Memoirs of a Girl Wolf (2 page)

              “And if you disobey me then—“

              “No driving, no drugs, use condoms.”

              “Very funny. Just be responsible is all I ask.” She smiled and patted me on the head as she walked across the room to the door.

              “Hey, Mom,” I called after her.

              She turned and raised her eyebrows. Her face was still blotchy red and her bright azure eyes, watery.

              “Who were you talking to?” I asked.

Mom tucked her fair hair behind her ears. She shook her head as she explained that the call was nothing more than an unhappy client of hers, but this too, I found unbelievable.

2

              The morning of my party Kristen and I were back at the beach, but this time with the twins. There wasn’t much to do in town besides going to the lake, and by August, Lake Michigan warmed up enough to go swimming.

              It was a beautiful day, and the beach was crowded. A group of college kids played volleyball in the sand near where Kristen and I lay on striped, colorful beach towels. They hit the volleyball, christened Wilson, back and forth and kept apologizing to the ball every time they hit it. They mimicked Tom Hank’s voice and yelled “Wilson” when the ball sailed over their heads, out of bounds, and into the lake.

              My brothers dunked one another under the water. Being twelve, they didn’t need supervision , but my older sister responsibility instincts that Mom loved so much, kept me alert and my eyes stayed focused on their heads as they bobbed up and down, wrestling one another in the lake. I held my breath every time I noticed one of them go under the waves and sighed in relief when I saw them re-appear. Kristen, on the other hand, was oblivious. I envied her nonchalant attitude. If only I could be so lucky to not have two lives to be responsible for at the moment and when I reminded her of this she just laughed and slapped my arm telling me to loosen up.  

              Kristen changed the topic to the party and then she started listing off all we had to do before the party. The list kept getting longer and more detailed. An overwhelming sense of dread washed over me in waves. I had never thrown a party before. Not a real high school party. Evidently there was a lot to do.

              “We have to get food, and music, and did you decide what to wear? How are you doing your hair?” Kristen asked, reaching over and tweaking a strand of my red hair.

“Food? Do we have to feed people dinner?”

              Kristen rolled on to her back and closed her eyes. She wore a bright red bikini which matched the sun burn on the front of her legs; oval sunglasses half the size of her face rested on the bridge of her nose.

              “Like snack food. Chips, dip, stuff like that,” she said.

              I leaned back onto my elbows and crinkled my face as I blinked into the sun above the lake. Then suddenly, I heard a smack followed by a low, pained moan.

              Looking over at my friend, I saw her sitting up rubbing her head, in her lap was the sandy volley ball.

              One of the players, wearing a green hat backwards on his head, ran over to us. Kristen and I both sat up straighter as he came to a stop in front of us and reached out his hands. He was shirtless and I noticed, in great shape. Smiling, he asked for the white ball back.

              Then taking notice of me, he adjusted the sunglasses on his nose and asked, “Hey, what’s your name?”

              Kristen tossed her hair behind her shoulder and said, “Kris—“

              “Wasn’t talking to you,” he interrupted.

              My mouth fell open at his blatant rudeness. I worked up a response in my head, but was too much of a coward to verbalize what I wanted to say in response to his comment, so I remained silent until it became awkward. We were saved when one of his friends called to him, evidently able to tell we were too young for him to be flirting with, because we heard the friend say, “Dude, those girls are jail bate.”

              Picking up the ball from Kristen’s lap, I threw it to him and he, catching it, slinked away, looking back a couple times at me.

              I glanced at Kristen.  She shrugged, then laughing she ran her fingers through her hair, before rolling on to her stomach.

              “What a jerk,” I said.

              Kristen muttered in agreement.

              “Once you get your braces off guys are going to be all over you,” I said.

              This brightened her up a little. “Yeah, just one more year.”

              “That’s what happened to me. I got my braces off last May; my boobs grew two sizes—“

              “Are you saying once I get my braces off my boobs will magically grow?” Kristen asked.

              “Maybe,” I said. We looked at each other and started laughing.

              Kristen sat up and pulled her knees to her chest. She looked over at the group of guys playing volleyball. “He was kind of ugly,” she said.

              I glanced over at the guy who was at the moment beating his chest over scoring a point. “Totally,” I agreed.

              I continued watching the guys play volleyball until I was distracted by water mildly raining down on my legs. Looking up, I saw both my little brothers standing over me dripping wet.

              “Stop it!” I shrieked. “You guys are getting my towel wet.”

              They glanced at each other and then fell on top of me laughing. They rolled all over me and Kristen and then picked up the end of our towels and dried themselves before jumping up and running back into the lake. Kristen and I exchanged a look of conspiratorial affirmation, and with a nod we leapt up and ran after them.

              By early afternoon Kristen announced that we should go to the store to pick up what I would need in preparation for the party. We shook out our towels before rolling them up and tucking them in a beige canvas bag. I slipped a terry cloth royal purple dress over my head which immediately stuck to my damp skin. My brothers ran ahead to Kristen’s parked car while we trudged behind, wincing as we stepped over broken shells and stones embedded in the hot sand.

              As soon as Kristen unlocked the doors of the Volkswagen, my brothers jumped in to the cramped backseat and locked us out by holding their hands over the lock so that Kristen was unable to use the keys in her hand. They laughed hysterically, but once Kristen handed me her phone and I said in a warning voice that I was going to call Mom, they sobered up and unlocked the doors. As pay back, they whined and kicked the back of our seats the entire drive to Kroger.

              But there was little I could do to control them. They knew they had power over me because I had to bribe them in order to ensure that they would stay away from the party. I promised to buy them a ton of junk food if they remained in the attic all night. The deal wasn’t awful. Last spring, Mom renovated the entire attic so that now it was a cozy den complete with pool table and 72 inch television mounted on the far wall next to a series of tall bookshelves. An L shaped grey couch was placed in the center of the room and was so comfortable my brothers usually fell asleep stretched out on the cushions while playing their video games.

Regardless, I held up my end of the deal, so we spent close to thirty minutes in the candy aisle while Josh and Eric argued over what kind of candy they wanted.

              And then I saw him. He was at the end of aisle in an ash grey t-shirt and ripped jeans.  His head was bent as he studied a shelf of candy while rubbing his hand over his jaw. I particularly took notice of his feathered golden hair and how it curled behind his ears.

              Kristen stood next to me with her arms crossed, staring at my brothers with a frown. I pinched her and nodded my head in the guy’s direction. She pushed back her sunglasses and squinted a little then looked at me and mouthed silently, “He’s cute.”

              “Who is he?” I asked. 

              Kristen shrugged her shoulders and said, quietly, “Tourist.”

              He must have heard us because he looked up from the bag of Starburst he held and glanced at us. I arched my back, but looked quickly away as Kristen waved and smiled. He returned her smile and then walked away, around the corner, disappearing into the store.

              Kristen shrugged and said, “We’ll probably never see him again.”

              This was true. During the summer season, the town was always crowded with people visiting the lake. There were some regulars who owned lake houses and would visit so often it was as if they were part of Petoskey, but many were just passing through for a fun family weekend.

              I checked the time on my cell phone. The party was going to start in three hours and Kristen and I still had to get ready. Grabbing whatever bags of candy I could reach, I threw them in the cart as I ordered my brothers to follow behind me and stay close.

              Kaitlynn Rover, a junior, checked us out. She chewed on a minty type of gum and blew blue bubbles. She perked up when she recognized me.

              “Hey, Mickey,” she said as she started scanning the food. “Wow, is this all for your party tonight?”

              I was a little taken aback. How did she know about my party? I thought Sydney said it would just be a few of us. Kaitlynn didn’t even hang out with the dance or cheerleading team. In fact, she had never said two words to me before in my life.

              “Yup,” Kristen said.

              Kaitlynn blew a bubble and awkwardly avoided eye contact as she mumbled, “Sounds like it’s gonna be fun.”

              I paused a moment. “Do you want to come?” I finally asked.

“Oh, yeah. I’ll come by after my shift.”

              “Great,” I said, under my breath.

              Kaitlynn filled the last plastic bag with the remaining food, and handed it to me as a bubble popped and gum stuck all over her lips. She waved good bye as she picked at the blue gum while my brothers pushed me aside and jumped on the back of the cart.

              As soon as were outside in the parking lot, I turned to Kristen and said, “How many people are coming?”

              “Get over it,” she replied and chased my brothers to the car.

              “For someone having a party, it doesn’t sound like you’re excited,” a voice behind me said.

              My breathing slowed. Startled, I turned to see the guy in the ash grey t-shirt standing behind me holding a couple sacks of food.

              I smiled nervously. He was wearing sunglasses, but he was smiling at me waiting for my reply. “Yeah, the woes of popularity, I guess,” I said, but immediately regretted it. Feeling stupid, I ran with the cart all the way to the car wishing I could vanish from his sight.

              Before Kristen turned in the long, gravel lane leading to my house, we noticed a U-Haul truck parked further down the road.

              “Maybe somebody’s moving in to that old house across the pond,” I said.

              The family that had lived there moved out abruptly around the same time Viktor, my dad, left. I was too young to remember anyone living in that house which appeared to be much smaller than our cabin. The house across the pond was a deteriorating two-story home with boarded up windows. Kristen and I firmly believed it was haunted and somehow this belief got around town because when I would tell people where I lived they would nod and ask, “Oh, next to the haunted house?”

              I once asked Mom about it. Surely, she had known the family that had lived there.  When I asked her she became silent like she didn’t want to talk about it, but I continued to ask because I hated that Mom kept so much of my first three years hidden from me. Finally Mom told me, “Just some family. The woman died in a hunting accident and that’s when the rest of the family moved. That’s all. It makes me sad to talk about it so stop asking questions.” 

              After twelve years of neglect, the house did not look pretty. The sunken roof was covered in debris like fallen tree limbs, and lacked shingles. Dirty glass in wide windows was broken in, and the once white paint was completely chipped off. That was all that was visible from standing on my back deck looking across the pond. The house was one I had never actually been to up close. I grew up looking at the back of the house safely in the confines of my own home, but even across the pond the house sent shivers down my spine.

              “They’re probably lost,” I said pointing to the U Haul truck ahead of us before Kristen turned right down my lane.

              “Should we help them?” Kristen asked, looking back over her shoulder.

              I shook my head. They’d find their way and the clock was ticking. We didn’t have a lot of time to get things in order before people started arriving.

I didn’t know what to expect for a party. In the past, I had held sleep overs at my house for no more than five girls and as I grew older and cliques started forming, excluding me and Kristen, the sleep overs transformed into Kristen and I taking turns at sleeping at each other’s houses every Friday night.