Eyes of the Wolf

12
I overslept that morning, since my alarm got ignored due to its being slapped off by my hand on automatic. No techno ringtone accompanied my whinnying clock. It took my dad coming in and shaking me awake with a time said in my ear that got me to explode out of bed and scramble so badly that I slammed my head on my dresser tripping over my thin blankets. Hearing the crash, my dad returned, found me collapsed between my bed and dresser, and dragged me into the living room to check my pupil dilation for ten minutes (it took so long since absolutely no-one in a sane mindset likes having a flashlight shone in their eyes immediately after they wake up). I threw on the very first clothes I could grab, and muttered jibberish at my shoes for another ten minutes until I finally realized that my right foot would probably be much more comfortable in a right shoe.

By the time we had finally gotten out of the house, we were forty-five minutes late. Conversation was scarce until we pulled into the school parking lot.

“Are you gonna need a tardy slip?” Dad asked me.

“Probably.”

He heaved a sigh. “I’ll come with you.”

The lady behind the desk in the office didn’t seem to be too happy to help us, and gave us disgusted looks as she gave us the sign-in form and drummed her long crimson manicured fingernails against the wood the entire time my dad signed the paper.

“Why was she late?” she demanded in a high pitched, clipped voice.

“Car problems,” he lied smoothly to her. “Shouldn’t be much of a problem—she hasn’t been tardy before, has she?”

I could tell that this question irritated her immeasurably. Unwilling to admit that she had no idea whom I even was and look it up on her computer, she quipped a little “No, she hasn’t”, handed me a slip of paper, and proceeded to pretend we weren’t there, lurid pink lips pursed. With a quick bob of his eyebrows that conveyed a clear “Well, then,” my dad put his hand on my shoulder and escorted me out.

“When that woman dies, maggots will use that face as a trampoline,” he muttered to me. “Don’t get plastic surgery, okay?”

Grinning despite the morning’s terrible start, I answered, “No worries, Dad.”

With a nod to me, he patted my shoulder. “Have a good day.”

:o3

My lateness was ignored by my P.E. teacher. He took the slip of paper and gestured to the track, and I obliged in picking up a run. We didn’t really take my P.E. attendance seriously, since I had finished my required physical education at the end of my sophomore year. For the same reasons, he didn’t get after me for wearing baggy jeans to his class.

By the time I had finished my laps, I was sorely regretting my choices of clothing. For my feet I had grabbed ankle socks, and I had put on one of my more feminine bras, which was not up to the challenge of keeping me adequately supported while I was running. The long sleeves kinda sucked too, and I had forgotten to put on deodorant. Crud crud crud crud.

Despite my discomfort, I was almost literally unable to wimp out. I had never had much respect for girls who claimed they were on their period every week to avoid physical exertion. I knew there was an obvious medium, but I was refusing to acknowledge it. I did the repeat mile along with all the freshmen and sophomores, the few higher classmen blatantly ignoring me.

I was slathered in perspiration by the end of the period, and my chest hurt like hell. I walked gingerly to the locker room, my socks somewhere around my toes. A hammer was pounding what was sure to be one hell of a swelling in my forehead from the earlier morning. My locker was thankfully stocked with a stick of deodorant and fresh, clean (if not slightly wadded and wrinkled) clothes, so I showered with relief in the icy water, which, even with the outside temperatures, somehow ensured that I got the shower to myself. The clothes were like clouds against my skin. One of the things I loved about working ‘til I was a sweatball was the feeling of clean clothes after I had showered. Plus, the shirt was short-sleeved.

Upon emerging from the locker room, I was in a much better mood than I had been walking to the class that morning.

:o3

My optimism seemed foolish by lunch. My English teacher had scolded me for a million grammatical errors I made when I spoke, and my government teacher gave me D-graded homework to fix along with my new homework. During government, I also discovered that Chris was still blatantly not talking to me.

After collecting my…lunch?...from the cafeteria and sporking it directly to the back of my throat so as to avoid my tongue, I went to look for Chris, my hands in my very deep pockets, checking absently for anything I might have left in them. Her strawberry-skin red hair wasn’t hard to find on the other side of the room, especially when it had a whole empty table devoted to it.

Chris glared missiles at me, and sent shrapnel along with it, but I sat anyway. I knew stabbing things with sporks is very difficult, but I admired her effort. When I looked to her face, her cat-green eyes dropped immediately to her plate. Her fingernail-nubs were trying to hole punch the Styrofoam tray.

“Chris, I’m really sorry,” I told her, knowing she would listen even if she was convinced she hated me. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you after I was done talking to him. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that I was going to LaserQuest with him. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my dad being all miffed when he came to pick me up and he found Niko and me…” I let my voice trail off, ‘cause when I had said the last line, Chris’s eyes had snapped back up to me, boring into my head like a super drill.

“What happened?” she demanded, her voice as intent as her gaze, immediately hungry for the news. I let my eyes drift down to her plate, dimly registering that I now recognized the strange brown thing for a burrito.

“You probably don’t care,” I said lightly, leaning my head on my knuckle. When she didn’t answer, I glanced back up at her. Her lime-green lidded eyes were hanging halfway over her pupils, conveying a thoroughly irritated look by optics alone.

“Are you still mad at me?” I asked sweetly. She rolled her eyes. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the packet of 5 gum I had found on my way over. I proffered it, watching with amusement as her nose wrinkled more and more as it got closer and closer to her.

“You know I hate that stuff,” she hissed at me. “I feel like I’m chewing cud. It makes you look like a cow too.” She leaned as far back as she could lean with no back on her seat. A smile played at the corner of her mouth as she said, “Redeem yourself.”

Grinning again, I leaned across the table and told her everything that happened—omitting, perhaps, the ominousness of the second lasertag game—as I slid the gum back into my pocket. I’d chew some later, I promised myself, after I was in a class that wouldn’t have me in Chris’s vicinity. I would hate to impose my bovine alter-ego on her so soon after we had made up.