I covered the skillet with a lid and walked away from the stove. I’d let it brown before returning.

              I sighed loudly. Things had been so strange lately. I had been strange, but didn’t love make you do weird things? Maybe love made you eat raw ground beef. No, I laughed at the absurdity, but I could believe that it made you distracted enough to do weird things like not realize the beef wasn’t cooked yet. I accepted this.