Wolf Sirens: Forbidden: Discover The Legend Page 10
After four days of practice, morning and night, I began to get better and I actually picked up the steps. I didn’t fall over my own feet or hit anyone though Lily developed a habit of bumping me. I guessed that it was not out of clumsiness. But I knew I wasn’t good, not after I saw them in action. They were like elite gymnasts - each member ate power shakes for breakfast and pasta at lunch. They were strong and flexible. They were rhythmic, precise and beautiful, like a real pod of dolphins powering through the surf in unison, I imagined. This was my new life and I was in practice to become one. However I was still a flapping fish not yet transformed to their impeccable standard, not to mention my thigh and stomach muscles ached.
“I won’t be good enough in time, Sam,” I admitted. She only patted my back and asked if I would just learn it, then the style part would follow.
“I’m not fit enough.” But my feeble complaints fell on deaf ears.
My legs pained as I trudged to class, every muscle ached. I felt less like a dolphin and more like a jellyfish. Reid came up behind me. I sagged under the weight of his arm as he casually threw it over my shoulder, joining me on my way to class. I swayed and he squeezed me close and almost carried me to visual art. His warm shirt pulsed with the warmth his body emitted like steam.
“Has Sam been brutal?”
“You have no idea,” I sighed.
“Don’t worry babe,” he cooed.
“What’s up, L?” asked Jackson.
It began to dawn on me that this group liked me and so I quickly and easily became one of them. It was as natural as breathing, and I had become an organic fixture of the ‘in’ crowd.
“God, don’t even ask.”
Reid intervened. “Practice is killing her muscles,” he offered.
“No, it’s killing me literally,” I moaned.
We entered class and all the other students stopped talking as we sauntered past to our seats. And just like that, I was part of the clique, but more than that. The feeling, which crept up on me, engulfed me and the tiny desire to be near them grew and fed on their presence - a feeling I wasn’t familiar with and perhaps back then I thought it was just happiness.
The whole clique took me out to some unused fields on the outskirts of town, the grass was dry and in a clear paddock rimmed with run down fencing. Sky’s blue ute pulled up. It was loaded with two dirt bikes, and Bianca and Jackson jumped down from the back. Sam rode a quad bike and met us. Sky arrived on a road bike. It looked expensive as he rolled up slowly and shut off the engine. I couldn’t help but admire the sleek shiny lines.
The aim of the day was to ride around and take a few jumps. Sky joined Jackson with a shovel and they piled a small mountain of dirt. He compacted the earth with a few beats from the flat side of a large spade. It was cold and I wore a black quilted jacket. Whilst I watched, Jackson and Reid rode the squealing dirt bikes through the mud. I viewed them from a vantage point behind the old fence posts. Sky pulled a beer from the back of the pickup and came to stand by me, leaning on the rusted wire. He wasn’t close enough to allow conversation so we stared out at the boys taking ridiculous risks, sailing over the mud jumps and when they almost collided I gasped audibly. Sky laughed. “Shit!” Our eyes met and I wasn’t sure what to say as I rested my hand over my heart. Sky offered me a sip of the beer. We each stepped closer so I could reach it and I tasted the warm wet saliva from the top as I took a sip of foam. I made out the line under his shirt of the chain around his neck.
“They’ll be okay,” he assured me.
“Are they normally this reckless?” I asked wiping the foam from my mouth.
Sky took a sip without wiping the rim of the bottle and nodded as he swallowed.
Cold, I dug my hands into my pockets. Sky was wearing a T shirt and jeans. I noted what it was about him which was so captivating. He was handsome, classically so, but his manner wasn’t intimidating. There was something wounded about him and I could see it now.
“Do you ride too?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, eyes on the track.
I recalled with a cringe his bike, parked behind me. “I mean obviously you ride, I just mean do you do that?” I watched Jackson go past and propel from the mound they had made as he landed. Sky answered, “I’ll let them have a bit of fun first.” The comment sounded almost fatherly. Over the roar of the engine we heard Reid’s nefarious laugh.
“Do you like it?”
“Riding?” he questioned.
I nodded in reply.
“Yeah?” I could see a smile at the corner of his lips.
“Do you hit the jumps?”
“I try.” He smiled self assuredly. “Do you want a go?”He raised his eyebrows in a show of genuineness.
“Me, no,” I said unsure. “I’ll have a ride on the back or something but not over the jumps.” I flushed with embarrassment. Of course I wouldn’t go over the jumps.
He laughed a little but resisted the urge to make fun of me, I guessed.
Later, rain started to drizzle so we packed up as the clouds rumbled above. Sky offered to let Jackson ride his bike and Jackson swooped up the keys with enthusiasm. Bianca and Sam took the four-wheeler, Sky ended up sandwiched in the front of the Pickup with Reid in the driver’s seat. I swallowed uncomfortably as his tanned hand brushed mine, the gear stick separated Reid and me, but I could feel Sky’s warm thigh against mine even through my jeans. I wished he hadn’t ridden with us. And perhaps he would have jumped on the back of the ute with the bikes had it not started to rain. I began to realize a sweeping feeling. It was unidentifiable but it was there.
I never had been popular before but I took to it like a duck to water, made easier by the fact that the rest of the students had ostracized me previously. The distance I felt between myself and the rest of the teenagers grew. I was no longer below them but far above. I was no longer aloof, I was the opposite of boring and I was definitely not invisible. I was elevated to a social status, faster than anyone could have predicted. Mr Crealy didn’t recognize me by the third week of school as I visited the office to change my class schedule. My hair was dyed and highlighted, my eyebrows plucked and tinted. Sam and Giny had more than a little fun giving me a manicure, a shopping trip and make-up, even a shout at the hair salon where I was given new blonde highlights and layers, whilst my split ends were cut away. I had been transformed into a popular girl, I walked the halls with the in-crowd, and we were high school royalty. Tealy and Monica looked away when I entered English and stared when I wasn’t looking. Reid stroked my hair with the end of his pen from the seat behind. Life had changed. I was now a Dolphin but I felt more like a shark as I smiled with my painted lips and shiny hair.
If Cresida was in class I would not have noticed, I was basking in the collective glow of my new status, which my new friends permeated like perfume
- though like Giny I wasn’t good enough and, like her, I didn’t care.
Geography was the only thing which dampened my newfound elation, Mrs Bealy remained absent and it was revealed on the rumour mill that she had joined a religious sect and left her husband. I swallowed a lump in my throat when I recalled the things Cresida had said to me. She said the wolves had taken Shelly Bealy. At the time I hadn’t realized she meant Mrs Bealy, my teacher. Angie’s friends seemingly only noticed her absence. Giny said her stepfather was a drunk; everyone thought she had run away.
“Haven’t you forgotten about me yet?” I laughed at Reid as he waited for me outside school after the final bell.
“I have an idea.” He smiled. “Let’s have a break.”
Reid entwined his large fingers in mine and tucked his arm around me. This was the real deal so far, he and I. We’d been dating three weeks. This was an all-time record for me since my last relationship in 3rd grade and my rejection by Jeff for my best friend, Bec, who was now far from my mind. The fact that Reid wanted to hook up at all with the new chubby girl, in baggy street gear from the city, was amazing to me. My head dizzied as he warmly kissed
my cheek and squeezed my shoulder. There wasn’t room for paranoia in my life anymore, but I must have looked troubled. He cocked his head to the side and brushed my hair behind my ear. I looked up at him thinking the world would catch up with me soon, and if so, would I be ready when it did? This tanned god was my boyfriend.
“Hey what are you sad about, L?” he cooed softly. Nicknames were big in the popular world, though I hadn’t been brave enough to make up my own yet. I changed the subject.
“Where are we going?”
“Dinner,” he said.
I expected a restaurant, but as we rolled down the
long dirt driveway of no. 31-33 Stones Road, I realized we were at a house, though it could have been a venue; it was a large cabin style log home with multiple stories and stonework, surrounded by purple Agapanthus. I couldn’t decide if I liked the design or not, it wasn’t quite like anything I had seen before. It was a log cabin on steroids. We got out.
“Is this yours?” I smiled, bemused.
“Sam’s,” he simply replied. I walked with him to the door - he strolled, and I stepped more briskly. He didn’t knock or announce us. “Her parents are in Valley Heights in Tarah, at their beach house.” He said it like an apology as he opened the large door. The floor was covered in raw irregular slate paving which stretched the advance of the house and flowed out the rear sliding doors to a patio and down stairs to a courtyard. He examined my reaction. “What do you think? Nice huh?”
I imagined this would have been the sight of parties. There certainly was enough space. I was led to the back of the house. We stood in the main living area from which I could view the huge green pool.To our right, up a level overlooking the courtyard, was a huge kitchen with a black granite bench top and to our left a lounge area, where Bianca reclined with a wine glass in front of her painted toenails on the coffee table. She was reading.
“Where are the others?”He spoke in her direction.
“Out,” she said. “Food’s in the fridge,” she added in a high friendly tone without looking up.
He went over to the refrigerator and studied a chart on the side. He pointed, resting his finger on it, and then turned to her. “B, wasn’t it your turn?”
“I will do it later.”
“It’s your head.” They exchanged looks. He said, “We take turns cleaning, there’s a roster,” he explained, pulling open the fridge door.
“Sam should just hire someone,” Bianca interjected behind us.
Reid looked visibly annoyed. Instead of replying to the remark he scanned the fridge. “What would you like, L?”
I noticed the bin next to the fridge was overflowing with food wrappers and discarded scraps.
We spent the weekend reclining on a beach chair in the undercover pool area listening to music on the radio. I drank non-alcoholic cocktails with Giny. Sam and Lily were in and out; I didn’t know where they went. The house was so big I assumed they were in another area or on another floor, though I imagined you could get lost in the unusually large multiple levelled cabin. I glanced up at the long upper balcony overlooking the back yard.Were they up there? Bianca seemed to take over hosting duties in Sam’s absence. She notably knew where everything was, getting us towels and making food. I made two visits home to placate my mother. It didn’t take much and she was pleased to see that I had friends and genuinely happy to see me smiling and acting normal I guessed, after the first rough weeks of ‘settling in’.
I snuck out my window on Saturday night. On the Friday night I told her I was at Sam’s and she didn’t question me, except to enquire if I had been heeding the curfew. I knew she thought the Angie girl had been taken by the wolves and in the past I would have seized the opportunity to manipulate this in my favour, but now I just ignored it. She smelt of gin. I didn’t invite my new friends inside for introductions and in the dark night I rejoined them hurriedly. Parents were non-existent in this new world and my mother was merely an inconvenience.
Reid gave me a tour of the rest of the house, everything was normal, apart from the lack of adults, and all the rooms contained double beds. He showed me the guest room. There were portraits and black and white pictures on the walls of what I assumed were relatives. The guest rooms were on the second floor, including a main bathroom, with an ensuite to two of the rooms. Sam and Bianca’s bedrooms were up more stairs on the third level, Lily stayed at her place on the beach. Reid said Bianca’s parents were always traveling, so she lived here with Sam and her parent’s rather than go to boarding school, though I hadn’t seen them. Reid said they were on holiday. I had the distinct feeling they were more often than not on holiday. Sam seemed to run the place - she did all the delegating, there was a list you could add to and the rules were whoever went to town that day had the obligation of acquiring the items requested. When Giny decided she wanted to invent cocktails we ordered coconut milk, mango cheeks, pineapple and elderberry cordial, tomato juice and celery - and Bianca arrived back with everything we needed. She helped us mix the ingredients, but I noted she added vermouth to her concoction, complaining that she had to go to two different shops to acquire the ingredients. She left the liquor cabinet open and I saw the collection of spirits and vodka. She spent the rest of the day reading a Mills and Boon novel by the edge of the pool in a yellow animal print bikini, which left little to the imagination. And I could see the appeal living with Sam had.
Bianca only rose to put the washing on the line in her slippers whilst the boys played football and when the ball struck the clothes line as she pegged, she swore at them and smiled.
The guys swam in the pool splashing us with salt water. Giny and I were the only ones who seemed to feel the cold in the evenings. I swam in a bikini in the cold water when it was vacated, too shy to join the boys or risk getting in the way of their ruckus. The cold burnt my skin and I vacated the green toned water vibrating with chill. We watched movies in the TV room and Giny told me about Lily’s place right on the beach and we made plans to go there in the summer. I wondered when Sam’s parents were coming back. Gin and I slept on the floor wrapped in blankets when the last movie credits rolled, though I knew there were many rooms and beds in the house, I slept pleasantly, tucked up on the carpet over a couch cushion.
In the night I heard the guys talking loudly, raiding the fridge contents. They laughed and jostled each other, the light woke me, but I lay still with my eyes open. From my view point I could see Giny was gone from her spot on the couch. I saw her empty blanket in the moonlit darkness. I guessed she’d snuck out back home as I slept. Her parents were stricter than ours – but that wasn’t saying much. I didn’t know what the time was but it was dark and felt very late. I could tell the guys were in high spirits after some backslapping and jokes at Jackson’s expense while they ate straight from the fridge and pulled items out onto the bench. Reid stood there drinking a whole carton of milk as some ran down his rippled russet coloured chest, which reflected a shine of sweat. For the first time I looked at Jackson. In his own right he would have been considered buff and handsome at any other high school. He had a long, shaggy grown-out fringe that covered his eyes, and it was sand coloured. He was slightly nimbler than the other two in width and height and he was the clown of the bunch, a title occasionally rivalled by the loutish Reid.
In a normal group of high school boys, absent of Sky and Reid, he would have been the leader of the group; in his own right he was attractive. But my eyes always seemed to take in Sky with all their spare vision. Even in my dreamy state I took him in, he was clearly the alpha of the group, he was more serious than Reid and definitely Jackson; they moved around him. It wasn’t as obvious by the pool when they played diving and tackling each other. Reid and Jackson frequently returned to their homes. I noticed Sky always stayed.
Sky leant against the side counter, which met his lower back, gleaming under the kitchen light. I saw him slowly glance in my direction. I couldn’t be sure but I thought he saw me even though it didn’t register on his face. I shi
fted uncomfortably as his gaze met my eyes. He may have been checking if I was still asleep. He looked considerate, he must have been able to make me out clearly in the dull light as he faced the group and resumed talking. Reid and Jackson didn’t seem to notice me or know I was there. Sky didn’t say anything about me. After a time they all left and Reid quietly asked if he should take me home, his breath warm in my ear. I nodded and he lifted me up, much to my shock, and carried me outside to the car.
11. The Last Day on Earth.
“That was good, but let’s take it again!” Sam ordered us. Giny was the flyer I was in the base; I learnt the monkey grab and other terms. I bent over onto my knees hoping I wouldn’t heave up the vodka cocktails we had indulged in, when we were bored of the virgin type. I vowed to never to drink again. Rhythmic Calisthenics was a cross between cheerleading, modern dance and gymnastics. I guessed from my gruelling introduction that kids trained from a young age for a long time to get it right and I wondered why on earth Sam had put faith in me to develop to a standard worthy of competition.
The open liquor cabinet and lack of parental supervision or anyone who cared had seduced us. Giny looked green and her eyes were bloodshot; a look was all we needed to exchange this morning between bouts of performance.
We rehearsed a routine part of the way through, stopping when I stumbled, out of time. “She’s no good!” Lily spat venomously, before everyone else had stopped.
“Do you want to make her any good?” Bianca intervened and I appreciated the remark in my defence
- though Bianca was the one who had left an open invitation to the array of liquor.
“Give her a break, she’s not like us,” she spat back at Lily. Lily trembled with rage. I thought she was going to lash out and hit me as her hands made the shape of claws and her knuckles turned white - the anger wasn’t mutual. Bianca stepped in front of me in a crouching protective manner with her arms back.
I looked at Sam as she shouted, “Lily!” - panic in her eyes - “Calm down!” Her voice pleaded, “Don’t ruin all our good work.” Soothingly she wrapped her arm gently around Lily’s back and placed a palm on her chest. She whispered into her ear too low for me to hear, glancing in my direction. Her eyes were wide and frightened, she began to walk Lily backward, and I didn’t realize the force with which Lily resisted until I noted Sam leaning and her feet sliding back along the boards of the hall floor towards me. Lily was physically pushing her with less strain than I would have thought. Suddenly Lily broke from her grip too quickly for the others to act effectively as barriers. Mid step her body launched into a shiver and burst into brown blur. Before I knew it a snarling wolf was about to lunge toward me. I saw it like a flash before my eyes in the half a second it took to feel panic and shock as she sprang at me, teeth out. A slap rang out, sharp, as the huge creature landed on me, pushing me with a thud down and backwards onto the floor. Its weight fell over me, heavy and lifeless, knocking my head and elbow to the floor with a smack, swiftly pushing all the air from my lungs. Stunned, I pushed against her and flailed weakly. My breath had been flushed from my chest with the force. I’d never felt so feeble as I wobbled under the enormous weight like a stunned mammal and then I tried to breathe. I couldn’t draw in air! I gulped and struggled. In the severe hit, which my body had sustained I had been badly winded. The warm furry body was dragged limp from me. I had my chin up trying to gasp, crying out, trying again and again to suck in air.