Eyes of the Wolf

6
Things at my house got a lot calmer after literally being pinned down by my best friend. Honestly, the red hair was suiting her more and more. She was much more content now to go on the more expected tirade about her brother somehow managing a D in P.E.—not his smartest move in the world, I agreed—along with the rest of his classes that he was either barely passing or, quite bluntly, not passing. Gee, wonder why his mother was doing banshee imitations up at their house.

When that topic ran out of fuel, I politely asked her about her riding lesson, and listened to that for another fifteen minutes. Apparently the horse she was taking lessons on—a middle-aged Thoroughbred named Tigger—had bucked her off and she had landed on the cavaletti ("Poles to go over," she reminded me patiently, when I allowed my confusion to show on my face), and she was now fantastically bruised on her thigh and ribs. She hiked her shirt up to beneath her bra and showed me where, indeed, there were blotches of purple and black and blue on her left side. I declined seeing the one on her thigh. It would be awkward if my dad came home to see me admiring something high up on Chris’s leg. Later I wondered how seeing her ribcage was much different, but somehow, it just was. I listened to the rest of her diatribe about how she really wished she could trailer Roy to the lessons instead, and how she longed to hit Johnny what’s-his-name with a horse turd someday because he had made fun of her for getting bucked of when he fell off all the time when he only asked his horse to canter (“But I just can’t figure out how to make it look like an accident”).

We were discussing possibilities for her plans when I heard the front door open and shut, accompanied by my dad’s airy “Hey, girls” as he dropped his stuff by the couch in the living room. “Hey Dad” mixed with “Hi Rob.”

“My house still in one piece?” he asked teasingly as he moved to the kitchen, opening cabinets.

“Ummm…yes sir. One piece, sir,” Chris shot back with a grin, walking in to talk to him, her crimson four-inch heels clicking against the floor. I tailed after her until she turned to the kitchen while I went to the laundry room. I would feed the “creepy sneaky critters” with the “creepy squeaky critters” while she asked about Dad’s day at work and devised more plans to drag me all over town in her brother’s stolen car. After I had fed the snakes, I took the clothes from the dryer and put them on Dad’s bed, went back and transferred the load from the washing machine to the dryer, and began sorting through the hamper we kept in the hall.

“Maya!”

I scooped up the whites and carried them to the laundry room…

“Maya!”

…dumped them in the machine…

“Ma-ya!” Footsteps were accompanying her calls now.

I turned the knob and set the machine running just as Chris strode into the laundry room.

“Ma-yaaa!” she said, pinching my earlobe between her fingers. “Your dad said we can go to Cold Stone. Let’s g—yuuaah!” She leapt away from the dryer, upon which the cage of mice was perched, with some of the occupants staring at her. I watched as she seemed to teleport from inches from my face to three yards outside the door of the room, shuddering. Unable to help it, I started chuckling.

“Maya, it’s not funny,” she pouted. “You know I hate mice.”

“I am aware of it.”

“Uugghhh! You are such a bitch sometimes!” she told me, stomping her foot against the hardwood floor.

“Chriiiis…” My dad’s voice sounded exasperated. “Don’t punch holes in my floor.” As he meandered past the laundry room to get to his own room, peanut-butter cookie in hand, he added, “Save it for pushy boys.”

I snickered at her expression. Emerging from the laundry room, I reminded him, “Don’t drop crumbs over the clean clothes.”

“Eyyeknuhh,” he called back through presumably what was the rest of his cookie. A door shut.

“Maya, your dad is…so…”

“Weird?” I provided. When she just shook her head incredulously I laughed again and said, “C’mon. Weren’t we going somewhere?”

:o3

We did end up in Cold Stone, but only after Chris insisted that I change into clothes she considered “more flattering” and she had done my hair into a ponytail with strands of my indiscernible bangs brushing my collarbones. I finally got her to just get out the door, fearing that she was going to give me the first ear-piercing of my life with one of my push-pins. An honest concern—she’d threatened to do it before, and I’d learned long ago not to underestimate what Chris would or wouldn’t do.

Apparently at three-thirty P.M., Cold Stone wasn’t all that busy. I was grateful. The tight shirt that I had been hiding from Chris at the bottom of my pants drawer—unsuccessfully—showed most of my collarbone and shoulders, only one thin strap on either side clinging to the curves of my shoulders. Luckily, my friend had not found anything but my usual baggy denim pants anywhere, considering I owned none, so at least my legs were covered. My sneakers, too, were still on my feet, since one of the uncomfortable flip-flops she had forced me to buy had been “accidentally” dropped in the canal while we were in Fresno. But none of this changed the fact that a terrible amount of my torso was visible to the general public.

I sulked in the door after her, keeping my head down. I could swear the cashier was staring at me, as well as every passerby that walked by the window. The taste of blood was lingering on my tongue as I chewed my lip again, enduring Chris’s informing me matter-of-factly that I should have let her put on more than the tiny amount of eyeshadow that I applied every time I left the house. Finally realizing that I wasn’t paying attention to her for once, she huffed and went to order ice cream for the both of us.

The door’s reopening was heralded by the tinkle of bells, and, before looking up, I knew who it was, especially due to the continuing jingle of metal on metal. Damn Chris.

I glared at Niko as he went to say hi to Chris before he turned and, upon seeing me, actually blushed, though his gaze went only to my face. Despite the daggers I was attempting to telepath to him, he walked over and kneeled against the table, folding his forearms over it and resting his chin on them.

“Maya?” he started, not even trying to make eye contact. “Listen, I’m really sorry about yesterday. You shouldn’t’ve had to intervene.”

Startled, my grumpy expression must have slipped for a millisecond, ‘cause next thing I knew he was sitting on the chair across from me, still resting his head on his arms and gazing up at me, with a crooked smile on his face.

“See, you’re not still mad at me, are you?” The question wasn’t as teasing as he obviously intended for it to sound, and he changed the subject, finally letting his eyes flick once over the rest of what I was wearing before looking up at me again. “You’re dressed differently today. Is that ‘cause you’re not in school today?”

No, it’s cause my best friend’s an evil, conniving… I thought nastily to myself as blood crept up into my face. Unable to actually say anything mean, I just shrugged, glaring pointedly at the table space just to his left. Still feeling the prickle of his gaze on my face, I looked at him.

“And I noticed you’ve brushed your hair today,” I remarked before I could stop myself, though it wasn’t a lie. It was silky today, and actually fell a few more inches farther down his shoulders than I had originally believed.

He barked a laugh, his tag jingling against his collar as he sat up. “Yeah, I—I actually remembered today.”

I smiled too, surprising myself. Remembering what Chris had told me earlier about him, I found I had no idea what to say next. What did you say to someone who quite possibly was interested in going out with you? I had never flirted with a boy before, and I had no idea whether or not to even try. Settling for avoiding that whole route altogether, I chewed my lip again before inquiring, “So did you two get it all figured out?”

Niko sighed. “As much as we ever can. He hates me, and I think he needs to lighten up a bit. But, despite that, we are no longer intent upon killing each other now.”

I nodded, wondering if he was deliberately overstating or not; it had been said so matter-of-factly that I couldn’t tell. He didn’t look like he’d been in a fight, though, so I decided to ignore it.