Stealing Butterflies

Chapter Eighteen

                 

Laptops are fragile creations.

I've never owned one. Still don't, actually, but I've seen those glass creations in action. Like, at coffee shops, those people always get their really expensive fancy smancy drinks and sip them, hacking off the free internet like there's no tomorrow. Not that I go there, because I don't and wouldn't even if I had the time, but the place has got windows.

And my cousin Laura dragged me in one once when we were fifteen.

She's eleven months older than me and lives on the Makah reservation up north near my grandparents. We got stuck spending the day together on a Great Big Call Family Vacation, once. Laura always had this contrived image that California was "the place to be." She was convinced that a week in Hollywood would gift her with instant stardom, and she could realize her hopes of being a famous actress/poet. I don't really know where she got that mix, but hey.

Dream big, I guess.

So, in order to become more "cultured," she spent her afternoons with the laptop-obsessed in the coffee shop named Beaver's River. I don't really know how they got that name, or how it stuck, since they're situated right by a tiny creek that's home to zero wildlife and more than a few Styrofoam cups from the neighboring McDonald's.

She dragged me there, all the same, though, and bought me a chocolate milkshake. She didn't even have a computer. She just sat there, on our little red couch, grinning like an excited fool while I slurped my free drink.

We stayed there for a whole hour.

Doing nothing.

My milkshake was gone in about five minutes.

And after that, I decided that I was never spending time with Laura Call ever again. I mean, when we left I didn't feel any different. I looked the same. I wasn't any more "cultured" or whatever. I don't know how drinking a milkshake while the people clicked manically away at their computers was supposed to make me, as Laura said, "a better person."

To be quite honest, I think my cousin just wanted an excuse to get out of Alaska.

I used to want a good reason to escape La Push. All throughout middle school I had this Big Plan. I was going to be smart in high school and go to college and all that jazz. I had it all mapped out, you know. I was going to be a doctor or lawyer or something else really cool that makes you rich.

But that brilliant plan failed.

Just like most of mine do.

Well, I did all right freshman year, but in the middle of tenth grade life threw me a pretty sick, twisted curve ball.

Yeah. I never saw the whole werewolf thing coming.

But that's okay. I don't really know what I'm going to do with my life, but I'm here, breathing, and I'm pretty damn good at hunting vampires. So who knows, maybe I'll go werewolf-pro or something...

"Will!" Kim hollered for her brother, ripping her room apart.

I was sitting awkwardly on the bed, holding Kim's laptop while she was searching furiously for her other shoe and "the shirt," whatever that meant. Apparently the one she was wearing wasn't good enough.

"We're going to be late," I pointed out dutifully.

I had been stuck in Jake's tiny bed for four days during my skeleton's remodeling process, while Brady bowed to my every whim and Katie brought me yummy baked goods. Honestly, if I knew I would have received this kind of royal treatment, I might have "accidentally" run into another maniac vampire earlier. Brady was glued to my ankles exactly like a puppy who would chase after whatever stick I deemed worthy to throw.