Five Lies

You Look Familiar

My Aunt Josephine had complained about how drab our old home was, so naturally Uncle Adam transferred his job to a different location. Los Angeles, California was quite different from my home in Georgia. It was still extremely hot but it was a different kind of warmth. It was more relaxed than and not as blazing as the heat back home. I adjusted well and felt pretty good about it. I was quite content in moving away from all of those haunting memories. I had no need to remain in a place where I could not attempt to forget my past. Staying in Georgia would have made that hard.

So here I lay in my futon bed that didn’t exactly do wonders for my back as Adam pounded on my bedroom door. I sat up, still wiping that awful dream off of my mind and I attempted to get up and rummage for something to wear.

“I’m up Adam!” I called through the door and replied like the smartass he had always been. I suppose I should be grateful for him taking me in after everything but I wasn’t. I wanted my old life back. I often wondered what my life would be like right now if I had never lost my best friends and my parents. But it was too late to worry about any of that now.

“That’s Uncle Adam to you young lady!” He yelled back and I jumped by the roughness of his tone. I rolled out of bed and searched through a few boxes that still had yet to be unpacked. You know, funny thing about Josephine and Adam is that they were practically rich, yet I was limited to only a few belongings. Sure they could afford to buy me guns, silver bullets, swords, daggers, crossbows and countless arrows. But they could never afford to buy me any new clothes or make-up. I had to work for that. It all depended on how many dead wolf corpses I brought to their door step. If I did well as a hunter, I would be rewarded. But if they couldn’t buy me anything because they actually cared, I didn’t want anything they would offer me when I took down big game. So I rarely had anything nice to wear. My wardrobe consisted of old ripped jeans and band t-shirts. The one thing I did take from them was converse though. I loved me my converse! But anything else, I would have to come up with the money for on my own. The funny thing was that I could never keep a job very long. So I often didn’t have the money for anything but gas to fuel my blue jeep liberty whenever I needed to drive myself somewhere. So suffice to say that I didn’t have much to choose from for my first day at my new school. …

I was starting college, but again Josephine and Adam wouldn’t send me to a college with dorms due to the money factor. I never quite understood their greediness since they made close to $10,000 a week with running the whole werewolf hunting business. It’s not cheap to kill a werewolf, that’s for sure. But to be honest with you, I don’t think they were counting on me becoming something and actually wanting to go to college. They thought I would just warm up to the whole hunter’s life and be completely content with that. I’m sorry, but I actually wanted to do something with my life other than kill beasts for a living.

After about 20 minutes of searching, I finally found my newest pair of shockingly non-ripped turquoise blue skinny jeans and a nice presentable Falling in Reverse t-shirt that ironically said “Raised by Wolves”. I laughed with glee at my chance to piss off the aunt and uncle. I threw my long, stick straight jet black hair into a high pony tail and slid on some black knee-high converse up over my skinny jeans. When I exited my room Josephine scoffed at my appearance and said something that just pissed me off.

“You’re not going out looking like that are you, dear?” She complained, wrinkling her long pointy nose at me.

“No…No I’m not. This isn’t me walking out in not these clothes because you’re just a generous saint Josephine.” I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes at her arrogance.

“Don’t you have something better to wear?” She asked me, her eyes lightening up. I just stared at her and decided it was pointless to answer. Cheap bitch! So I just grabbed my bag with my laptop in it and left.

When I got to the Los Angeles Community College parking lot, I was searching for a place to park. Suddenly a young guy with longish shaggy dark brown, almost black hair, a tall strong build, well defined muscles and features, and deep honey brown eyes came out of nowhere and I almost hit him with my jeep. I stepped on the breaks and my liberty screeched to a halt. He turned and looked at me like I was an idiot and hit the hood of my jeep causing me to jump a little.

“Da’ hell do you think you’re doing?” The fairly attractive guy who was now yelling at me exclaimed. I shook that thought off to deal with the situation at hand. But there was something awfully familiar about this creature in front of me. His eyes burned with the fiery passion that reminded me of a phantom of my past. I noticed that there were two more that looked like one could be his brother standing near him. One of them flipped me off and my eyes widened at that as I put the jeep in park and unbuckled myself, swinging the door open and stepping out.
“What the hell do I think I’m doing? I think I’m trying to fucking find a parking spot and you three jokers are out here throwing yourselves in front of vehicles!” I mouthed off to them and they came closer to confront me.

“Hey lady, calm your tits!” The short one with slightly shorter shaggy black hair and the same eyes as his comrade spoke. “We were walking here and you almost ran us the fuck over, so I have no sympathy for you and your shitty quest to find a damn parking spot!” I gave him a nice big smile and clenched my fist wishing he would back the hell up and get out of my face.
“Well then…If you and your friends would kindly get out of my way-“ I began but was cut off by the last one who hadn’t done anything or said a word since the whole ordeal had began.

“Miss, I’m terribly sorry about my brother. He’s just pissy because he had to get up early. Please accept my apologies Madam.” He stepped forward and took my hand in his and leaned down to kiss the top of it. I flashed him a smile and nodded, feeling my knees grow week. There was something oddly familiar about him too. It felt like I had known him a long time ago but I had no idea who, when, or where I had met this gentleman. He hit the other two in the back of their heads and one cringed and the other rubbed the spot where he had hit him.

“Yeah…sorry for being in your way Miss. There’s an open space over there next to our escalade. That’s if you want…” The one who had hit the top of my hood with his fist pointed about two spaces down next to a black escalade with tinted windows. I nodded and thanked them, getting back in my jeep and taking the parking slot. They waited for me to my surprise and the one who had been so kind, the one with short side swept dark mocha brown hair with blonde highlights and eyes to match the base of his hair color motioned me over to walk with them. I sighed and grabbed my bag that was loaded down with books and slung it over my right shoulder. They stood there and waited for me to catch up.

“So what is your name doll?” The nice one asked me with a pleasant grin while we headed into the college building.

“Phoenix Avery. And yours is?” I left the door open so that they could all tell me theirs.

“That’s on a need to know basis Miss Avery. But you can call me Nadaddy for now. This is my friend Soul Glow Activatur, and this his brother Crouton.” He said and I looked at him as if he had been dropped on his head as a child.

“What are those nicknames?” I asked with a playful smile looking at the one they called Crouton. I just couldn’t put my finger on it, but he just seemed so damn familiar to me…Not to mention he was highly attractive. Although those points had gone down since he had put a dent in the hood of my liberty.

“More like stage names Phoenix.” Crouton replied, his honey brown eyes staring into my own hazel green ones. I raised an eyebrow at him when he took my bag and slung it over his own shoulder. “Allow me Ma’am.” He added.

“Thanks…So stage names? What for?” I asked the one with highlights that they called Nadaddy.

“We have a Christian crunk rock band so we developed our own stage names for it.” He answered my question but my curiosity only continued to spike higher. We made it into the school building and they met up with two other guys. One had longish chestnut brown hair and a larger build, while the other one was much thinner and quite blonde with some scruff that made him look like he was related to Chuck Norris. I giggled as they introduced me to them and they each took my hand and kissed it. Was this a trend? If it was, I didn’t mind much. I was never too good with the boys over in Georgia, but I had no problem with these guys. They helped me to find my classes and we parted for a few hours until they found me whilst I consumed my tuna fish sandwich for lunch.

“Hey Phoenix, what’s going down?” Soul Glow Activatur popped up out of no where (I had no idea where he came from) and scared the fish of me. I literally dropped my sandwich on the floor and I sat there on the bench just staring down at it for a moment.

“My sandwich apparently…” I replied, saddened at the sudden loss of my lunch.

“Aw man, my bad Sweetheart. Would you care to tag along with the crew? We could use a female to even out the testosterone.” Had he just invited me to lunch with them?

“I would love to Mr. Soul, but I’m kind of broke.” I answered him and he gave me a pleading puppy dog eyed expression.

“Pleeeease?! I’ll pay for you!” He practically begged me. I laughed and gave in to his tactic, grabbing my bag. But before I could sling it over my shoulder, he took it from me and carried it, finishing what I was going to do when he slung it over his own shoulder.

“Umm…Thanks Soul Glow.” I thanked him and we made our way out to their black escalade. I hopped in the back and seated myself between the blonde one they called Chap Stique and the other one they called Fatty. Crouton was driving and Nadaddy had shot gun. Soul Glow hopped in the middle seat and invited me to sit up next to him. I was comfortable where I was at, but I did as he asked me.

“So where are we going Jake?” Soul Glow asked Crouton. Wait…Jake as in Jacob?