Chapter Ten: Change

"This is going to be our last batch, okay Sophie?" Sue told me as we stirred chocolate chips into batter. This woman cooks constantly, and not even for herself most of the time. It's really amazing. She says sometimes she cooks for Emily Young, a girl on the reservation.

"Who's Emily Young again?" I asked.

"She a girl on the reservation, I already told you that," Sue told me.

"I got that part, I mean, why are we making these for her. We've had to of made twelve dozen or so at the very least, I mean my arm feels like it's coming off I've been mixing so much!"

"Well, you know how much Seth eats?" she asked me.

"Well yeah," It's kind of hard not to notice. I mean, he eats like a starved person even though he's far from it.

"Well she has a fiancée who eats exactly like that, who stays over at her house a lot, plus she has others to cook for, like her husband's friends and such."

"And they all eat like Seth?"

"Right. Sometimes, they eat more."

Oh my god. How could anyone eat more than Seth? I gaped at her and she smiled at me. "And they all work in security I guess," I told her. What do these men do all day when they work? Do they just run around the entire perimeter of the state of Washington or something?

But I know better than to ask Sue, or Seth. They wouldn't answer me fully and I'd just get frustrated.

"Can you finish this batch, I need to get off my feet, and I'm feeling extraordinarily tired today for some reason."

"I wonder why, it couldn't be because we've stood here all day and done nothing but create culinary masterpieces all day could it?" I asked her with a grin. "Yes I can finish it without anything going wrong, I hope."

As Sue went to lie down I wondered what could be wrong with her. It just seemed so out of character for her to actually want to lie down. She was normally so tough! She had been going to the doctor's office a lot…

"Sue, how old are you?" I asked her, hoping I wasn't being rude. Ever since Seth and I became friends I had become fractionally nicer to people. I was hardly ever rude, but I still got aggravated sometimes. I couldn't be perfect, and besides, that façade was the thing that I hid behind for so long, I couldn't just break the habits now.

"Twenty nine and holding," she told me. I laughed and then she added seriously "I'm fifty three, why did you ask?" She told me.

"I just wanted to make sure that you weren't going to die on me or something," and then I internally sighed with relief. That was still really young for people.

"No I'm not going to die! My goodness, why are you being so morbid all of a sudden?" she asked me.

I shrugged in answer and finished putting the cookie in the oven where they were going to cook for fifteen minutes. I sighed. Maybe I could rest before we had to clean up.

I knew the real reason that I was worrying, but it wasn't exactly something that I could say out loud, even if Sue knew everything.

The anniversary of Peter's death was coming up in a month, and I was getting depressed again. It was hard to think about, but the date was right around the corner. And I was insanely worried about Seth, even though there was no reason to be. I mean, it's not as if they would have any reason to mess with him anyway…

As I shook my head to get it out of my funk Seth walked in the door, and I smiled at him the best I could.

"Are you okay?" he asked me, looking worried. This was one of the worst things about Seth, he noticed too much sometimes.

I nodded and tried to smile more convincingly. It didn't seem to work, but I didn't want Seth to be worried about me. "Do you want a cookie?" I asked him. He usually forgot everything once we brought up food.

"No," he answered. "I'm not very hungry, actually."

"You're not hungry?" I asked. Wow, that had to be a first.

"Nope, I just ate at Emily's with the guys, we needed our fuel."

Oh, so that's what Sue meant when she said Emily needed help.

"Look, do you want to go take a walk down First Beach?" he asked me suddenly, almost randomly.

"Um, sure I guess. Let me go get a coat and I'll go talk to Sue really fast," I answered almost as swiftly as he had asked the question.

"Oh yeah, where is mom anyway?" he asked me.

"Up in her room."

"Okay, I'll be waiting out in my car. I don't think that your car could handle the sand."

I rolled my eyes; he always made fun of my car! When I entered Sue's room she was dead asleep and I didn't want to wake her up for something so insignificant.

"She's asleep, I didn't want to wake her up," I told him and he nodded.

Seth's house was on the other side of the reservation, the one farthest from the beach, so it took a while. We didn't talk in the car like we usually did, and this worried me a little. We usually didn't have silences like this one. What was on his mind! I needed to know before he drove me insane.

"What's your problem?" I finally exploded on him. I winced at my words, they sounded harsher than I had intended.

He grinned at my reaction, but to me it wasn't funny. I glared at him as his grin faded, and he didn't look me in the eye.

This scared me for more than one reason. What if he said that he didn't want to be my friend anymore? What if he was sick and tired of me coming around, what if he asked me never to talk to him again? There were so many things that could be going wrong in a situation like ours, and I was frightened to my core. It would kill me again if he said that he didn't want me to be his friend anymore.

"Okay, where did that come from?" Seth asked me. I shrugged. I wanted Seth to go on, I wanted this to be over as quickly as possible so that I could go home and try to forget about him. Try being the main word here.

I didn't know if I could do it.

Seth took my hand, and this time I didn't shy away from the contact. For some reason it felt oddly comforting to me. Like I had been in agony, and his touch had taken the pain away.

Okay WHAT THE HELL was that? I had an urge to pull my hand away from his and run away as fast as I could in the other direction. That sensation scared the hell out of me I had never felt that before in my life. Ever.

"You know," Seth started as he glanced at our hands so quickly I almost didn't notice it. "My birthday is in two weeks."

"No way, how old are you turning?" I asked him. That meant that his birthday was about a month or so away from mine! How cool is that?

"Nineteen. Duh Sophie, I've already told you that!" Oh, right. I had forgotten.

"So when is the actual date?" I asked, liking the way that our conversation was going. Maybe things weren't going to be as dreadful as I thought.

"November twenty seventh, actually," he told me with a wink. "I'm having a party, which is part of the reason that you and mom made those cookies."

"Really? Why didn't she tell me that then?"

"She probably didn't realize that I didn't tell you that. I usually tell you almost everything."

The almost bothered me more than it should. What was with the almost, I mean I didn't exactly tell him everything myself, but still.

"Oh, so am I finally going to meet the infamous Collin and Brady?"

"Yeah, you'll meet all of the guys."

"Will Leah be there, or is she going to be in class then?" I asked. I wanted to meet Leah, to see if she'd approve of me. I knew it really didn't matter in the slightest what she decided about this, I mean, Sue liked me well enough and I guess in Seth's opinion (from what he's said before) she was the one that really mattered.

Not to say that Seth didn't care about his sister, because he did. I could tell by the way that he would talk about her, and the gleam he got in his eye made me all the more eager to meet her. She seemed really important to him.

"No, Leah won't be there. It's difficult for her to be here, is all."

I nodded. I never understood what Seth or his mother meant whenever they said things like that about Leah. I wondered randomly if it was a family trait to be vague with one another. But then again, they all knew what the other one was talking about. I was the only one who wasn't in the know.

Seth took a deep breath and I braced my self. Here it comes, the blow I had been waiting for, and I could see it plainly on his face.

"Look, Sophie, there's something I need to talk to you about. I probably should have told you about it earlier, like way earlier than this, but I was scared. Please just take this rationally please."

Oh God. What could be the worst that could happen? Did he have a girlfriend or something now, and he was afraid that I would take away from that relationship? It's not like I'd never heard that one before.

Oh my god, that was so true! How could I not see the truth that was right under my nose! The elongated work visits, the vagueness? I might as well have been blind.

But then the pain that I felt after realizing my assessment blew me away. I then knew why I didn't see this coming. Because I didn't want to see it. Why should I be sad if he had a girlfriend? That fact really shouldn't have hurt me as much as it did. Images of Seth kissing a girl with long dark hair filled my mind and I wanted to shy away from the pain. This hurt.

No, no, no, no, no. I didn't want to find this out. The phrase 'ignorance is bliss' has never been so true. I had to fight the urge to cover my ears and hum obnoxiously.

"I didn't want to do this right know, but mom suggested it would be a good idea and I agree. As I told you before, I should have told you a very, very long time ago."

He took a deep breath again and I bit my lip. The suspense was killing me. Why couldn't he just tell me about it already, damn it!

I want to die at home now please. I just wanted to mourn what could have been a great friendship.

"Look, don't go off screaming, please. Please. But the truth is that I'm a werewolf."