Now that I was left on my lonesome, I had all of Home Ec to myself to mull over things. I busied myself with unraveling the enigma of peeling kiwis.
Selene had warned me about letting Pierson back me into a wall, and I still floundered in front of him and his entire pack. Maybe his over-territorial alpha brain craved controlling others. Maybe he was, simply put, a bully looking to, uh, bully. What I had that he wanted, I had no idea, considering he already had seemingly everything a guy could want—popularity, a stunning sports career, and a far-above-average girlfriend. As nasty as Uriey was beneath her facade, she was gorgeous. She knew it, too.
There was another issue to worry about, too. If Pierson had a girlfriend, had I stood Simon up the other day for nothing?
My fine slicing turned to hacking as my thoughts sped up. Here I was, stewing over the whole thing, replaying that scene. The muffled talking, the smiles and laughter between Simon and Pierson. Pierson didn’t seem Simon’s type and vice versa. Why’d I make such a crazy leap? People were allowed to hang out for the sake of hanging out, weren’t they?
Without Cheryl in class, I had to apply my bandaid by myself after cutting myself with my knife. The Home Ec teacher came by and gave my work a thoughtful look, and though the quality was a solid D, she marked it down on my rubric as a C+ for effort.
“Not a final grade, mind you,” Mrs. Merri, the Home Ec teacher, informed me. “The rubric I’m filling out for you, and all the grades on it, are a guide to show you where you need to improve before the end of the semester. If you can show me you can do better, I’ll change it.”
Her words would have given me some hope if she hadn’t been telling me the same thing since the semester started.
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Ash was missing for fifth period again. I stared at his empty seat as if he’d apparate out of nowhere, shrug his shoulders, and shoot me with a yo. Fifteen minutes passed, and it didn’t look like that was going to happen. I cracked open my book, trying to at least grind through the last few chapters, but my mind was more interested in other things. When I got home from school, I said my mandatory hi to Amy and Sam before going upstairs to flop on my bed and process the day.
I could break the past two days down into two states: things that were resolved, and things that were getting worse.
Resolved: Pierson had a girlfriend, bringing me some relief that maybe there wasn’t something going on between him and Simon. Well, outside of maybe some unknown friendship. I’d made up with Cheryl and returned to talking terms.
Worsening: Matt from Gym had developed a taste for my blood. Pierson’s advances were getting bolder. Which, sure, there was some flattery in one of the most popular guys in school finding me interesting, but the ire of his girlfriend and the rest of his pack came with it. I certainly wasn’t the right type to join them, or even breathe the same air.
And, on the final topic lingering on my mind, was I ever going to get another chance to hang with Simon, now that I’d trashed the last one? Sure, Cheryl was quick to forgive me. Simon seemed… different.
My thoughts were interrupted by a knock on my bedroom door.
“Come in!” I called out. The door cracked open; Amy was on the other side.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Fine.” I got up and made room on the bed for her to sit. The frame squeaked as she sat down beside me. “What’s up?”
“Just doing my mandatory sister duty and checking up on you. You seemed pretty upset yesterday.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I shouldn’t have talked to you and Sam like that.”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t come up here to lecture you,” she said. “Being a teenager is hard and ugly. Sam’s been worried you’re mad at her for getting too involved in your life.”
“I’m not mad at Sam,” I told Amy. “It’s just… I need space. A lot of people have been poking around my life lately.”
“How so?”
“Telling me what to eat. Who to hang out with.” I frowned. “Whenever I’m the center of attention, it’s always a bad thing. And everything’s getting worse. I hit some guy in the face with a pickle ball during gym, and now I’ve got some target on my back for it. Meanwhile, there’s another guy I really want to spend time with, but I stood him up by accident.”
“Wait, back it up a sec,” Amy said. “You hit someone in the face during gym?”
“Yeah,” I confessed. “He was being a dick. I fumbled during a game in gym, and he was all total omega move or some crap. So, I figured, if he was gonna gloat like that, might as well remind him he was beta. Right in front of his alpha, too. You’re… not going to tell Sam, are you?”
She laughed. “No. To be honest, I’m a little proud of you.”
“Scandalous.”
“And worried,” she pointed out. “You better not go shifting alone in some dark alley somewhere.”
“This isn’t The Outsiders, Amy.” Sam had a bunch of 80s and 90s movies on DVD, which the two of us had been steadily parsing through. “Some Soc isn’t going to pop out of nowhere and drown me in a fountain.”
“I’m joking. But my point stands.” Amy straightened a patch of the sheets with her hand, the way a mom would straighten your things when they were looking for something to say. “As for your new friend, have you thought about apologizing to him?”
“No.” My shoulders slumped. “He told me once that if you say sorry too much, it stops meaning anything.”
“Then make it up to him. Ask him if he wants to do anything around town. There’s the mall or the arcade, or maybe shakes. Down near Yarrow Street and Broadway, there’s a used book store that has a cafe in it.”
“If he says no?”
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”
“Right,” I nodded. “But I don’t have his number.”
“Guess you’ll have to talk to him in person, then.” Amy gave me a small smile. “The old-fashioned way.”
“Yeah. Kind of like Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet.”
She looked at me quizzically. “Sorry?”
“From the book, Pride and Prejudice. They didn’t have internet back then, so they had to send letters and track each other down to have conversations.”
“Right. And it went well, I presume?”
“Not for most of it, really,” I admitted. “The two main characters keep offending each other and getting mad over avoidable stuff. It’s not until the end when they actually stop trying to burn each other and have an honest, face-to-face conversation that they find out everything was a huge misunderstanding and that they like each other.
“That’s good—“
“Which happens after someone gets borderline kidnapped by a creepy old guy and they need to save them. Conflict shows people’s true colors or something, yeah?”
Amy’s voice stalled a second before she replied. “Well… less good. But that whole thing about talking to each other honestly, face to face? Try it. Preferably without waiting for something terrible to happen.”
I nodded. She pulled me into a side hug, then scruffed the hair on the top of my head.
“Goodnight, Collin. Sleep sound, don’t let the fleas bite.”
“You too, sis. Goodnight.”
“Are you watching for something?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I followed his gaze but found nothing of interest laying ahead. Just black pebbled shoreline and more dark water.
“Where, the waves?”
“Mostly. Sometimes, the shore, when there’s other wolves.”
“So… more people like me.” Something in me sank upon the realization it wasn’t just the two of us. I mean, wasn’t that a good thing? That we weren’t as alone as I thought?
“Not like you, Collin,” he corrected. I raised an ear. “They never stay long, anyways.”
“I’m sorry. Whatever that means.”
“No, it’s… a good thing. The last one that stayed, hurt a lot to lose.” The rocks shifted as he sat down. “You smell like cigarettes.”
I snorted, sitting down on my haunches beside him and snaking my muzzle beside his hand. “I don’t smoke.”
“It isn’t good for your lungs, you know. Smoking so early. Smoking at all. Neither is driving without a seatbelt.”
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Ash was in fifth period again. Like usual, we scooted our seats closer together to chat.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked.
“Just out and about,” he answered casually. “School’s kind of a drag—the whole education system’s an industrial complex. Need to take a break every once in a while to enjoy life, y’know?”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“Uh-huh,” I nodded along.
“Hey, how about your day?” he asked, brushing back the locks of dark hair that hid his dichromatic eyes. “What do you have going on?”
“Just the usual,” I answered, leaning back. “English, trig, gym, home ec.” Luckily, there hadn’t been much else happening with Pierson and his crew, just the occasional glare from one-eyed Matt. “Been hanging with Selene’s pack on and off.”
Ash frowned. The expression seemed unnatural on his face—he was the kind of guy who’d rather smile, even when things got discomforting.
“You know her?” I asked.
“Yeah… we know each other.” He tapped his fingers on his desk before quickly changing the subject. “Hey, how about going out somewhere today?”
“After school?”
“Nah, now. I’m thinking Slammin’ Sally’s. You been?”
“You aren’t talking about skipping class, are you?”
“It’s just fifth period,” he shrugged. “Nobody cares. Teach doesn’t even pay attention.”
I looked up at the front desk. Mr. Sanger looked half asleep over a pile of papers he had been unenthusiastically grading. Still awake enough to catch us trying to walk past him and out the door, though. Ash stood up anyway, waving at me to follow him as he made his way to the front of the class, so I did.
He cleared his throat to grab Mr. Sanger’s nearly-depleted attention span. “Hey, Mr. Sanger—Collin and I’ve been falling behind in Spanish, and Ms. Ramirez told us to stop before the end of the day by when we can to grab some extra assignments. Can we go?”
“You can’t do this after class?” he asked.
“Yeah, but apparently the staff printer’s been acting up, and we don’t want to miss the buses home, y’know?”
Sanger conceded with a shrug. “Just don’t linger in the halls.”
“Course, teach.” Ash smiled, less to the teacher and more to me.
Normal Collin would have felt guilty. Current Collin was grinning, even though he didn’t do the cunning legwork. My friend put his hands in his pockets and walked out the door and down the hall.
Neither of us even bothered stopping at our lockers, boldly passing by the receptionist with a friendly wave. She waved back. And, without a single hassle, we exited out the front door and entered the freedom of the streets.
“How far is it from here?” I asked.
“Probably twenty minutes by foot,” Ash calculated. “It’s downtown just before Macomb Park. You skateboard?”
“Never owned one, just a school bus pass.”
“The back parking lot leads to the skate park. Check it out sometime, if you ever get a board.”
“My birthday’s next month,” I told him. “I’ll ask for sure.”
We cut through some alleys and jaywalked a few streets, chatting about random stuff like music on the college radio (flaunting Ash’s maturity and advanced tastes), how modern fashion was turning people to sheep, and other things that, if I wasn’t agreeing with Ash on, I was being enlightened about. He could say anything, and just by the way he posed his words, he didn’t have to argue to seem right.
“Where do you hang out in town?” I asked him. He lit a cigarette as we walked. “Other than the skate park.”
“Moxy’s cool. Local theater. Tickets are cheap. Especially when they keep the back doors unlocked.” He hummed as he thought, musical as always. “Macomb after dark. Real beatnik vibe on summer nights.”
“How about shifting?”
“Shifting?” A sideways smile broke out on his face. “Plenty of good places. Most people go for the North Slopes, the hills above town, or Walker Butte southwest. But Devil’s Ridge is where it’s at, east of here.”
“Sounds like a cool place.”
“Yeah. Early explorers called it that because of all the native tribes and outlaws that would ambush travelers from the ravines,” he spun. “Friends and I meet up there on full moons—my friend Seb’s trailer is right on the city line, so you can jump the fence from her backyard straight into the forest’s edge. It’s a steep ways up, but once you get past the initial climb, you can see the city and all three rivers. We go there, like, every full moon.”
“Wow. Is that why you were out the past couple of days?”
Ash nodded. “Yeah. Full moon was Monday. Went and camped there for a bit.”
“And your parents just let you?”
He laughed. “They’d get their tails in a twist if they find out, so I pretend to take the bus to school, then get off somewhere else.”
“Doesn’t the school notify your parents if you miss class?”
“Who cares?” he simply replied. “They’re all waiting til I’m sixteen to drop out. Me, too. Hey, you should join us next full moon. You in?”
“Maybe. I’ve never shifted with people here, really, before.”
“How was your old pack?”
I shrugged. “I never really fit in with them. Felt like we were hanging out not because we wanted to, but because we had to. Couldn’t really pick your pals in a population of under 500.”
“Small town stuff, huh?”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “My dad was kind of… restrictive about who I hung out with, too. He didn’t fit in either.”
“But you had plenty of room to run around, right? Out in the boonies—I mean, the country.”
“It was the boonies,” I admitted. “I’d rather die than go back, y’know? But there was plenty of room to shift. Even though I don’t miss home, I do miss that part.”
“Yeah?”
“Back there, it was just a ‘Hey, I’m going to step out for the night, see ya later’ jig. My dad would go out for cigarettes and either come back late at night or the next day. Sometimes, I’d come home, and my mom would just be gone and no one would say a word.”
“Wow,” Ash whistled. “Just going wild whenever and where ever it takes you.”
“Yeah,” I hesitantly agreed. “But… I like it here better. There’s people to spend time with. My family here, Sam and Amy, are around more. Sure, I can’t just walk out the door on all fours without disrupting traffic and getting yelled at. I’m OK with that, though. It’s just… nice, I guess.”
“Well, to each their own. Hey, we’re here.”
We stopped in front of a square brick building. Slammin’ Sallies’ appeared to be in a renovated part of an old factory, flanked by a pilates studio and a holistic medicine shop. The glass of the front door was covered in so stickers and concert tour posters you couldn’t see in, while the nearby sidewalk was lined with makeshift flower beds built from recycled tires and metal. Bikes were parked all over the place, locked to anything they could be, from handicap signs to street light posts.
Ash smothered his cigarette in an ashtray piled with other butts near the entrance. Either nobody was routinely taking it out, or the place had so many smokers whoever was in charge of cleaning couldn’t keep up.
The door jingled as we walked in, and we were greeted by the smell of incense and an undertone of something herbal and skunky. Immediately, I liked the place—it was filled with shelves and shelves of crazy stuff, mazes of posters, knick-knacks, and succulent pots. A dog lay next to an antique gas pump and sat up when we walked past, wagging her tail. I spared the hound a scratch behind her droopy ears, finding it funny how the folds on her face made her look like an old man. I’d never owned a dog before; I’ve been wishing for one almost my whole life.
We walked around the store, playing around with all the weird stuff, like the singing bells and wind chimes. Ash strode over to a display with a bunch of iron-on patches, pointing out one of an hourglass with a skull at the bottom, with the words ‘Killing Time’ embroidered at the bottom.
Along the back wall, with a host of fragile stuff, there were a bunch of glass animals small enough to fit in a fist. They weren’t the gimicky stuff you could get at a gas station, crafted with enough detail that you could see the pupils divited into their eyes. When I held one up to the light, it cast a prismatic rainbow instead of a shadow, turning the whole shelf into an enchanted menagerie.
“Nice,” Ash said as he peered past my shoulder. “You into collecting that stuff?”
“No, but my sister and her mom Sam are.” I could imagine Sam or Amy finding a home for it on the ledge above the kitchen sink. Most of the figures on display were (predictably) wolves, which I passed on. One of them was a giraffe, poking its head high above the crowd. I picked it up, turning it over to see the tiny price tag on the belly. Well over the change I kept in my wallet. “Maybe not.”
“Let’s check out the second floor,” Ash said. “They’ve got a whole wall of vinyls and shirts there.”
For all the talk we had over music, I barely recognized any of the artists Ash pointed out, let alone understand the rarity of a few he fawned over. We eventually split off from each other, and after twenty minutes, rejoined at the front door.
“You get anything?” I asked.
Ash gave me an mmm sound. “You?”
“Just a card. Thought it looked pretty.” I showed it to him, the card’s front picturing the moon across several phases, with a blank inside. “Eventually it’s gonna be someone’s birthday, right? Or anniversary. Graduation, maybe.”
The card was an (overpriced) $5, and the cashier slipped it into a little paper bag and told us to have a good day. When I checked my phone, it was already 4:00 PM—half an hour past when I was supposed to be home.
“I gotta run,” I told Ash. “Sam’ll be mad if I miss dinner and the food gets cold. She’s a stickler about that sort of thing.”
“I won’t hold you back. Hey, before you go, though.” Ash fished something out of his inner coat pocket, handing it to me. It was the glass giraffe from earlier.
“Wow,” I said. “You didn’t have to— I can’t keep it without giving you something.”
“No skin off my teeth. You said your birthday’s coming up, right?”
“Are you sure?”
Ash winked at me.
“Hey, don’t worry about it. It's cool,” Ash calmly insisted. Assertively, he took one of my hands, and planted it in my palm, wrapping my fingers around it with his own. “Trust me, alright?”
I nodded. “Alright. I’ll see you soon then.”
“Yup. Catch up with you later.”
Departing, I should have been in a good mood, but a strange, uneasy feeling came over me. Maybe tinged with guilt; I didn’t know exactly why. Was it because I had skipped class? Because I was out late?
I hadn’t seen Ash check out at the store when we were done shopping. That was because he checked out before me, right?
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“Where’ve you been?” Sam asked me. “It’s almost five.”
“Sorry,” I apologized. “I took a walk around the river with a friend to get some air.”
An internal debate went on in Sam’s head, on whether to scold me for coming home late, or praise me for finding another friend to spend time with. “Well, if you’re going to be out later than usual, text me next time, okay?” She sniffed. “You smell like cigarettes.”
“There was some guy on the bus trying to smoke out an open window,” I lied. “Bus driver had to kick him off. Really awkward. Think I might take up biking.”
“Well, maybe we can see about getting you a bike for your birthday. Food’s getting cold.”
I nodded and slid into a seat. Sam put out a couple of red pot holders on the table just before Amy set a bowl of rice and stir fry on top. They both dug in with chopsticks, while I went with the trusty fork and spoon. Amy gave me an elephant thing that you put on the end of your chopsticks that helped teach you how to use them, but I was too hungry to settle for anything less than a mouth shovel.
I kept my eyes on my plate, hoping Sam and Amy would keep talking to each other about work or the weather or something. If they asked me about the day, I feared I’d say something too suspicious. The stir fry was a mix of chicken, chili sauce, soy glaze, and green beans. Spicy, but not too hot for a guy who grew up on beef and potatoes.
“When’s the last time you called your mom?” Sam asked me out of the blue. “She’s a timezone ahead, but it shouldn’t be too late.”
“I don’t have her new number,” I said.
“I’ll give it to you after we eat, okay? She misses you.”
We finished the meal without ceremony. Sam gave me my mom’s number on a sticky note, and I went outside, out of hearing range. I could lie to Sam—tell her I did call without even dialing a single digit, make up a fictional conversation if she pressed further. Something too mundane to look into while still being believable enough to satisfy everyone.
In the end, I decided to give my mom a ring.
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“Hey mom, it’s me, Collin. Just wanted to give you a call, and let you know everything’s going okay. Made some new friends. In fact, I just hung out with one a few hours ago around town. Garden City’s so much bigger than Sulphur Springs. Way bigger.
“School’s been tough so far, but… it’s getting better. There’s a few bullies I have to deal with. I met some great people who more than make up for it, though! There’s a girl named Cheryl, she’s super smart and has been holding my hand the whole time while I get used to things. I’ve gone to her place a couple of times to study. She’s introduced me to her pack, too. I don’t know what I’d do without her.
“Then there’s my classmate Ash—he’s the guy I was hanging out with today. He’s cool, and I want to hang out more. But he’s the kind of kid that if Sam knew about him, I don’t think she’d like him. He smokes cigarettes, and my therapist thinks that makes him a bad influence to be around. Sometimes he skips class, too. He’s not a bad person, though. We talk a lot, and he’s always thinking about right and wrong. At least, on the big picture scale.
“Oh, there’s this one kid called Simon, and I’m having a hard time figuring out how to act or think about him. I can’t tell if he hates me, or likes me. Every time we talk, I have a lot of things I want to say. I don’t know how to say them, though, so he probably thinks I’m an idiot. I’d have better luck dealing with lions, I bet.
“By the way, Sam’s got me seeing a therapist. Her name’s Amber, and she’s nice. I hope the one you’re seeing is still working out. And I hope you’re doing alright. I’m calling you from my new number, so you can always call me back on it. The number is 509-777…”
When I finished the call, a part of me was relieved that my mom hadn't picked up. Another part of me was sad. The more time I spent with Sam and Amy, the more I realized there had been a gap in my life; maybe if my parents were there, it wouldn’t feel so big.