Wolf Sirens: Forbidden: Discover The Legend Page 5

  I ignored her correction.

  “Principal said I should meet you.” I shrugged. I swallowed, trying still to sound casual. “He said you would show the new girl around.” I shrugged again, honestly not sure if she was going to refuse based on her expression.

  “Sure,” she said in a low tone glancing at her friend Monica in her peripheral vision.

  “Are you friends with Sam?” I enquired, as we walked out to the hall toward the cafeteria.

  She laughed nervously and I wasn’t sure why. She looked like she wanted to take off.

  “Should we have lunch together?” I did my best friendly smile; it felt like a bad impersonation. I stood in the entrance to the lunch area waiting for her answer. I was better at this than I had anticipated.

  “Yeah, okay.” To my surprise Monica had replied, from behind us. She looked at her friend and shrugged. Tealy glared back. It seemed I was social suicide, even though the most popular girls seemed to currently adore me. Why? I wondered, and how much trouble would they be in for walking into the lunch area with me? But I dared to see. I walked closely with them. I wasn’t going to let Tealy or Monica escape.

  The open lunch area was sparsely populated. It was a nice clear day and the larger population was outdoors soaking up the springish winter weather so we made less of an entrance than I’d hoped.

  The clique was on the green lawn in the sun being entertained by a boy doing cartwheels and walking on his hands up the embankment where they sat. He, too, looked fit. Was it something in the water? We bought lunch and I guided my new friends to the outside as well. I realized as we approached that there was a good view of the lawn from the far seat in the undercover canteen. I plunked down, immediately happy we could see the entire student body from our vantage point.

  “So tell me the gossip. Who’s who?” I pointed around. I spotted the yellow-haired girl. “Who is that?” I chimed pointing to the green blazer she wore.

  “Who? Cresida?” Tealy replied. “She looks like she’s wearing something from the op-shop,” Tealy whispered to Monica.

  “Oh, so she’s the one missing from class.” I wasn’t genuinely surprised. They didn’t elaborate, so I asked another question jogging my memory for anything I could use. “She’s into books and computers and stuff, yeah?”

  “Hardly,” Monica scoffed, bemused.

  Tealy informed me. “She was really popular ’til like last year. Now she ditches school and-” she glanced around and lowered her voice- “she used to hang out with the queen B over there.” She tilted her head in the direction of the clique.

  “Queen S and Queen B,” added Monica, enjoying the gossip as equally as her friend.

  “- And queen L! Ha, right,” laughed Tealy. The two girls smiled and nodded at each other.

  The clique was throwing popcorn playfully into the acrobatic boy’s mouth, laughing and lounging on the grass.

  “She’s into drugs,” said Monica with her dark eyes still referring to Cresida.

  “That’ll do it; I guess,” I added knowingly. “Does she hangout with Sam and Lily at all?” I asked.

  They both looked perplexed. Tealy laughed nervously. “No,” she huffed.

  “She used to,” admitted Monica.

  “Yeah, years ago,” argued Tealy tucking her dirty blonde hair behind her ear.

  “One year ago,” Monica corrected. I couldn’t be sure but I thought I heard sadness creeping into her tone.

  “Are you guys friends with them? Cresida or the cli-Sam and friends?” I prompted swallowing.

  “No, why?” Tealy asked with a suspicious expression.

  “Tell me more,” I encouraged. “How long have you known her? Have you all grown up together?” I leant on my knuckles, ready to listen, my full concentration directed towards the twosome.

  They looked at each other. Monica spoke first.

  “Well, actually no, they’re all new here - except Giane. Cresida was really popular around here until, I don’t know, six months after they all arrived,” she emphasized. “Until last year during term break, they all went down to the creek, camping,”she hissed. “When they got back everything changed. Reid was more muscular,” she blushed. “Same with Jackson,” she recalled. “Cresida fell off her perch,” she added with a guilty look.

  I wondered privately if it was steroids or something, which had sculpted them.

  “Why don’t they hang with her anymore?” I asked, unsure. They looked at me.

  “Have you seen her?” Tealy pointed to her own head with her mouth open. “She’s taken a few too many E’s,” she whispered circling her finger near her temple to indicate the fact that Cresida had lost it. “She used to sleep around, that’s when anyone would have her,” she said with disdain. “Now her Aunt has to deal with her.” She shrugged, scooping up a clump of mashed potato from the top of her pie.

  “Yeah, the aunt’s a total church nut,” Monica added. “Why are you so interested, anyway?” she enquired, sipping her shake.

  I smiled. “Just curious-” but I wanted more -“how were they different after the river?” I wanted to know.

  Tealy went on.

  “Just look at them, all of a sudden they were, I don’t know - the popular kids, like they deserve it and they know it,” she said, her voice souring. Monica nodded in agreement. Tealy stirred her milkshake with a straw.

  “Tell me about him?” I pointed to the good-looking chestnut-haired guy.

  Monica looked over.

  “That’s Sky.” She smiled slightly.

  “Where?” I said scanning the girls. There wasn’t anyone I hadn’t already put a name to within view except for the guys. “And that boy is Reid.”

  I realized she was talking about the guys. They were tall and they weren’t boys if that’s who Tealy and Monica had been referring to. Maybe not long ago they were, but what I saw was three men. They had answered to last names in the classes I’d shared with them - Harton and Davies. The handsome dark-haired guy was Reid Davies.

  I eyed the tall guy.“Sky…Harton?”I asked unsure.

  They nodded in unison.

  My heart started to jump in my chest as the tall one glanced at me, as he bent down to kiss Sam. I looked away flushing with embarrassment. I hoped they didn’t notice my reaction.

  “He’s Sam’s property,” Tealy informed me.

  “Who?” I said, as she raised her eyebrows at me.

  “Sky.” Monica smiled wider at me with her bunched teeth, perhaps knowingly.

  He was too beautiful for the reality of Shade. He wore buttoned blue jeans, a white singlet and a blue short-sleeved shirt; his ear-length wavy brunette hair blew in the breeze; he tucked it behind his ears, his eyes were sapphire blue. I tried to look away, succeeding this time. He wasn’t perfect but there was something about him, which my eyes liked to linger on.

  “Hot, huh?” Tealy nudged me with her elbow, evidently noticing my voyeurism.

  Monica whispered, “Reid’s the available one,” smirking.

  “Well co-ed does have its advantages,” I added slyly in a tone that was meant to impress them. “He dates Sam?” I asked, referring to Sky.

  “Sure does, and here’s the best part,” she leaned in. “He used to date Cresida,” whispered Monica. She licked the inside of her top lip.

  “Till she went loco that is,” Tealy continued.

  “Teals!” Monica scolded.

  “-Well anyone would have,” she said defensively. Monica shook her head at Tealy.

  Ignoring her friend, Tealy lowered her voice.

  “Now they’re all back together, minus Cresida.”

  Monica sighed. Sam shot a glare at us from the lawn. Her crystal light blue irises pierced our gathering as though she had heard us. She turned and seemed to continue her conversation in the sunshine, although she could not have overheard, from her distance.

  I tried to imagine Cresida with him, the Cresida in the picture in the office with cleaner hair in the white top and jeans, which showed her
belly button, her smiling face and flushed cheeks. I could imagine her beside him. In my safe position I casually asked about Giny - she was the only piece that didn’t fit. The rest were muscular, well fed thoroughbreds. I looked at them luminous with youth in the sunlight with their unsettling confidence and alabaster skin. Giny’s skin was dull, her frame small and her limbs bony, more like an un-toned ballerina than a strong trained acrobat. She seemed unfit and unwell next to them with deep shadows under her eyes and a smattering of freckles across her small nose. I wondered how she fitted in, was she related to one of them? How was she part of their crowd while Monica and Tealy were not?

  “Tell me about Giny?” I added with curiosity. “She doesn’t seem to fit?” I leaned in.

  They looked at each other brows raised. Tealy answered.

  “She’s a brown noser.” She screwed up her freckled nose. “She’s wanted in since forever, since Sam arrived.”

  I could tell it left a bad taste in her mouth.

  She squinted.

  “Who knows what she’s done to get in,” she said with disdain - with the ‘clique’, I added silently in my head. I realized that if Sam and her posse weren’t at the school that Tealy would have been the ‘it girl’, along with Monica.

  “Giane used to be a – nobody. She’s lucky,” sighed Monica. “What!?” she replied to Tealy’s glare, which she returned. She threw a pretzel at Tealy playfully. They smiled and then talked of their absent friend Angie, how she had been weird all day and left school ill earlier. I tuned out and gazed at the lawn, happy to take a moment to bask in their presence from the safety of the cafeteria, all the time wondering if I was the next victim, their next Cresida.

  I felt no disdain or fear as I took them in, just numb curiosity, and admiration. Could I be one of them?

  Now that I had some background they seemed more intriguing. Sky and Sam, now in her Jackie O sunglasses, rolled on the grass in the sun smiling, their friends around them. I felt compelled to join them, but would I have been greeted as warmly as yesterday? I wasn’t sure. If it was a cruel joke, then why was Cresida in on it, if they’d had a falling out?

  I broke a short silence my eyes still on them. “Do they ever get involved in hazing?”

  “Who, them?” Tealy looked over, her mouth full of meat pie. She shook her head. “No.” She looked at Monica.

  Monica agreed. “No, not that I know of? Why?” The bell pierced our ears ending lunch.

  “Um, I don’t know they just seem the type,” I shrugged.

  The girls exchanged glances again.

  “Well, we’ll be off then.” Monica grabbed Tealy and they hurriedly tipped their lunch trays in the garbage and exited into the hall, swallowed up in the sea of students drawing out of the cafeteria. They hadn’t bothered to ask anything about me. I felt they weren’t in any hurry to speak to me again. I wondered if Sam was the cause as I watched her gather her cardigan on the lawn as the others moved around her like she was a planet, not moving assuredly until she had. I began to feel angry. A feeling of unrest, which I now know to be a different kind of poison coursed through me. I wished I could take her down. In that moment the very first stirrings of something that would become bigger inside me compelled me to action. At the time I was convinced it was just boredom and the need for justice, which infused me.

  Cresida was in my fourth period class.The USB stick containing the footage had to be in her bag. How was I going to get it? I had a hint of sympathy creep over me for her. Surely, no matter what she did for them she would never get back into their circle? They were probably using her as much as they used Giny, exploiting her needy vulnerability in exchange for popularity. Maybe they used Cresida now too. I had a sudden urge to run home and never come back. To call Bec who had been an ear for me via SMS the last week. Part of me wanted to go home but nothing waited for me there, the city was a cold host. I remembered Arli having the girls who tagged around with her push me in halls, and the gossip they caused. I would have been dragged back nearly as soon as I got there anyway, and I didn’t want to live with dad’s girlfriend.The thought made me sick to my stomach.

  A dormant spark awoke in me. The clique’s mysterious behaviour, perhaps Shade’s spirit, began to infuse my body with life. I wanted to be alive like the clique on the lawn; perhaps I wasn’t so different from Giny. I wasn’t sure blood actually coursed through my grey complexion until they looked at me. I felt what I imagined Giny felt - that it was better to be seen, than not seen at all. Better to be the least dazzling of them than be invisible. Something about them beat with life.

  I went straight home avoiding practice, as a conflict of interests stormed inside me. I watched the land pass by out the window on the bus and noticed how green the hills were in winter. I messaged Bec and she called me a few hours later at home.

  “So how’s life?” she chirped.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Bad, huh?”

  “God, I don’t know, it’s weird - half the town is on

  Prozac– or drinking the Koolaid and the other half, actually the popular kids, are trying to get me to join their clique,” I huffed in disbelief.

  “Weird,” she said sounding distracted.

  “I know, what a turn-around. I just wish I could get the fuck out of here,” I sighed.

  “Yeah I got your messages about the alternate universe you’re in.”

  “It’s just shit. I’m not one of these kids. I don’t know what to do. I can’t stay here,” I whined.

  “Lila, I told you my olds would kill me if you showed up…not to mention your mum,” Bec warned. Rebecca had always been the cautious one in our friendship. But her warning was unnecessary. I wouldn’t have wanted to hide at her place, not with Jeff now permanently attached to her hip.

  “I know, it’s just, my God, you have no idea how odd it is here.”

  “Hang in there, it’ll get better,” she comforted.

  “What-like maybe the killer wolves will die and curfew will be dropped?” I thought about Ben shooting them all. For a second, maybe, I wanted to join him, as though it was them that hindered my freedom.

  Bec laughed at my melodrama. “Yeah, genius”.

  “Maybe a club will open?” It sounded stupid but Bec feigned a laugh. “Do you think it will ruin my street cred if I do make friends with the popular, rich kids?” I added. Her optimism was almost contagious. Curfew however stopped even the remotest possibility of after-dark fun.

  “Why? Are there boys?” She was curious, but the last thing I wanted to discuss with her was guys.

  “No.”

  “Well, it could be a new start,” she added hesitantly.

  “Great, so everyone wants me to just roll with it and change? Even you?” I said defensively.

  “I don’t, but you’re stuck there.”

  “My God, you’re starting to sound more and more like your parents.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she retorted.

  “Forget it.”I knew I was being grouchy, but things had been strange between us since she started dating my crush.

  “Fine…look, sorry it’s not working out. Hey, maybe I’ll visit you over Christmas?”

  But by Christmas I’d be a different girl.

  “Yeah,” I breathed.

  “Bye, Hun, keep in touch.”

  “Sure, bye, Bec.” I didn’t ask about her life. I couldn’t bear to hear how in love she was.

  I wasn’t in the mood. We had fallen off the same wavelength after they became a twosome and now the distance made it worse. Our friendship was dying a slow death.

  I’d hoped she could make the situation here clearer for me, but somehow I was just more confused and more alone.

  6. Archangel

  That night as I undressed in the bathroom mirror, I caught sight of a discolouration on my upper arm. I touched the mark and felt the familiar burn of a bruise in the shape of Cresida’s fingers.

  During the night I dreamt of the wolves. They were differ
ent colours, with tanned legs that padded through the wet earth, as they ran in the woods. One of them stared into my face with clear as ice, blue eyes spattered with brown specks and then it wasn’t a white wolf ’s face - the dog’s features became smooth and the hair over its face became luminescent white skin, it was Sam’s face inches from my eyes. I awoke. All the down time in Shade caused vivid dreams.

  It was an image that stuck with me the next day on the way to school, as I caught the bus. No one from the team had called about my absence from practice. I didn’t know if Sam would take offence to me declining her invitation. Maybe they thought I was making other friends, being that I had stared at them whilst lunching with Monica and Tealy.

  The day was uneventful until lunch. I waved at Tealy only to have her assume a blank look and walk briskly from the canteen, though my look at Monica was surprised disappointment. She shrugged at me also and went off after her. It wasn’t just my imagination, something was up with this whole thing, the un-cool girls were ditching me while the coolest kids in school pursued my company – and so far I had avoided them because my instincts told me it was wise, especially given the whole Cresida James strangeness. So there I sat by myself. Sam was out on the lawn despite the overcast weather, sitting on a bench. Giny and the rest of the gang joined her or, rather, settled around her. I threw my lunch in the bin and went to the library for the remainder of the hour. I was relieved Cresida wasn’t there. I didn’t really need the stress of confronting her. I didn’t need to suffer any more rejection. I was disappointed I couldn’t steal her bag for the video footage. Under the fresh spell of my anger from being ditched at lunch by Tealy and Monica, maybe I was capable. Sam was in my next class and she handed me a note, touching my hand as she did, not saying a word. I unfolded the paper warm from her body. It read: ‘Coming to practice this afternoon?’ in scrawling black ink. She nodded at me with a friendly expression. I shrugged and nodded back as the teacher began to address the class loudly. I turned my attention to the front and then glanced at Sam from the corner of my eye. Reid seemed to feel my eyes, he looked my way, I flushed crimson and the hairs on my arm stood on end. Perhaps I had enjoyed looking at him too much. Not only did I think him the most beautiful thing I had ever seen but that I was infatuated. I swallowed hard and tried to steady my heart as my pulse raced. God, how embarrassing, I thought, as if he would even dream of acknowledging me, the chubby new girl from the city.