Surprise

Chapter 3: New Girl - Editing

There was something cold on my face.  Or at least, I thought there was.  I felt my forehead to discover there was just water drenching me.  I sat up slowly and looked around.  The first question that popped into my head was probably the most important one.

Where am I?

There was a towel over me, and when I shoved it away, I realized it was because I was completely naked without it.  I quickly pulled it back up.

I took in my surroundings.  Why was I in the woods?  Where had that waterfall come from?  Whose towel was this?  But most importantly, I wondered why I was naked in the woods next to a waterfall.

I remembered the painful details right away.  My parents.  I had forgotten.  How had I forgotten?  I instinctively shifted, as I was doing a lot lately, whenever I think about something unpleasant, I shift to avoid it.

I tried to shift, anyway, but nothing happened.  I stayed exactly as I was, sitting up in the woods, holding a towel up against me.  I couldn't.  I made no change.  I thought and thought, commanding my body to change, but it refused every time.

"You can't shift," I heard a bright and bubbly voice say from behind me.  I immediately snapped my head around to see a short pale blonde girl sitting on a boulder, staring at me intently.  "I must say, you really outdid yourself there, didn't you?  Didn't anyone ever teach you about wolf stroke?"

I shook violently as a breeze blew over me.

"Here," the girl said, throwing something at me.  It hit my face, and then fell to my lap.  Clothes.  I picked up the white camisole and tugged it on, and then the black cardigan.  I never thought I'd be so glad to see underwear in my life!

I looked at the girl, hoping for a bit of privacy, but she just shrugged.  "We're all girls here."  Her voice was soft and quiet, but easy to understand.  Her blonde hair was pale, like I'd never seen as a natural hair color.  I'd never seen a blonde that light, like the color of corn silk.  I bet it felt like corn silk, too.

She was pretty.  I couldn't tell if she was a wolf just by looking at her, and I couldn't smell any better than a human at the moment in my weakened state, so I guessed I would just assume.

I stood up and pulled on the dark jeans and smiled.  "Thanks so much."

"Whoa!  Lay back down.  You can't use up so much energy.  You need to rest up so that you can make it to my pack house."

My mind stuck on the end of that sentence with hope.  Pack house.  She's definitely a wolf.

I sighed and found a boulder to sit on.  "So what's wolf stroke?" I asked.

She glared at me in a way that made me want to laugh and motioned to the ground.  "Lay back down."  She wasn't scary, but I realized just how tired I was, so I relented and did as told, laying on my side so I could face her, holding my head up with my left arm.

"I'm guessing you've been running a lot, hardly been out of wolf form.  Did you even drink any water, or eat anything?"  Her eyes looked worried, but her tone of voice felt judgmental, like my mom's would when she knew I was doing something stupid and dangerous.

My mother would never look at my like that again, I realized.  I was hit suddenly my an intense desire to see her like that one more time.  I tried to remember the last time my mother acted this way toward me.

It was a few months ago.  Hannah had convinced me to go downtown to help her pick up boys.  We walked around for hours, my feet hurting, and all the while feeling very uncomfortable.