Once upon a story

Chapter Twenty-One

I follow him from the kitchen, both of us carrying more food than I have eaten all week. We walk up sets of stairs and then turn left down a corridor then left again half way along. The door to Sam’s bedroom is a lighter wood than the ones in my corridor but apart from that it all seems the same. After struggling to open the door due to our full hands we both get in a sit on the floor with our backs to his bed. There is no window in his room and the square walls seem almost like a prison, he turns on the light and although the walls are a light blue instead of the previous grey it still feels like they are quickly closing in on you.

We chat about little nothings while eating, throwing food at each other for the other to catch. There are grapes in various areas of the room so when we had eaten all that we could possibly stomach Sam2 scrambles around picking them up and putting them in an empty pot. I push the wrappers away so that we are just left with a half-eaten tub biscuits and a box of chocolates that neither of us had eaten, yet. I see Sam plug in his phone to a portable speaker before sitting back down, the song is quiet but I recognised it from one summer where all we did was play it on repeat. It reminded me of the friends I had left behind.

“I’m just going to be blunt” I say quickly before the silence starts “What are you doing here?” Sam2 sighs, I can almost see the clogs turning in his mind as he thinks of an answer but in the end he just pulls a pillow off his bed to rest on before turning to face me.

“You know I’ve been waiting for you to ask as soon as you got here, right?” I nod in reply and edge him to continue “It’s a pretty long story, but you deserve to hear the truth. You and me, we were always close, little inside jokes and that. I feel that out of all of them you would have understood the best. I should have said something before, I was even going to and then each time I would shy away. So many started texts and leading sentences, Faith. The last time was the first day you didn’t turn up for school, I know now that you would have been here but you not being there felt like the final attempt, there was not point telling anyone. Now you are here and I can just tell you, I need to start I know I am waffling but it’s hard. I’ll start at the beginning…

It all started when I was late for school, I had woken up late or something stupid like that and now I had needed to run. You know my adverse to PE well It’s not because I’m lazy, well I guess that’s part of it but really it’s because I’m good at it. Too good, I could have easily beaten the other guys in our year, even in the other sports like badminton or golf I was good. So this day, a Tuesday I think, I had needed to run to school so I did. I don’t live that far away, as you know, but anyone else would have been out of breaths running full pelt from there to school except I wasn’t. Not in the slightest. I had slowed down to a slight jog when they found me. Kallum and his, pack. They grabbed me by the arm and hauled me behind the building. Spitting sentences at me like I was in the wrong, I remember one of them coming forward and slapping me. It sounds so odd if you think about it, obviously now I know why. They were looking for a reaction to prove I wasn’t completely human. I don’t know if anyone has told you but your eyes change shape first so it would be simple to prove. Get someone agitated and their wolf comes forward but my eyes didn’t change so they left, fuming. I ended up missing tutor but got to lesson on time and I hoped that would be the end of it.

Every day at school I would feel their eyes on me, my every action was watched. I knew it changed me, even with all of you I was different. I was quieter, more enclosed in my own thoughts. That was it though, they just watched me. Then one week later they grabbed me when I was walking home from school. I say they because I have no idea who it was who brought me here, then I was interrogated and yeah, I don’t like to think about it. I don’t know how long I was in that room for but eventually they realised I wasn’t going to change naturally. So I was bitten. They decided that they couldn’t just let me go; they had to go and ruin everything by forcing my body to accept its wolf nature. I was completely sedated throughout the whole experience and when I awoke it was Ceridwen, Lady Ceridwen Arthurfoul, who told me the truth. She told me that I was different, wolves are normally born with a 70:30 wolf: human state, those whose past is not as ‘pure’ are 60:40, that would be you. Then there is me who got 50:50, luck of the draw. By being bitten it pushed me up to 70:30, they assumed I would be a powerful wolf. One that could win them wars. They were right but that wasn’t the life I wanted. I should at least have had a choice. I resent them for changing me, I resented my wolf form for so long as well until I realised it was pointless. It was a part of me before, it is just stronger now but that doesn’t mean I accept them. The ones who did this to me.

They kept me here; I wasn’t allowed to go home. Then one day they woke me up and sent me to school. I was a completely different person and then suddenly normality was thrown into my face. I couldn’t understand it but I felt like me again. Walking around school, seeing everyone and being back in a normal life. It was such a surprise that I was able to walk from those school gates and head home. That night my family acted as if I had never been gone, it was like a dream. The dream ended when I ran away, I ran away from my family because I couldn’t cope with the normality. I was so used to the anger and the pain of living without them that even when I had them back it all just seemed so fake. I returned here and they gave me this room. This is my life now. I ring them every evening and I go to school every day but I always come back and I don’t understand why.

Oh Faith, I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

He had looked at everything in the room during his story and then in the last sentence he finally laid eyes on me. I could see so much anger and pain swirling in his eyes but there was hope there too. Little wisps of it that made everything seem better.

“I don’t know how to answer you Sam” I say slowly keeping eye contact “You have been through so much and there is so little I really understand. It seems the longer I stay here the more I learn that makes me want to run far away from this place. There are problems here, problems that have to be fixed if this community wants to survive. It just makes me so angry, they think they know how this world works but honestly they don’t.”

“There is nothing we can really do though Faith, we just have to continue.” He grabs the box of chocolates and opens it with ease, eating one before offering the box to me.

“There has to be something. Why shouldn’t there be, everyone just assumes that they can’t do anything. They think that someone else will take the chance and make a stand. We have to be those people.”

“That’s the dream” He says “but just think for a moment. What can we do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know yet.”

Together we plough through the rest of the chocolates, throwing ideas around in hope of finding an answer. By the end we are both on the floor, wrappers and crumbs surrounding us with all of Sam’s pillows supporting our heads. We lay in silence, being with Sam2 is like being back home, I can’t think of times the two of us ever met up without the others but I miss the talking. I miss them all. The problem is that I can’t leave, Sam can’t leave and I don’t want him here, in this place alone. I know his story now so he deserves my help; somehow we will change how things are around here. The two who still don’t fit in a world of outsiders.  Maybe all we need is to tell the truth and who better than a girl who grew up wishing to be a writer.

There on the floor of Sam2'shorrid room I decided what I was going to do. I was going to do what I do best and that is to write. A little bit more digging and the truth will be shown and then everything will fall into place.

Or at least that’s the hope.