Wolf Broken (Wolfish 2)

&n

bsp; I take a gasping breath and turn over, the betraying rush of oxygen into my lungs triggering a wracking sob that I can’t push down. It bubbles out of me, spilling over until it overtakes my entire body.

My vision, already hazy, is blurred by tears.

Down below, I hear a moment’s hesitation in my mother’s furious scrubbing … but then, a moment later, it just begins with new fury.

By now she’s used to this routine.

It’s not the first time we’ve played this game.

I know she must be growing tired of me. She, like everyone else, thinks I should be getting over it. Getting over them.

I should be moving on. But they don’t know what I lost.

I lost more than Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb. I lost more than the chance at a life that was more than the humdrum of school, work, and sleep.

I lost a bond.

And try as they did to convince me that as a human I couldn’t feel it, they were wrong.

Because why else would I feel as if I’ve been shattered into three separate pieces? Why else would I feel as if each one of them has taken a part of me with them that I’ll never get back?

I lay here in my bed, staring up at the forlorn moon painted on my ceiling by one of the boys who stole a piece of my soul when he left. Even the moon looks vacant, even that has left me only emptiness.

At some point in the night, I hear the cabin door close as my mom leaves for her shift at work and I find myself glad that she is gone. If I am to be alone, then I want to be very, very alone.

More days pass into weeks, and I start to feel like my body is a mechanized piece of equipment, just going through the motions of daily doldrums until eventually I’ll break and be unrepairable. I don’t see things, or hear them, or feel them; I just simply do them.

Jess comes up to my locker one morning as I’m pulling a book out. I don’t even know which book it is or if it’s the right one for class, and I don’t care one way or the other. At this point, thanks to all the time I spent playing hooky alongside the boys, I’ll be lucky to pass anyway.

I stick the book under my arm and see Jess’s face behind my locker staring at me once I close the locker door.

For once, it jolts me present enough to hear the words that drop from her lips.

“Hey stranger,” she says with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Still feeling a little under the weather?”

Understatement.

Not that I have the energy to correct her.

That’s the worst part about grief. Everyone expects you to get over it, when all you want is for it to swallow you whole.

She continues on before I can drown in my own thoughts again, before her voice can dull into a sound as blurred as my vision.

“There’s a Renaissance faire coming to town tonight. It supposed to last through the weekend. Me and Aimee and a few of the guys are going after school today. Do you want to come?”

I know I should think it’s sweet of her to invite me, but I have no desire to go do anything at all. When she sees my reluctance, she sweetens the deal by making the alternative sound much worse.

“It’s either that or spend a night at home with your mom,” she says, grinning. “You must be getting pretty tired of that by now.”

Since it’s all you do.

I stare at her blankly for a minute, ready at first to turn her down—as I must have done a dozen times—when I pause. If I just go, just do this one thing, maybe she’ll back down for a while.

Maybe she’ll just leave me alone if she sees that even she can’t make this pain go away.

And even the darkest, numbest part of me has to agree almost anywhere is better than home right now. And it’s not because of my mother, who’s increasingly loud voice seems to have doubled with the empty bottles found shattered in the garbage can every morning.