Growing up Were, Part Two

In my case, I was in the middle of my sophomore year the first time I turned wolf. Fortunately, it was during the Christmas holidays so I could have my first run, make my first kill, and have fun on New Year’s Eve.

It helped that I had an older brother I could run with. Quint and I helped each other. I was less upset about the whole wolf thing than he was, and he could give me both protection and the benefit of his experience when we took off for our monthly runs deep in the park. Between the two of us, we could bring down the wilier game and share the kill.

Actually the kill was not something Quint enjoyed. Oh, it fascinated him, and enticed him; he was werewolf and killing is part of our nature, but the boy part hated it. Many of his musical compositions involved guilt, loss, alienation and other manifestations of teenage were-boy angst. I, on the other hand, took it in stride. I tend to have a more pragmatic (blood thirsty?) nature.

So Quint taught me how to hunt, how to stalk and harry the game but often the kill was mine. Then we both shared the meal. Mother said this was because I was an alpha but perhaps I am just less sensitive about things I can’t do much about. I will never create music, but I can hunt with the best of them.

Mother explained I was alpha the day she tried to kill me. I did not believe this is why she wanted to kill me, and I still don’t. She simply has a violent personality and she never liked me much. She doesn’t care for girls.

The alpha thing would have made better sense if she had been a wolf, but Mother is wolverine.

I believe we had an older sister who was a red fox. I saw a couple of pictures in an old album. She was in a human form but with her small size and red hair, and pointed nose, her fox was already apparent. She was gone by the time Quint was born. I suspect mother ate her. Foxes are no match for a wolverine.

My father was full human and very handsome. He could never keep his hands off my mother, who gloried in his attention.

I don’t know what caused my parents to marry. My mother was an attractive woman, with a full body and a lusty laugh. She loved to give parties, was always the center of attention and considered herself to be creative and unconventional though she was a lifelong Republican, with set opinions and little tolerance for ideas alien to her upbringing. She played enthusiastic piano and was always a great hit at parties and singalongs.

Her wolverine nature, solitary, bloodthirsty, and angry, was in opposition to her party girl personality which, I suspect, caused her to be slightly mad, but that kind of madness can be very seductive.

Quint and I lived with these two people, slept under their roof, ate their food, accompanied them to parent-teacher meetings, Disneyland, family dinners, softball games, band practice, but I always knew we were an afterthought. Quint stayed in his room, I planned my exit and anticipated my kill.

My father, on occasion, forgot my name. Once, an ex-neighbor ran into my father and Quint at a ball game. The neighbor asked, “And how is Crystal?”

“Who?” Dad asked, clearly confused. Quint whispered, “My sister.”

“Oh, fine…” my father replied. Actually, that was the year I fell out of a tree and broke my arm. I was staying with my grandparents until it healed. It is not a good thing to be weak or injured near the den of a wolverine.

If I had been a human girl, he might have remembered. But my mother might have eaten me at birth. Who knows?