Beckett

Despite the large population around Frozen Lake, I’d never actually seen a real life wolf before. This was one much bigger than I had expected, and its fur was slightly red. Not with blood or anything, just naturally. It was pretty. The animal came closer to my brother who remained beside me, holding me beside him. I watched it sniff us, lifting its nose into the air but not getting too close. “Hey man,” Xavier greeted, lifting the bags slightly.

Then the wolf charged back into the woods. I glanced over to Xavier but he looked like this was completely normal. Like he was expecting this exact thing to happen. He continued to look like that even though there were sounds of pain coming from the woods, cracking sounds, and finished with rustling sounds of movement.

And a man came out. He smiled. “Well Xavier, who’s this?” The man stood opposite of us, wearing a dirty shirt and some sweatpants, watching me as I kept my eyes stuck onto the Earth beneath his feet. He was bare foot, I noted before shifting my eyes up to his. They were brown and welcoming, but some part of me knew to question it.

Xavier, releasing his hold on my arm, watched me with a smile, “This is my sister Sofia.” I lifted my hand in a pitiful wave and the man chuckled, but he continued smiling. I looked around the woods, expecting something or someone else to make an appearance. Maybe for the wolf to come back. “She kind of tagged along, sorry. She doesn’t know.” Whatever his last sentence meant, the man’s face brightened with shock.

“Don’t know what?” I asked, looking up at my brother who remained watching his friend’s reaction. The man simply offered his hands out to take the bags from Xavier, a feeling of uneasiness clear on his face. I watched my brother give the man a look before pulling the bags closer to his torso.

“Fine, you carry them. I’m not going to oppose that.”

Xavier snorted, “Of course you won’t.” My brother gestured for the man to do something. Silently, the man started to walk into the woods, with us in tow, until we came upon a little cottage. For some reason I felt out of place following them. I didn't even know the man's name. Reaching the front door of the cottage, the man glanced back at me with furrowed eyebrows.

“Are you coming along, Sofia?” Xavier glanced back to me as if he just remembered I was there. I glanced at my brother before looking back at this man, whose name I still didn’t know, and smiling. “Great. Come on, I have family you can meet.”

"Hey Sam, is Xavier here with the food or are you still pretending to mow the grass?" A teenage boy stood in the now open doorway of the cottage wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. Xavier groaned and told him to cover himself for the sake of “his baby sister's innocent eyes.” I snorted, finally feeling comfortable enough to take the couple steps over to my brother's side. The new boy's eyes widened as he noticed me, “How is she in any relation to you?”

"What's that supposed to mean, Beck?"

The teenage boy raised his hands as if to surrender, saying, “Hey, I'm just saying she looks nothing like you. Now, do you need help with those bags?” Xavier once again brought the bags closer into his torso and shook his head like a child. The boy, Beck, chuckled before stepping outside of the cottage so Sam, the first man, and I could make our way into the small house.

The cottage was huge. Is cottage even the correct term? Is there a size limit to a cottage? I admired the house—with its wood walls that matched the flooring, a cute rug covering the ground in the living room. It was cute and screamed “home” in the loudest way possible, but in the sweetest way as well. Xavier left to put the bags inside the kitchen without saying a word to anyone leaving the first man I'd met to explain my appearance. Beck vanished into the one of the bedrooms only to come out seconds later, but now with a black shirt on. He glanced at me before making his way over to the couch where another boy and woman sat.

“Kids,” the man began, standing beside me now, “and Natasha,” a woman with strikingly white hair contrary to her young features gave the man a gentle smile, “this is Xavier's sister, Sofia. She tagged along, much to Xavier's protests,” as he spoke I slowly turned to put my gaze on him with humor dancing in his eyes, “I'm guessing.” I couldn't stop the smile that formed on my lips as I nodded, brushing a few strands of loose bronze hair from my face. “Well since he’s busy, I'll introduce you to everyone. First off, I'm Sam.”

“Hello,” I replied politely.

Sam smiled down at me before turning back to the group before us, he pointed to the guy from earlier, “that is Beck. You kind of met him.” The guy smiled at me, lifting his hand in a small wave.

Next was a platinum blond haired teenage boy, “That would be Shelton. Geeky name, we know. Sorry, kid.” The boy shrugged, clearly not caring. Then followed awkward tension when no one knew what else to say to each other.

Luckily, Xavier came in that moment to break the awkward bubble growing in my throat. “Hey Sam, I was hoping we could discuss a few details since the winter is now upon us.” Or not. I turned my full attention to my brother in confusion. Sam nodded making his way over to my brother who then left me once again stranded in the living room by myself.

Maybe coming here was a bad choice. I bit my lip yet again as the three went back to calmly eating their food and watching the television. I crossed my arms nervously a cross my chest, staring intently at the television. It was the local news station. After a couple minutes, the awkwardness was just too much and I went back to through the woods to the car. Luckily it was left unlocked so I could sit in my seat. I blindly grabbed at the hood of my gray sweatshirt, tugging it over my head and curling my knees up a bit so my feet were more comfortable atop the dashboard.

I had to have fallen asleep in that position because before I knew it, someone had yanked open the Toyota's driver side door and had sat beside me, resting themselves as close to the now closed door as they possibly could. I grumbled something inaudible, not shifting even slightly from my position.

“I don't believe those were actual words,” the clearly male voice said teasingly. A hand reached over to attempt to pull up my hood up over my face, but my own hand was already tightly keeping it right where it was. There was a laugh.

I yanked the hood off my head to outright glare at the person who I now saw was the boy they called Beck. He had already been grinning before I even lifted the hood off but now his smile was so wide I almost wanted to ask if he was in pain from it. If this would have been a normal situation, I probably would have noticed at that time how amazing his blue eyes were, but I was annoyed beyond belief.

"So that's what you look like underneath that hood," Beck joked, "never would have guessed. Now, why are you hiding in this car and not sitting inside?" I decided before he even finished the question that I would not give him any answer like he wanted. I just hid back underneath the hood of my sweatshirt and adjusted my feet on the dash. "There's the hood again. Why are you doing that?" After a while, I hoped he would just get frustrated by my lack of words, but he didn't seem to mind one bit. It was like he just enjoyed sitting next to someone. It was almost doglike. "Hey, Sof?"

“Please don't call me that.”

"Fine, I won't," this time he sounded frustrated and I swore I heard the sound of the door being forcefully yanked open and the sound of feet padding down onto the grass, "Goodbye Sofia." He closed the door gently, which for some reason hurt since I was hoping he would slam the door. To finalize the end of the conversation, but he hadn't.

Xavier didn't question why I was sitting in the car with my feet and hood up, but I got the feeling he had expected it. Instead of striking up a conversation, he started the car and turned the radio up just in enough so that the sound completely filled the air with a comfortable hum. It was nice. Until he began speaking.

“So you know when you were little and there used to be those rumors going on about the wolves? And how maybe we really didn’t have a huge wolf problem, maybe we had a normal number of wolves, but also some werewolves?” Xavier asked. We were half way home.

“I remember,” I whispered, a little sacred for what would come next.

“And the teachers would get so pissed about the kids getting scared and everyone making up all these stories so more kids would get scared?” I nodded. Xavier glanced at me as we stopped at a red light. It was almost like he was judging whether or not he was going to continue on with what point he was trying to make. “What if I said the rumors were real?”

I snorted, finally glancing over at him. My eyes clearly displaying my disbelief. Xavier flashed me a small smile back before he continued, “I’m being serious Sofia.”

“And I think that’s insane, Xavier.”

“Sam is a werewolf, Sofia.”

I scrunched my face, watching him and wondering how he could look so damn serious while telling me this ridiculous nonsense. But he looked like he truly believed every word he was telling me, like we weren’t just talking about teenage novels or fantasy creatures, but actual living breathing animals. And somewhere in me, I wanted to believe it all too. “Prove it.” He looked over at me, clearly surprised that I was just going with it. “You’ve never lied to me Xavier, so I have no logical reason, well, I have logical reasons to not believe you, but I want to believe you. Prove it to me.”

We pulled into our driveway. The lights were off inside our house because our parents worked terrible hours and then added to them by overworking themselves to forget. Forget what happened years ago. Xavier turned off the car and watched me, again looking like he was judging whether or not to tell me, to convince me.

“Fine, okay, I will,” he smiled, “me, you, and Sam. I’ll prove it.”