I heard the scream right before I woke up. It wasn't until I sat up I realized it came from myself. I had been dreaming about Elsa. Again. I had seen her running towards me, with her blonde hair dancing around her. He brown eyes had been watching be with a sad expression before she stopped and disappeared. Then I was awake. I looked at my watch. 7.25. I could just as well get up. When I stood, I grabbed the fluorescent pen and marked yesterday in my calendar. 16th of May. Fifteen days until I was safe. I went to the bathroom next to my bedroom and spent half an hour there to do something about my appearance. I went down to the kitchen. I met my little sister, Hanna, on my way down.
"You screamed" she muttered and I shouldered my way past her. Elsa was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I went into the kitchen and saw my mom with the newspaper. She looked up when she heard my steps. It was like looking at an older version of myself. Mom and I looked very much alike, everything from the long, black hair and small nose to the green eyes and the little too thin lips. I looked at her newspaper and saw that she was reading an article about a family whose son had evolved. Mom saw what I looked at and sighed.
"You have fifteen days left, you will get through." she said and I turned to the cupboard and took a cup. I waited until I had poured the coffee before I answered her.
"We don't know that" I said while I sat down and held my hands around the cup. What was it I was afraid of? Afraid is the wrong word; I was more worried. The year you turned 15, you could evolve into a werewolf during the month of May. Two representatives from the werewolves visited the family. The representatives took the child to an unknown place. Many parents were relieved when the representatives came, while others made a scene about it. The same thing could happen the year you turned 16, but this time you could evolve into a vampire. I hade made it through the werewolf-month, now it was just the vampire-month left. I was worried I would evolve, and what could happen to me if I did. The risk was there, in fifteen days.
I was pulled from my thoughts when the doorbell rang. I drank what was left of the coffee and put the cup in the sink before I opened the door. It was my friend Wayne from school. He was waving with a white little paper bag.
"I guessed you wasn't going to eat breakfast as usual, so I bought you this" he said and gave me the bag. I opened it and found a breakfast bagel from my favorite café.
"Thanks" I said and hugged him before I put on my black boots and jacket. I took my school bag and said goodbye to my parents. We went outside to Wayne's green scrapheap to Volvo. He had been working like an animal since he was 13 to afford half of the Volvo, which he shared with his brother. Scrapheap or not, it was a car. I sat down in the passenger sear and took a bite of my bagel. It took three attempts to start the car before it started to roll down the street towards the school. We sat in silence and I buried myself in my thoughts. I looked out the window and counted streetlamps while I muttered to something Wayne said.
"Hello? Earth to Stella?". I came back to reality and looked at him.
"Sure, you usually disappear into your thoughts, but you usually don't space out like that" he said and I shrugged.
"I have a lot in mind" I said and Wayne chose not to answer. I knew he thought I was thinking of Elsa. He wasn't wrong. I threw the leftovers of my bagel in the bag when he drove into the parking lot of the school. We went out of the car and stood before the three, white buildings that formed my school.
It wasn't until lunchtime the subject Elsa came up in an actual conversation and not just in out minds. I, Wayne, Abby and Tara waited for our fifth member to arrive, Nathan.
"So, what do you think Elsa is doing right now? Running around, howling?" Wayne said and picked in his food. It was meat stew. Again. Tara shivered and shook her head. Tara was as afraid of werewolves and vampires as my dad was.
"I think she is okay" Wayne added, as if he could read my minds. I wasn't worried about the risk that she had evolved; I was worried that she wasn't okay.
"We don't know if she evolved, she said she was moving" Abby said and Wayne snorted.
"Without calling at least once in a year? Don't think so" he said and put down his fork. He had given up, the stew didn't get tastier when he picked in it.
"What are you talking about?" Nathans voice said behind me. He sat down between Tara, and me who played with her hair. She pretended she didn't heard what we were talking about. Our gang was now as complete as it could be without Elsa.
"The gang's own werewolf" Wayne said and Nathan jumped into the discussion. They loved to discuss theory of what had happened to Elsa, even though both of them were sure she had evolved. I stopped listen after a while. I knew somewhere inside of me that Wayne was right. Elsa hadn't contacted anyone in a year; it was clearly suspicious. If she had moved to North Carolina as she had said, she should at least have called her best friend once. But neither the others nor I had heard a sound. Even though the odds that she had evolved were big, I didn't want it to be true. Not because I was afraid, but because it meant that I would never see her again. I was pulled from my thoughts when Tara reminded us that our last class for the day started in ten minutes. We went together to the classroom where we saw a group of girls from the class. One of them was missing, and three of them cried.
"What has happened?" Wayne asked and the girls turned to us.
"It's Enya. She has evolved" said the fourth girl and Tara sounded like she was going to vomit.
"We met her today", said one of the crying girls, "her eyes were yellow and she left after we had met. We don't know where". They all hugged and we stood in silence until our teacher arrived. We used the whole lesson to whispering about Elsa and Enya's fates while we looked like we were listening to our teacher talking about the Civil War. Wayne and Nathan came up with the brilliant idea of driving Wayne's scrapheap to North Carolina and find Elsa.
"You know it takes two days to drive from Sacramento to North Carolina?" I whispered and Nathan smiled. I turned to the teacher and tried to put what he said on my mind. All I could think of was Elsa. Where was she? Was she even in the USA? What if they had sent her to Europe or the other side of the planet? I spent the rest of the lesson imagine worse and worse scenarios where Elsa was. I turned to my friends when the lesson ended. Wayne and Nathan were still discussing how best to drive to North Carolina while Tara stared at Enya's friend's backs as if they were infected with something. We went out from the classroom and collected our belongings from our lockers. When we stood next to Wayne's car we decided to meet up the same night and try to contact Elsa. It was something we had tried to do more than once. Nathan offered his house and we parted. Wayne and I sat down in his car and the others went their ways. Wayne left me next to my house, and it wasn't until he left that I saw her. It was a woman with long, light brown hair. She stood across the street, next to a street lamp. She was talking on her phone, but I could only catch that she seemed upset. She hung up, looked right at me and smiled before she turned and started to walk down the street. It felt like she didn't belong here in some way. I came into the house and was greeted by our two dogs; a French Bulldog named Frank and a Corgi Pembroke named Milton.
"I'm going out with the dogs!" I said and got a muttering noise from the living room as an answer. I opened the door and the dogs ran out like bullets. We started to go down the street and the dogs ran around and sniffed on everything. When we passed a café, I saw the woman again. She wasn't alone. She was talking to a man in his twenties, with dark brown hair in a little ponytail in the neck. I heard a little of their conversation.
"They should be here according to Helia, I propose we prote…". I frowned. It sounded like a weird topic. Not that I put my nose in other people business, but it was something different with both the man and the woman. I shook my head and let it go, even if it was something, I would never get to know. I turned left and went into the dog park. I released Frank and Milton and let them run around. I sat down on a bench and looked around. It was a beautiful park, with big trees and a pond in the middle. Balls and dog toys flew around in the wind. I sat there for a while and thought about how much Elsa loved to be here with me. I called the dogs after half an hour and went back home. When I walked by the café was neither the man nor woman there.
It was Nathans little sister who opened the door when I arrived. She had the exact same light brown color on her skin as her brother and the exact same shade of black hair. It was just her green eyes that differed from Nathans brown. She let me in and Nathan and the others met me in the hallway. We went into Nathans room where a laptop stood.
"There is no use", Tara said and we looked at her.
"What?", she said sullenly, "it's not like she is going to answer"
"You are just afraid", Abby said and no one could ignore to hear the cold in her voice. Nathan pressed "call" on the screen and we waited. Even though I had done this a million times by myself, I got nervous. No one answered. Nathan hung up and we looked at the screen. It was Abby who broke the silence.
"It seems like she has so much fun that she can't answer". It was the nice way of saying "there is no use. We should stop hoping". Nathan reached for something on his wardrobe and pulled down a game we always played when we were at Nathan's: Risk. As soon as we started to play, we forgot about Elsa for a while, at least.
"Ha! I win with Africa, South America and Europe!" Abby shouted after a few hours of playing.
"Yeah, I had to let you win, I didn't want you to cry", Nathan said and Abby rolled her beautiful, blue eyes and punched him on his arm. We had a discussion about who was the best player, without success. After I while, we decided to go home since it was late. Abby and I went together for a while, until she was turning right to get to her house. When I walked by myself, I saw a figure next to one of the houses. I got a nasty feeling in my stomach, like I was going to vomit. Suddenly, I heard steps behind me. I looked back and a man with a long leather coat and no hair on his head walked behind me. I went faster. So did he. I stopped. So did he. I dialed mom's number when I started to walk again. If something happened, I could call her and she could do something. There was a light in one of the houses. Would they hear me if I screamed? When I was thinking of the worst scenarios, I saw someone in front of me. It was the woman from earlier. She walked towards me, and I heard how the man behind med went into the woods. She passed me, and I looked back to se her go into the woods as well. I walked fast to my house, and went up to my room. When I looked out my window, I saw her stand next to the street lamp as she had been doing earlier. I went to bed. It felt good to have her out there in some way.
I woke up to the sound of voices the next morning. I went up and marked another day on my calendar. Fourteen days left. I put on the clothes from the day before and put my hair up before I went down to see who was talking. I could hear my dad's voice, but I didn't recognize the other. I came into the living room. My mom and sister sat in the sofa, and my dad stood up across from a man with dark brown hair put up in a little ponytail in the neck. It was a woman by the wall, a woman with light brown hair. I looked in the man's eyes and I suddenly realized what I though was different with him. His eyes were yellow. They were here to get someone. It wasn't hard to guess who.