~Sorry it took so long to be posted. There was thanksgiving and then the all-the-work-you-have-to-make-up-because-of-the-break stuff. Hope you had a stupendous thanksgiving and a glorious Black Friday too. Thanks for all the positive comments by the way…and anyone who has read this far! You (yes you) are awesome! ~

Chapter Eight- "Blame it on the Dog. Oh, Wait. That's Me."

"Mom? W-what are you doing here?" I manage to choke out as Jared half-drags me to the front porch or, in better words, my ultimate doom. He suddenly isn't my favorite person anymore.

"Kiley Arianna Jay Black, I don't even know where to begin with you. I swore I'd never set foot in this town again, but here I am. Because my lying, school-skipping daughter decided she'd rather spend her day on a little field trip to Washington and scare her mother half to death. What the hell you were thinking! I mean, having you exorcised doesn't sound like a bad idea right about now. You can't even imagine how furious I am that you'd pull something like this!"

So I'm a tad in over my head at the moment. If exorcism is on the table, a psychiatric ward seemed like a pretty reasonable solution if I told her I something like, "When I get mad, I shift into a wolf the size of a bear. I found this out when I was hit by a car and fell on my head. I'm totally fine though…

Yeah, we fight vampires. Except the ones that live in town and pretend to be normal high school students. Apparently they don't find drinking their classmates very nice. The doctor's one too. Ironic huh? When we're hunting down the evil vamps I can read minds with a bunch of other teen werewolf freaks. Good news. They're all boys! And they've all seen me naked too! Like mother like daughter!"

As fun as a padded cell and a straight jacket sound, I couldn't tell her even if I wanted to. So, why don't we rewind the two hours of motherly ranting and skip to the almost-not-bad alternative story Billy came up with.

Around six in the morning, I drag my sorry ass out of bed and get a call from some man claiming to be my Uncle. Apparently, he had been looking for his sister for the past seventeen years and, at long last, found out where she lived! He was so happy he'd found her, but there was some kind of family crisis. Poor Jacob was in some kind of accident about a month ago and was in a coma. Never having the chance to know my cousin, I raced over as fast as I could to see him. I didn't tell my mother because I was too scared for Jake to think straight and angry because she never told me about him. Billy offered me to stay the weekend. Amazingly, the next day, Jake recovered! Billy has some kind of superstition that I'm "lucky" and wants me to spend the rest of the school year here. It appears that I'm totally thrilled about getting to know my family and my "rich culture heritage" that I couldn't care less about.

The hard part of it all was bailing out on my scholarship. Even my mom couldn't believe I'd willingly let down my exclusive private school education down for the wondrous opportunities tribal school has to offer. Through clenched teeth, I had to talk her into believing I could take all my Evanburrow Prep courses online on top of tribal school.

This didn't get me off the hook though. Not a chance. Couldn't my mom be like every other parent and ground me? Take away my cell phone? No allowance? Chinese water torture? No. I go around the back of the house and see my skateboard, snapped in two, fueling a nice, strong campfire while I just stand there, open-mouthed. My mom replies with a "You can put the fire out with your tears," roasts a marshmallow, pops it in her mouth, and walks away in her four-inch stilettos.

Lesson learned. Fire beats skateboard. And Sam is gonna have hell to pay.

As for telling my friends, I needed an answer that was actually realistic. Me giving a damn about my "family heritage" was less likely than me being human trafficked to Saudi Arabia and becoming the head mistress for some sixty year old dude with a name I couldn't pronounce. Instead, I say what every Westridge kid would say. My mom got busted by the social workers for child neglect and my mom's sending me to live with my stay-at-home uncle for six months until the po-po get off her case. It had already happened to Ronnie and Twizler like fifteen times, so nobody thought to ask questions. Yay for living in a city full of lazy parents.

Two days later, a moving truck is parked in front of Billy's house with all my possessions. Tears almost spring up in my eyes when I see my own mattress again.

Remember what I said about that house being a total man cave? I didn't. Well, it is. I swear, Billy almost picked up his shotgun on the first night and put me out of my misery. Spiders all over the place. It appears that the smell of rotting pizza and fish brings the freaky the little critters crawling. It must have been the ants.

Just because I'm a freak doesn't mean I have some new immunity to other abominations of nature, particularly little ones with lots of legs. I was lying on the air mattress. One crawled up my face, and I started screaming like I was on fire, which woke up the whole damn town. The sheriff was at our door in under thirty.

Rest assured I'm the laughing stock of the entire neighborhood. Thank god, Jake gave me his bed last night. It smelled like sweaty teenage boy, but it beats the bugs.

I'm spending the day dropping my cardboard boxes into my fabulous new room. And by "fabulous" I mean it's so dirty even the spiders couldn't handle it. I'm carrying in a box labeled "the junk I found under your bed" when I hear someone coming up to the truck. It takes me a moment to recognize the kid. He's in the pack. He's a lot shorter than the others. Seth, I think.

"Hey," he says almost too brightly.

"Hey."

He pulls out a box in the truck named "the clothes I didn't throw down the garbage disposal because they were so torn up. WEAR SOME STUPID KNEE PADS! We SO Can't afford this!" and laughs.

"You're mom seems really…interesting," he comments as he hoists the box onto his shoulder.

"Uh…you don't have to do this…" I tell him. My natural instincts are that if someone bigger than me has my stuff I should be shouting "thief" and then something along the lines of me shooting his kneecaps out. Though, I doubt that would fly well in this happy-go-lucky Mr. Rogers neighborhood-only-we're-all-poor setting. Besides, I'm not exactly sure if we're bulletproof yet.

"Nah, it's okay. I was just on my way to Sam's anyways."

"Is this some really important top-secret werewolf business I should know about?

"No," he smiles guiltily, "I could smell Emily's peach cobbler a mile away."

I roll my eyes. "I bet you could. Come on. My room's this way."

So far, my room contains all my furniture and a couple of opened boxes scattered around the floor. We silently walk from the truck to my room for a solid five minutes until there's a giant pyramid of boxes against the far wall.

"Thank you."

"No problem."

Not that we're finished, Seth takes a good look around my new place. "It's um….uh…you need any help cleaning it up?"

I smirk at him. "I've got it. Thanks" It's amazing I'm already standing up for the dump.

"Are you sure? I mean, I heard about the spider thing-" Now he's just teasing me.

"Shut up. Worst case scenario, I've got bug spray. And a shoe. Besides, the spider was on my face last time….wait…you didn't tell any of the guys about that…did you?"

"Well…they sort of….already know-"

I plop down onto the bed and slap my hand against my forehead. Great. Now I'm the laughing stock of the entire pack too. As if being a girl wasn't going to make everything awkward enough as it was.

"Perfect," I grumble.

"It's not so bad," Seth reassures and sits down next to me, turning his back to the grimy windowpane. The bed groans under his weight.

"You don't have to try and cheer me up. I'm not gonna sit here and cry about it or anything."

"No, seriously. You're not the worst one out there. The thing about being a werewolf is…because we're a pack and all…we know everything about each other. And I do mean everything. Even though we try to respect each other's boundaries, there are no secrets. It's cool at times, but sometimes it's not exactly comfortable being all connected like that."

"What do you mean?"

Seth tries to hold back a grin and looks me dead in the eye. "Quil used to play with dolls."

"Dolls…you mean like…GI-Joes?"

"More like….Barbie dolls."

"You're joking!"

"Take it easy on him. Paul's older sister was getting rid of her 'talking town house.'"

"The one with the built-in kitchen and the elevator? That was on my Christmas list forever!"

He gives me a skeptical look and I look down at my hands. "When I was like…five."

"Quil thought it was pretty cool too. He found it on their front porch and took it while no one was looking. He has a lot of memories with that house, well, until his dad got all freaked out and made him give it to Jake's sisters."

I'm laughing now, and wonder if that same dollhouse is hiding up in the closet somewhere. Billy was using this room for storage until I came along. I told him he didn't have to go throwing everything out, that I had a dresser and my mom had thrown away most of my clothes anyway. I open the door and, sure enough, there is a big pink and blue dollhouse shoved in the back corner. I pull it out, pick up one of the much-abused beach blonde dolls, and smile.

"Well this is certainly not a GI-Joe."

"I'd be careful in there," Seth warns me.

I whip my head around to look at him. I feel the confusion clearly on my face. "Why?"

"There are a lot of cobwebs in there, which…well…lead to…"

"Don't say it," I growl in a threatening but playful voice, I position the doll like I'm about to throw it at him from across the room. "Or you'll have to explain to the pack how Malibu Beach Barbie gave you a black eye."

"The itsy bitsy spider…" Seth starts to sing.

I fling the doll straight toward him, and the second I let go I remember I've got Wonderwoman strength now. It all happens in slow motion. Seth dodges the doll, which goes straight through the window. The glass shatters all over the floor, leaving a big gaping hole where the dirty pane used to be.

"Oh…crap."

We stare at each other for one long second before we hear keys turning in the lock on the front door. Billy was home from Sue's for the afternoon. Of course he was.

Well wasn't this all freakin' fantastic! At this moment I really wish I had climbed through the window with Malibu Barbie.

Damn Spiders.