Takota
"Kota, did you do your homework?" Mom yelled from the kitchen.
Of course I had done my homework. I did every stupid thing Mrs. Chenoa told me to. Did I have any other choice? Nope, not one stinking choice.
My imprint was probably the most unfair one out of all my pack. Sure, Quil and some of the others were stuck imprinting on girls younger than them – babies in some cases – but it wasn't nearly as annoying as my sorry luck. While they were waiting on their future wives to grow up, I was stuck on the other end. I had gone and imprinted on my eighth grade teacher. She had to wait for me to grow up, and I had to try to keep her from freaking out when she caught me staring at her in class.
"Yeah Mom," I yelled, kicking my basketball a little too hard and causing it to careen off my chair and into the wall. Shoot. Another hole. There were already three others I had covered up with posters. This one was in a weird place for a cover though. If she found one, she was going to look for more. It couldn't end well.
"Kota, if you're going to play rough you should go outside," Mom warned me.
It's a good thing she didn't know about me. I can just imagine the look on her face if she ever found out that her only baby boy was a wolf in his spare time. Then again, she might surprise me. She usually did. That would be worse. She might follow me around with a brush and clean-up kit and groom me right to death – especially because of my color.
Some of the wolves had lighter fur, but none of them had it as bad as me. My coat was a very light gray, with white on my paws and face. I was the freak among freaks, and they constantly razzed me about getting dirty. It was bad enough being the youngest, without having that to contend with.
"Get cleaned up," she yelled again. "Breakfast's almost ready."
Well that was good news at least. In response, my stomach growled a little. Would I eat as much when Jacob's wife changed me?
I wasn't excited about it. Actually, I was downright mad about the whole thing. Just because I was the runt didn't mean I couldn't be a valuable member of the team. I had swallowed my pride when Jacob told me about my new job. It had taken a good hour or so for it to sink in that he had chided me right into agreeing to it.
I mean, really. Who would want to follow around a bird all day – especially when that bird was Leah Clearwater?
It sounded like a pretty crappy job to me. They were just trying to keep me away from the action, not realizing that I could probably help them if it came to a fight. I was small, but I was smart. Not that it really mattered anymore, especially since I wouldn't be a wolf for much longer.
Leah had gone and screwed things up again, and I had to fill in for her until she popped the kid out. Well, they were going to try to make it so that I could take her place, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure it would work. I was sort of hoping Nessie screwed it all up. It's not like she had much practice with that sort of thing. Just because she had managed to change what Leah could do, didn't mean it would work with me. I wanted to be a part of the pack. Leah hadn't.
Jacob had all but made her change me on the spot when I had finally resigned. He hadn't exactly helped my decision along either – with his mocking about becoming a turtle dove. Then, he had won again by referring to me as a canary. I wasn't yellow! He had known that of course, and it was another hour later that I had realized he had suckered me into doing his bidding – again.
"Are you coming, sweetie-pie?" Mom called.
I sort of understood that she couldn't look at me like I wasn't crawling around in diapers. She was my mom, and I was her only kid, but I wasn't some sissy boy. I was tough. I had even beat Len and Machk in a few spars – not together of course. But they were mostly always together. I guess twins are like that, but I didn't even have a brother or sister to relate too – let alone someone I'd spent every second since I existed with, so I couldn't know for sure.
"Coming Mom," I hollered.
I tried not to think about breakfast like it was my last one, but I had to admit to myself that I was a little scared. What if Nessie did screw it all up? What if in the process she took every stinking memory from my head, and I ended up on one of those weird breathing machines that my dad had been on before he died. What if my body stuck around but my brain was all marshmallows?
That wasn't the worst thing that could happen to me, either. Maybe I would half phase into some weird creature and couldn't phase back. What if it killed me? Nah, I was too tough for that to happen. And even if she was half-bloodsucker, she wouldn't let that happen. She was good people. I could tell that about her.
I actually liked Nessie. I didn't much mind Jacob either – not that I had a choice in the matter. He ran things a whole lot differently than Sam. At least he was trying to involve me. Sam had just brushed me under the rug and pretended I didn't exist. I guess that was better than being in the front and getting growled at all the time.
Sighing, I moved toward the bathroom to get cleaned up. I took a good, long look at myself in the mirror. There was still a great bit of roundness in my face, and while I wanted to hurry up and grow up, I had to be patient. The others who went through the transformation sort of took a giant growth spurt and ended up shooting right up to the sky in a few years. Me, I was stuck waiting for my spurt to happen. It felt like I had been waiting forever. My chance to touch the sky was going to happen with a new set of wings.
Turning off the water and making sure to clean up the sink as a pre-emptive strike against my mom's clean-queen tendencies, I started down the hall. Sure, I was small, but like I said, I was tough. Maybe I could work the whole thing to my advantage and show them they could depend on me so that when they got around to changing me back, I could be the first to say I flew through the task and lived to tell about it.
Besides, getting them out of my head for a while wasn't entirely a bad thing. At least I would have a break from being called 'Teacher's Pet'.
Sitting down at the table, I pretty much ignored my mom's dirty look when I started eating with my hands to speed up the process.
"Takota, mind your manners," Mom scolded me. "You would think you were raised by a pack of wolves."
I looked up at her sheepishly. She had no idea how close she had come to the truth.
#
I wasn't really sure what to say, how to act, or what stance was most appropriate for the up-and-coming change. Nessie was looking like a bundle of nerves too. I wasn't sure it was really a good thing that she was sweating. Yep, she was totally going to screw something up, and she knew it.
That wasn't stopping either of us. We were both too stubborn to admit defeat. Probably equal parts stubborn and stupid. I was hoping to get it over with quickly, since I was missing out on my most favourite part of the day – school. Could I help it that my passion to learn came strictly because of who was doing the teaching?
"So. Uh. Let's just do this thing," I stammered.
She just stared at me like she was trying to figure out something important. It made me uncomfortable, and I couldn't stop fidgeting.
"Nervous?" she asked.
"No," I lied.
"Well I am," she replied, letting out a big breath.
It felt sort of weird that she was confiding in me. In a way, I was more worried. In another way, it felt pretty good to know I wasn't alone in my feelings. I wasn't weak. I wasn't a baby. Then again, she was a girl. So I wasn't about to completely let myself get run over with emotion.
The longer we sat there, in silence, the more anxious I became. That's what she took me completely off guard and laughed. Girls were very peculiar creatures. It was like a light-switch went off in her head, and she was completely determined.
"Ready?" she asked softly.
"Yeah," I muttered. "Ready as I'll ever be."
"It's going to be great," she said, smiling like my mom did when she knew she had a surprise up her sleeve that was going to be completely awesome.
I trusted her. I didn't know her that well, but I completely trusted her with everything inside me. It was like she had a giant bubble around herself, and she had pushed it out to surround me. I knew as long as I was inside that bubble with her that nothing bad could happen.
When she placed her hand on my face, at first it was like a trippy music video with colors and lights. She was putting the thoughts in there, her own memories of feeling like she wasn't a part of the group – an outsider. The thoughts sort of changed though, like while she was putting them in there, she was also pulling something else out.
Mixed in with her pictures were pictures of my own. Me as a toddler chasing after my mom. Me coming home from school and finding out my dad was in a coma. Me trying to reach the kitchen cubbards to try to make my mom breakfast in bed for her birthday. Me standing at the edge of cliff while the others laughed and called me a wimp. That one stopped her, and she drew her eyebrows together like she was concentrating really hard on something.
She continued with that memory, but it was like other things were playing in the background while they slowly pushed me toward the edge. In the background were other memories of when I had felt too small and useless to do anything. The last memory I remembered her taking was my first phase.
I had been coming home from school, and Joe Brown had decided he was going to razz me about my dad. It was mean, and he had wanted me to cry. But I hadn't cried. Instead, I had started shaking so hard that he had run the mile straight to my house to get my mom.
Sam had gotten to me first.
Then it all got hazy. The only thing I could still see was my body getting pushed closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. I could feel their hands pushing me, and me being unable to stop them. Then I was falling. The water was rushing toward me, and I didn't feel the exhilaration that they had promised me I would. The air was cutting into my face, and the ocean was getting closer and closer. And then I hit it, and everything went black.
I'm not sure how long it took before I was thinking clearly. It felt like hours that I was drifting.
I blinked a few times and looked her square in the eyes. "Well, what do you suppose I am now?"
She laughed. "I guess we will have to wait and see."
"You mean, you don't even know?" I asked, annoyed.
I didn't feel any different. I felt like the same little kid that I always had. It's not like I expected to have the urge to peck something, but I figured something would change. I was sort of torn between disappointment and relief. If I was still a wolf, it wasn't my fault. I had done everything that they had asked me to. But at the same time, I was letting them down too.
"Have a little faith," she said, smiling.
"Easy for you to say," I groaned. "Shouldn't I try it out?"
"Not yet," she warned me. "You'll know when the time is right."
"How will I know?" I persisted.
"Because I'll know," she answered thoughtfully.
"Well, thanks for the clarification," I grumbled.
Then she was standing and out the door before I had time to blink. The girl was definitely weird, and she had taken her bubble with her, leaving me to sit and stew over what she had turned me into. I guess I would just have to wait and see.