Memoirs of a Girl Wolf (7 page)

The yellow car came to a stop and Kristen, her hair straightened, waved at me.

Taking notice of the frown pulling down the corners of my mouth, she shrugged her shoulders in an apology and motioned at me to get in her car.

Despite still feeling slightly hurt, I’d rather go with her to school than be dropped off by Mom, so sighing in defeat, I waved at Mom who sat watching me from the Toyota and ran to the passenger side of the yellow Volkswagen and climbed in.

Kristen turned the radio down and said, “I am sorry. I know you’re mad at me.”

“I’ll get over it,” I said.

“Is your leg okay? Everyone is so concerned,” she said.

I looked down at my leg which was hidden under a knee length black skirt. “Yeah, I’ll live.”

“I have so much to tell you,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?”

Kristen updated me on the gossip I had missed out on the past few days. I didn’t care. The party changed me. I was beginning to think I wasn’t cut out for popularity. I smiled and nodded to be polite, but mainly I just paid attention to the passing scenery.

A group of people swarmed me the second I arrived at school and stepped from Kristen’s car.  They hugged me and asked how I was. Shrugging them off of me, I tried to escape the attention, but Sydney linked her arm through mine and pulled me back into the crowd treating me like something she brought to show and tell. She made a big deal of saying that she was one of the people with me when I was attacked.

I laughed off everyone’s concern. Being the center of attention, made me uncomfortable, though I was happy that everyone still liked me. In fact, this was the first time ever at school that people waved at me or said ‘Hi’ to me as I walked through the hallways and I was getting better with people’s names. My apprehension about my place in the popular crowd quickly dissipated and that familiar craving of wanting, no needing their approval and attention returned.

After parting from Kristen and Sydney, I walked down the brightly lit hallways to find my locker. I figured I probably wasn’t going to have the same problem with my locker this year as  I had last year, but as I read off the numbers of a row of lockers, approaching mine, I noticed someone at the end of the row who looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Just my luck my locker was right next to his.

He kept running his hands through his thick golden hair as he emptied his backpack into the open locker.

Coming to a stop next to him, and in front of my own locker, I glanced back and forth between him and my lock; mentally repeating the combination I had been given a week before a registration. My hands were beginning sweat which made opening my lock difficult. He saw me glancing at him and smiled then looked back into his locker.

“Hey, you’re that girl,” he said, pausing in front of his locker with a book in his hand he shifted his body toward me and smiled.

I had no idea who he was or what his name was. How embarrassing. He probably came to my party. I nodded, but focused on my lock until finally the locker popped open.

“The girl from the store. You weren’t excited about your party,” he said, smiling.

He wasn’t from here. That much I could tell. From the North, I mean. He spoke in a slow southern drawl in a low voice that sounded like it was dripped with molasses.

He had such a warm, bright face. I couldn’t help but smile and laugh a little when he looked at me. His good mood radiated off of him and infected me.

“I am,” I said, now realizing he was the guy in the candy aisle. The one who Kristen and I thought was a tourist.

“What’s your name? Miss Popular?” he asked.

“Mickey,” I said.

“Like the mouse?”

Before I could reply, someone tapped on my shoulder, distracting me from the conversation. I reluctantly turned my head. Max stared down at me with his large arms crossed over his chest.

“Hey, Mickey,” he said. “I wanted to apologize about your party. I feel really bad,” he said avoiding my eyes.

“Oh, that’s okay,” I replied, but the truth was I felt a little disheartened that he hadn’t come back for me, and I was still bothered by the fact that I didn’t know who found me, carried me, and bandaged me up.

He sighed, and leaning against the lockers, he said, “Maybe we could tell people that I didn’t run away.”

“I guess,” I said.

He reached over and played with the curled ends of my hair. “I was thinking we should go out since we didn’t get a chance to hang out really at your party.”

My face broke into a smile. “Sure.” I shrugged, wanting to jump up and down. I couldn’t wait to tell Kristen.

“Friday?”

Friday was my birthday, though I didn’t plan on doing anything special besides dinner and cake with my family. Mom suggested I have another party, but she was weird about it as if she didn’t really want me to have one and she told me everyone would have to leave before dark, but the truth was I never wanted to have another party ever again after the last one anyway so I turned down her offer. I could tell she was relieved.

Max pushed himself off the lockers. Shaking his head to the side, to get the hair out of his eyes, he looked at me with his goofy grin that made me so nervous and told me good bye. I stood, clutching my books, as I stared after him as he walked away down the hall and was swallowed by the crowd.

First bell rang. The shrill, echoing ringing, prompted me to quickly throw my books in my bag. Remembering the guy next to me who I had been talking to, I turned back toward him, but he was no longer there and his locker was closed. Even though our lockers were next to each other and my school not very big, I wouldn’t see him again for a week.

For the first time in my life, school was fun. There was always someone to talk to during class and in-between, and especially at lunch. In the past, Kristen and I ate lunch at a lopsided table in the back of the cafeteria, but on my first day as a Sophomore I sat a long table filled with kids near the center of the cafeteria and everyone wanted me to sit next to them.

I ended up sitting sandwiched between Sydney and Kristen and across from me were Max’s two friends Joe and Seth. Max didn’t have the same lunch as us, but I spent most of lunch scanning the cafeteria for the guy who had a locker next to mine. There was something about him that pulled me to him and I couldn’t’ stop thinking of his smile which made me smile which made my friends think I was thinking of Max.

I blushed and rolled my eyes which only confirmed to them that their assumptions were right. Desperate to remove myself from the attention, I dipped my head and turned toward the conversation Kristen was having with Lorrie Arnold about Kim Kardashian. I nodded my head along pretending to care. 

When I got home and entered the house I called to Mom, but she didn’t respond. I walked up the stairs and noticed at the end of the hallway the door to the attic was open. I walked down the hallway to the attic door and up the narrow stair case till I came to a stop at the top.

I found Mom in a grey suit and black heels peering into a box that was sitting on top of the coffee table in the middle of the attic room.

“Mom?” I asked.

Her hand flew to her chest as she jumped back, startled. She laughed when she saw me. “You scared me.”

“What is that?” I asked, walking over to the coffee table.

She quickly put a lid on the box and moved it to the floor; sliding it under the little coffee table with her foot before walking over to me and putting her arm around my shoulder. She guided me back to the staircase.

“How was school?” she asked.

“Max wants to go out,” I said with a smile though after thinking about it some more I wasn’t as excited. It kind of bothered me that he asked me to lie about the other night.

“When?” Mom asked.

“This Friday,” I said, walking down the stairs with Mom behind me.

She closed the door to the attic behind me and then grabbed hold of my hand to keep me from walking further down the hall and away from her. She turned me around so that I faced her and she said, “Not on your birthday.”

“Why not? I don’t want to do anything for it,” I said.

“No,” Mom said, firmly. “It’s your sixteenth birthday.”

“I already said yes,” I whined.

“No. I have to go get your brothers from school” she said, moving past me down the hall and disappearing down the stairs. I rolled my eyes, and started walking back toward my bedroom until I remembered the box in the attic and how weird Mom looked when I asked her what it was.

I waited until I was sure I heard the door close and the car start outside before I ran back up the stairs of the attic and pulled the box out from under the coffee table. I threw open the lid and looked down into a box of silver chains.

7.

When I told Kristen that Mom didn’t want me to go out with Max on my birthday, she was more upset than I was.

She covered her face with her hands and shook her head. “You can’t tell Max no. What would people say?”

She really had me concerned. I loved my new popularity and I didn’t want to go back to being invisible.

“What do I do?” I asked.

We sat parked in her car in front of my house. I knew Mom was waiting for me inside with a birthday cake and presents. It was Friday afternoon and I hadn’t broken off the date with Max. In fact, he was going to pick me up that night in just a few hours after I returned home from school.

I should have told him the truth and asked for Kristen’s advice earlier in the week, but I really didn’t want to have to cancel. I kept putting it off thinking Mom may change her mind, but she’d been acting distant and weird all week. Some nights she’d hover really close to me and feel my face if I looked flushed and other nights she stared, coldly at me as if I were a stranger. Then there was tea. She ordered a bunch on-line or something and every day there was a new tea to try. It made me sick, though, just that morning I had thrown up before school.

Things were weird, and when I had asked her about the chains in the box in the attic she asked innocently, “What box?”

I grabbed her hand and made her follow me all the way back up to the attic, but the box was no longer there and Mom acted like there had never been box.

Regardless, I was sixteen now and it was my birthday. I should get to decide what I wanted to do celebrate. I was no longer a little kid.

“You’re gonna have to sneak out,” Kristen said, nodding her head.

“How? My room is upstairs and I live miles out of town.”

Yup, I was screwed.

“I can pick you up down the lane. I’ll be waiting for you and I can drive you into town. You don’t have to sneak out your bedroom window just wait until Erin is distracted and go out the back door. Text Max and tell him you’ll meet him at the lake by the bathrooms.”

“Romantic,” I mumbled, pulling my phone out and sending a short text to Max.

Kristen clapped her hands; proud of her scheming. She reached into the backseat and grabbed a poorly wrapped box in polka dotted wrapping paper which she dropped in my lap.

I smiled and opened it slowly. In the box was a photo collage of us through the years stretching back to when we were in second grade. I loved it. I hugged her and asked, “Do you want to come in for cake?”

“No, that’s okay. I’m meeting Seth for gelato and then we’ll pick you up at six, okay?”

I gasped, “Seth, really?”

Kristen shrugged. “Yeah, he’s kind of boring but he plays football.”

I picked up my school bag at my feet and opened the car door, but before getting out I remembered I wanted to ask Kristen about my locker mate.

“You know who has the locker next to mine, that kid who we thought was a tourist, remember? The one in the candy aisle the day of my party,” I said, searching her face hopeful that she knew who I was talking about.

“Oh, yeah, Reign. I have English with him. He’s like from Texas or Alabama or something,” she said, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel.

“Reign,” I repeated, quietly. “He seems really nice,” I said, smiling as I thought of his tan face, and sincere smile, and the way his warm, ember eyes crinkled as he looked at me.

“Oh, no, stop,” she said, slapping me lightly on the arm. “He is a hillbilly from the south. He talks like one of those Duck Dynasty people. Focus on Max. You like Max the next hockey star for the Red Wings,” she said in a stern tone.

I nodded. “Right, I haven’t even seen Reign again anyway. I just thought it was a funny coincidence.”

I got out of her car and waved to her as I slung my bag over my shoulder.

Filling my lungs with fresh piney Michigan air, I walked up the path to the front door of my log cabin. I walked into the dark house. The lights were off and the house silent. I was too old for surprises, but I did my best to act shocked when Mom, Josh and Eric jumped out from behind furniture and sprayed me with silly string.

I gasped and covered my hands with my mouth as my little brothers ran up and hugged me. Mom led me over to the front of the couch and sat me in the center as I pulled the string off of me, laughing. She made to move the pillows and noticed for the first time that one of the pillows was missing.