Chapter Nineteen
Elle's POV
The library was a coffin of silence. The heating unit made more noise than the six or so students who bunkered down in fear of looming deadlines. Ms Harmin patrolled the aisles, her finger fused to her lips as she monitored the library, silencing students who dared to type too loudly.
Jacobi, Kendra and I were hidden amongst the canons of law, loose paper strewn around us as we tried to find our motivations. We'd been in the library for over an hour, and my page was still blank as I twiddled nervously with my pen. Jacobi was half of my distraction. He twirled his pen effortlessly between his fingers, a swirling baton, as he stared at an old PlayStation portable he had found on Tuesday after searching the dredges of his drawers in a state of procrastination. He made it look too easy.
The rest of my thoughts were on the piece of paper that burned through the fabric of my uniform. We had an essay due in a week, and all I could think about was the restraining order which felt like it was charring my pocket. I was meant to be thinking about court hearings and the conflicts that created them, and I was, in part, but I couldn't write about my own experience.
Kendra wasn't any better. Her page was filled with scribbles, doodles of flowers, skulls, and the silly little 'S' everyone learned to draw in third grade.
It was clear that we weren't welcome in the library. Ms Harmin had looped around the aisles eight times to walk past us, shaking the floors as she stormed down the halls in search of evidence that we'd made a noise.
We couldn't help ourselves, whispers and stolen laughter were heavenly distractions, and Jacobi's chips powered our inspiration. When no one else was making a peep, the whispered conversations and the crinkling packet of chips became deafening roars.
We could always tell when she was coming because her steps vibrated through the shelves and up our backs. Kendra would start a new page when she went by, pretending to be immersed in meaningless song lyrics as she scribbled the words to Bad Guy and Truth Hurts onto her page. Jacobi and I would pick up books, reading random sentences without taking them in until she had passed; Jacobi would leave greasy barbeque-flavoured smudges on the pages as he flicked between them, which would then annoy Kendra.
She kicked him silently when Ms Harmin turned her back, gesturing to him to clean his hands, but he stared back cluelessly.
'At least wipe your hands before you pick them up!' she hissed when Ms Harmin scurried off after another noise bounced around the library walls. 'And make sure you don't hold it upside down. She's eighty, not stupid.'
'At least wipe your hands.'
'Great, no wonder you can't read a book. You are only five.'
It was the calling card Jacobi had been waiting for because he flung his study notes onto the ground and replaced them with his PlayStation portable, a childish grin stretched across his face. 'Good, I have never seen a five-year-old study, and some five-year-olds don't even attend school, and that's the kind of five-year-old I want to be.'
'We graduate in three months. What are you doing?'
I snorted, finally looking up at their pair of them. 'Jacobi pretty much has a guaranteed position with the pack, and if that doesn't work out, his dad will give him the business.'
'I hate you.'
Jacobi lazily pounced at Kendra, looping his arm around her neck as she squirmed, and pulled her close to press a sloppy kiss to her temple. 'You love me.' He cooed, falling onto her lap and gazing up at her, the lights reflecting in his eyes like stars.
Kendra caught his nose between her fingers and pinched it. Jacobi flinched, but he didn't pull away as she had hoped. She sighed and slapped his forehead with her notebook. 'Can you explain exactly how Elle decided Lachlan's fate again?'
Jacobi, pouting, rubbed a trail of oily crumbs across his forehead. 'She came up with water,' he stated. He lost the bells and whistles he had first told the story with, and Kendra nodded along, invested in the recount. 'Meniok asked what punishment he should have. She didn't know it was him. I don't know how since it was a very specific set of crimes. I think she was too easy on him.'
'The punishment fits the crime!' I barked, going back to my notes. I scratched the nib of my pen across the page, tearing a hole into the paper.
'Well, they are holding a trial, but really it's just for show. The Vermiculo pack made a big deal of threatening this kind of behaviour with repercussions, even members of our own pack. Lachlan heard all of this. He can't claim ignorance.'
'And?'
'And what? The council decided on the severity of the punishment on Monday, but Elle was pretty adamant that there be a trial and investigation, one, to be fair, and two, because a trial makes it public and it's the sort of crime that should be publicised. The investigation is bogus, though. Elle gave a pretty damning statement even though she didn't know who was on trial.'
Lachlan hadn't been at school all week, but I couldn't stop scanning crowds, searching for his face as it haunted my waking moments. I'd looked over my shoulder more times in the last week than I had all year. It was worse because at least when he was around, I knew where he was, and now I didn't know, and everything inside of me was constricted with fear.
The judge on Wednesday had granted a temporary protective order against Lachlan until his trial could take place. But it was protection made of paper. A sheet of paper couldn't protect me. It couldn't stop Lachlan from using force again. There were police, and they would respond if I needed them, but there was no knowing how Lachlan's desperate mind would operate. The paper took away Lachlan's only legal way of talking to me.
His parents had pulled him out of school before the order had even been granted, and within hours they had a tutor organised to get him through the year. He'd be able to finish his final year once I'd graduated, but the likeliness of him returning was slim.
He was no longer allowed at the hotel either, which meant he was no longer a part of the council.
Jacobi had shrugged and continued to conjugate verbs in our French class, telling me it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Lachlan's parents had revoked his privileges within the pack the day they had pulled him from school.
From there, everything had moved quickly, and by Friday, we'd learnt that I wasn't the only girl he had deceived. Three other girls had come forward, admitting they had believed they had been soulmates for a period. We couldn't be sure how many girls were too embarrassed to come forward.
Of those three girls, none had reported any counts of harassment.
'Earth to Elle?'
I was startled, pain webbing across the back of my head as it ricocheted off the shelves, Kendra had leaned as close as she could with Jacobi still on her lap, and her face was mere inches from mine.
I swatted at her, ducking my head. She cackled, stretching her arms with a softened yawn. 'You zoned out on us.'
'Do you need anything?'
'Nah,' she smirked, running her hands through Jacobi's hair as she laid back against the shelves, her eyes drooping. 'Not really.'
'I hate you.'
'Jacobi!' she whined, 'Do you hear how she is talking to me?'
'Suck it up, princess.' He snorted.
'Hey, Jacobi.' Kendra said slyly without opening her eyes. She waited for a hmm of acknowledgement. Her face was scrunched with the efforts of squeezing her eyes closed, and she flung her arm dramatically across her face as she wailed, 'can you do this assignment for me!'
'Sure.' Jacobi scoffed, 'It's on serial killers in the 1800's, right?'
'No!' she groaned, 'It's on the Venadni Peace Treaty of 1962.'
'The who-what now?'
I snorted, returning my attention to my books because Jacobi was trying to get a rise from Kendra.
You weren't a real werewolf – or human, to be fair – if you didn't know what the Venandi Peace Treaty was.
The treaty between werewolves and humans was such a big part of our history that it was worshipped as the turning point of our past. It became a global holiday that spanned a week of celebrations. Just like Eddison, Martin Luther, and the defeat of the Nazis, the treaty changed the course of history.
In the mid-1950s, as the world was still stabilising after WW2, the objectification of werewolves became worse. Xenophobia caused raids and mass destruction, creating evil in packs that intensified over the years. There had never been a good relationship between humans and werewolves, but we created it when there was no other hate to turn to. Propaganda created unrest within once-peaceful communities, and hunters used their liberties to take lives with no repercussions.
With such a strong affinity for their pack lands, the werewolves protected them the only way they knew how, and a reign of terror struck fear for a decade.
And then, in 1957, everything got worse. Death was constant worldwide, with mass killings and 'exterminations' of entire packs, crippling the werewolves and bringing them to their knees by cutting off their legs. Nanna and Pop remember living in fear for a decade, they said it had never been good, but in the years following the war, it was a time of unlivable unrest.
Gias Harper and Edward Kempt.
They changed the world.
A peace treaty was proposed, which ended the war and stopped most of the killings. Towns such as Aucteraden, which had been accepting of werewolves even before the treaty, reaped the most from the peace, and the werewolf population boomed as wolves initiated into the packs around it. Now we were able to celebrate our diversity.
I was sheltered. I knew that. Segregation still existed in towns where xenophobia clung tightly to the minds of those still driven by fear. And racism was a wolf in sheep's clothing, manipulating itself to blend within society, causing just as much damage as before. But our future was looking brighter. We could educate, change our ways, and create a world that thrived on harmony.
'Elle!'
'What!' I groaned, dropping my pen to cup my face with my hands, struggling not to pull at my hair and cry. 'I'm trying to do this assignment.'
'No need to get snappy.' Kendra moaned. 'I just wanted to know if you had a marker.'
***
I found refuge on the steps that looked over the backyard. When venturing into the forest felt unsafe, I resigned to watching it from afar. Today the air was still. The trees were motionless, and not a sound spilled from the darkness.
I couldn't look away, crossing my arms, uncrossing them, and tugging my shirt sleeve. I wanted to go in, but something about the trees begged me to stay away.
The temperature dropped, and a chill rolled down my skin as the back of my neck prickled. Jacobi had told me it was safe, but every time I closed my eyes, the memory of the wolf rushed towards the front of my thoughts, yellow teeth gnashing and gnawing as he assaulted my mind.
'Elle,' A winter jacket fell from the sky as Nanna lowered herself onto the stairs, her body groaning in protest. 'What are you doing out here?'
'I'm worried.'
'About what?'
I clattered the nails of my thumbs together, staring intensely as fingers twisted and jerked, clack, clack, click. I swallowed the dread that pooled in my mouth, hemming to clear my throat. 'About what's in there.'
'Is this about that boy?'
She meant Arlo, and to some extent, she was right. But I'd always known the risk, and I'd never felt like I hadn't been protected. He had made me feel safe, always. But now, I wasn't sure. I didn't know how to act or treat him, not now, not once I had witnessed how fear could control him.
'Elle,' Nanna placed a hand atop mine, and I felt the leathery wrinkles of her skin. 'If I believed for a second that you would be unsafe in the forest, do you think I would have let you run around when you were only five?'
'Five?'
'We tried to keep you out, but after your parents left, you needed something familiar, something you could recognise as your home. We followed you for months, but you always went to the same place, and a young wolf waited for you. We didn't know who he was, so we were worried, but we were even more concerned that if we took away that comfort, you would crumble.
'One day, he leapt at you. He was growling, his hackles raised, and we knew we wouldn't get to you in time. You screamed so loud, but I could hardly hear you over the blood rushing in my ears. We thought we had lost you when he lunged, but he missed you and instead rose up with a curling snake clenched in his muzzle.
'After that, we didn't feel the need to follow you anymore. We trusted him.' She leaned over and pressed a cold kiss atop my forehead, sighing wistfully. 'You trust him as well. You're scared he won't catch the snake this time.'