Animal Nature

Chapter 13

"Have you seen my phone charger?" Billy called from the kitchen. Shy ignored him and kept scrolling through the pages of Google results. Billy had been interrupting her research all day because of his stupid hunting trip.

"Shyanne? Do you have an extra phone charger?" Billy yelled.

"I don't have a cell phone!" Shy called back.

Since David didn't call last night, Shy had finally sat down and read the story "The Company of Wolves" for her Little Red Riding Hood assignment. A few things had struck her about the story, which was actually more about werewolves than about real wolves. She remembered how David had been looking at the moon on the night he kissed her, and how he was eating meat again, and then her thoughts stuck on the mysterious animal attack up in Maine.

Totally ridiculous, Shy told herself. David is not a werewolf. Werewolves are not real. Still, it was a strange collection of evidence, all pointing to that very conclusion.

"Hey." Billy poked his head into her room. "I'm taking off." He was dressed entirely in camouflage.

"See ya."

"Shy, come out and say good-bye to your brother," came Mr. Brown's voice.

Shy got up and trudged out to the kitchen. Billy slung an arm around her shoulders. "I'll bring back some good venison. Then you'll see the error of your ways and go back to being a carnivore."

"Omnivore," Shy said.

"Huh?"

Shy sighed. "Carnivores eat only meat. Omnivores eat both meat and vegetables. Humans are omnivores, like bears."

"I'll bring back one of those too," Billy laughed.

Shy shook her head. She stood with her arms crossed while Billy and Mr. Brown took all of Billy's bags out to the truck. "Why do you have to kill innocent animals to have fun?" Shy asked, like she asked every year when Billy went off on his hunting trips.

"Just to piss you off," Billy said, smiling sweetly.

"Sometimes it's hard to believe you're nineteen," Shy said. "You act like you're six."

In response Billy stuck his tongue out at her.

"I think that's everything," Billy said, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. "Don't worry, guys," he said to Mr. and Mrs. Brown. "If I see any damn wolves like that one that attacked David, we're gonna have a nice trophy head to hang in the living room." He patted his rifle. Shy wondered how she and Billy could even be related.

Once her brother left, Shy could get to work on her report again. "How is Little Red Riding Hood related to today's world?" she read to herself. Werewolves didn't have anything to do with that. For some reason, though Shy didn't know how, the wolf in the story had something to do with sex.

Shy pulled out Grimm's Fairy Tales and opened it to the story. Girl meets wolf, wolf eats girl. In "The Company of Wolves," the girl had met a man who turned out to be a werewolf, then, after discovering he'd killed her grandmother, she'd run off with him, after turning into a werewolf herself. But what did that have to do with sex?

The wolves were symbols of men who only wanted sex. The girl, going off by herself, and wearing red, which was the color of passion and desire, and talking to a stranger, that was putting herself in danger from a man, or a wolf, who may have seemed pleasant, but who only wanted that one thing from her. The part Shy couldn't figure out was the grandmother. If the wolf eating Little Red Riding Hood was a symbol for sex, why did the wolf also eat the grandmother?

This got Shy to thinking about David. Did he only want sex from her?

That's stupid. It was just one kiss, and suddenly you think he wants to have sex with you?

It did seem that way, though. He hadn't wanted to go to animal rights club or do the animal shelter promotion with her. He'd kissed her then run away. Shy supposed he could have done more to her, but he also could have stayed and talked to her.

The phone rang. "Shy, honey? It's for you," Mrs. Brown called from the kitchen.

"Who is it?"

"David, who else would it be?"

Shy smiled and picked up the phone. David wasn't a wolf. She felt silly for even thinking it.