Howl (Howl #1) (6 page)

“Hey, do you want to go shopping tonight?
” Emma asked from behind her.

“Umm, no, that’s okay,” Samara replied. “I think I’m just going to go home. I have a lo
t of homework to do tonight.”

“Suit yourself,” Em
ma shrugged. “Ashley and Brielle
are also coming. You’ll be
the only one who’s left out.”

“It’s okay. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Samara replied,
slamming her locker
door
shut louder than she meant to
and began walking down the hallway
. Shopping had never been Samara’s favorite afterschool hobby, but she usually tagged along because she had nothing else to do. It was a lot better than going home after school and listening to he
r family argue with each other.

Tonight, she just didn’t feel like being around anyone. Samara knew that she was going to be a Debbie Downer, so she was better off staying at home. Besides, it would give her time to mope around – and that was really what she
needed tonight. She wasn’t sure
why
it bothered her so much
,
but Luke had really hurt her.

*

As she walked home from school, just thinking about Emma got on her nerves. It seemed
like her best friend wanted her to be unhappy just because she was unhappy. Sighing, she realized that they had a lot in common at the moment. Luke did
n’t really like either of them.

When she walked through
the front door, Seth was sitting on the couch. He looked up at her when sh
e came into the living room.

“Seth,” Samara said, trying
to compose herself
. She wanted to yell at him for hitting their father, but she knew that would just make him even angrier and he’d either end up getting violent towards her or run away again for who knew how long
. “Were you at school today? I didn’t see you.”

Seth shook his head, staring at the widescreen
TV
in front of
him. It was turned off. “No.”

“Where have you been for the past few days?” Samara asked
,
realizing immediately, judging from the way Seth shifted in his seat, that she had chosen the wrong words. “I mean…I’m not trying to intrude or anything. I was just wondering who you were staying with while you weren’t here. We all worry about you
while you’re gone, you know.”

Seth stared down
at his shoes. “Just places.”

“Seth, is everything okay?” Samara asked. “If you’re having problems at school or if something’s bothering
you, you can always talk to me . . .
or mom and dad. We’re all here for you, even though you might not believ
e it. We all care about you.”

“I’m fine,” Seth muttered. Before Samara could say another word, her brother leapt up from the couch and stormed out of the living room. Moments later, she heard his bedroom door slam shut and the sound of rock music by a band who she
wasn’t able (and didn’t want to be able) to
identify being turned on.

Sighing, Samara kicked off her shoes. She hated that her brother had suddenly become so angry. It wasn’t even just because he was constantly fighting with their parents. Samara also was beginning to feel shut out of his life, and she hated it. Years ago, they had been really close. When she was little and obsessed with
The Lion King
, Seth
would pretend that he was Pumba and she was Timon
. As they got older, they found that they had common interests. They both enjoyed being outdoors, and Samara didn’t mind kicking around a soccer ball with him as long as he promised to swim in the lake with her. She fear
ed that they would never be that
c
lose again.

Her mom thought that Seth was going to grow out of this “phase” that he was in, but Samara feared that it was only going to get progress
ively worse as time went on.

As she grabbed a container of
strawberry banana
yogurt from the refrigerator, Samara looked out the kitchen window
,
and that’s when she saw it. A gray fluffy tail. The wolf turned around and stared her in the eye before running into the
wooded
forest that separated the McKinley’s house f
rom Starlight Lake. 
 

Chapter 6

****
 

“So, you definitely missed out on one amazing shopping trip!” Emma said excitedly whe
n Samara answered her iPhone.

“
Maybe for a shopaholic,” Samara said sarcastically, thinking about how Emma, Ashley, and Brielle all loved to shop. Having a Platinum card made their lives complete. Samara just didn’t understand the appeal of owning hundreds of pairs of shoes if you only ever wore one o
r two pairs on a regular basis.

“What’s that?” Emma asked.

“Nothing,” Samara replied, rolli
ng over onto her side. “Look, I’m just not really in the mood to shop right now. I
have other things on my mind.”

Emma groaned loudly. “
I think that you need to stop being so lame, Sam. You’re missing out on all of the fun things in life. Live it up a little. You’re only fifteen, ya know. There’s no reason you have to a
ct like a grownup all the time.
”

Samara felt her annoyance rising
. Emma had never given her a reason to believe that’
s what she thought of her. Maybe their friendship had more problems than Samara had realized. “
I just feel like I don’t have much in common
with Ashley and Brielle,” Samara blurted. This was the first time she had admitted this to Emma or herself.

“You never
feel like you
have much in common
with
any
of the
girls our age,” Emma snapped. “That’s wh
y you have no f
riends.”

Feeling the tears build up behind her eyes, Samara
hit the end button on her cell phone. She didn’t need to deal with
this,
and between everything going on with Luke and her brother, she really didn’t want to right now. Samara needed a best friend who
would
be
supportive of her, not criticize everything she does.

Wrapping her white down comforter around her
body and wiping aw
ay a lonely tear that skated its way d
own her cheek
, Samara lost herself in her thoughts. At some point
, she drifted off to sleep.

*

Samara felt her legs moving under her, carrying her faster than
she had ever run before. She glanced around
at her surroundings. She couldn’t tell where she was exactly, but it
looked like somewhere tropical . . .
m
aybe the rain forest or jungle.

Samara heard a low roaring sound from behind her. Remembering that she had gotten attacked the last time she had heard a similar growling, Samara continued
running.

Even as she ran as quickly as she could, the growling noise caught up
with her.

Samara wasn’t afraid any
more, though.

Whirling around, she found hersel
f standing face-to-face with
an orange
tiger, except it was browner than she had imagined one to be in real life. The tiger stared at her through
its golden eyes, fluffing up its orange
and black
fur and licking its lips a
s it prepared for its attack.

Before the tiger had the chance to come any closer to her, Samara reared on it, sinking her teeth into its wide neck. She watched as the blood poured
from the wound she had caused
, inhaling the scent of its flesh, as she devo
ured her prey.

Samara jolted up in bed. Panting, she glanced around at the light purple walls and realized that she was still in her own bedroom. As real as the dream felt, she wasn’t in the jungle. Sa
mara breathed a sigh of relief.

She felt her stomach rumble.
It was followed by a nauseating feeling that let her know that she was hungry.
Glancing at the
dolphin
alarm clock on her nightstand, Samara realized that it was two o’clock in the morning. There was no way she was going to be able to hold off until she woke up for school
at seven o’clock the next morning to eat
breakfast.

C
lumsily c
limbing out of bed, Samara went downstairs and into the kitchen. She glanced into the fridge. There
were leftover slices of extra cheese pizza
, a tub of garlic hummus, and blocks of cheddar cheese that Samara liked to eat with crackers. Then, she sp
otted what she really wanted.

Samara unsealed the plastic bag that the deli packed the roast beef in and began shoving slices into her mouth. The rich flavor of the juicy meat
satisfied her palate
, encouraging her to continue eating
the roast beef until there was nothing l
eft besides the plastic baggie.

When there was no more roast beef left, she opened the refrigerator door again and pulled out another package. She stuffed piles of the round slices of pepperoni into her m
outh until that, too, was gone.

Tossing the empty
deli
packages into the garbage, Samara licked her fingers clean and thought about what she had just done. She had eaten a
n entire
pound of roast beef and prob
ably a few ounces of pepperoni.

Just t
hinking
about the food that she had practically inhaled mad
e her feel sick to her stomach.

Samara had been a vegetarian for as long as she could remember. She was only a child when she had decided that she didn’t want to eat meat. Samara loved animals and after
she saw
Bambi
, she
knew that she didn’t want to be a meat eater
.
Ever since then, just the idea
of eating meat sickened her.

So, what was she doing? What had compelled her to come downstairs in the middle of the night and eat all of that meat? More importantly, why did she
suddenly like –
no, not like,
love –
the way it tasted?

Samara didn’t know what was happening to her, but something strange was
definitely going on. Something that really sc
ared her.

*

Samara got up and changed into a pair of dark wash skinny jeans and a
burgundy
hooded sweatshirt for school the next morning. It was October in Pennsylvania and, although the air was crisp, it wasn’t cold enough for her to wear the blue plaid peacoat that she had bought on a recent shop
ping trip with Emma just yet.

Thinking about Emma, Samara sighed. She knew that she was going to have to see her best friend in biology and literature today, and she really wasn’t looking forward to it. Emma was probably really angry that Samara
had
hung up on her, but Samara didn’t care. She wasn’t going to let Emma walk all over her when she had bigger things to deal with right now, things that she
didn’t
even fully understand herself.

As she was getting ready to
start
walk
ing
to school, Samara glanced into her brother’s open bedroom door. Seth was still sleeping, which meant that he probably wasn’t going to school today. Samara wanted to open the door and tell him that if he kept missing days of school, there was no way he was going to graduate this year, but she k
new that would just make him angry at her again
. She wanted to tell her mom, too, but Mrs. McKinley
obviously
didn’t
want t
o face Seth’s problems head on or she would have h
im see a counselor to help him cope
with his anger problems.

When Samara got to school, she didn’t head to her locker right away like she normally did. Instead, she ventured into the school’s cafeteria. She normally didn’t eat breakfast at school, though there were a few times she’d bought from the bagel cart
when Emma thought it was the “cool” thing to do.
Today
,
though
, the aroma of the cafeteria filled her nostrils and she knew that she h
ad to have breakfast
.

As she stood in the cafeteria line, Samara noticed the mess of bro
wn hair
in front of her.