The Girl who Cried Wolf

three. smell of decay

          No one even noticed Tram or I as we walked through the hallway of our new school. None of them even flicked their sights towards us, but it still felt like everyone's eyes were glued to me, following me like a bad smell.

A space almost the size of my hand had barely wiggled its way between my brothers back and I, I was too afraid to be more than an arms distance from him in case I became lost in the sea of hormonal teenagers and needed a rope to pull me ashore.

But I obviously hadn't suffered enough because, deciding to add to my already growing anxiety attack, my stray left shoelace finds its way under my right foot, causing me to momentarily trip and fall into my brother. The only reaction I received were glances from people I nearly knocked over, but the room felt like it was spinning carelessly.

Tram must have noticed, because he grabs my upper arm, guiding us into the classroom we had been walking too. Only a few other teenagers sat in the room, carving their imagination out onto the desks they sat at and blowing bubbles of pink out of boredom. He pushed me down into a seat, taking the one across from me before grabbing my foot and yanking it up onto his lap, threading the frayed straps until they formed a bow together. He switched feet, this time grabbing my right ankle to fix the knot that was untying itself slowly, as I bit and sucked on my jumper string.

Tying knots and shoelaces was never something I could do. I have no idea why I couldn't just understand the simple steps and imprint them into my brain, but my ears wouldn't catch onto the information and gift them to my memories. I often feel like a child, and it's the only thing that I truly hate about myself. I can't go anywhere without my fucking colouring book, I can't sit still for more than five minutes, I can't just speak one sentence at a time like a normal person and It would be easier if I just got Velcro strapped shoes. I watch Tram be able to do all these things like just sit and listen to someone as their voice painted a story, count in his head or on his fingers without starting over thirty times and walk through a crowd of people his age laughing without his breath so much as hitching for even a second, and I wonder why I can't do that.

But, I still have my charming personality and outstanding behaviour, I guess.

"Hey, gorgeous-"

"Fuck off, before I burst your nut sack in my hand like a water balloon."

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e t h a n

          "Oliver, if there was a new and dangerous supernatural creature in town, we'd know about it." I roll my eyes at his consistent nagging. He basically burst the back door of our house down to get to us. He didn't even say hi to Mum on his way in, she most likely doesn't even know he's here.

"I'm sorry, I thought this was a conversation between us shifting wolves, the ones with custom spidey senses." Oliver snapped right back at me, gesturing between himself and my older brother, Atticus, who was standing in front of me nodding like he was actually listening to any of this.

I have never been able to shift into an actual wolf despite it being in my DNA, and they made sure I knew that. Every chance they got someone would bring up the one-form thing no matter what the conversation was about. What no one but My mother, the towns supernatural doctor and I knew, was that it was my fathers' fault. He once threw me as if I was an empty paper bag into a brick wall like I meant nothing to him, and I was never able to heal from it, despite being able to grow back fingers and toes. He was once a kind man, once a good father. But he stole from a powerful witch, and she cursed him to become what the world sees 'his kind' as. A monster.

"You and Kayla did get attacked last night. You weren't even slightly showing signs of being werewolves when, as you say, an invisible creature tried to kill you." Atticus pointed out like I didn't have a bandage wrapped around my foot and crutches to prove it. For some reason, Kayla and I weren't healing as fast as we were supposed to.