Chapter 16 - Dream
I wanted to lie around in my room all day. I wanted to sleep in. At this point, I would have rather lied in the cotton fields and slept until my skin blistered, or until I dehydrated, starved, and died... whichever came first. I was tired, and busy. The only free time I had, I spent sleeping. The only good thing I could say was that I didn’t actually have any time to think. That was the only beauty of my insanity.
“Lynn!” Two hands collided together in front of my face, making a loud snapping sound. “Up!”
I inhaled deeply and lifted my torso off the hard floor, and let it fall onto the ground again. Today, for training, we were supposed to run laps around the gymnasium. After several laps, I had to stop. My lungs felt like they would burst and my bones felt like they were going to fall out of my skin. Since I failed so miserably, Bethy had me doing crunches instead.
“Lynn!” Bethy stood by my feet. “Pay attention!”
I wanted so much to complain, but I knew better than to do that. I’d tried it before and received threats and warnings and a bunch of what ifs after that day’s training. Even after two weeks of training, it hadn’t gotten any easier. Bethy used a technique where we all do different exercises everyday to keep all of our muscles developed, which also meant that we would always be improving our bodies in some way.
Lifting my torso again, I continued with a series of crunches. I knew training had to end soon. It felt like we’d all been working out for hours. That was my stimulation; otherwise, I’m sure I would have passed out right there.
“Finish the lap and then head to the eatery!” Bethy yelled to those running laps.
I watched everyone finish their lap carefully, knowing that the moment they finished, I would also be free to leave. The last person finished the lap and everyone headed toward the exit. I ceased the crunches and stayed down for a moment, just trying to regain myself enough to get up.
“Did you pass out? It wouldn’t be the first time that happened here.”
I looked up above my head, Elisa stood there with her hand planted on her hip, sporting a taunting smile.
“No,” I sat up slowly. “Just attempting to catch my breath.”
“And who did the running?” She turned sharply and headed toward the exit.
I rubbed my forehead, suddenly feeling angry and pathetic for not being able to persevere with the group.
Max emerged from the group and headed toward me. He was sweaty like everyone else, and that increased my guilt. He stopped in front of me and extended his hand toward me.
I took it and he helped pull me to my feet. “Thanks,” I mumbled.
“Yeah. It’ll get easier.” He started toward the exit, and I followed eager to get out of this gray, windowless room.
“Lynn!”
I stopped quickly. Well, I almost got out of the gymnasium. I turned back toward Bethy.
“We’ll be heading to the lounge after dinner, Lynn, you should join us,” Max said from the doorway.
I glanced over my shoulder at him. “Yeah, I’ll see you there.”
He smiled and walked out the door, leaving Bethy and me entirely alone. I stared back at Bethy. She grabbed a makeshift, wooden step that she used for days we did step aerobics, and sat on it in the very center of the room. Resting her arms on the top of her knees, she stared at me.
I gazed back at her waiting, but she didn’t make a sound. Moving slowly across the concrete floor, I stopped a few feet away from her. “What is it?”
She looked up at me, her eyebrows pressed together, and for a moment, she looked much older than her thirty-five years. “Sweetie...” I knew I was in for it when she used names like that. “I know you’re not doing your best. You have been doing this for over two weeks and everyday you only do seventy percent. Muscles are resilient. You’d be amazed at what you can do.” She stretched her left leg out in front of herself.
“I’ll try harder,” I whispered. I inhaled deeply, my breathing was just now returning to normal and my body temperature was cooling. Bethy was embarking on a long conversation, so I lowered myself to the hard floor and crossed my legs Indian-style.
She tilted her head to the side. “That’s what you said last time.” She stood, and I regretted my decision to sit. Maybe it wasn’t going to be a long conversation at all. “I know that you’ve had a rough time this past month, and I just want to make sure you know that I’m here for you. If you need guidance, or just want to talk.” She stared toward the door. I glanced back at it, but saw an empty hall. “I know there’s something bothering you—maybe even you don’t know what it is. But if you can clear out that blockage and move on, you’ll be better for it.”
I shook my head. “I don’t have a-a blockage.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Yes, you do.”
I steadied myself on my hands as I pushed myself into a standing position. “I don’t.”
Bethy stepped directly in front of me and set her hands on my shoulders. “Lynn, you need to find a reason why you’re doing this. You need to focus.”
I stared up into her dark brown eyes. “You don’t know anything about me.”
She let her hands fall off my shoulder. “Then tell me something about you. Tell me what your plans for the future are.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t think of an answer anything short of I don’t know. There wasn’t anything that I wanted to do with my life. At one time, I wanted to finish high school and then go to college and study theatre. But now I knew that was an impossibility. How could I even think about my future with everything going on?
Bethy shook her head. “Wow. You have no idea.”
“All I want is to go home with my family.”
“You can’t go home,” she snapped. “You need to stop thinking that is a possibility.”
I folded my arms. “So you tell me that you want me to talk to you, to open up to you, and then you tell me there is no hope?”
“No, Lynn, that’s not what I’m saying. That is why you’re here. Because there is hope.” She rubbed my shoulder.
I shrugged her hand away.
“Being a werewolf is like a disease, it limits what you can do. Backtracking is something you can’t do. You can’t see your family again.”
There were so many words swarming through my mind. It was almost too much to keep my mouth shut. I started toward the door. I wasn’t obligated to listen to her.
“Lynn, I’m just trying to help you.”
“Stop helping me!”
“Don’t let your life fall apart.”
I flipped toward her. “It all ready has!” I growled.
She stepped cautiously toward me. Her face was soft and full of pity. “You can’t go back to your family.” Her voice was soft and caring, but her words stung.
“I’m not going give up.” I stared at her hard, making sure she knew I meant what I said. “I’m going to fight.”
I stormed out of the room and down the hall to my room. The hall was deserted. Everyone was on their oh-so-particular dinner schedule. I was too upset to eat. I couldn’t stand to be around anyone anymore. It was late in the evening. I’d been picking cotton for days and tiring out my body before I had time to recover from the last day.
Fighting back tears, I pulled off my sweaty clothes and shuffled through my dresser trying to find something fresh to wear. Neatly folded in the top drawer, were the clothes I’d worn when I came in here. The same clothes I left Wolf Point wearing. I lifted the raspberry shirt out of the drawer and pressed it to my nose, inhaling deeply. It still smelled like my mother’s laundry detergent.
Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes down my cheeks. My throat burned, and my insides ached so much that the release of tears didn’t even fix the hardcore emotions coursing through my soul. I shoved my old shirt back into its drawer and pulled out a dress that Georgia insisted I should have. I pulled it on over my head and shoved the drawer back into its proper place.
I ran my right hand through my limp hair and attempted to smooth out the frizzy mess it had become. After several run-throughs, I finally gave up and departed my room. I was so annoyed by the lack of windows anywhere. Like a framed picture here and there could cover up the gray walls. I needed to view the outside skies, I felt like I was suffocating as it was, but now I felt like I was hyperventilating.
I stopped in the middle of the hall and rested my hand on the wall, breathing in slow, deep breaths to calm myself. I stared down at my feet and tried my best to clear my mind, but I still couldn’t hide away the feelings behind the thoughts that crept into my mind. They were the ones that I had inadvertently been avoiding since I came here.
Suddenly everything was rushing around me and I wasn’t able to stop it. I had been stolen from home and then left to rot in the middle of the desert like a forgotten corpse. I couldn’t understand why I was left here alive. The only reason I could think of was that Chris hated me. That these people were right in what they said about Chris. He wasn’t really all that I thought he was. Perhaps he was even the enemy.
There was the underlying thought that I couldn’t get out of my mind. It was like a boulder blocking my path, I couldn’t get around it. I couldn’t even begin to fathom how to remove it and I refused to go searching for another path. It was my family and I couldn’t think about anything else. Nothing else mattered.
My head shot up suddenly as voices carried to my ears. It was a sound that seemed so ordinary that it was addictive to me. I took in another calming breath, though it did little good, and I followed the sound. I didn’t realize how the quiet had drowned me and how my thoughts consumed me until there was something to break that silence. I heard the familiar sound of Bernie’s deep-throated laughter and almost threw myself through the door.
Faces turned to stare at me as I entered the lounge so suddenly. I straightened myself slowly and forced a slight smile in Bernie and Elisa’s direction. Clearly they had been talking before I stumbled in and silenced the room.
Elisa stood up from the arm of the couch where she was sitting. “What’s the matter?”
I shook my head. “Nothing, I just tripped.”
Bernie walked toward the door and leaned toward me on his way out. “I told you so.”
I turned toward him. “Wait, what?”
“I said you’d be tired at the end of today, and look at you.” He gave a half nod and continued out the door.
I scoffed and moved further into the room so I didn’t seem like any more of an outcast that I already was. Being in the room surround by these people already made me feel a little better. There was still that underlying itch that made me want to just run and not stop, but it was more tolerable with distractions.
“You look like you need some air.”
I turned toward the voice. I didn’t even notice Max sitting in a chair in the corner of the room with a book propped open on his lap.
“I’m going outside if you wanted to join me,” he elaborated.
Just the idea of going outside was enough to excite me. Subtly I wondered why I didn’t think of that idea first. I needed the air. I was going crazy and itching to jump out of my skin. “Sure.”
He closed his book softly, arose from his seat, and tossed the book down in his place. I followed him closely as he led the way outside. The air was crisp and slightly chilled with a barely autumn feel. I allowed my lungs to expand breathing in the coolness that seemed to finally calm my entire body.
We walked a few paces away from the school and stood at the top of the hill overlooking the cotton fields and just stopped. I stared disgustedly at the cotton and looked down at the cuts on my hand just barely able to see the cuts I acquired in the scant moonlight. The cotton fields were so vast I couldn’t see the end of them. We just began to harvest, but I knew we’d soon be walking further into the dusty, dry wastelands to get to the cotton. “Why did we stop here?” I complained.
“You’re not even looking at the right thing.”
I turned slightly so I could look at him. He unfolded his arms and let them dangle loosely at his sides. His smile was cheesy and his hair was slightly displaced.
I looked slightly to the left and right and then shook my head. “There isn’t anywhere else to look.”
He shook his head very slowly. “Look up.”
I looked up feeling like an idiot for moment and then complied and looked up. Thousands of bright, glorious stars filled the sky, glowing brighter than I had ever seen them before. The heavens above were crystal clear, with the constellations easily visible.
There was a flurry of motion in front of me, disturbing my viewing. Max sat down on the grass, and then laid back, resting his hands behind his head. I shook my head. “What are you doing?”
He gave a strained shrug. “I’m stargazing.” He took in a deep breath and then exhaled just the same. “It’s a much better view from here.”
I cocked my right eyebrow skeptical of how anything could be seen better by getting further away from it. It just seemed that it would be a better view the closer you were to whatever it was you were trying to view, and lying down while staring at the stars – to me – it seemed you couldn’t get any further away from the sky.
Max propped himself up on his right arm halfway between sitting and laying. “Have you never stargazed before?”
I took in a breath ready to say “of course”, but stopped short to rethink my answer. “Not like that.” I made sure to relay how foreign of a concept stargazing while lying on the ground seemed to me. Like eating a dish from another country, this was something I wanted to say “no thank you” to.
“Then maybe you should try it, rather than standing there arguing with me about it.” The moon sparkled in his eyes as he watched me carefully. I shrugged it off uncomfortably.
“I wasn’t arguing with you about it.”
He raised his eyebrows, as if to prove a point.
I let my lip pout slightly, as I lowered myself carefully onto the ground. I moved slowly since it didn’t seem like the best idea in the word to be sitting on the ground—let alone lying on it. But I guess that was fine, at least I was in the fresh air. I leaned back on both of my arms to support myself, refusing to lie down completely. “Hey, don’t they have like scorpions and snakes out here in the middle of the desert?”
Max turned his head slightly to hide his laugh, but I still heard it. He turned back toward me. “There’s none in this area. Scorpions don’t really do grass and snakes usually stay out in the fields.”
I nodded. Was that supposed to reassure me? Because it didn’t. “Is it really safe for them to have us working out in the fields with snakes?” I stared hatefully out at the moonlit plants that made up the fields in front of me.
“Snakes don’t come out in direct sunlight.” He tilted his head back up toward the sky.
“Oh…” I felt like an idiot for not knowing any of this. The way he talked, it seemed like all of that should be common knowledge, but I didn’t know.
I stared up at the stars again, letting my head fall back easily. The cool breeze caught my hair and twirled it across my face. With a slight hesitation, I reached up and tucked the stray strands behind my right ear.
“It’s starting to feel like autumn,” Max said aloud what I was thinking.
I glanced toward him. He was already staring at me, and when I looked toward him he quickly looked up at the sky. “Yeah, it is.”
He opened his mouth and sucked in a breath like he was going to speak, but then closed it again. Finally, he pointed toward the sky. “See Orion’s belt, just to the south there?”
I gazed into the sky until my eyes locked on to the mentioned target. “Yeah, what about it?”
“Well…” He cleared his throat. “Just east of it, is the constellation Canis Major. According to mythology, it’s supposed to be Orion’s hunting dog—along with Canis Minor—and it’s supposed to be a very powerful hunter?
?? so fast that a deer couldn’t escape it.”
“Wow…” I watched him intently as he told the story, eager to know if there was actually a point to anything that he was saying, or if he was just trying to make conversation.
“Anyways, the story goes on that the dog was brought to a city with a fox problem. I forget the details, but it turns out that this wonderful hunting dog who could catch anything, couldn’t catch this one small creature. This chase went on for awhile, but finally Zeus turned them both to stone.”
I contemplated that for a minute, and then I stared back up at the set of stars that he mentioned. “I always thought that some mythology made people seem harsh. Like Zeus, for instance, he’s just turns two poor creatures into stone for no reason.”
He chuckled softly. “It wasn’t really for no reason, I mean, they would have chased each other for eternity if he hadn’t intervened. Eternity is a long time when all you’re doing is chasing another creature… pointless really.”
“That’s like saying that their lives were pointless. Zeus just took the poor dog and killed him. Like putting him in the stars would justify his life as a great hunter.” I shook my head softly, suddenly feeling overly emotional towards a constellation.
I heard Max shift positions to lie flatter on the ground. “Sometimes when you are a hero, and you’ve done great things, it’s okay to die early because you’ve already made your mark. It’s a warrior’s death.”
“No.” I laid back on the ground and rested my hands on my stomach. “Warriors die for a reason. The dog didn’t die for a reason.”
“He was a hunter. He was a killer and he was doomed to kill. Zeus stopped it.”
“Maybe that dog would have been happier living a life of repetition rather than having no life to live.”
Max turned his head and stared at me. The moonlight subtly lit his chiseled features. His eyes searched over me.
I waited, but it seemed he had nothing to say—or he was waiting for me to say something. I didn’t know, but it was starting to creep me out. “What?” I finally said.
He smiled and stared at me with something that resembled wonderment. “You see the connection with the story too.”
I shook my head slowly and let out a deep breath. “What are you talking about?”
He nodded toward the sky. “I used to be an astronomy geek before I became a werewolf, but afterwards—and after all that happened—I found that I couldn’t relate to any of the other stories of the constellations any more than the story of Canis Major.”
I stared at him sideways. I couldn’t believe he actually understood my argument—seemingly better than I did. Only then, did I realize exactly how much he must have been thinking about being a werewolf. Blatantly, I realized, I wasn’t the only one having a difficult time trying to adjust to werewolf life. I felt guilty for being so trapped in my own sorrow that I didn’t even realize what anyone here was going through—and these were nice people! People whom have tried to help me since my arrival.
“Bethy told me today that I need to find something else to think about besides my past… that I should be moving on,” I said more as a question. Like I was getting another opinion on what I should be doing. But somehow, I just couldn’t take someone else’s answer when I know what was going on wasn’t right.
He nodded, and gave a half-hearted shrug. “If you think about it, we all have to move on at some point. We can’t stay at home living with our parents forever. We’re bound to start lives of our own.” He tore his gaze away from me and stared straight up at the stars. “Maybe it isn’t exactly how we expected to live our lives, but sometimes you just have to work with what you’ve got.”
I plucked a blade of grass and twirled it between my fingers, watching as it bended and flexed easily without being broken. “If life is what you make it, maybe I want to make it with the people I grew up with. It’s not fair to be taken away from all that for no reason.”
“But see? It’s like the story of Canis Major, it isn’t for no reason. If you were left at home with your family, you’d all just have to keep being uprooted and moved to a different location as the Gregottas chase you down. It’s a pointless life.”
“But I’m still being chased anyways. What is the deal what that? Since apparently I’m going to be chased down no matter what I do.” I rolled my eyes up at the stars, staring at the poor dog in the sky. “I can’t make plans for a new life when there is no hope of…”
My arms grew tired of supporting my full weight, so I lowered myself onto the ground and folded my arms across my belly. “… getting my first job, going to prom—or going to college.”
“You can still do those things.” His voice was just above a whisper, and there some something about it that was just soothing to me. “Being a werewolf is like starting life with a clean slate. Anything is possible.”
I shook my head feeling the grass poking me with its almost soft sprigs. “No. It’s not. Maybe we can go to prom—for one night. Maybe we can go to college, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be uprooted in the middle of the semester. And we can get our first job, but there’s no room for advancement.” I rubbed the palm of my right hand with my left thumb feeling how cold my skin had become, matching the crisp night air around me. “I don’t know about you, but working at McDonald’s for the rest of my life was never on the agenda.”
I turned my head toward him. A slight smile touched his lips, but it was weighed down with the heaviness of the conversation we were having.
“Well, I was going to go for Taco Bell. You know, aim a little higher on the restaurant totem pole,” a sarcastic voice broke into our conversation.
I glanced back toward the building at the source of the voice. It was Bernie.
“What are you love birds lying on the ground for?” Bernie walked closer to us until he towered over us.
I felt weird lying on the ground and staring up at Bernie. “Contemplating life.” I shrugged. “Seems like the thing to do.”
He placed his hand on his hip dramatically. “You can’t seriously tell me you’ve always been this doom and gloom, Halle.” He frowned theatrically.
“Well…” I sat up so quickly that I felt dizzy for a brief moment. Adjusting myself, I stared back up at him. “If you can tell me that there is a single werewolf in this world that is actually living a nice life somewhere with their families, I will stop being such a downer.”
He folded his arms and looked down at me his eyebrows furrowing and casting a dark shadow over his eyes. I glanced at Max who laid there quietly, simply watching our conversation.
I shook my head and let my eyes fall away from Bernie. This wasn’t right. This situation I was in, wasn’t right and I didn’t know how to get out of it. From what I hear, you can just walk out of this place whenever you want. I hadn’t tried so hard to get away from here, because I didn’t know where the right situation was. I wanted to go back to Wolf Point with my family, but if what everyone says is true, and the Gregottas actually were going to come after me, I didn’t want to put my family in danger. I’d already messed up enough, the last thing I needed was another mistake to add to my list.
Feeling the weight of my own problems, I arose to my full height in one fluid motion. I didn’t so much as look back at Max or Bernie or the building as I walked toward the stupid cotton fields.
“Oh, come on, don’t be like that. We’re all in the same boat here,” Bernie called after me. I could tell he meant that. If it wasn’t sarcasm coming out of his mouth, I believed every word of it in my short time of knowing him.
Again, I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin. I had to keep moving. There was some emotion inside of me, I paid attention to it enough to know that it was either anger or hate or fear or sadness, but I didn’t know which one. If I left myself alone for too long with that feeling, it was going to burn my insides and deteriorate my heart.
“What are you doing?” Bernie yelled out to me.
I twisted my torso a
round toward them. Max was now standing beside Bernie, both of them were watching me with confusion like they were trying to figure out if they should stop me or not. “I’m walking. I feel like walking,” I yelled back.
“Why didn’t you just tell her werewolves are happy?” I heard Max say to Bernie.
“Why didn’t you tell her? I’m not going to lie to her to please you,” his tone was lighthearted, but I could tell there was a seriousness about his words.
“She asked you, not me.”
“Maybe you should start practicing speaking up.”
My foot slid into the dark, potholed dirt throwing me off balance. I expected the dirt to stop sliding, but before I knew it, my entire body was falling into the ground. A high-pitched scream escaped my throat as I reached out for anything to break my fall. I broke my fall on my back, and coughed as airborne dust filled the area.
“Lynn!” I heard Max yell, and the familiar pounding of heavy footfalls on the dirt path.