Chapter 11 – A Boy Named Evan
I woke up in the car with the warm sunlight shining through the window heating up my skin. Suddenly the memories of last night flooded my mind. I vaguely remembered them, and the events seemed more like a dream rather than reality. I questioned if last nights events were actually a dream, but upon seeing the smile on Christopher’s face when he saw that I was awake, I knew it wasn’t a dream—we actually did kiss.
I stretched my body out as much as I could, being in the cramped confinements of the car. I yawned and attempted to make myself more awake quicker. Looking around at everything, I noticed the scenery changed drastically, as it always did. In fact I was getting slightly tired of the changing scenery, I would fall asleep in one place and wake up in an entirely different state and the idea of that more than frustrated me. I wanted nothing more than to be able to sleep peacefully in my own bed and wake up there in the morning. But I knew that wasn’t about to happen.
Twisting around in my seat I saw that Evan was awake and sitting up appearing exceedingly bored.
“Ah, good morning, Halle!” Evan said in his usual English accent.
I flipped back around in my seat. That was one nightmare that was still here.
“Good morning,” I said humoring him. I stared at him in the rearview mirror. He saw me watching him through the mirror, I knew he did. He turned his head towards Chris now.
“Permission to eat pizza now?” Evan questioned.
Chris let out a small chuckle, “Go for it.”
Evan reached for the pizza box in the center of the car, set it on the seat beside him, and opened it.
Chris spoke softly to me, “He had strict orders this morning not to wake you.”
I nodded, “Oh.”
Evan let out a gasp, “Dude, someone ate my pizza!” I figured he must have gotten the pizza box that Chris and I stole the pizza slices from last night. He counted the missing slices with pointing at the empty space in the box. He looked up at both of us; I wore a little triumphant smile on my face. “Dudes, have some respect for the pizza man! You can’t just randomly eat pizza while I’m sleeping. Those were the best slices in the box.”
Chris glanced at him in the rearview mirror, “Then eat the pizza from the other box.”
Evan pointed at Chris as if coming to a realization, “Dude, you’re genius.” He lurched for the other box of pizza across the car, and then sat back in his seat. I noticed he wasn’t even wearing a seat belt, which caused my annoyance for him only to increase. I would not go anywhere without wearing a seat belt. I was surprised that Chris didn’t make him wear a seat belt; if I were driving everyone in the vehicle would be wearing a seat belt. Then again, that was just me.
I tried my best not to stare at Evan sitting in the back munching on pizza—one slice in each hand—but it was hard. I was sure he was one of the most precarious creatures I’d ever seen.
“So,” Evan swallowed a mouth full of pizza, “Halle, how long have you been a werewolf?”
I glanced over at Chris, “He knows about that?” I asked not caring about my loudness.
Chris glanced at me probably to get a feel to see if I was angry or not, “Yeah, he knows just about everything.”
Was did that mean? Did Chris tell Evan about our kiss last night? I kind of hoped that he didn’t, it was like our special kiss, and I wanted to lock it away in my heart forever. Not only that, but he had his friends to tell about it, but I had no one. It didn’t seem fair on top of everything else. But, I tried to calm myself down at the thought, it hasn’t been proven. We’re currently a couple now, I’ll just talk to him about it at the next stop, I told myself.
“About three months now,” I said honestly. It seemed like such a long time that I’ve been a werewolf, to think that it was only three months ago that this happened simply amazed me. Being a werewolf didn’t seem like something new to me anymore, it was actually quite easy to grasp. It was the equivalent of someone saying “Oh, I am a teen,” easy to grasp, it was just what I was—it was a part of me now.
“Ah, a newbie,” Evan said shoving another piece of pizza in his mouth.
“You could say that,” I said turning my attention towards the passing scenery. The skies were really blue, and mountains were all over the place in the distance. Not that I didn’t see mountains everyday in Montana, it was just something about these ones that seemed more spectacular than the ones back home. Noticing the sunlight shining and the lack of shadows I realized it wasn’t early morning.
“What time is it?” I asked Chris ignoring the animalistic sounds coming from Evan eating the pizza in the back seat.
Chris craned his neck towards the side window looking for the sun—exactly the thing I didn’t want him to do, “It’s around noon.”
I shook my head. “Shouldn’t you get a watch or something?”
Evan broke the silence before Chris had the chance. “Christopher doesn’t use watches. Werewolves are basically attracted to shiny things, and the last—what was it five?” Chris nodded. “Five watches he had, he ended up destroying before morning. So he reads the sun instead.”
I nodded. “Oh—”
“Didn’t you know that?” Evan stopped chewing the pizza and questioned.
I raised my eyebrows. “I had an information download upon waking up from the effects of the full moon. I think I forgot to ask why Chris didn’t have any way of telling time.”
“Huh, really? I asked him about it the first conversation we had about him turning into a werewolf,” Evan said. That was so out of the blue, he sounded like he was the one that had an information download.
Chris wore a vague smile and his eyes seemed far away. For a second, he looked much older than he was. “You remembered that? That was years ago.”
“Well yeah, would I forget about you telling me you’re a werewolf? That has to be the best conversion I’ve ever had with anyone before. Ask me what the coolest thing I know is… go on ask!” Evan directed at me.
I glanced at Chris, he gave me an approving nod. “Okay, what’s the coolest thing you know?” I stared at Evan in the rearview mirror.
He smiled, put down the piece of pizza he held in his hands, and took in a deep breath to start his rant. “The coolest thing I know is that we all live in a world of werewolves.” Evan grabbed the edge of both of the front seats in the vehicle placing his body in the center of the car where the pizzas were before. “And I am the only one that knows it.” He turned his head toward me, he had nasty pizza breath. “You know, I’ve been trying to get him to tell me Superman exists too, but he won’t say it.”
Chris glanced at Evan. “That’s because he doesn’t exist.”
“Can you believe him? Absolutely crazy this guy.” Evan smacked Chris’s arm before returning to the back seat, sitting opposite the now empty boxes of pizza. “That’s alright; I’ll believe you until Superman comes and tells me that he actually exists!”
“Suit yourself,” Chris said.
“So, there aren’t any other supernatural beings?” I picked absently at the rip on my jeans.
“Besides werewolves? No. No other creatures. We don’t have fairies, we don’t have dragons, vampires, ogres, unicorns, or anything else out of the ordinary—for now all of that is just that: out of the ordinary,” Chris confirmed.
Evan broke in, “So, you’re saying that when I went to Germany, learned to speak German, and searched through the forests for ogres it was all for nothing?” Evan laid one hand flat in the air like a cutting board, and made chopping motions with his other hand. “The legends said that the ogres were in Germany!”
Chris laughed. “No, Dude, you were just being an idiot.”
Evan gave a sour looking expression. “Why didn’t you tell me? Dude that took up three years of my life… One of those years spent in a forest, Dude, a forest!”
Dude, Dude, Dude, I repeated in my mind. Evan was so repetitive; I could feel my brain cells re
ceding.
“No TV, no cell phone reception. I came back to a world of smart phones and crappy presidents.”
I propped my feet up on the dashboard tired of sitting—I wanted to get up and move around. “Where are we?” I asked hoping to get an answer out of him. I swore I was riding in a car with a bunch of idiots.
“We are in Colorado,” Evan answered with a meaningless Spanish accent, he was staring at something up ahead. I turned my head around, it was a sign: Welcome to Colorado. Now I felt like the idiot. I sunk down in the seat—in a few minutes I was sure I’d start beating my head on the window in a desperate attempt to escape the insanity. Of all of the people in the world I could be trapped in a vehicle with, they had to be the most annoying. That was for sure—of everything else I was completely unsure.