Author's Note:
15 years ago, when I was in middle/high school I started writing (very bad) fanfiction. And now, all these years later, with some creative writing degrees and some spare time, I am going back through my hold hard drive, trying to mend and polish some of my old pieces to make them what I wanted them to be at the time. So I'll upload in chunks as I finish them. And when I get to the end of what I had, we'll see where the story takes me. Here's to fulfilling some childhood goals!
Part One:
For me, I had little warning. I didn't even notice the fever when it started. Well, it probably began long before the fever, a subtle shifting within me low and steady a simmering pot just waiting for enough sudden heat to boil over. The others, they talk about the change differently, how they felt the anger and the lack of control taking over weeks before their temperatures began to rise. How by the time their body was ready to explode into what we had become there was absolutely no doubt that something was wrong. But not with me. After, they wondered if it was because I was a girl, if somehow my femininity had changed the order of events, and because fighting them is useless and tiring I just let them believe that. But I know the truth. I am sure in the weeks leading up to that morning, there was the change. I was already so angry though, that it didn't even register. This new anger, the wolf anger, was merely another raindrop in the middle of an already raging tempest.
How could I not be angry? Sam had left me, left me for the one girl I thought I could count on. In a single year my entire life had shifted into some extremely sad movie I had no interest in watching. And I couldn't escape, I had to walk around constantly worrying that I would run into Sam, or even worse Emily. That I would have to stand in the aisle of the supermarket or the post office and make casual conversation with the girl who used to just be my cousin. I would have to stand, staring at the little band of silver around her finger and remember how just a year ago Emily and I sat at my kitchen table, my head tilted back as she braided my hair. We were talking about wedding dresses. Not in any real way, I was sixteen, and Mom had made me promise not to marry Sam until after high school at least. But Emily's hopeless romantic heart could not be swayed from planning each, and every detail of the far off event. I remember how warm the room was, something was cooking in the oven, bread maybe or biscuits, and the room smelled of yeast and lavender from the detangling spray Emily was combing through my hair.
"You know," she said, guiding my head to the side slightly to capture a few loose hairs from the back of my neck, "I think strapless would look so good on you. You have the shoulders for it." I remember laughing, both at her compliment and at the image of my self in some strapless satin gown.
"I always imagined something lace." I admitted, creating the silhouette in the hot air. Immediately I felt silly. Emily had a way of drawing me into the fantasy, she believed so wholeheartedly in Sam's love for me it was hard not to get swept up with her. "Or who knows. It's a long way off, maybe by then I'll want to wearing something totally different. Like puffy sleeves or a turtle neck." Although my back was to her, I knew she was rolling her as at me. She hit me in the cheek with the end of my braid, laughing again.
"Whatever you wear, Leah, you'll be a beautiful bride."
"Even in a turtle neck" I'd asked.
"In anything. Because you'll be marrying your soulmate, what could be more beautiful than that." And I believed her.
But things don't work out, not in the end. It was only a month or so later, I watched from the sharp edged rocks as Sam and Emily walked on the beach, Sam tucking his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close to plant a gentle kiss right at the center of her forehead. My forehead still buzzing with the memory of his lips on my head. So yes, I was angry. I had been angry, for longer than I remembered. It was always there, this dark and twisting thing inside of me, nearly tangible, like something rotten inside me and it made me bitter, the change slow and permanent as the color was sucked from the edges of my world.
It was Fall when my mother made me start running. She'd burst into my room two hours before school, the sky still tar black, and pushed me from the bed. She read it somewhere online, that consistent and routine exercise was good for kids with anger issues. I fought her at first, but then I realized that it did help in a way. The burn in my muscles, the feeling of my foot first sinking into the wet sand and the suck of it releasing as a pulled it free, it was a good distraction. Because here's the thing that no one tells you about anger, it isn't really real. Sure in some ways it is, but anger is really just the hard bitter shell that hides the gooey center of grief, or, loss or pain, or whatever it is. I didn't want to stop being angry, because when the anger ebbed, and some days it did, the weight of all that I had lost would swing down hard and fast. It would leave me breathless and shivering, like I'd been held under the freezing water. All I could taste was salt and blood. So yes, the anger was easier.
The running helped for a while, I got stronger (which I now realize was probably the wolf thing and not just my sudden interest in physical fitness) and Sam wasn't in school anymore. Some morning Seth would run with me, his young legs just beginning to turn into the strong, agile things of a true teenager. We wouldn't talk, we'd just run, the salt air burning against my lungs, my skin, my eyes. Seth was good like that, he knew when to be quiet. It was beginning to feel as if perhaps I could survive this. At the beginning, I hadn't been sure. I felt as if I could tread water here for a couple of years and then find a way to leave, to move as far away as I could go on my limited saving account. I could forget that Sam Uley ever existed. I wasn't yet sure if I wanted that, but I at least wanted the option.
In the weeks leading up to that terrible morning, my dad had been acting strange, taking Seth on all these long fishing trips on the weekends. "Bonding time" or something of the sort. I didn't exactly begrudge Seth the time with him, the boy was just hitting that age where father figures became important. It just meant that I was left at home with my mom most of the time. She was always right there, on the fringe of my world finding some new thing to find fault in. First it was how long my hair had gotten, that it was starting to be constantly tangled from a lack of brushing. Then it was my grades and then my lack of friends. Her voice became this constant buzz, like a wasp trapped inside my head, slamming around, stinging. This was when the boiling began. It felt as if my body was actually on fire, like I was being burned alive from the inside out. For two or three days it went on like this, the corners of my vision slightly fuzzy as I wondered if perhaps this was the onset of some mental breakdown.
The morning it happened, I was late for school. The old, dented fender Camry in the driveway had been a birthday gift from my parents that came with the stipulation of, when the weather was bad, driving Seth to school so that we didn't have to walk the two miles in the rain or snow. It was, of course, raining and Seth was already in the car. That boy was never late. His backpack sitting on his lap, a paper plate with two bagels sitting precariously on top of it. One for me. Mom came into my room without knocking as I was pulling the t-shirt over my head. I don't remember what she said, just that there was some threat of being grounded. It didn't really matter, I barely left the house nowadays anyway. Going out meant the threat of seeing Sam or Emily, or one of the doe eyed boys that followed him around like he was the La Push Jesus. I heard Dad rise from the recliner, the volume of our argument finally reaching his ears. He, like Sam, was often roped into playing peace keeper. I was moving into the living room, bringing the fight to him, and for some reason it felt as if my body was vibrating, like actually shaking with the anger.
"I am so done." I heard myself say, but it sounded distant, far off as if I was trapped under this lava that seemed to be moving through my veins. "I am so done with you and your hypocritical shit." I watched both my parents recoil as the curse left my mouth. Clearwaters weren't allowed to curse, it had always been the rule. I was unswayed, pausing long enough to bend and grab my sandals from beside the door. "Everything I do is wrong. Everything. I go out, I get in trouble, I stay home I get in trouble. It's like you want to find reasons to be mad at me. And I'm done. It doesn't matter. Be as mad as you want, I am just counting the days until I can get out of this hellhole of a house, of a reservation." I threw myself down on the couch to put on my shoes. I heard the thud of the car door shut as Seth entered the house, coming to try and soothe us. My mother was shouting, but I couldn't really hear her. I was too distracted by my own hands. They were shaking so violently I couldn't fasten the strap on my sandals. And there was something else, something inside. I felt it like a seam of a dress beginning to rip, an unraveling of sorts. A bursting forth.
I can't describe what that first phasing was like, all teeth and claw. I didn't even realize what was happening until I felt the fabric of the couch tearing beneath me. I felt the air, could smell the room and the tension in it. And there was something more, almost like a voice in my head. Holy shit. Leah?! Ahh, I knew that voice, but I couldn't place it. For a moment I was entirely sure this was some kind of breakdown or psychotic episode I had been fearing, but then I heard the screaming. I turned, it felt different to move, like suddenly everything in the room was smaller. My mother was hunched over, and I can only describe the sound as keening. Half fear, half grief. She was screaming for help, for my father, and that's when I noticed him. There were more voices in my head now, yelling my name. But none of it mattered, because I could see my brother crying. His whole frame quaking under the sobs. I moved to try and reach him, reach my mother and that was when I caught sight of myself in the front window. All the stories came flooding back, the ones told at council meetings, at slumber parties, by boys trying to scare the girls. We were descended from wolves. There were monsters in our tribe, and I was one of them. The face that stared back at me was my face, I could somehow tell that, as if it had always been my face. But at the same time it wasn't me because, in the literal sense, it was a wolf, and not just my face, everything. Seth's movement caught my eye, he was still shaking but now he was looking around in what I can only describe as terror, and as I watched he exploded, right there in the doorway. His close tearing and flying away as in his place was this five foot tall tawny wolf, still shaking, eyes wide. He was staring at me and I realized that I must look the same.
My mother was still wailing, oscillating between staring at me and Seth and my dad. I was standing on the couch, I could feel that, feel the lines of ripped fabric beneath me, but there didn't seem to be much more ruined in the living room. I searched my father's frame, still lying on the carpet, for blood. Nothing, it must be his heart. One of my mother's hands fluttered over him anxiously, the other held the phone from the side table. We stood like that for several minutes, no one moving. Somewhere in the distance I heard sirens. Thirty seconds passed and then my mother could hear them too. This seemed, at least for a moment to snap her out of her wailing. She looked once more between the two of us, and then threw her head in the general direction of the woods.
"Go." She said, then once again louder when neither Seth or I moved. "Go. Don't come back until you're normal." I noted that while there was fear in her voice, it wasn't as surprised as I was expecting. Maybe she'd always believed the legends, and was always expecting her son to one day transform into a wolf. But never her daughter. My thinking was cut off by her shout of "go" again, and this time Seth and I both listened. Out the front door, down the gravel driveway and then into the woods. It didn't feel strange to run on four legs instead of two, I was shocked at how incredibly natural it felt. I was faster than Seth and made it to the little stream first, faster than I thought possible. We were out of sight then, and I paused, my breath ragged. A new thought was beginning to emerge as I heard the sirens come to a stop, having arrived at the house. This new thought began, slowly to overtake my mind. I killed him. I killed him. I killed him. The realization grew and grew, expanding out until I could no longer breathe. My heart began to beat along with the three word sentence. I couldn't hear the stream any longer, there was only this low whine that I, with disgust realized was coming from my own mouth. I don't remember how long I stood there, Seth pacing back and forth anxiously. Soon enough though, I watched Seth's form shudder once, twice and then just as suddenly as he had changed he was himself. Only naked. He sat down, back to a tree, head in his hands. He seemed very small. I inched my way towards him; and even though he himself had been a wolf only moments before, I watched as he shied away from me. Unsure. A part of me expected him to leave, to run back to the house to be with Mom and Dad and the paramedics. There weren't sirens anymore. Was that good or bad? But he stayed for what seemed like an eternity, and I kept waiting to change back myself, but I didn't. I didn't remember anything in the stories we used to hear about how the Protectors changed back into humans. All I could do was lay there, staring at my two front...paws, and wait. I could still hear those strange familiar voices calling my name but I tried to ignore them. Listening for sirens or the weeping of my mother, trying to determine just how much damage I had done.
Eventually there was another noise, real voices, close by. I wondered if I should run, if whoever it was would kill me. Plenty of people carried guns when walking through the woods. What about Seth? Suddenly I whipped my head around to him, trying to communicate that he should to go safety, to go home. He was standing then, looking at something across the stream.
"Paul! Jared!" He yelled, waving an arm above his head. "Over here!" I couldn't believe him, was he trying to get me killed? Seth was always so sweet, but then again we had both endured a lot of trauma in the past hour. I heard the footsteps, the breathing. I turned to see and there, making their way through the low ferns towards me were two figures and in between them a towering six foot tall black wolf. Another wolf. So I guess we weren't the only ones. I wondered if these two boys were also whatever we were, monsters or protectors. The boys I knew well from my time with Sam, although they were so changed now. Gone were the lanky, beanpole teenagers. These were bulk muscled, clean cut men. They began to jog in our direction, leaping easily over the stream until they were only a few feet away, the large wolf totally in sync with them. They were both shirtless, seemingly unbothered by the light rain filtering down through the pines. A wide smile spread across Jared's face as he tossed a dark bundle in Seth's direction.
"You good little man?" He asked, Seth just nodded pulling the shorts, the thing Jared had tossed in his direction, without question. All three sets of human eyes turned to me then, and I couldn't help but lower my head slightly at the disgust on Paul's face. He spoke low into Jared's ear but of course I could hear.
"I really can't believe it's her. It's impossible." Jared shrugged,
"Not impossible, I guess. Just never happened before. I just can't figure out why she hasn't phased back. Seth went after her and he's back."
"Maybe it's the girl thing. Maybe she can't phase and she's stuck like this forever?" At those words I felt my heart quicken, stuck. Fear was causing that low whine to come out from my throat again. The black wolf, towering nearly as tall as Jared and Paul let out a low snarl. At first I thought it was directed at me, the hair on my back stood up out of instinct. But Jared and Paul fell silent, stepping a bit away from the wolf. I lay perfectly still as the wolf took one then two steps towards me, leaning it's face down so I could not avoid eye contact.
Leah? I felt my stomach twist, knot itself so tightly I wanted to vomit. That voice was so clear, so close. It was as if he was whispering directly into my ear. I knew that voice. It was Sam.
Leah. He said again. But he wasn't saying it, not really. It was as if he was implanting it into my brain. Like I was reading his thoughts. Because it wasn't just my name I could hear, there were other nameless things swirling around. It was like thick smoke. There was anxiety and anger and something else I couldn't quite place. I knew they weren't my emotions. I know you can hear me. There was annoyance now, and that tone I recognized. My mind quickly began to dart in the direction of some unpleasant memories when a sudden thought stopped me in my tracks. If I could feel his thoughts, his emotions, then he could feel mine. It was so violating, that the anger returned full force. It burned so hot that I watched as the black wolf, Sam I guess, recoiled just the slightest bit. Good. I heard his voice again, this time the slightest bit gentler, kinder. A tone that caused some deep and unhealed ache inside of me to immediately begin to sting.
Leah, come on. Breathe. You've got to calm down or you're just going to be stuck like this for even longer. Come on.
What do I do? The thought was more directed at myself than Sam, just my internal monologue, but he seemed to take it as a direct question.
Breathe, slow even. Don't think about anything else, okay? Just breathe. There was something different about the way he said it, an authority to the voice that made me, without pause begin to take slow, deep breaths. I felt the heat ebbing slightly. Good. Listen to the water, do you hear it? Listen to the raindrops hitting against the stream. I could hear it, the soft plink of water against water. I felt a coolness then, starting at my head and running down my body, lingering near my fingers and toes, almost like a breeze blowing through a clothesline. I thought changing, or phasing as the boys had called it, would hurt. But I didn't even feel it. I just felt the wet ferns against skin instead of fur, felt my toes wiggle down into the soft mud at the bank of the creek. I could no longer hear the rain against the stream, just the gurgle of it over the rocks. I heard someone, Jared or Paul clear their throat and I heard some brush shifting slightly. It was then that I realized that, like Seth, I was naked. Jared and Paul had turned away, but Jared was holding something out, another bundle of fabric. Seth grabbed it and handed it to me. His eyes still a bit wide. Sam, or the black wolf or whatever it was I was supposed to call him, had disappeared into the trees. I felt a small twinge of relief for that, and a secondary, much greater relief as I realized I could no longer feel his thoughts and he could no longer feel mine. The clothes that Jared had brought were too big for me. The shirt hanging so long it could have almost been a dress and the shorts were baggy and loose.
"I'm decent." I said, and immediately the two boys turned back around. Seth was sitting against the tree again, his head no longer in his eyes, but his eyes were still stuck wide and fear filled.
"Well, uh," Jared said after a long moment, "I guess we've got some explaining to do." Paul was still glaring in my direction, as if my very presence unsettled him.
"Head to Em's? I bet breakfast is almost ready and I don't want to miss it." Before I could process what was said, Sam had emerged back from the dense trees, human this time.
"I think Seth and Leah should go be with Sue at the hospital right now." Remembrance flooded the boys faces and Jared's shoulders slumped slightly. Maybe I was making it up, but it seemed as if he gave a slight grimace at my name. As if he had the write to be disturbed by me, this was all his doing. "There'll be time for explanations later." He fished a set of car keys from the pocket of his denim shorts. "You two head back to the house, and I'll drive them into town." Even though Sam was no longer invading my head, he could still read my face as careful as I was to keep it icy and expressionless. The prospect of spending the fifteen minute drive in an enclosed space with him as we drove to see if I killed my father by turning into a freaking wolf, was too much, and he seemed to sense that. "Uh, actually," Sam quickly shifted, tossing the keys at Paul. "You drive them. I better update everyone else on the situation."
Paul caught the keys easily and began to spin them around his pointer finger, muttering slightly. Sam moved past me, never glancing in my direction, and offered a hand to the still seated Seth, pulling him to his feet. Quietly, but still loud enough for me to catch Sam spoke to Seth in this reassuring, almost paternal tone.
"You're good. Okay? You're good. It's all going to be okay and I'll explain everything later." He paused, looking for some kind of acknowledgement, but Seth seemed to be entering some kind of shock. "I'll be there soon. I'll meet you at the hospital. Just stick with Paul, he's got you." Then he left, tossing his head in the direction they'd come, Jared and he jogged off, quickly out of sight.
Paul let out a long, slow breath, almost a whistle. "Whelp, we better get going." And he began heading in the direction of the road, Seth following right at his heel. Sam's words seemed to have worked some magic on Seth, because his eyes were a little clearer, as if he were actually looking around at the world. A ripple of selfish jealously moved through me. No one had asked if I was okay? But then again, what would I have said? Because I wasn't sure what I was but I was pretty sure it was about as far from okay as a person could be.