Five Lies

Chapter 7

Liar in Wolves Clothing

“Finally.” Jacob breathed a breath of relief. I could feel the angry tears welling up inside.

“All…All this time, and you were a-alive?” My voice quivered with emotion. It was a little difficult to wrap my mind around the fact that my childhood best friend, whom I believed to be dead, was standing right in front of me alive and very well.

“What? Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” he looked at me with confusion written in his expression.

“Don’t you dare give me that!” I pushed him away with a huff.

“You know exactly why I would think that. Do you realize how long I waited for you to come back? Do you even know what kind of hell I went through in the months after you were gone?” I began to go off like the fourth of July.

“Pheon-“ he attempted to get in a few words in but I wouldn’t have it. He doesn’t know what kind of hell I had been through. And he hadn’t been there for any of it. The pain of losing him, of losing my parents and having to move towns. I was nothing like I was back then. That little girl he knew, she was gone. The only thing that remained of her was a painful past and the older shell of the distant body she resided inside of.

“No, you don’t! For days I waited on that doorstep, and then for years after that just in case you ever decided to come home. Every second you didn’t come bursting through those trees, a sadder part of me shriveled up and died. You have no idea, because if that wasn’t enough, after losing you, I lost both of my parents. And while you were out there bullshitting around, doing your little canine dance, the girl you once knew was dying! You weren’t there Jacob. You weren’t there for any of it! I needed you more than ever and you weren’t there…” I blew up, tears flowing down my flustered cheeks. “You weren’t there.” I barely whispered the last line.

“Whoa, whoa, what’s going on out here?” Soul Glow, or should I say Solomon questioned with his hands in the air in an attempt to act as a peace keeper.

“Fuck you Solomon! You’re no better than him, you deceiving little prick! You knew who I was. You both did. Yet you went on pretending we were perfect strangers. I thought your ass was wolf meat, and according to Jacob’s little secret revelation, it appears I wasn’t too far off.” I said seething and advancing on him. He put his hands up in surrender. I could see his eyes flashing between his normal brown shade and the glow of the golden rage that I had just ignited within him.

“Hey now, hold on-“ Fatty tried to pop in.

“And Youuu!” I hissed through gritted teeth, pointing to Fatty, or rather Joshua. “I have a bone to pick with you Fatty! Where do you get off eating all my goddamn funyuns?! Uggghhh!!” I shouted at him and shoved past the remaining two that I actually didn’t have a beef with.

Making my way back inside the Family Force 5 studio, feeling everyone’s eyes on me, I grabbed my bag and proceeded to get the hell out of there. I needed to think about what had just transpired. I felt like a big part of my life had just been revealed to be a big fat lie. And suddenly it made sense as to why I had said we all used to play together back in Georgia. My subconscious must have known who they were even if my conscious mind didn’t recognize them. It all made sense now. That’s why everyone had been acting so weird earlier. But the one unexplained part of that encounter remained. Why had Uri said those things she had?

I decided to make note of just how many lies I had believed to be true in my life thus far.

Lie number one: The dead best friends of my past were still alive.

Lie number two: They were also werewolves.

They were the very thing I’d been brought up to kill. They were the beast that I believed for so long had taken them from me. How was I supposed to process that?

What else in my life was a lie? The more important question, how was I going to handle this truth?