Exchange Help with Mr. Wolf

"Have you heard about it? Someone saw the wolf last night about to devour a human."

"What? The wolf that killed his own pack in the past? My dad said not to talk about it in the open or he'll hear you and get you and kill you!"

“Stupid, you know that’s not true, we can talk about him in hushed voices so that he wouldn't know. I guess he got some superpowers on him that make him live forever and choose from shapeshifting or devouring a human at midnight. Our gardener saw him last night. Killing a human."

“Really? He’s still existing? What does he look like now?”

“Scary and hairy as hell, his eyes glistened gold on the glow of the moonlight.”

“What? Really?”

“Why? You’re telling our gardener’s a liar?”

“No, Ira, I’m just surprised. Sorry.”

I snapped my eyes to the room and pushed the door open, Ira and Danisha can keep talking about the wolf all they want if they won't try to harm me again.

The janitor's closet was a cramped place to take a student’s lunch but I made my way to the corner and took a sit near a big blue drum and a yellow ‘wet floor' sign.

I fished out a melon bread from my skirt’s pocket and stared glumly at the back of the door. It has a yellow hard hat hanging and a green raincoat. I couldn't hear the voice of those girls but my head wrapped around what they said.

I know wolves only have one mate in their lifetime and that they walk together in a pack and do things, I wasn’t sure, I just knew a glimpse about them, but only one thing was concrete - he’s the creature that my whole town feared, he has a bad reputation and the town people were like mice and stayed indoors with their tails hanging between their legs.

I don’t know where it started but the tale of the legendary wolf was a common bedtime story to kids who wouldn’t sleep at night, it’s like the alternative of monsters under your bed that didn’t affect kids these days.

The tale said the wolf killed his pack when he got mad from not being the alpha, the ones older than him tried to calm him down but no avail was made, he slashed their throat mercilessly until his cheeks were tainted with blood, and he was exiled to the human realm after that, and so it's natural that human was afraid of him, that explains the title.

Humans were afraid of anything they don't know. That's why they invented names to at least become familiar with what they fear.

His title that he didn't even know existed to humans, his legend has been passed down from mouth to mouth, the people in my town were always gloomy even though the legendary wolf haven't gone to the town, but I don't care if he lived for a thousand years or has found his mate or he has fangs and killed his pack and could kill a human now, the fact that he was feared was the one I want.

I thought that if I became connected with him, somehow, my bullies would shoo me away.

That's kind of an absurd idea but I'm desperate and was testing the waters before I took up my courage and dived right in, besides I have three failed reasons to reason to him when asked why I did what I do;

First, to stop the bullying, I tried to walk up to a teacher one time but I got scared out of my wits when I'm in front of the faculty room; I remembered when my subject teacher humiliated me in front of the class.

"You know what, the only job I can see for you would be a kindergarten teacher, that one can cater your slow, irritating voice and body build. You have no future except that."

She learned I wanted to be a lawyer so why crushed a teenage dream? Why become a meanie? Such ridiculous acts made me despise her. Every time I remembered that day, I want to pull her hair and submerged her in the water. I hate her and because of that there’s a part of me that chickened out whenever I face challenges; I could only run away and let my mind repeat the words she said over again.

I came home crying that time but my mother held me in her arms and sang me a sweet song.

Artha was the most beautiful mom in my eyes, she likes gardening and would spend her whole day outside our home, Richard, my dad was a stockbroker, I'm glad my parents had financially planned and got us a two-story house with a garden and backyard, I always thought that being in my home washed all my luckless fate, I take pride of my home.

"Harriet? Come help me prepare dinner!" Mom called out in the kitchen.

I watched her as she wipe her hands in her light pink apron and pull an orange bowl.

"Why are you just standing still?! Come help me, your siblings will be home soon."

I smiled and took the bowl from her. I have a little sister and a brother, both in junior high school and I had the best times with them, though Andrea was some sort of a shrew my brother Ashton was the opposite he was the best brother I could ever dream of.

But everything stops when I entered high school, all the lucky things would fade away and an ill-stricken event would come.

My second reason was when my face got floured and a bucket of eggs dropped on my head. I'm in my senior year at North Point High, I'm just seventeen but I experienced all the bad things someone could ever think of as a student, bad grades, mean students and teachers, getting tripped, blamed, and all those crazy kinds of stuff, but above all that; Not a single day would pass that the story of the legendary wolf would be told in my school.

There’s something that was tangling people from that story, it was older than the students in my high school but it was so alive in them. That story's quite famous, but no one ever has concrete proof that the legendary wolf existed. I also don't believe that he ate human flesh, he can howl at the moon, perhaps, and harm anybody now and then.

I like staring at the moon too, it's a pretty thing and so far. If only I could be like the moon, I know my insecurities, my body’s a little overweight on the side and my face got craters, the last time I took a photo was for our junior yearbook, everyone laughs because of my fat round face and I looked like I’m staring on the ceiling because of the position of my eyeballs even though the photographer took his time photoshopping it. It added to my growing list of insecurities and I wanted to run when people scrutinized me; when my classmates bullied me, I want to run and hide and forget everything but I couldn't.

How did I catch all the bad things in life? I cried on my way home because I was alone, everybody in my school walks together hand in hand, but I followed the straight lines painted on the pavement with my hands in my pockets, I don’t dare to talk to them, much more go near them, I thought if I did my unluckiness will be doubled and I’d be damned in the following days. Life’s difficult for someone like me who was cursed from the beginning.

"My daddy said he found his mansion all over the woods!"

I gave a low grunt sound when I heard the two girls in front of me talking about the wolf again. They couldn’t talk in their normal voices about him because the wolf might hear them, I almost rolled my eyes at that stupid thought, how could a wolf hear them? He’s in the most lonesome place in this town - by the end of the forest.

"Oh, yes, I heard about that! My brother was out one time at dawn to buy the freshest meat in the wet market, he took a wrong turn and got strayed in the woods, and the smell of something like a burning rubber–" the girl in a ponytail was cut mid-sentence by the girl in a low bob-cut hair and flicked her long-polished baby pink nails in the air.

"Mixed with evaporated metal? That's what dad said too! And then you will see the house of the wolf round and round you until you got dizzy and big roots of trees will kick you out of the woods."

I remember them being in my science class, we grouped for a project before but now they act like they don't sense my presence when I was just a meter behind them. I thought we could be friends after the project.

"It's like magic. You'll return with sharp pain all over your body."

I stopped walking and let them distance away from my earshot. I put my hand to my chest and felt a sudden tug in it when I think of getting to his house. I want to go to his house so I can have friends, have someone I could talk to when I’m walking, or be with them together in the cafeteria for lunch, not the janitor’s closet, I would grab even the slightest hope so that I could make this possible; when I came to his house with my third failed reason tailing behind me.