Eyes of the Wolf

23
“So what the hell was Drake Johnson doing with us at lunch?” Chris asked casually after pulling from her parking space. She still drove her brother’s car. I wondered if they’d had words about that yet.

“I dunno. He’s just kinda been tagging along since English today.”

“Did he catch you crying?” Amazing how she could manage to make me feel like she’d given me the raised-eyebrow look when she had never moved her eyes from the road.

“What makes you say that?” I retorted, putting the right amount of indignity into my voice, even though that was pretty much how it had happened. She was silent for about a mile, and I stared into the side mirror.

“I thought so,” she said smugly, just when I thought she wasn’t going to answer. I shot her an irritated look. “So do you think he’ll be hanging out there more often?”

“I dunno.” The images in the side view looked surreal as always, with everything flitting in and out of sight like they were refugees and I was the overlord. As if.

“So why is your tummy so sore?” she breached, stabbing through the do-not-cross tape like a knife through a layer of jell-o. I sighed.

“I fell down a hill, and kept rolling until I collided with a tree. It hit my stomach. It hurt like hell.” My use of the minor profanity made Chris’s head swivel in my direction and back like a twitchy automaton.

“So Niko hasn’t hurt you?”

“[]No,” I said, putting as much force as I could behind the word. Chris was quiet again. Very bad sign.

“So what else happened this weekend?”

My world turned upside down. “Niko kissed me.”

“You told me that yesterday.”

Oh yeah. But had it only been yesterday? The one on Saturday hadn’t seemed real though. Rather anticlimactic when I thought about the big bronze wolf coming out of the bushes at the time.

With white on its face.

My bronze wolf?

“Maya? Maya?”

“Hi, sorry.”

“Christ, what the hell are you thinking over there?” She gave me a cursory glance.

“I dunno,” I replied, pulling my thoughts back on the tracks of Niko kissing me, and not jumping over to the conclusion I feared I was drawing. “Niko kissed me,” I repeated.

“You said that.”

“Yesterday.”

“Again?”

In the forest. His hands on my sides, his breath on my face…

“Maya…”

“Yeah. Yeah, again.”

“Christ, your brains must be leaking out your ears. Don’t drip in my car.”

“O-kay?” I shook my head at her. We drove in further silence for a bit.

“Anything else? Wha’d you do yesterday that brought you two so close together?”

I thought about this. “I met his family.”

“Really?” She pulled onto the on ramp. “Shit, how’d that go?”

I thought of Nicole, and Roger. “It went…okay.”

“Did you elbow the butter?”

“No.”

“Did you sneeze in Dad’s face?”

Oddly enough, I hadn’t met his dad. “No.”

“Well, then it can’t have been too bad. When I met my first boyfriend’s parents, I graffitied their walls, and I wasn’t allowed over again.”

I looked at her askance. “When was that?”

“I was seven. Bad year for my love life.” I grinned. The corners of her mouth turned up a bit too, but then she was sober again.

“You know,” she began hesitantly, “I was really gung-ho about you getting a boyfriend and all, but then I was really surprised when I felt so weird about it. You were somewhere other than my house this weekend, and we were talking about Niko for a lot of our phone time. I felt really odd about it.

“But I think I’m okay with it now. I mean, what kind of friend would I be if I got all miffed ‘cause you had a guy and I didn’t? A pretty shitty one, if you ask me.”

I was speechless. Had she really been going through that, ‘cause I was going out with Niko? How long had this been going on for? And, crap, what was I supposed to say to that?

“You wanna turn on the stereo? I’ve got Taylor Swift.” I nodded, and pushed the CD button. “I’m Only Me When I’m with You” blared on the speakers on track twelve, and I turned it down a bit so as to preserve my ears.

By the time we had reached her dirt driveway, we were dancing in our seats and belting along to the lyrics, all smiles, seamlessly friends again.

:o3

The news was boring, and working on the questions wasn’t exactly brain stimulating either. Soon, we gave up on it and started drinking Coke.

“You know that stuff can dissolve a penny in a matter of days, right?” Brad stated, strolling into the house. He was about five foot four, with thick, wavy brown hair down to the back of his neck, and it flipped out a bit at the ends. Just about every guy at our school had that haircut. He had mild acne, and had a couple of chicken-scratch scars disappearing into his bangs from when, as Chris told me, some older kids had thrown him to a blacktop with a broken beer bottle dusting the surface. Though it hadn’t been the first indication that they’d never really been to the best schools, it had still horrified me. It was hard for me to imagine somebody getting mad enough at Brad to throw him, period. He always had a kind of goofy grin on his face, and was very easygoing. We shared the same fashion sense, and I had been given a couple pairs of outgrown jeans and T-shirts cast off from his wardrobe.

“I bet my stomach acid can burn through your face in a matter of seconds,” Chris retorted, her tone carrying what was probably a similar PH level. Brad’s eyebrows bobbed up once, and said a carrying-off, “Just sayin’.”

“How are you, Brad?” I asked. I was never fond of listening to siblings fight—they never seemed to really appreciate what they had.

“I’m okay,” he said with a shrug. “Would be better if I could drive myself home.”

“You’re grounded from the car,” remarked Chris with obvious relish.

“And if you crash it, your stomach acid will not deter me from flaying your flesh from your bones and distributing your innards in varying corners of the world. Alive.”

She stuck out her tongue. He did the same. I did not try to hide my disapproval. Brad grabbed a milk carton and whisked it off to the depths of his room.

“So…” Chris swiveled her barstool around so she could lean on the counter and look me in the face. “My hair. Any ideas?”

“That you haven’t already mentioned?”

“I suppose. The question stands.”

“Okay…” I pondered. “Blonde?”

“I’ve been blonde. My grades can’t stand the IQ drop. What else?”

“You’ve said everything else.”

“Have not.”

“Have too.”

“Have no—”

“Grey.” I raised my eyebrows. She made a face, often associated with chewing gum and talking about religion.

“I’d look old.”

“You’re eighteen. It’s impossible to look old.”

“Not with silver hair. I’d look like some anorexic middle aged woman trying to cover her oldness with pounds of makeup.”

“You don’t look anorexic.”

“You get my point.”

“And you don’t have to wear so much makeup.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Has anybody asked you if you charge yet?” asked her brother on the way to the fridge. The milk carton he had abducted was deposited onto the counter, empty. Chris gave him a look that would have put a Gorgon to shame. Wasted on his back, of course. “Just the other day Nick was asking, ‘Hey, is your sister some kind of streetwalker? D’you think I could afford her?’”

“Are you serious?” Chris asked with a perfected tone of sarcasm.

“I’m surprised I’m not.” He gave her a twisted smile and grabbed another quart of milk.

“Mom’s gonna get mad if you don’t put that damn jug in the trash.”

“I will.” He opened the new cardboard carton and raised it to his lips.

“Don’t drink out of the carton!”

“Why? I’m gonna finish it.”

“You’ll spoil your dinner.”

“Yeah, right, mom,” he shot back, taking a few greedy gulps. I wondered absently how he could smile while he drank and not spill on himself. “When was the last time I said I was full?”

“When the principal asked if he could join your gay orgy.” Brad choked and stumbled to the sink, where he struggled to swallow his mouthful without making a mess. The carton, forgotten in his hand, spilled all over the tile floor. Right on cue, Balto limped onto the scene and, catlike, lapped it up until it was clean.

“Shit, now the dog’s gonna get all gassy,” Chris swore. Balto trotted unevenly to me, and I scratched at his neck. “And I am not drinking your fucking backwash in my cereal tomorrow.”

“Then eat it dry.”

“Christina, you watch your mouth,” scolded her mother, coming in. She was a tall, slender woman with fraying hair of a color that was hard to define, sort of grey and brown and blonde all at the same time. “Maya, dear, your father called. He says it’s a school night and time to come home.”

:o3

I went for a run after dropping off all my school stuff. I was barely rounding the corner when I was intercepted by a silver wolf sauntering into the twilight. I smiled and turned left to follow him into the trees. He disappeared behind a tree, then reappeared wearing soggy clothes again.

“Where were you?” he demanded.

“I’ve been at Chris’s house,” I said, shocked at his tone.

“You smell like different males.”

“They’re friends.” What was with him?

He huffed, then deflated and walked over to me. I let him, but stayed stiff so he knew I wasn’t happy. His arms circled around my ribs, and I relaxed into him, but then heard a faint sniffing next to my ear. I pulled away.

“I need to get home,” I said coldly.

“You just left,” he argued.

“He won’t believe I’ve been running if I’ve just been standing here.”

“So breathe harder when you go inside.”

“Niko…” He kissed at my jaw. The spot tingled, but I still pulled back. His hands were on my arms, and resisted my attempts.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I just didn’t know where you were, and I worried.”

I sighed. He kissed my eyes, then my mouth. I kissed him back, allowing myself to relax again, though I still felt like I wanted to run.

He released me. “Come over tomorrow?”

“I need to ask—”

“Your dad.” He bit his lip. “Okay. Call me, ‘kay?”

He released me, and I turned and ran four laps around the block, returning only when I dripped sweat and my knees shook, and I had stopped thinking about Niko.