16

“My men came up to me, told me that you gave them a helpful tip. I guess you can say that I’m a man who doesn’t like being in debt. So, I’ll return the favor just this once, make us even, so to say,” he said grimly.

“What are you talking about?”

“See, kid, we know you’ve got a thing for the new girl. What was it, Alice Hawkins? Oh, yeah. I just wanted to let you know that my particular recipe for revenge involves cornering that girl and letting my men have their way with her. Might be now, might be a few days from now, or it might be a few weeks.”

In my anger, I roared and reached for his throat, not minding the fact that there were people around me who could see my arm morphing into that of a wolf’s.

“I’d be careful if I were you. I warned you. Now, it’s up to you to sit here and squabble with an injured old cripple or go save your squeeze,” Terror Trevor spat as my claws tightened around his throat.

He was right. It might be a bluff, but he was right. I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I got up from the booth, running for the door, praying to the old spirits that Alice was okay.

“Hey! We are even now!” Terror Trevor called from behind, bursting into maniacal laughter.

I would deal with him later. Right now, I needed to make sure Alice was safe.

9

Alice

The girls in my class clung to their Cosmos like they were the Bible. It was like watching a museum exhibit up close. Back in Chicago, you couldn’t make the girls get off their phones, always uploading crap on I*******m, doing streaks on Snapchat, trolling people on Reddit, keeping up with the Kardashians, and whatnot.

Here, in Rapid Falls, where the internet was more of a commodity, people behaved like they were perpetually stuck in the ‘80s, listening to Kate Bush, driving old American Muscle cars, smoking cigarettes, and reading actual physical books and magazines instead of being on their phones.

Cheryl, Lacy, and Bethanie were three girls who sat with me in most classes. They had declared out of the blue that I was now a part of their clique, whatever that meant. Except, I know what that meant. It meant my access to an endless amount of Cosmo magazines, bubblegum during lectures, and sometimes, during basketball games, we drank whatever Bethanie managed to procure from her mother’s liquor cabinet.

They didn’t care about who I was, where I’d come from, or what I was all about as long as I was there with them, doing the stupid teenager stuff they were doing. Sometimes, on the weekends, we’d go to the strip mall and drink slushies while ogling the boys in the skating rink across the road.

It was ridiculous.

Of course, I was only indulging myself in all this crap because I was trying to get over Brandon. Trying to forget about everything I had learned that night in the teepee. Trying to understand that I might be a wolf. Coping with the knowledge that one of my parents might secretly have been a werewolf. Not to mention that goddamn vision I had. Every night, it haunted me. It was the last thing I thought of when I went to bed and the first thing I was reminded of when I woke up.

Being with these girls was the only time when I felt like I was a sane girl. Was it selfish? I didn’t care. I needed to be normal. I needed to fit in.

“Hey, Alice,” Lacy said as she uncorked the champagne bottle Bethanie had so kindly provided. All four of us were in Cheryl’s basement, where she kept her records, her novels, and her giant plasma TV.

“What’s up?” I asked absentmindedly as I rifled through Lacy’s DVD collection.

“Alice! Did you have a boo back in Chicago?” Lacy asked blatantly.

“I haven’t had a boyfriend. Ever. I did go on a weird, weird date with Tony Montello yesterday,” I said.

“The car mechanic? Eww, he uses a ton of hair gel. What did you go on a date with him for?” Bethanie said.

I’d decided to take my mom’s car for a ride through town yesterday. The front tire practically came off the Prius a mile away from the house. I called for the local mechanic, and Tony Montello showed up.

After grunting and pulling and moaning and grumbling for twenty minutes, he fixed the tire, all covered in tar and grease. Rather than accept my money, he kept insisting that I go out with him for a drink.

I decided that rather than argue with him, I’d have a drink with him and put an end to the matter right there and then. It wasn’t even a date, but Tony insisted that I call it that.

“Babes, you did go on a date with him. I don’t know how things work in Chicago, but in Rapid Falls, you get a drink with someone, you’ve dated them. Tony’s probably telling the entire town that he slept with you,” Bethanie said.

Lacy shook her head, indicating that Bethanie probably had too much to drink and was speaking out of her ass.

I chuckled. Date or not, Tony had served as comic relief, a palette cleanser.

“I once frenched Tony when I crashed my truck in a tree,” Cheryl whispered, which was enough to send us all into fits of wild laughter.

 

   

Later that night, I made a serious mistake. Cheryl dropped me off in her truck in the evening, a remarkable feat considering that both of us were inebriated. When I went inside the house, Mom and Elma were already at the dinner table.

“Someone’s home late,” Elma said.

“Shut up, Elms,” I called out. That should have been the first warning. I was drunk, not behaving like my usual docile self. I should have gone upstairs and slept it off. Instead, feeling confrontational, charged by the booze that were flowing through me, I went and sat at the dinner table.