Changed

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

 

            The sounds of the night transformed into the rush of wind in my ears as I started to run.  Being in this form gave me more agility and strength than I could ever experience as a human.  I always wondered how I spent hours exercising every night, but whenever I switched back –BAM.  I was a scrawny little sixth grader again.  I guess I should be glad because there were other things that stayed the same in wolf form, also.  For example, I didn’t smell like I’d been in the woods when I became human again.  It would be pretty suspicious if I took a shower right before bed and woke up smelling like I’d been outside all night.  Also, if I got scratched or scraped, it disappeared when I switched, so I didn’t have to explain how I hurt myself.  That rarely happened, though, and when it did, it would always reappear the same way I left it when I shifted back into a wolf.  It worked vice versa.  I sprained my ankle when I was 11, but it felt fine when I was in wolf form.  I wasn’t sure how it worked, but I was grateful it did.

            I was running around the woods over obstacles and such when I noticed a pair of headlights traveling down the road near the edge of our property, close to the area where I was currently at.  I slowed down to a stop so I wouldn’t be seen.  Our road that we lived on was nearly unused by anyone but us and a few others who had property further down, but cars occasionally traveled down it when I was on my nightly outings.  It was not big deal when it happened, so I just stayed still in until they passed by.  At least, that’s usually how it went.

            The car was going very slowly, even more than usual for a gravel road.  From what I could tell, it was a small black or other dark colored vehicle.  I didn’t worry about it too much, because the driver was probably trying to figure out what godforsaken street they were on.  I lay low waiting for them to make a U-turn or move on, but then I heard them roll to a stop.  I looked up and was startled to see that they were pulled over right in front of the entrance to our property, only 20 yards from where I was.  I slowly crept backwards, hoping they wouldn’t see me.

            The sound of the engine came to a silent halt, and I wondered if they were so lost that were actually going to ring our doorbell in the middle of the night to ask for directions.  Right then, I was really hoping that it wasn’t anything worse than that.  Besides, my adoptive parents would be more than happy to be helpful.  Their whole lives revolved around being helpful.

            Unfortunately, when they got out of the car, they seemed to have no intentions of asking for directions.  They didn’t even appear to be lost.  Two men climbed out and shut the doors behind them.  It seemed that they were trying to shut them quietly so they wouldn’t be heard.

            Burglars, I thought.  It didn’t make sense though.  Why would someone be robbing our house?  Didn’t burglars find out everything about a home before they robbed it, and anyone who knew anything about our house knew that there were sixteen people living in it.  That seemed awfully risky, especially considering that, as far as I knew, we didn’t own anything worth the risk.  And why would they come with such a small car?  It looked like a really nice car, too.

            I thought about lashing out at them to scare them off, but there was a list of several issues wrong with that plan, such as it was stupidly dangerous, I was still pretty small because of my age, and wolves weren’t entirely common around those parts, so I quickly scratched that out.  I would just have to wait and see what happened.

            Instead of making their way towards the house, they said something too each other too low for me to hear, and headed towards the woods where I was.  They bothe switched on their flashlights.