It had been second grade when the teacher asked us what we wanted to do when we grew up.
It had been a frosty winter's day, and the wind had been whistling a shrill tune outside, but the heater was on full blast, and it had been warm and toasty inside the wooden walls of the one-room schoolhouse. We had sat down in a circle, on the big yellow rug in the centre of the classroom.
We had gone around clockwise. Most of the answers had been positions in the pack. Pack sentry. Hunter. Tutor. Guardian.
Then they got to me. I had cleared my throat.
"I want to be an astronaut," I had said, matter-of-factly. "I want to visit the International Space Station and orbit the earth."
***
Eleven years later, I still don't like to talk about what happened next. Let's just say it wasn't a very pleasant experience.
Watching the yellow-and-green Stone River Post van as it drove away, I reached into the pack mailbox. There was something from the Organisation of Pan-Lycan Unity. Several of the fluff magazines the other pack members seemed to love. And at the very bottom, an envelope emblazoned with the familiar crest with the crow perched on top of it. The insignia of the University of Canterbury.
My heart gave a small leap at the sight of the last item. Making sure that nobody was around, I carefully separated it from the other envelopes and tucked it into my coat pocket.
***
I trudged discreetly through the pack village. People snuck looks at me and whispered amongst themselves, but they didn't dare say anything aloud, or do anything physical. They tolerated me, as I was the only one who knew how to fix things.
Having put the mail in its rightful place in the pack house and checked on the robots, I walked around to the back entrance. The Omega entrance. I was relieved that the tenon saw and pencil I had left on the back porch remained untouched. Nearby lay some lengths of pine I had saved from the pack woodpile when nobody was looking. The bottom member of one of the window frames had completely rotted through and needed to be replaced urgently.
The top of the window frame had a little bit of rot too. I had already dug out the rotten parts and filled them in the day before. I was still waiting for the filler to set so I could sand and paint them.
I entered my room. The floral wallpaper was peeling at the edges. The floor was covered in clutter. Beta Roman's TV lay on the floor, half-disassembled. He wanted it back by Thursday as the next episode of The Real Lunas of Canterbury was airing.
Another TV stood on top of a chest of drawers at the far end of the cramped room. A 42-inch flatscreen, my pride and joy. The Alpha's son had thrown it out. It had taken me ninety seconds to get it going again.
The alternator of Iota Catriona's car lay next to Roman's TV, completely dismantled. It needed to be rebuilt by the day after, as she needed to drive into the Industrial Zone for a conference on bandaging techniques.
A small desk sat next to a single bed, covered mostly by thick instruction manuals. There was the day's homework at the very left corner, already completed. I'd done the pack tutor course so many times I'd memorised all the answers. They always used the same worksheets over and over again, with minor changes.
On the wall, the choosing ceremony invitation was pinned. This was a completely pointless exercise, as everyone in the pack knew exactly where and when it would be – tomorrow at the amphitheatre, as it had been since time immemorial, but one of the schoolteachers had still spent the better part of a fortnight painstakingly typesetting and printing copies for all the pack members.
