Wolf City

Healing

          It also didn’t surprise me then that the death of Max would affect her more than I because she had known him longer. She had hung out with him a lot more than I had in the past. She had run with him through the trees and drank with him around campfires; she had hunted with him, and had seen his true self when I hadn’t. To her, Max was a real part of her family, and to me he was more just a friend. Even after the kiss, I still saw him as a friend.

          Obviously with our connection I feel upset because of his death. I mean no one deserves to die like that. I cried for him, and I mourned for him most of the night, so I was trying to look at the day with a new light. The fact that I was exhausted also helped me, so I suppose either way it would be a little easier for me. Death was also something that just didn’t get to me like it might other people, but then I had never seen anyone die that I thought I couldn’t live without.

          I took some air deep into my legs and let it out so that I could clear my head of all the thoughts and then walked up to her. The skin on my hand made contact with her bare arm. It was soft and cold against the heat from my own body, and that was unusual for a creature of our sorts. We didn’t get cold really. At first I didn’t think that she acknowledged my presence, but when I pulled my hand away she whirled around and embraced me. Her read hair scratched my face as she dug deeper into my neck looking for some sort of security. My arms wrapped around her, rubbing her back soothingly.

          She started to sob once again, allowing small tears to fall from her eyes onto my shoulder. I started to think that this is what it means to be a shoulder to cry on, because before I had never really seen it as a true expression. No word escaped her lips, only soft whimpers as she held onto me tightly. Dark smoke was starting to rise from the pan, allowing me to smell the burnt food. I forced myself away from her and turned off the stove and put the pan into the sizzling sink.

          Alice was still standing where I left her, staring blankly at the floor. She was wearing a blue chunky knit sweater, elbow length, and no buttons; underneath was a plain white, spaghetti strapped tank top, and tight black, cotton capris. This was clearly one of her gloom outfits that she kept under the color coded drawer marked ‘blue days.’

          My stomach growled and I realized I hadn’t eaten in quite some time, but the burnt food kind of put me off getting anything down. Plus, I had bigger fish to fry…and I needed to never use a food reference when I was starving ever again.  I turned off the water I had used to cool down the pan, and then grabbed Alice’s shoulders and steered her to the couch. Still she walked like one of the undead.

          I had to wonder if she had ever watched someone die, or even had someone she cared about die. With the way she was acting, I had my doubts. Maybe my mind was used to it because my parents had walked out on me as a young child? Either way, this couldn’t be a normal part of the grieving system. She sat down with still blank eyes. I tried snapping in her face, clapping, saying her name over and over, and even hit her lightly once. Nothing I was doing was working.

          I got up and opened Zane’s door to a slit, from this I could see the pillows on his bed and his side table. To my surprise he wasn’t in bed, and to my even bigger surprise he wasn’t even in his room. This had been the first time I had ever even been in his room. Before, I had never needed to be in here because he was always around. Of course, my curiosity won the debate over whether or not I should snoop around.

          I didn’t bother being quiet since Alice was in who knew what kind of state and Zane was clearly not around. His room was not what I thought it would be like. Unlike Alice’s everything was neat and in a proper place except the sheets on the bed. The floor was bare of any lose things except a pillow that must have fallen off while he slept on the other side of the bed. His bedside table had a lamp, and a crinkled up receipt from some tea place.