Eyes of the Wolf

2
“So you took the job, right?” Chris prodded me at seven the next morning, just as I was waking up. I would never get used to these early morning calls from her, no matter how often she did it, often in sync with my whinnying clock—the same one that I had checked the night before, innocent and pretty when it wasn’t bugling a wake-up call. Add the techno-sounding ringtone shrilling on my other side, and it was the cacophony of completely antithetical beings.

“Yeahmmm…” I groaned into the phone as I waved blindly around my bedside table for the screaming horse sound—a gift from the morning demon herself.

“That’s good.” Her voice was ridiculously chipper. “This should be really good for you. I mean, you’ve wanted a dog for how long? And you can’t get your puppy fix off of old Balto here”—Balto being her twelve-year old Queensland cross—“and you need some more experience, especially if you want to work with dogs a lot…” She shifted ears in mid sentence. “…you’re older. Hang on.”

As she scolded her younger, freshman brother, I resolved to myself that sometime I’d inform the religious world that Satan rose at dawn. She continued the berating as I worked up the desire to sit up.

“Are you out of bed yet? Honestly, getting up slowly won’t make you feel any better in the morning, I’m always telling you that. You know, if you just get up when your alarm goes off and just march right into, well, wherever you go in the mornings, you’ll wake up much faster and feel much better for it, I assure you…”

I sat up slowly, groaning like a rising corpse, and the string of conversation barely changed.

“…see, listen to you! You should set your alarm earlier, then maybe I could actually talk to you in the mornings instead of listening to you moan around like the living dead”—scary, she was sometimes—“honestly, you know how I get so bored on this damn bus, ‘cause there’s absolutely no one on it and--you don’t count!--and you know how carsick I get if I try to read or do homework or anything…”

I zoned out, focusing on seeing if my left leg would move to the end of the bed. So far, it was like I was attempting telekinesis.

“And holy crap, you’re probably not even listening to me. Maya? Maya! God dammit, Maya, are you even listening to me?”

“Mmhmm…”

“You liar. My God, you are the absolute worst in the mornings…”

I zoned out again, having finally gotten my legs out from under the covers.

“…can’t imagine what I’d do if—”

“Chris?” I interrupted. “I’m up. Buggur brother.”

“Oh-kay.” And she hung up. I rolled my eyes at my phone and stood, moving to my drawer and grabbing a shirt and a pair of jeans, then stopping over the bra for the sake of remembering if I had PE—I didn’t—and simultaneously pulled out a pair of socks and my B-size demi. When everything was where it went, I pulled on my shoes, fumbling a bit with the tasseled end of the one lace, and emerged from my room. And running back in to swipe some eyeshadow over by eyelids. REemerging, I grabbed a pair of pop-tart packages and peeled the silver wrapping off the first, biting the corner of the first uncooked pastry before it was out. Dad was at the door first, wearing one of his nice shirts over worn plaid pajama pants. He opened the door for me before walking around the nose of the Honda and getting in the driver’s seat. I got in. We were halfway out the driveway when I remembered my backpack, which woke up my dad enough to enable him a chuckle at my expense. I stuck out my tongue at him as I settled the black backpack on my lap and closed my door.

My brain started waking up as Dad drove me to school. I was going to be taking care of puppies for three days, until Sunday night. I was happy about that. I was a senior in high school—it was about time I started helping out with more dogs than Balto, to paraphrase Chris’s opinions. I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, but I was getting pretty certain that I wanted to be a veterinarian. However, I wasn’t going to base all my hopes on that, considering I had no idea how I’d be in any kind of major situation. I helped my dad all the time with taking care of the pets, especially when they were sick, but I had never dealt with anything critical.

:o3

“Hey, you wanna hit Cold Stone after school? You know, since I’m legal now, I can drive you, and then I can just drop you off on my way to horse lessons.”

Yes, I knew very well that Chris could drive me over to Cold Stone. She had turned eighteen last month and was very excited about her new legal privileges, despite how normally she seemed to say it. I might have been fooled if I hadn’t known her so well, but she had mentioned it already three other times this week. As much as Chris could talk at once, she didn’t repeat information too much unless she was pretty happy about it.

“I need to call my dad first,” I intoned, though it was never likely he’d say no. As long as my homework got done and I got home at a reasonable time, it was fine with him. Sure enough, after a very brief explanation with a question mark at the end, I was off the phone with a ready and unsurprising affirmative. We discussed where we’d meet—outside her last class, as usual, since my last period on Friday was always free—and finished our lunches.

After my sixth period, I sat on a bench in the quad and finished my government homework, then my calculus. By the time the final bell rang, I was packed up and ready to go, and had positioned myself opposite the door in the hall as the ten fastest were already rounding the corners.

“How was English?” I asked conversationally as she reached my side and we started walking.

“Wonderful. You know that one really witchy girl who’s always giving you all that crap?”

“You mean the one that’s always calling you horse whore?”

“Yeah, that bitch. Well, Mr. D told her off so bad that she was opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water, it was so damned funny, I don’t think there was a person in the room that wasn’t laughing their ass off—”

“What did he tell her?” I asked curiously as we joined the throng of our classmates walking down the sidewalk.

“Well, he said that…wait. She said that he wasn’t…noooo…Dammit. I don’t remember what he said, but he made her look really stupid in front of the class, and in front of her boyfriend, too, that what’s-his-name that we have fourth period with…”

“Albert.”

“Yeah, that dick. My God, that guy is such an asshole…”

I grinned to myself as we made our way down four blocks to her grandparents’ house, her motormouthing all the way there about her day and the opinions of the people involved, most of which I heard every day. Other than the few occasions where she swore heartily at her horse-patterned shoulder bag as she switched arms, the conversation didn’t change much. A lot of people didn’t like Chris, but then, not a lot of people gave her the chance. She had brilliant crimson hair—obviously dyed—and wore more than the necessary amount of makeup, so most people were more than willing to label her as a talkative whore who, “naturally”, didn’t have many friends. Despite these condemned traits of hers, though, I’d found awhile ago that she was one of those strong souls who made for a treasured and loyal friend. She talked her mouth off, but if you had something to say, she was an avid listener. And, brainless though she initially seemed, she was pretty sharp, especially in a sense of logic and how people behaved.

Her grandparents, as usual, had no qualms about lending the car to Chris for the afternoon. They had formed an agreement about it when my friend had gotten her permit—she could borrow the car, and they would pay for everything but gas. They couldn’t use it much anymore anyway, what with Grandma’s sight failing and her husband’s recovering from a recent stroke. Chris had been thrilled about the deal, especially when she had gotten a job as a waitress at one of the family-owned restaurants downtown so she wouldn’t be relying on just allowance to pay her way.

“Long way or short way?” Chris asked as I slid in the passenger side of the blue Corolla.

“Which is which?”

“Long way means streets. Short way means freeway.” Before I could answer, she blew a gust of air and said, “You know what? I really want ice cream. We’re hitting the freeway.” She glanced at me. “Put on your seatbelt, or we’re not moving.”

I obliged, knowing that she would just cross her arms and tap her foot until I obeyed. She had seen me forget to put on my seatbelt a million times when we were driven places, and I knew, no matter how excited she was or how well-practiced, she didn’t trust herself with my life enough for me to ride school-bus style.

No sooner had the metal clicked into place when the engine of the car started. She barely seemed to hold in the usual breath of “I love this car” that she usually gave when she got it started up, as she had for the year when she drove me with her grandma’s supervision. As we pulled out of the driveway, she started up her vocal cords as well, and I listened to both engines run all the way to Cold Stone.