cold.

III

•Anais•

The rose died the next day.
I could say that it's a pity, but it's only a flower.

The long walk to school the next day was tedious, since my house is right next to the dull, gray beach. My high school, Mercenary High, is about fifteen minutes walking distance.

The route is mainly one, long road alongside the ocean. It's never sunny, and always windy. The waves are too large and the unrelenting waves are much too treacherous for swimming.

I pull the collar of my navy blue jacket up as high as it can go, trying to cover my exposed skin from the icy wind.

By the beach, snow is very rare, but further into town, the snow can reach up to three feet.
The flimsy, twisted cypress trees were the only ones around, the tiny ice plants and dull gray-green sea oats were the only vegetation growing on the dunes or farther up the beach.

It's beautiful here, in its own, mysterious way.

A gray Mercedes whizzes by, blowing my hair out far more than it had been. 'Should've braided my hair' I groan.

As I reach my school, I notice the familiar vehicle that had passed me by. The brand-new model and license plate, reading "Qw3nAn4", belonged to one person.

The girl who had been driving opened the driver door and stepped out, revealing her black high heels, a common element, along with her black velvet leggings, black leather jacket, and of course, her iconic black glasses, which she pushed up out of her face, flattening her long, blonde hair.

Annalyse Knight was hard to miss. Everyone knew her because she came from the richest family in the town.

Every aspect of her was pristine, perfected. From the way she dressed to how she walked and talked, anyone could see that she wanted to be seen, needed to be idolized.

She had never been kind to me, nor to anyone for that matter. Everyone just accepted how she was. It was all that money she had at her fingertips.

Her parents absolutely adored her. She'd probably never have to work a day in her life.
"Annie! It's sooo great to see you. Figured you'd have left by now." Annalyse jeers.

"I'm just thinking about staying for a while. It's anything wrong with that?" I ask.

"Nothing, of course!" Annalyse replies before pursing her red lips and strutting off.

I huff, my breath swirling around me in the cold.

Years ago, in the third grade to be exact, Annalyse moved to my small town of Mercenary Bridge.

Even then, she stood out.

She had always been tall, as well as slender.

She would wear dresses and ballet flats, with headbands or bows adorning her long hair.
I always remember what she said to me once she finally acknowledged that I even existed.

———

"Hey. Anais, right?" The young girl asked, examining the strawberry blonde girl she was basically interrogating.

"Yeah." Was all the much smaller girl replied.
"Sooo... I think we should make some rules, since our names are so similar." The blonde explained.

The other girl didn't understand what she meant. Surely Anais and Annalyse were decently different names?

"I get to be Anna. You can be Annie. 'Kay?" The blonde explained, not giving the other girl any choice in the matter

———

Ever since then, I had been "Annie" to her. It was such an insignificant thing, something that shouldn't matter, hence why Atlas had been the only one to cross the boundary, which Annalyse did not like. She, naturally, blamed his actions on me, since she always had eyes for the charming olive-skinned boy.

Atlas and I... some would say that we were together, even though I had no romantic interest in him.

Maybe it was the way we behaved around each other, or how how fluidly we conversed.

But when he said some things he really shouldn't have, I wasn't hesitant to eradicate him from my life.

———

As I made my way to my first period class, -English-, the honey-skinned boy from yesterday -Emory- approaches me.

"Whatever Atlas wants. I don't care." I say before the boy has a chance to speak, my voice stern.

Emory looks as if he was trying to shrink before he answered me, trembling. "Uh- he- er- wanted- wants, to see you. At lunch. Under the pine."

"Tell him he won't be seeing me there." I snarl, sounding a bit like a wolf, which, ironically, was our topic for English today.

The poem written on the board was beautiful, resonating with me, which no one could ever know about.

Moon drunk beast,
Beautiful yet cryptic,
Howl your melancholy question,
And tell me,
Which you dread more,
The echo or the answer?

The class was boring aside from that. The fifty minutes of class passes me by in a blur.

When the bell rung, I snap back into reality. I rarely ever nod off, except in extreme situations.

I sling my bag over my shoulder, heading out of the classroom.

My mind kept making me think of the flowers. I hadn't looked for them out in the backyard.
But what did I care?
Exactly. I didn't.

"Isa!" A familiar voice calls. Only one person calls me by that name.

"Ambrose." I remark, a faint smile lingering on my lips. He threw his arms around me in a tight hug, messy mop of chestnut brown hair brushing against my face.

"Oh come on, babe." Ambrose whines, noting how I hadn't hugged him back as fiercely as he had. I sigh and squeeze him tightly. He smiles cheekily at me, dimples deep and green eyes sparkling.

The way he says "babe" always sounds so strange, so foreign to me. Alien even, as no one had ever called me that before.

Ambrose has been my boyfriend ever since after the whole fiasco with Atlas. I relate to him more than any other boy my age, since he is a wolf like me.

"Atlas wants to 'talk' under the pine at lunch, according to his minion." I remark.

"Then let's go 'talk' to him. Don't worry babe, I'll protect you." Ambrose jokes, kissing me on the cheek.

I smile. "How wonderful."