Willow

by Amy Richie

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Lounge

  I slid into the front seat nervously. Carlie smiled widely, showing off all her human sized teeth. I was surprised to notice that the bottom row was crooked. Carlie seemed so perfect. I stopped myself from telling her what I was thinking out loud.

  "So what's the … uh … the Lounge like?" I asked awkwardly. I wasn't well versed in normal teenage small talk but since Carlie didn't turn the radio on, I felt obligated to say something.

  "It's usually crowded and loud." Her nose crinkled up.

  "Oh." I nodded awkwardly and turned to stare out the window. I should have just stayed home.

  "I'm sure it's nothing like what you are used to."

  I looked over at her with a scowl, glad for the comfort of the darkness. She probably wouldn't have been able to see me, even if she had been looking. "I'm really not used to anything," I blurted out.

  "What was your old school like? Did anyone there … know?"

  My chin jutted forward in surprise. Did they know? I couldn't believe we were really going to talk about this out loud. I mean, I knew I couldn't just ignore it, but … "Of course not," I snapped my lips together. "We moved a lot."

  "And Ivy?"

  "What about Ivy?" My eyes narrowed to thin slits. Why was she bringing Ivy up? It wasn't like they were best friends or anything. She should just leave Ivy out of this.

  "Did she know about you?"

  Her words made my narrowed eyes go wide with shock. I had to lean back into the seat. Carlie didn't know about Ivy. She hadn't drawn the assumption that Ivy was like me, that we were the same. I needed to keep it that way. "No," I mumbled.

  "Why did they leave you here?"

  "I'm … " My mind rushed ahead of my lips to remember the lie we had told everyone. It seemed stupid to lie to Carlie now, but I didn't know what else to say. Carlie wasn't my friend. She was just someone who accidentally saw too much. It wasn't much of an accident I amended to myself. "I am staying with my uncle."

  "You mean that boy who took me home the other day?"

  A short huff of a laugh burst from my throat when she called Gage a boy. I tried to squeeze it back in, I mean Gage did look like an ordinary boy to someone who didn't know. A gorgeous, can't believe he's really here and not in the pages of a magazine kind of boy, but a boy nonetheless. "I guess so," I mumbled.

  She giggled at my discomfort. "He's cute."

  "Yeah," I shrugged. "He's cute." There was so much more to Gage than just being cute, though. There was so much to him that I didn't even know yet. One thing I was sure of, I was going to find out.

  "Are you and Rueben still going out?" She tried to sound nonchalant but I heard the tightness in her voice.

  "We never really were."

  "Oh." She smiled without looking at me. "I always knew there was something different about him."

  My scowl deepened. How much had Carlie actually seen? She knew about Gage and me of course, but how many of the others? Should I ask her? Maybe it would be a bad idea to open up conversation about that day.

  We came to a stop and turned onto Main Street. Soon we would be at Aubrey's house and I would miss out on my opportunity to ask her anything. I chewed on my bottom lip; indecision making my heart thump loudly in the too quiet car. Could Carlie hear that?

  "I think you'll like the Lounge," she commented. Why wasn't she nervous at all? She knew what I was. Why wasn't her heart hammering like mine was?

  "Mmm," I mumbled incoherently. I wasn't looking forward to hanging out with Lindsey and Aubrey all night. I wasn't even sure how I had been talked into going.

  "Now that you're a cheerleader this will be expected of you," she teased. I couldn't believe how normal she was being. She was alone in a car with a girl who could change into a giant wolf and she was discussing cheerleading. It was maddening.

  "I bet you're glad to be hanging out with Aubrey and Lindsey again." I rolled my eyes at my own inability to socialize. Why had I said that? I wished I could bite my tongue off.

  "I realize why Rueben didn't want me to talk about werewolves," her eyebrows shot up at the forbidden word. "But I have been popular at this school for a long time. I know how things work. I wouldn't even care about being popular but I want to be back with Rueben. He has to keep up his persona."

  "You're really … honest."

  "I want us to be friends, and not like Lindsey and Aubrey kind of friends either."

  I didn't know how to respond to that but I was spared from having to when we pulled into Aubrey's driveway. The two girls appeared almost right away at the front door. Carlie flipped the radio on low before they opened the car door to file into the back seat.

  "Willow!" they both squealed in unison then fell into a fit of giggles.

  "Hey," I called back with notably less enthusiasm.

  "Where's Rueben?"

  "Um … "

  "He'll probably meet us there," Lindsey answered her own question.

  "Yeah, he probably didn't want to ride with Willow and Carlie."

  "Awkward."

  "Rueben and I are just friends," I said quickly.

  "That's not what it looked like to us."

  All three of the girls laughed loud in the small space of the car. I couldn't believe that even Carlie was laughing. I was absolutely positive that I would never understand these girls and that I would never fit in anywhere in high school.

  The inside of the car suddenly felt much smaller. The air was sucked out as soon as Lindsey and Aubrey got in and now even the space around us was shrinking.

  I took a deep breath, trying to stave off the panic I could feel coming on. "I'm not dating anyone," I mumbled.

  "Lindsey and I have decided to date twins," Aubrey laughed.

  "Twins?" My head jerked back in surprise. Surely she didn't mean my twins.

  "Colby and Tyson Thatcher."

  "I didn't know you guys liked them," Carlie took over my response when I couldn't get words past my closed off throat.

  "They're on the football team," Lindsey explained as if it were obvious. "Why not?"

  "You can't date them," I fired suddenly.

  "Why not?" Lindsey asked again.

  "You aren't their type."

  "How would you know what their type is? You've been at this school what … a week?"

  "Besides, we're cheerleaders. It's only natural."

  "We're here," Carlie announced before I had time to say anything else. I was far from done. No way were Tyson and Colby dating these two girls. I was not allowing it.

  "Oh," Lindsey bounced in her seat with her squeal. "Look who's here."

  Even though I could already guess, I still looked to where she pointed. Rueben, Colby, and Tyson were all standing by Rueben's black car. They smiled widely when they saw us pull up.

  "Looks like the two of you are going to have to share Rueben," Lindsey said under her breath.

  My ears flamed red hot. I turned to Carlie but she only smiled. "Ready?"

  I nodded quickly and stepped out on to the pavement. The boys may have been coming over to stand beside me but they were cut off by Lindsey and Aubrey. I tried not to glare but when Tyson flinched nervously away from Lindsey I knew I had failed.

  "It's not very crowded tonight," Carlie said close to my ear. I hadn't realized she was even out of the car yet. Rueben had come to stand in front of me.

  "It doesn't look too crowded," he agreed with her. I puffed my cheeks out dramatically. This was going to be a long night.

  

  Too irritated with the way Lindsey and Aubrey were hanging on my boys, I felt no excitement to be out at the Lounge. I had often times wished that just once I would be invited to hang out with all the cool kids; here was my chance and I could only sulk.

  We easily found an empty table and Carlie and I shoved onto one side. Rueben slid in front of us. Colby and Tyson, however, followed the girls to a table in the back of the small dimly lit room.

  "Why aren't they si
tting with us?" I demanded a little too loudly.

  "They're sitting in make out alley."

  "What?"

  "It's those tables back there," Carlie explained, "it's darker back there and kids go back there to make out."

  "Is that what they're doing?" I craned my neck to see but the shadows were deeper back there and before my eyes had time to adjust Carlie elbowed me in the side. "Ow!"

  "Don't look," she hissed. Rueben grinned wide.

  Was that a rule? Had I missed the rules sign when I walked in? I scoffed openly but kept my face straight ahead. "Whatever," I rolled my eyes.

  Rueben ordered me something that I could barely drink and then the two of them fell into an easy conversation that I had a hard time following. My thoughts kept going back to those make out booths that my boys were in, pressed close to two overly-friendly cheerleaders who together may have made up one brain. My hand tightened on the glass. I bit hard on my tongue, trying to focus again on what Carlie was saying.

  "What do you think, Willow?" She surprised me by asking me a direct question.

  "Umm … " My eyes darted to Rueben for some sort of hint to what they were talking about.

  "The uniforms?" she prompted, but it didn't help.

  "I … uh … yeah." I nodded weakly. Was that an appropriate response?

  "Coach was saying that the cheerleading skirts are too short and wants the school board to get new ones," Rueben filled in the missing pieces.

  "And that's bad, right?" I looked back to Carlie for confirmation.

  "The uniforms have been this way since the dawn of time." My thoughts skittered back to the first day I had met Jed and he said the lockers were from when Pebbles was little. I smirked at the memory. "Ok, maybe not that long." Carlie was gracious enough to smile at her own dramatic words.

  "But close enough," Rueben added.

  "What do you think?" She and Rueben both turned expectant gazes to me.

  Was this really what we were going to talk about? The length of the cheerleading skirts was not what I considered important - at all. "They're fine. Waste of money to buy all new," I muttered around my fancy pink and yellow striped straw. Cute, I thought with a small huff.

  "They're fine," Rueben commented in a low voice.

  I knew he wasn't talking about the skirts anymore, but I played dumb anyways. "Yeah," I shrugged. "The girls are going to wear worse things to school anyways, so what's the point, right?"

  Carlie leaned down to take a long sip from her dark pink drink. "Guess so," she smiled tightly.

  I looked down into my own glass at the thick brown liquid. "What is this?" I demanded suddenly

  "Chocolate shake?" I heard the question in Rueben's voice. "That's what you wanted."

  "Yeah, of course it is." Not quite, but it would do for now. I chanced a quick peek behind us and was slightly appeased to see Tyson and Colby both watching me instead of the girls that were obviously trying to get their attention.

  I let my mind wander briefly to Gage. Where was he tonight? What was he doing? He was always so secretive, coming and going all the time. What secrets did the old wolf in him have? My heart rejected the idea of him being old, but my mind knew he was. The things he had seen and done in his lifetime … I shook my head as my mood turned sad. The boys would sense it, then Gage would know my thoughts.

  "You all right?" It surprised me that Tyson was suddenly next to our table.

  "Yeah," I blurted automatically. "Just tired."

  "We should go then."

  I scrambled quickly to hold onto the offered escape. "Good idea." I jumped up, nearly tipping over my still half-full shake. "Ready?" I looked eagerly to where Rueben still sat.

  He was instantly on his feet. "Sure." He smiled widely.