Raised by Wolves

The music died out in my ears and began to make a sound like when someone would dunk their head underwater and hear a plastic. My mind was replaying the first night that I had met Ryan. He was a goody two shoes and had brown hair. It seemed to be unlikely that someone so innocent would become a complete rocker.

As he played his beloved drums, he looked like he was fighting off some demons that he just wasn’t able to destroy. His eyes were full of passion as he sang along with the lead who had been named, Ronnie Radke.

Right after the concert, I stayed behind as the rest of the people were either going home or trying to meet the band. I kept fighting with myself on whether I should go say hi to Ryan. If I were to be brutally honest with myself, he probably didn’t remember me and he surely wouldn’t recognize me.

The five boys had come on stage again and took their stuff away slowly as they were talking to each other. They were in their own world. They kept on laughing at little things they had done during the concert and marveled at how it might be their best show. With having a lot of time to think during the concert, I decided to walk up to the stage.

No one was looking at me and I got a sudden tightness in my stomach. Without a second thought, I closed my eyes and slowly sunk to the floor, hoping that doing so would prevent anyone from seeing me. Surely if I had just walked out, they would have noticed.

“Hey!” I knew the voice. I’d only been hearing it all night. The voice was close to my face and I felt myself blushing lightely. It was Ronnie.

I lifted my face. “What?”

I found him sitting next to me. “Are you alright or did you get stuck in that moshpit?”

“No, I’m fine.” By looking at Ryan without too much of a thought, I tried to make myself believe those words but I knew that they just weren’t true. At this point of life, Ryan was just an imaginary friend from my childhood who just popped up a few times in my thoughts and yet I still had so many feelings about him.

When I was younger, when I had first met him, I couldn’t stop thinking about how normal and sweet he was. I wanted him but I knew that it would be impossible being our ages at the time and several other things.

Ronnie looked at what I had been stalking with just my eyes. He put a smile on his face but he didn’t say a word. Suddenly a little laugh erupted from his buffed stomach and he smacked his forehead.

It irritated me in a way. “Enough with your laughter! Do you know how degrading that is to hear someone laugh at you?”

The man with the black clothes and eyeliner stood up and took my hand. “I’m not stopping you from doing anything. If you want to go talk to Ryan, then do it. It’s a once in a lifetime chance possibly.”

“Trust me, I’m not a fan girl.” I accepted his help to get off the ground. When I was up, I brushed my clothes down with my hands and tugged on my shirt. With failing miserably, I attempted to boost my confidence and put better thoughts in my head.

“Jesus!” Ronnie screamed. “You really have no idea who this band is, do you? Do you know Escape the Fate?”

“No.”

Ronnie folded his arms. “I suppose that’s not a horrible thing then.” He looked me up and down. “You look like the kind of girl that would like this music though.”

“And I do, but I don’t obsess.”

Ronnie just shook his head in confusion and walked away.

I jumped on the stage and took the acoustic guitar off the stand, looking around before beginning to play it like I was playing for a large group of people.

“You used to know me when I was young. I didn’t know how to act but you gave me this special song. This is the final test to express my insanity. This whole story turned into a puddle of blasphemy. You can’t trust me. I was raised by wolves.”

I looked around noticing that I was playing the song that I had written when I first learned guitar. I had dedicated the whole song to Ryan.

He looked up from his drum set and set down his sticks to come to see me. “Samantha.” He looked me up and down. “You’ve grown so much!”

This wasn’t going the way I had planned. I wanted to talk to him but sadness overcame me and I felt a bump in my throat. It disallowed me from speaking a word to Ryan.

“Follow me.” I followed him after setting the guitar down into his dressing room. Although he insisted that I come in, I resisted and just stood by the door.

I could see him pick up my jacket and pants and come back with them. “Thanks for the clothes.”

Closing my eyes, embarrassed, I held them close to my chest. “How did you know it was me?”

“I didn’t understand it until I changed all those years ago. You never really wanted to just be outside for the love of the outdoors. You knew and still know that werewolves exist.” He showed that dazzling smile of his and I couldn’t help but smile back.

Feeling like he was my old friend again, I felt fine to walk over to his couch and sit on it. “I am so sorry. I’m such an idiot. That night, it was my entire fault.”

“Don’t feel bad about it. Actually, that first time I changed, I had this spiritual experience that I don’t think any of the guys in the band have felt.” He walked up to me and sat down.

“Really?” I said this in the most innocent of ways without exactly meaning to.

He repeated me and said with a deeper voice, “Really.”

At that moment, I leaned in for a kiss but backed away like the idiot that I am. I was embarrassed. Surely he still saw me as a little lost 11 year old girl in the woods. Deep down inside my heart, I knew that I didn’t know Ryan as well as I would have liked to. This was barely my fourth time seeing him.

I smiled and apologized. “I don’t know what got into me.”

Once again, he told me to not worry about it.

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“After that embarrassment I caused myself and probably him, I left.” I looked over at Jethro to see if he was still awake.

His eyes shot open and he positioned himself. “All this time, you’ve been talking about Ryan Seaman? You met the guys from Falling In Reverse?”

“Yeah, turns out I was.”

Jethro seemed to find something a little suspicious but I just couldn’t tell what it was. “I love that band.” It looked like I had put him into a trance with the story. He kept staring off into space.

“I don’t really understand to tell you the truth. Why are you telling everything about your love life? You keep talking about how much you cared for Ryan.” Jethro looked a little hurt from me getting into this subject when possibly, a relationship would be formed with this date.

I looked at his hands which he was playing with. “You had asked me to tell you all about my life, so I am telling you.” To reassure him that all I wanted was him now, I put my hand in his as he raised it and kissed.

When he looked back at me, he seemed to have a renewed faith at this time and place. “Then go ahead.”

“You promise that you’re okay with this? If you want to stop then by god damn it, we’ll stop right now.”

Jethro took a deep breath. “Yeah, let’s do this.”

“For a few days, I didn’t exactly want to leave the house. I didn’t want to go to any concerts in fear that he might be there.”

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