Blue Moon.

Chapter 26

Liam talked while I listened. There wasn't much else I could do while he told me about himself. And though there wasn't much happy in Liam's story, I felt elated as he talked. This was what I had wanted all along. I wanted him to trust me with his life's secrets. I wanted to know him, every aspect of his life because I didn't want to feel like I cared about a stranger.

Because when it came down to it, I did care about Liam. A lot.

His mother's name was Angela Henry. Liam didn't remember much about her except her constant company of men. Angela and Liam had been unlucky with money while he was with her and she did anything or everything she could to make sure they had food on the table, but not that that meant she cared much for Liam. He was often neglected, and most of what he remembers of his childhood was playgrounds. Angela would leave him there for hours to play with unfamiliar families and children and pick him up once the sun went down.

One night she was late picking him up and he sat alone on a swing set, watching a family he had just made friends with walk away with talk about dinner. They had fussed over Liam before leaving, unsure if they should leave him alone unattended, but Liam was used to this routine, even as a three year old. He was supposed to stay put until Angela came to get him.

And that was when it happened. It came out of nowhere, knocking Liam out of his swing. It was a huge wolf, brown with black spidery lines in the wolf's fur around it's face, and yellow eyes. All Liam remembered was trying to get away but the wolf bit his arm to try to stop him, dragging him down onto the ground. The next thing he knew someone was calling out to him, and suddenly the wolf was gone. Liam was crying so hard as he laid there on the ground that the person found him, though the voice turned out to be his mother.

With a huff she picked him up and told him to stop crying. She only took notice to his bite once they made it back to their rundown apartment, merely washing it out and placing a Looney Tunes Band-Aid on it.

Nothing happened until the full moon came out two and a half weeks after. He had blacked out at midnight and woke up the next morning to a torn house, himself sprawled out in front of the bathroom door, which had been scratched and clawed at. He hurt all over and was naked, so scared that when he started crying he actually started calling for Angela, something he had learned wasn't ever useful.

Suddenly the bathroom door opened and Angela stepped out in hysterics as she looked at her son that had become a baby wolf the previous night. She ordered him to get dressed, which he did while still crying and confused. When hewasfinished,she grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him out of the apartment without a word. He didn't remember her saying anything but remembered vividly how scared and disgusted she looked as she led him tothe nearestpark.

She left him there the rest of the day, but when dusk came, she still hadn't showed up toretrieve him. Liam sat in a tube slide at the park into the late hours of the night until he started getting scared again.

He cried and cried until he fell asleep at the bottom of the tunnel slide, waking up the next morning in the same spot. His mother hadn't come back for him, but when he woke up it was to two kind-faced strangers, one woman and one man; Emily and Timothy Silver. They fussed over him on and on, speaking sweetly to him and asking where his mother was.

Liam told them in a small voice that she left him there at the park but never came back, and at first they looked shocked and appalled. Then as they beckoned Liam out of the slide they saw the bite on his arm and knew what he was. They alsohad a hunchthat Liam's mother would probably never come back for him.

They took Liam to the hospital and the authorities set out to look for Angela, but found her apartment empty of the essentials. Angela had taken most of herstuffin her car and ran, with no clue as to where she was going. But the police ended up catching up with her somewhere in Pennsylvania.