Growing up Were, Part Three

I know my father knew my mother “changed” but he did not discuss it. Selective amnesia, lust and perhaps love kept them together.

I wondered how Mother explained the missing fox. Did he ever ask?

The day I turned wolf for the first time I was supposed be in a Christmas pageant in junior high. It was a secular pageant, that involved a lot of dancing snow girls and a few non-religious Christmas carols. I was supposed to be doing a hip hop dance of Frosty the Snowman and was in my room pulling on the red tights when I noticed my legs had gotten hairy overnight. I hadn’t started shaving my legs yet, what hair I had was pale blonde and baby fine. However suddenly my tights could not conceal all the dark hair sticking through the weave.

I knew what was happening, of course. Quint was already a werewolf and I had seen my mother in her were form often enough (though generally we locked our bedroom doors and hid when she changed.) I knew what I had to do and did it as quietly and quickly as possible.

I slipped out the window, climbed down the tree next to my window and ran for the park. I ran for hours until I was deeply in the park and found a hollow under a dead tree stump where I could hide. My tights were ruined and it was cold. But as I huddled in the cave, my icy hands and feet became paws and my face elongated and grew fur. I was warm enough to forget the cold and realize that I was, in fact, a werewolf and this was my destiny. I also knew I was in grave danger of being killed by Mom as long as I was vulnerable.

I stayed there for a full day, and might have starved to death if Quint had not found me. He said he had followed my tracks and scent in the snow, but had told my parents I had ditched the school play to go stay with a girlfriend. By the time Mother checked my tracks were covered with ice and she had no reason to suspect I had had my first change.

Eventually Quint convinced me it was safe to leave the tree hollow and, together, we hunted a couple of rabbits and I ate my first kill. I believe my brother saved my life that day and, no matter what he put me through with his moods and suicide threats and awful songs, I will always love him for that alone.

Of course, when I got home my mother could smell the wolf in me, but by then I was strong and ready. This is did not stop me from locking my door at night but every time she thought about challenging me I would stare in her eyes and show her my wolf. Also, fortunately I was a large wolf, and an alpha. She likely could have killed me, but she would have had ugly scars and a lot of explaining to do when I failed to show up for school.

My mother loved music and loved to read. Quint inherited her love of music. I had no musical talent but I learned early how to escape through books. The books my mother recommended modeled courage and morality which came in very handy, especially when times were tough and I was hungry and it was so tempting to take a bite out of some annoying human.

The Scarlet Pimpernel likely spared the lives of a few of my college roommates and employers.

As much as my mother was a predator, she was also the head of our family, and her attitude was, if anyone were to harm one of her children, it would be her. When I was fourteen I fell in love with the bass drummer in our high school marching band. I haunted the classrooms where he had class, I sat next to his table in the lunch room, and I let all my friends know he was my only true love. On Valentine’s Day I sent him a flowery Valentine and asked him to take me to the Valentine’s Day dance. (As an Alpha it did not occur to me to wait for him to ask me.)

Five of my very best friends told me he had made a point of showing everyone the card, laughing about the invitation and telling everyone within earshot he would rather be dead then go to the dance with a loser like me.

My mother found me crying in the back yard and quickly got the story out of me. She patted me on the back and made me spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, with hot fudge ice cream sundaes. On Monday I dreaded going back to school and having to pass this boy in the hall. I had asked my mother if I could just change schools but she just shrugged.

I didn’t actually have to worry about seeing my nemesis in the halls. In fact I never saw him again. And for the rest of the year, the school marching band had to make do without a bass drummer.

Quint graduated from high school and enrolled in a local college when he was eighteen. In his sophomore year he tried out for track. He was a natural. His long wolf legs were made for the sport and he started winning local and regional meets. At the same time he realized he really wasn’t gay after all.

He told me he spent a lot of time in locker rooms and in the showers and on the team buses. He said he liked the guys, the camaraderie, the normalcy of track and the resulting friendships, but he said he realized he had absolutely no romantic interest in any of those guys. Their feet smelled, as did his, many were recovering from the same skin problems he had suffered from. Almost all of them were confused, afraid, fascinated, and obsessed about girls, and none of them reminded him of David Bowie.

He told me later he would not have minded being gay, but a being gay werewolf was just too confusing and since he was stuck with the werewolf part, he was relieved he at least liked having sex with girls. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if David Bowie ran track.