Wolfbound

Chapter 5: Zane

Chapter 5

I’d reached the end of my tether. I’d had enough of this girl.

I stood abruptly, causing the girl to open her eyes. She stared up at me but said nothing. Her face said enough. She was worried and confused at the same time.

I didn’t allow myself the time to care about what she felt. There was no way to explain myself to her. So I just left.

The front office hit me with its wall of warmth as I entered. Jodie looked up at me from behind her desk.

“Zane!” she beamed, “How can I help?”

A few things ran through my mind. What to use? “I… um… my… uncle died,” I lied.

“Oh dear!” she gasped, eyes twinkling with sympathy. I knew this would be a piece of cake. The office lady had a somewhat creepy cougar-like admiration for me.  Just flash a smile here and there and she would do anything I asked.

“Yeah,” I pulled my best attempt at a sad face and watched her eat it up, “I’m going to need some time off school to deal with it. I can’t stay here, I can’t take it anymore.” That last bit was true, which made for a more believable lie.

“Oh, you poor thing! Well, of course. How long, darling?”

I thought about it carefully. How long could I get away with? How long until the next full moon? How long would be enough for me to sort myself out?

“3 weeks,” I answered.

She hesitated.

“Sue is taking the news hard. She loved Uncle… Roger,” I added quickly with the first name that came to mind. Sue really didn’t have a brother. “After all she’s done for me, I feel as though I need to support her.”

“Aren’t you a sweet kid?” she smiled. “I’ll see what I can do,” she typed something into the school system, “When is the funeral?”

“Next week,” I said smoothly.

She hit the ‘Enter’ key dramatically and looked up at me. Her glasses had slipped down her nose. “Okay. Well there we are; all done. I wish you the best, dear. And do feel free to come back to school earlier.”

“Thank you, Jodie,” I said, flashing a smile.

“Anytime sweetheart,” she replied.

I turned on my heels and left the office. My face was beginning to burn. I could tell it was red already. I’d held it together for Jodie’s sake. But now I felt it, rising in me. I made the mistake of glancing towards the Oak tree where Tia watched, jaw unhinged, eyes trailing me. It only made things worse. I stormed out the school gates and down the street. It wasn’t her fault. Then again, maybe she was the one to blame. Maybe she’d secretly used her witch powers to tap into my emotions. With werewolves in existence, I wasn’t about to rule out witches.

I’d spent too long trying to lose touch with my human emotions. I wasn’t quite there. But I didn’t have hopeless attachments to people the way humans did. The only person I had ever felt any kind of actual love towards in my life was Sue.

My parents had left me for dead, stranded, cold, crying, as a kid on the side of the road. “Someone else’s problem now,” I could still hear my father say. He bared his teeth at me, close to my face. I remembered his canine teeth being unnaturally sharp and frightening. I cowered away from him but he grabbed my chin and forced me to stare into his eyes.

“This might help,” is the only other thing he said. He held out an old, aging book. It was the lifeline they left me with. “You show this to no one, you hear me?” I didn’t answer. A deep cease sunk in across his forehead. “NO ONE!” he yelled in my face. I could still smell the raw meat and blood from his breath. It made me shudder, even now.