Instinct

39. The Final Stand (Part Two)

The summer of Stephanie's fifteenth year had been, for the most part, filled with sunshine and iced tea; air conditioning and kind smiles; the barest of southern twangs and just a hint of homesickness. But it hadn't started that way.

It had started in the dark early hours of a morning in May, with the slight buzz of alcohol in her veins and the smell of tobacco in her nose. She had trailed down the street, a warm stream of tears carving a path down her face. For hours she had wandered, leaving behind suburban neighbourhoods to discover herself at the side of a highway outside of Woodstock, Vermont. Stephanie hadn't known what she was going to do or where she was going to end up. So she'd just kept walking.

June had found her in an alleyway in Charleston, South Carolina lying amongst the garbage. The pads of her paws were cracked and bleeding, worn from endless days and nights of travel. Her flanks rose and fell shallowly as she panted, attempting to bring her temperature down, to no avail. The outline of her ribs underneath the coarse layers of her fur was visible. She had collapsed behind the diner the night before, too weak to shift back even if she wanted to.

The stink of rotting food, cat urine and rat flooded her nose but she just didn't have it in her to move. She'd had all night to come to terms with the fact that she was probably going to die there, forgotten among the dumpsters and the wooden crates. That she'd made it this far had been a surprise, and not an entirely welcome one.

All she could think was that it wasn't supposed to be like this. When she finally got out of Woodstock, it was supposed to be for a better life. But then, it had all gone to shit so fast that all she had learnt from Eric hadn't mattered anyway.

By night-fall, Stephanie was still hanging on, and beginning to wonder why her body wouldn't just give out once and for all.

Then, the door at the back of the diner opened, and a woman stepped out with black bags in either hand. Stephanie couldn't summon the sense or energy to even bark for help, but the woman seemed to know intuitively that something was amiss. When she spotted Stephanie, the werewolf assumed that the woman would freak out and call animal control or something. Wolves weren't, as you'd imagine, very common in the Carolinas.

But instead the trash bags fell to the floor with a myriad of mismatched noises and then the woman was on her knees beside Stephanie. If she had been human, she might have nonsensically tried to warn the woman about where she was kneeling in those nice white pants of hers, but as it was she just keened low and long.

"Oh my god," the woman whispered. "What happened to you?"

Stephanie just let her head fall to the ground and focused on breathing.

"I can't even take you to the hospital like this," she said.

In the next moment, Stephanie was out.

***

The woman's name, it turned out, was Charlotte Minors, known fondly by almost everyone as simply Charlie. She was the proprietor of the diner, and a regular bleeding-heart. Taking Stephanie in, she often said, was a blessing in disguise. Stephanie didn't agree, of course, she was the one who benefitted from the strange arrangement, but Charlie would hear nothing of it.

Charlie had let her get a job as a waitress once she was well enough, so she could earn some money. In many ways, the woman became Stephanie's surrogate mother. They were so alike and dissimilar all at the same time that it felt natural.

By the time the summer was coming to a close, Charlie started to get a look in her eyes. Stephanie only knew later that it was because she knew what was coming. It was nearly time to say goodbye. On Stephanie's sixteenth birthday, they went to get her a driver's licence together, and by that evening Charlie revealed to her a beaten up, old Camaro she had gotten for Stephanie.