Home -- Wolv book 3

Chapter 2 - To lose a life

Nadie rolled the pencil between her fingers with frustration, glaring hatefully at the papers scattered on the table before her. She scowled at the numbers and words scrawled out across the page, and began nibbling on the pencil. There were things she wanted to be doing--things outside--but she was stuck at the wobbly kitchen table instead, trying fruitlessly to finish her schoolwork.

"What was I thinking?" she grumbled, doodling in the margins of her assignment. She'd thought learning the new language would be easy--all of the tourists that came through Bloodvein seemed to know English well enough, and she'd picked up a handful of words over the years--but when it had actually come to sitting down and studying it, she had quickly realized that it wouldn't be a simple as she'd hoped.

Having her mother and father--both of whom spoke English fluently--casually teaching her new words outside of her native Ojibwe tongue had been enough to pique her interest in the subject, an interest that wasn't paying off in the slightest. Her grades were awful, and she struggled to construct even the easiest of sentences. Writing it out was even worse--who, in their right mind, would ever invent a method of speaking that had too many rules and exceptions to count?!?

She jabbed her pencil into the paper, scratching out a sentence. "No, I did not see the car over there, sir!" She rolled her eyes, knowing full well that she was a long way from becoming fluent. She would've been happy sticking to the Ojibwe language had she known just how much learning a new tongue would suck, but with her teachers beginning to write more and more in English, at the end of the day, she really hadn't had much of a choice.

She was getting the basics--really, she was--it was just slow going. Being ashi-niiwin--that's thirteen years old in English, Nadie!--she had all the time in the world to master it.

Unfortunately.

She finished her English assignment, and grudgingly moved on to her math assignment, conveniently written in the strange new language as well. Sure, it was the language used by the rest of the country, but the whole point of living on a reserve was to be able to maintain one's way of life and language, wasn't it?

She blinked her eyes, realizing just how quickly her mind was changing on the subject. One day, learning the new words was a fantastic opportunity, one that would eventually allow her to travel, should she ever decide to do so--and the next day, when the homework piled up and the teacher clucked her tongue disapprovingly at the teen, learning it was a curse.

Snap!!

Her eyes flicked down to the shattered pencil in her hands, and she growled again. Tomorrow is another day. I can do this then! She hastily swept the papers together off of the sticky table, and shoved them into her backpack, giving them one last glare. Thanks for ruinin' my afternoon!

She looked out the back door, and snatched up her windbreaker. She'd been waiting for two days to go paddling down the river, now that the waters were low and calm. She'd picked out her canoe, her paddle, everything, and had been about to rush out after her friends, until her mother had caught her by the arm, a knowing look on her face.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"Where does it look?" she'd sassed back, holding up her paddle and life-jacket, 'duh!'  written all over her eyes.

Her mother had shaken her head. "Did you finish your schoolwork?"

That had earned an annoyed growl. "Why do you always ask me that?"

"Because the answer is usually no." Nahanni had reached over and taken the paddle and life-jacket from her dumbfounded daughter's hands, and pointed at the old kitchen table. "School first, Nadie. Your father is gonna be home this weekend, and you don't really want to be doing homework then, do you?"