“How long before you fainted this time? Did you make it a whole minute?”
He lunged at me, but this time the wolf stayed buried. Apparently she knew the difference between a threat and play. And Jase was definitely in a mood to play. Our injuries made it impossible to do anything too boisterous, but we still tumbled across the yard, skirting around trees and using Talley as a shield. I felt lighter than I had in forever, even with the knowledge that Charlie, who normally would have jumped into the melee, was keeping his distance.
Jase had me in a headlock when Angel bounded out the back door. “You better stop right now,” she said with a put-upon sigh. “You’re already in big trouble.”
Chapter 10
Angel wasn’t kidding. We were beyond trouble. Up until that June, my biggest punishment had been losing my phone and computer privileges for a week because I called Ashley Johnson, a friend turned reviled enemy, a name that rhymes with “cranky sassed witch” in front of my father and Miss Emily, my Sunday school teacher. Destroying the kitchen and almost killing your brother carries a much stiffer penalty.
Since the rest of the world thought I was still the not-so-proud possessor of a mutilated stomach, my parents decided it would be best for me to stay out of sight for the entire summer. Completely out of sight. As in, not leaving the house except for the nights my “condition” required it. And, as if being on house arrest wasn’t bad enough, Mrs. Matthews called to inform my parents that the pre-Olympic schedule of one of the world’s top costume designers simply didn’t allow enough time to watch Angel over the summer, leaving me with the responsibility.
“But you guys are finally getting along better,” Talley said as she attempted to mimic the stretching exercises I was showing her in the make-shift dojo Dad constructed in the loft over the garage. “It won’t be that bad.”
I twisted to the other side, laying my head on my knee. I got momentarily distracted by Jase and Charlie who skipped warm-up to mess around with the bokkens Toby would rarely let them use. They were mesmerizing to watch. Jase’s speed and energy reminded me of a rabid hummingbird, but Charlie was able to deflect him with a lethal grace I’d never noticed before. You could barely see one of the muscles fleck in his bare chest before his sword would magically appear between Jase’s blade and his flesh with an audible thwack.
“Angel is like a rich dessert,” I said, snapping myself out of my reverie. “In small doses, she’s wonderfully sweet, but get too much and you quickly get so sick of her you can’t see straight.”
“I don’t know what you’re whining about,” Jase grumbled as he ducked away from Charlie. “Not only am I grounded for a whole freaking month, but I have to miss summer session and get a job.” He accentuated each of his punishments with a bone-jarring swipe at Charlie.
I got to my feet and heard Talley do the same behind me, but was unable to pull my focus off the boys. A knot of conflicted emotions took up my entire chest cavity, turning the normally simple task of breathing into a labor intensive burden.
While shirtless Charlie was the main contributing factor to my emotion-induced asthma, he wasn’t the only one. Jase and I were just starting to learn how to be post-accident Jase and Scout. It was going to be a long process, one that would always have the pain of Alex’s broken body at its center. But I was willing to endure it because, despite everything, Jase was still my brother. I needed him. I needed us to be okay, and we wouldn’t get to that point if he moved off to Lexington in two weeks to get a head start on classes and unofficially train with the rest of the basketball team. So I was happy Dad called the school and used our family’s recent tragedy and my grandfather’s name to ensure Jase could stay home all summer and not lose his place on the team.
Of course, delighting in Jase’s misfortune didn’t exactly get me Best Sister Ever points, hence some of that conflicted emotion.
“Scout, can we be done now?” Talley laid her head on my shoulder, batting her big blue eyes at me.
“I guess that’s enough warming up for one day.”
Her entire face fell. “Warming up?”
“Yep, and the boys are about done, too.”
“You sure about that?”
I could see where her doubt stemmed from, the wooden swords were still whacking against each other in a continued, steady staccato rhythm, but Jase’s feet were moving much slower. Then, as if on cue, Charlie feinted to the left, and when Jase followed, come down on the right side, delivering the killing blow.
“Bob Saget!” Jase cursed, slinging his bokken across the room in an easily anticipated bout of temper. Gracious loser and Jase Donovan were two terms that rarely kept company. “You would never have been able to do that if I wasn’t still sore as hell from yesterday.”
“Keep telling yourself that, pretty boy. Maybe one day you’ll start to believe it.”
“Time out,” I said, sliding between the two. “No ninja monkey attacks. I’ve got a job for you, Jase.”
“Does it involve polyester pants and a neon colored t-shirt bearing an annoying advertising slogan?”
“No.”
“A lawn mower and/or weed eater?”
“No.”
“Soap and car wax?”
“No, Jase…”
“Then your wish is my command, Pack Leader.”
“I prefer Queen Scout or Your Royal Highness.”
“How about Royal Pain?”
“How about you run through some simple drills with Talley before you get yourself in a heap of trouble, Underling?”
“You want me to train Talley?” Jase’s mouth flattened into a straight line. “No.”
“No?” Was he joking? He didn’t sound like he was joking. “But we need to train her to defend herself, remember? We had this whole discussion about how if we were going to do the whole Seer Harriet Tubman thing then she needed to be able to fight just in case some crazy hillbilly really did try to grab her. Surely this sounds familiar. It was your idea.”
“I meant for you to train her. You. Not me.”
“Why not you?” Talley grabbed my arm and said my name in that please-don’t-because-I’m-not-worth-it way of hers, which only managed to transform my confusion into major annoyance. “You’re good with novices.” When Toby made us help out with the younger kids, Jase’s group always managed to actually learn something while Charlie’s group was typically found running around the building like a bunch of wild banshees and my kids sat in a corner crying. “Is it because of that one time her mom sent her to practice with us when we were eight? Because that was nine years ago, and your uncle should have been wearing a cup.”
“She’s not touching me. My thoughts stay in my head.”
I saw Talley discreetly wipe away a tear and had to swallow back a scream of frustration. “For the love of all things shiny, she’s not going to go poking around in your head, Jase. Talley has no need in knowing what half the females at Lake County High look like naked.”
“Whoa!” Jase’s head jerked up, his eyes wide. “Did you just call me a man whore?”
“How is that worse than accusing one of your best friends of being a mental Peeping Tom?”
“She’s a Soul Seer.”
“And she has it under control.”
“She has it under control most of the time.” Talley brushed away another tear and this time Jase saw. It was like someone let all the air out of a balloon. His shoulders sank, his head fell slightly forward, and all the hard lines of his face slid away. “I’m sorry.” He sounded like he really, truly was. “But it’s my head. No one should be able to get in there but me.”
“But—”
“No, he’s right,” Talley said, cutting me off. “My control isn’t absolute, and Jase has a right to privacy. It’s in the Constitution or something.” She gave a watery smile. “Anyways, there was no way this was going to work. I’m the Alfred to your Super Friends. Me and the physical stuff just doesn’t work out well. I mean, look at me.”
“Tal…” J
ase gave me a desperate look.
“Don’t be stupid, Talley,” I said, placing my hands on my hips. “You can and will learn to defend yourself. That’s an order.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I thought you didn’t want to be a Pack Leader and give orders.”
“And I thought you wanted to be your own person, free to choose which Pack you belong to.”
There was an uncomfortable silence as Talley and I just stood there, staring each other down. I couldn’t help but think that at one time Charlie would have stepped in at this point to say something clever to lighten the mood and then deftly maneuver us all into doing exactly what it was he wanted, magically convincing us it was our idea in the first place. Instead, he stood off to the side, watching but showing no indication he was affected in the least.
“Okay, you’re right,” Talley finally sighed. “I can at least try.”
“There is no try,” Jase said in a voice more closely resembling Miss Piggy than Yoda. “Do or do not.”
In the end, Talley did. Sorta. She was overly timid as Charlie and I showed her how to escape different holds while Jase provided a running commentary of not-so-helpful tips from across the room. Eventually, though, she gained some confidence and began making progress.
Talley’s self-defense training and our own workouts became the entire focus of the summer. It only took Dad a single day to find Jase a job as a lifeguard, so we scheduled a session every morning before he headed off to the public pool at The Strip and another in the evening. By day two, Jase managed to get Talley a job at the snack bar where he could keep an eye on her, leaving me alone in the house with Angel and Charlie.
I spent the majority of my time in deep research mode. Since I read every book available on werewolves when I found out about Alex, I knew there was nothing helpful there. Instead, I investigated the whole blood transfusion angle. I buried myself in medical journals and text books. Mom’s copy of the Merck Manual was my constant companion. I poured through library databases and on online health sites. Through it all I found nothing more than a growing fear of bloodborne pathogens.
As for my companions, Angel was surprisingly tolerable. Sure, she criticized my wardrobe daily and tended to watch the most annoying television shows ever made, but at least she was fully interactive.
Charlie was like a ghost made of granite. When we trained, he executed his moves with stoic precision. At dinner - which my parents insisted should always include everyone sitting around the table eating together - he answered Mom’s seemingly endless questions on his family, first year of college, and any other topic she could think of politely and succinctly. Even Angel, with her inability to understand boundaries, couldn’t wrangle anything more than a sentence or two.
You would think his lack of interaction would’ve made it easy for me to ignore his existence and go on about my normally scheduled life. You would be wrong. It was as if his presence was made even more oppressive by his silence.
It was like he was always there, no matter where I went. If I walked into the kitchen to grab a drink, he would be sitting at the table eating. If I went out for a walk in the woods, the only place outside the house I was allowed to go, I would turn a corner to find him sitting on a tree stump or fishing in one of the little ponds that dotted our property. I could barely walk out of my bedroom without almost barreling into his chest.
I thought eventually I would get used to seeing him, that it would become easier, but it didn’t happen that way. If anything, it got more and more difficult. I wanted to hate him. At times, I did. There were moments I hated him so much I fantasized about clawing his face off.
Those were the easy times.
The times when I wanted to fold myself into his arms, when I ached for the sound of his laughter, those were the difficult ones. Those were the times I hated myself for still loving him.
As my friend Joi would say, I was one big hot mess and getting messier by the minute, which is how I found myself trying to concuss Charlie with one of the wooden swords he and Jase had developed an obsession over.
“I just think you can do better than Randy’s,” I said, swinging the bokken with all my might. “You know, maybe there is a crack house in need of a janitor or something.”
Charlie, having fended off my attack with the exact amount of effort Goliath used on a ninety pound asthmatic, cracked his sword against mine, sending it flying out of my hands.
I really, really hated fighting with bokkens.
“What’s wrong with Randy’s?” Jase asked from the other side of the room. He was showing Talley an easy karate routine while maintaining a distance of at least five feet. If I hadn’t needed all my oxygen to dodge Charlie’s non-stop attacks I might have pointed out that she’d been cured of cooties way back in second grade with a carefully placed vaccination of circle, circle, dot, dot.
“The words ‘den of iniquity’ come to mind,” the cootie-free girl in question answered for me.
“Dude, I love that place.”
I managed to get enough distance between Charlie and me to shoot Jase an incredulous look. “My feet stick to the floor, and it smells like urine.” The last word came out as a grunt as I kicked out and finally relieved Charlie of his weapon.
I smiled. Things were about to get interesting.
“What are you going to do, Charlie?” I rolled my shoulders, loosening the muscles. ”Something incredibly dignified, like mopping up puke in the bathrooms or checking to make sure the working girls’ vaccinations are up to date?”
Honestly, I don’t know why I was being so antagonistic. Randy’s wasn’t that bad. Sure, it was a little trashy, even for a place that advertised itself as a “one stop shop for manly entertainment,” but it wasn’t Trainspotting worthy. Part of me just wanted to keep pushing until Charlie exploded, just to see something resembling life flash through his eyes.
Charlie circled casually to my left. “I’m working at the shooting range.” I was so shocked I didn’t notice his tell, a shift of his right hip, and found myself on the business end of a right jab. His fist connected with my jaw, but as per usual, he was holding back. It stung like crazy, but I would hardly have a bruise the next day.
And that’s what made me snap. Not that he’d hit me, but that he’d pulled the punch.
I couldn’t even blame it on the whole wolf girl spilt personality. It was the same loss of temper that had me punching Ashley Johnson last winter. I held nothing back and threw every rule of fair play in existence out the window. He held me off for all of two minutes, and that was only because he was strong as a freaking ox. But I was faster. I knew he would be wearing the evidence of our bout for days to come when I put him on the mat.
“Yield,” I said, bending his arm back at an angle that would snap the bone if I pressed down just an inch more. He attempted to roll beneath me, and I sent his arm a quarter of an inch closer to the mat. Before, I would have let it go right there, making some comment about boys and their ego. Charlie would have teased me relentlessly about being the one who gave up and picked at me until I declared a rematch.
Those days were over. That Scout and that Charlie died on the shore of the lake under the light of the full moon, and the next full moon made certain they would never be resurrected.
He twisted again, and this time I planted an elbow into the hard muscles of his abdomen. “Yield,” I repeated, leaning in so my face was directly in front of his. With no other options available, he was forced to look at me, and when he did…
I knew a deep breath would help, but I seemed to have forgotten the mechanics of it.
I don’t know how long we stayed frozen in that moment, but it was a long time. Sometimes I think there are parts of us still there, forever staring into the emotional maelstrom of one another’s eyes. Charlie ended up being the first one to break the connection. He lifted his chin, exposing his neck to me.
Instead of acknowledging the submission, I quickly jerked away from him in possibly the single most ungraceful mo
ve in human history. Putting as much distance as I could between us without actually leaving the room, I collapsed back onto the floor, staring resolutely at the ceiling. I noticed Jase and Talley had grown Charlie Chaplin silent. There wasn’t even the groan of a floorboard or squeak of the mat to indicated they were even still in the room.
“I’ll be working at the range,” Charlie repeated into the quiet stillness. I closed my eyes and finally remembered how to take those deep breaths. “And before you go all Mother Hen on me, Talley, remember I’ll be behind bullet proof glass the whole time.”
“But you’ll still be passing out guns to rednecks.” Even I could hear the resignation in my voice. I wasn’t going to use my Pack Leader status to tell him he couldn’t take the job. “You can do better than this, Charlie.” Of course, that didn’t mean I was going to express my not-so-humble opinion. “There has to be a virtual smorgasbord of jobs that don’t involve half-drunk morons and firearms.”
“Probably,” was the only answer he seemed wiling to give until Jase ventured into the conversation.
“Will you be able to get us in?”
“Yep.”
“Despite the ‘no one under 21’ rule?”
“Yes.”
“After hours?”
“Not going to be a problem.”
“What are we going to do about guns for the girls?”
Wait. What? I didn’t want a gun, and the idea of Talley with something she could accidentally shoot her pinkie toe off with was possibly the worst idea ever.
“Jake Sills has a little Smith & Wesson he’s going to sell me for Talley, and I thought we could pick up a compact Glock for Scout.”
I rose up onto my elbows. Jase and Talley were both sitting against the wall. I could tell by the crooked little line between Talley’s eyes that her thoughts mirrored my own. “Why would Talley and I need guns? We don’t have to lug riffles out into the woods to pull off some overnight hunting trip story. Mom and Dad already know where we’ll be on full moon nights.”
“You know the whole werewolves can be killed by a silver bullet thing?” Charlie asked.
Time Mends Page 8
