by Alexis Davie
Just as she took her cup of tea and turned around to exit the kitchen and go back to her bedroom, Rex’s ears perked up, and then he began to growl in the direction of the main door.
“What is it, Rex?” Penelope asked him, peeking her head out into her tiny living room. Maybe there was a cat outside and Rex had smelled him, or maybe their neighbors were about to take their own dog out for a walk, or maybe—
A distant howl cut off Penelope’s thoughts.
The sound sent a shiver down her spine, making her feel like her blood had turned into liquid nitrogen, freezing and paralyzing her. She watched Rex run into the living room and jump at the door, barking at it and scratching it as if he were attacking it, as if there was something dangerous right outside Penelope’s house and Rex was trying to warn her about it.
Penelope slowly pulled back one of the curtains of one of the windows in the living room, looking out into the darkness, which was starting to recede, giving way to the light of dawn. She could see the snow-covered street in front of her house and the lampposts illuminating the way, and she could even see the lights on in some of her neighbors’ houses, as they got ready to begin the day. Nothing seemed to be out of place. It was just an ordinary morning in Penelope’s neighborhood.
And yet she couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was something dangerous lurking in the shadows. That there was something… watching her, hiding and preparing to strike. The fact that Rex had begun whining, as he scratched the door, didn’t make her feel any better.
“C’mon, Rex,” Penelope mumbled, patting the dog’s head until Rex turned to her. “C’mon, boy. Let’s… let’s just go back to sleep.” She firmly held her cup of tea between her two hands as she made her way back to her bedroom, and she heaved a sigh of relief when she saw that Rex was, reluctantly, following behind her, turning his head to the door every few seconds—like he expected something to break through it.
“C’mon, Rex,” Penelope repeated, and this time, Rex followed her without hesitation, jumping onto the bed as soon as Penelope had settled down and pulled the duvet over herself.
As she softly blew on her tea and waited for it to cool a little, she couldn’t help but feel nervous about the prospect of falling back asleep. What if she had the nightmare with the wolves again? What if it was worse this time?
Ever since she was little, Penelope’s dreams had always been a little different than everyone else’s. She was able to see the future through them. She couldn’t foretell major events or anything of the sort, nor could she control what she dreamed about, but every dream she had ever had—and every dream she could remember after she woke up—had always come true. From finding a five-dollar bill on the street, to predicting the weather, to what kind of dog she was going to end up adopting, every dream Penelope could recall after waking up had always come true. Every single one of them.
Except for her nightmare with the wolves.
Penelope had spent her entire childhood being terrified of forests and woods, enjoying the safety of living in urban cities, where she didn’t have to worry about being attacked by wolves with nobody around to help her. Her parents had never believed she could actually see the future through her dreams, always thinking them to be incredibly specific coincidences, and so she had decided she would never discuss her nightmare with them. Why would she? They wouldn’t understand, and they would certainly be of no help to calm down her anxiety.
As Penelope grew older, the nightmare had slowly started to leave her alone, but lately, it had seemed like it kept returning to haunt her more often than not, and yet it was the only one of her dreams that hadn’t come to fruition.
Sometimes she wondered if it ever would, or when it would.
That’s enough thinking about that, Penelope scolded herself, finishing her cup of tea and leaving it on her bedside table. She had spent almost a decade in Evergreen Grove, Montana, after moving there to go to high school and eventually to college, and not once had she ever encountered a wolf under any circumstance. If her nightmare hadn’t come true yet, perhaps it never would. Perhaps it was just her mind messing with her, keeping her on her toes for no reason whatsoever. Perhaps Penelope was worrying over absolutely nothing.
She lay her head down on her pillow and closed her eyes.
She didn’t notice Rex waking up a few minutes later, hopping down from her bed to growl through her bedroom window at a strange figure lurking among the shadows.
2
“You look awful,” Alana told Penelope as soon as she walked up to the closed door of the coffee shop, where they both worked. Penelope was usually in charge of opening up the shop, despite the fact that Alana often showed up earlier than her.
“Good morning to you too, Alana,” Penelope said, knowing that Alana didn’t mean it as an insult or an offense. She was just stating a fact: Penelope did, in fact, look awful. The ponytail holding her blonde hair was loose and disarrayed, and she had just put on the first jacket she had found in her dresser, which had a stain on the underside of one of the sleeves that she hadn’t noticed until she had been halfway to work. She hadn’t even put on any makeup, knowing that she was more likely to accidentally rub it off, and to make matters worse, she had forgotten her phone on her bedside table, still charging.
Overall, she’d had better mornings.
Alana, on the other hand, looked as amazing as she always did: her red-haired ponytail was tight and perfect, and the mascara around her eyes brought out the green in them in such a way that Alana’s eyes seemed to be jewels. Her jacket, unlike Penelope’s, had no stain to be seen. Penelope always found herself staring at Alana’s hair—she had never met someone whose hair color was that same gorgeous shade of red.
“What happened to you?”
“Couldn’t really sleep last night,” Penelope said, rubbing her eyes. The cup of miraculous tea she had taken in the early hours of the morning had only helped her go back to sleep for a few hours, and then she had been tossing and turning on her bed until her alarm clock had started beeping obnoxiously. Luckily, she hadn’t had the nightmare with the wolves again, but that didn’t mean she’d been able to rest.
“Do you need some more tea?” Alana asked, as they both walked inside the coffee shop. “’Cause if that one isn’t working, I’ve got a few stronger ones that could—”
“No, no,” Penelope said, shaking her head. She and Alana took off their respective jackets and hung them on the coat rack behind the counter, replacing them with their work aprons. “I mean, thank you, Alana, but I’m not sure if stronger tea is the answer. We’re already surrounded by caffeine; I don’t want to become addicted to tea as well.”
Alana laughed, setting up the coffee machines and getting everything behind the counter ready for the day while Penelope placed the chairs around their respective tables and dusted them off.
“All right,” Alana chuckled. “But if you ever want to try it out, just let me know.”
“Will do, Alana. Thank you.”
* * *
The beginning of the day was slow, as days at the coffee shop often were. Even though the establishment opened up at nine in the morning, they didn’t typically get busy until an hour after they opened. When business was slow, it gave Alana and Penelope time to catch up and make small talk.
It wasn’t a stressful job for Penelope. At least, she didn’t feel like it was. The coffee shop she worked at was small, compared to some other big chain restaurants, and so she’d never had to deal with anything worse than an old man complaining and yelling at her because she hadn’t added cinnamon to his Frappuccino, even though he hadn’t asked her to do so. Besides, Alana seemed to have the tendency to pull the worst costumers towards herself, so it wasn’t even that Penelope had to deal with them.
It was just tiring sometimes. Tiring and time-consuming, if only because she often had to work double shifts. As small as the coffee shop might be, and as few customers as they regularly had, their manager refused to hire more people, wh
ich meant that Alana and Penelope had to take turns to work pretty much all day.
“At least we don’t have kids to take care of,” Alana had once joked, as they closed up the shop. If a day had been particularly slow, she would stay to help Penelope close.
“Hey, I have a dog,” Penelope had argued.
“Well, yeah, but it’s not like anything’s gonna happen to him when you’re gone, you know? In fact, I’m pretty sure he can keep everything in order in your place, not to mention that he could probably scare away anyone who tried to rob you or something.”
“Oh, please, don’t joke about something like that,” Penelope had told her.
“All I’m saying,” Alana had continued, “is that it’s a good thing we don’t have someone who depends on us, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” Penelope had said. “I think that if either of us had kids though, we wouldn’t be working someplace where we’re required to work double shifts more often than not.”
Her co-worker had laughed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right about that.”
“So,” Alana was saying now. Penelope had finished setting up the place, so now they were both resting against the counter, waiting until the day truly began. “You said you couldn’t sleep last night?”
“No,” Penelope answered, rubbing her eyes again. “I mean, I did get some sleep, but then I woke up at almost five o’clock and then spent a few hours just tossing and turning before my alarm went off.”
She groaned, throwing her head back and covering a yawn behind her hands.
For a moment, Alana just stared at her. Penelope waited for her to say something, but her co-worker seemed to be taking her time. Either that, or she was staring at nothing and her gaze had just happened to remain on Penelope.
“I thought you’d said you were getting better?” she finally asked.
“I was!” Penelope cried. “Believe me; this surprised me even more than it surprises you.”
“I mean, was there any reason you woke up in the middle of the night?” questioned Alana, slightly frowning. “ I remember you mentioning the tea had helped you rest for the whole night.”
Penelope shrugged her shoulders. “I had a bad dream, is all. It can happen to anyone, you know.”
“Anything you’d like to talk about?” She turned her head to Alana.
“Not really,” she answered, crossing her arms over her chest. Penelope liked Alana well enough, and they got along just fine, but she didn’t know if she would go as far as to call her a close friend. If she decided not to discuss her nightmare with her parents, Alana wasn’t even an option. She would probably tell her it was just a dream, there were no wild wolves in Evergreen Grove, and she had absolutely nothing to worry about. Penelope knew all of this. She had said these facts to herself several times before.
“Maybe it would help you if you talked about it with someone else,” Alana added. “I’ve heard that bad dreams aren’t as bad if you tell someone about them.”
Penelope narrowed her eyes at her. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”
Instead of backing down and apologizing for her insistence, Alana simply kept staring at Penelope, as if she could make her change her mind just by looking at her.
What’s her deal? Penelope wondered. She had never known her co-worker to be so nosy, much less about something that clearly made Penelope uncomfortable. Why was she so interested in her dream? It wasn’t like they didn’t have anything else to talk about.
Before Alana could reply—and before Penelope could change the subject of their current conversation—the little bell on the door rang, and they both turned to the coffee shop’s entrance, as the first customer of the day walked in.
The man who walked through the door was dressed in a thick wool jacket, jeans, boots, a scarf around his neck, and a pair of gloves that he took off and put inside his jacket as soon as he had stepped inside the establishment. He had richly colored auburn hair, and his cheeks were flushed, no doubt from the cold outside. He glanced around the place and then turned to Alana and Penelope, flashing a smile in their direction.
“Aw, shucks,” he said. “You didn’t have to open up earlier just because I was going to visit.”
Penelope blinked at the man, at a complete loss of what to say. She was about to ask what he meant when she saw Alana grin, walk up to the man, and then punch his shoulder.
“Alana!” she cried, already stomping towards her so she could apologize to the man on her co-worker’s behalf. To her surprise though, the man started laughing, and then he wrapped his arms around a still-grinning Alana, lifting her off the ground.
“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you haven’t changed a bit?” the man was saying, though it was hard to hear him over Alana’s squeals of delight.
“And why doesn’t it surprise me that you’re still a jerk?” Alana replied, as the man set her down on the ground again. “Didn’t you learn any manners while you were away?”
“Says the woman who works at a coffee shop, where she has to constantly be well-mannered,” the man said, which made Alana punch his shoulder again. It didn’t seem to hurt him in the slightest.
“Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry!” Alana wiped a tear from her eye and turned to Penelope, resting a hand on the man’s back. “Penelope, this is my brother, Nico. Nico, this is Penelope.”
Oh, Penelope thought, her eyes widening and her eyebrows raising. Now that she was aware of the relationship between the two of them, and now that she saw both Alana and the man, Nico, standing side by side, she could definitely see the resemblance. Both had the same sharp cheekbones, the same nose, the same defined jawline. Even their lips curled upwards in the same way when they smiled.
Nico’s eyes, even greener and brighter than his sister’s, were absolutely stunning.
“It’s nice to meet you, Penelope,” Nico said, holding out his hand. Penelope shook it with her own, unable to look away from Nico’s eyes. It was as if they were keeping her in place, like the distant howl she had heard last night, except that this wasn’t liquid nitrogen flowing through her veins—it was the warmth of a fire in winter; it was her duvet wrapped around her shoulders; it was Alana’s miraculous tea warming her insides with each sip she took.
Nico’s eyes were warmth and comfort, finding every secret inside of her and deciding to keep it safe for her sake. It was like he could read Penelope like an open book, and yet he wouldn’t reveal anything she didn’t want him to.
For some reason, they reminded Penelope of the glowing red eyes from the wolves in her nightmare, except that his were soft and honest rather than terrifying.
“Nice to meet you, too,” Penelope finally managed to say, hopefully avoiding making a fool out of herself in front of one of the most handsome men she had ever seen. If Nico noticed how she had spent at least a few seconds just staring at him, he thankfully didn’t mention it. Instead, he smiled kindly at her, and Penelope resisted the urge to tighten her grip around his hand when he began to pull away from her. “I—I would’ve thought you were twins, you look so much like each other!”
“Story of our lives,” Nico laughed, and even his voice seemed to chase the cold out of Penelope’s bones. It was soft and melodic, like he was always a second away from bursting into song. “Unfortunately, Alana’s a year older than me, and she never lets me live it down.”
“As I shouldn’t!” Alana replied, chuckling. She then turned to Penelope again. “Nico’s been away from Evergreen Grove for a while, so when he said he was coming back home, I told him he should drop by to visit his favorite sister at work!” While she said this last sentence, Alana wrapped an arm around Nico’s shoulders, despite the fact that Nico was a few inches taller than her.
“You’re my only sister, Alana,” Nico mumbled.
“Exactly!” She patted his back and then headed towards the back of the counter. “Now look over the menu and order something.”
“Do I have a choice in the matter?”
“You�
��re already here,” Alana said, grabbing a plastic cup to, presumably, make whatever beverage her brother ordered. “You might as well order something.”
Nico glanced at Penelope, raising an eyebrow at her in a, Well, nothing much I can do about that, and Penelope tried not to blush at his intense gaze. Instead, she went to stand beside Alana, busying herself with making sure all the dishes were clean, and all the plastic cups were stacked in their proper place, even though Alana had already checked all this when they had opened up the coffee shop. She didn’t want to embarrass herself any further, just in case she already had, and Nico was simply being incredibly nice about not mentioning it.
“I guess I’ll have a coffee,” Nico started to say, but his sister interrupted him.
“A simple coffee?” she asked. “C’mon, Nico, don’t be cheap.”
Nico scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, why don’t you tell me what you want me to order, then?”
Alana suddenly grabbed Penelope’s shoulders, causing her to yelp a little in surprise. Her co-worker’s hands forced her to stand up from where she had been kneeling behind the counter, trying to hide from Nico’s warm eyes until he had something else to look at.
“Penelope makes the best vanilla chai latte you’ll ever have,” Alana said, and Penelope felt the blood rushing to her cheeks.
Nico raised an eyebrow at her, smirking. “Is that so?”
“S-she’s exaggerating,” Penelope stuttered, trying to push Alana’s hands off her. “I-I mean, it’s decent? But I wouldn’t say it’s the best out there, not even in Evergreen Grove—”
“She’s being way too modest,” Alana insisted. “Honestly, if this is gonna be the first hot beverage you drink after coming back home, it should be Penelope’s vanilla chai latte.”
Nico, however, didn’t seem to notice how uncomfortable Alana was making Penelope, because he ended up nodding to himself and saying, “All right, then. I’ll have a vanilla chai latte, please.”
