Unlearning

CHAPTER 10

July 2016

Samantha, age 25

I've been doing my dream job for a whole year now – a whole year! I still couldn’t believe it sometimes. I loved every part of it and everyone was so nice. The pack was a bit different from the previous two that I'd lived in. It was less family oriented, and not in a bad way. Everyone was younger and there were no families with pups living on Parks territory due to human rules, they commuted to work from the neighboring towns. The rest of us all ate together, lived together, and sparred together at the pack gym. At one of my first training sessions at the gym, one of the she-wolves challenged me to a round in the ring, and it surprised everyone how easily I'd won – I'm not sure what the vibe I was giving off was, but apparently “dangerous” wasn’t it. I’d made sure then to inform everyone about my dad's crazy training routine he'd had me on since I was a pup, and because of it I got stuck with leading a training session twice a month. I grumbled a bit but secretly enjoyed it very much, since it made me feel closer to my dad in a small way and I bragged to him endlessly over the phone.

James was very interested in dad’s routine, and he’d challenged me to spar with him more than once. He'd usually win, but not before me getting a couple of good hits in. I'd mentioned in passing how yoga really helped me relieve physical and emotional tension and he immediately introduced some yoga classes to the pack's weekly training. He was a really good boss/pack leader. He valued my input and opinion on many things, not only those related to the park activities, and I would consider us friends as well as coworkers at this point. Nowadays, we also did most of the patrolling together. In the beginning, I was part of a monthly roster, and would get paired up with different people, but I guess they moved away from that system about six months in since now I was mostly paired with James, Carter, Ashley, Solange, and Jeannie. Not that I minded, since some of the males had been using our time on patrol to try to get me to go out with them. Some of them came from more liberal packs than mine and let's just say they had a hard time understanding why I wasn't dating wolves. Luckily, now I didn't have to spend nights in tents or cabins with them, and I was about to complain to James or Carter about it if it had continued.

My friendship with Carter was still going strong, and when I was in the mood to be around mated wolves I’d sit with him and Ashley at meals. Their easy banter and sense of humor put them in the sibling-friend category for me. When I’d brushed up against some poison oak during one of my first park rounds, they’d teased me mercilessly the whole day about my rookie mistake. Carter also immensely enjoyed needling James about different things, some of which I didn’t really understand and he refused to explain them to me, brushing it off as their inside joke. Lately, it was all about saying what a good manager James was and how he was going on so many patrols like a lowly ranger. I didn’t think that was funny, but then again, I wasn’t in on the joke. James would just glare at Carter, and then continue talking business with me.

He was such a workaholic, always swamping me with reports to do and activities to plan, calling me into his office for every little thing. I'd half jokingly complained about running up and down the stairs ten times a day so he moved my office downstairs, right next to his.

“Now you can't use the stairs as an excuse,” he deadpanned. Ass. I loved the work, however. Both in school and at work, I was the type of person to do extra work for extra credit, to proudly display my work to a teacher like a mother showing off her brand new pup, to thrive in the glow of praise for a job well done, and James wasn't stingy with it. He kept admiring my dedication, my hard work, praised me to our colleagues both in the Parks and Crescent City, and kept giving me more responsibilities.

We had to go to Crescent City quite a bit, sometimes taking Carter with us. After our work at the office was done, all three of us would go to malls, restaurants, even the movies. It was a nice break from the life back at the Parks, where after the work day, pack responsibilities still awaited the two of them. Once, Carter smuggled in some potato chips into the cinema and made the mistake of offering me some. I just ran out of there and puked my guts out – I didn't feel like ruining everyone's night with a glimpse into my past so I just informed them never to bring chips near me again. James went as far as to remove them from the break room vending machine at work, he must have thought it was a severe allergy or something. The company restocking the vending machines replaced the potato chips with my favorite canned flat white coffee, so I didn't correct his assumption. Everyone already knew I bought the stuff by the case to stock the mini fridge in my room, so now they could bribe me with it at work if they needed a rush on something. When it was just James and me going to the City, we'd just get takeout and relax in our respective rooms every night after work, sometimes going out for dinner together on our last day.

During the school year, we’d get a lot of students visiting on class trips, and we'd have to give them one of the educational tours. I especially enjoyed it when the really young kids from neighboring towns visited with their teachers. Jeannie and I designed a completely new program for the youngest visitors, which included a simplified botanical tour (mostly the tallest trees and some beautiful flowers, berry picking if they were in season) and showing them a rabbit, fawn, or whatever friendly baby animal we could find. That age group had a very limited attention span so we had to be careful not to overwhelm them. We’d designed ranger badges that we would hand out to them at the end of their visit, so that they could keep protecting nature in their own towns, and we’d printed a complimentary coloring book featuring the most prominent plants and animals from Redwood. James loved the program so much that he pitched it to other California parks during their annual meeting, and he always came to watch when we gave that particular tour, staying afterwards to play with the children and the animals. I guessed the Alpha in him was missing having pups in the pack, giving him a sense of the future. Sometimes I'd think I feel his gaze on me while we were entertaining the kids but when I'd look up, he'd be lost in thought, his eyes trained somewhere else.

We'd also had some stressful situations during my year here – hikers would get lost or hurt, and we’d had to form search and rescue parties. Most of them were found and rescued unharmed, but one case had been absolutely devastating – a young couple went hiking and encountered a mountain cat who, for whatever reason, proceeded to attack them. When we found them, the girl's face had been mauled beyond recognition. The guy barely survived falling and hitting his head while trying to fight off the mountain cat. They were both taken to the nearest hospital by helicopter, and they survived, but on the drive back from the attack site all of us in the vehicle were silent.

I kept thinking what their future would look like – would they do gratitude exercises like me, reminding themselves how lucky they were to be alive? Would they ever hike again? Would their relationship survive? Would he be able to look at her scarred face every day? Would she insist on making love in the dark? Whose idea was the hike anyway? Would he still love her with the messed up face and gently kiss her scars? That thought brought tears to my eyes and I pressed them shut, wishing for that to be the future they would have, and I fervently prayed for them. I reached over to turn up the heat, feeling chilled to the bone from hours of searching in the dark, and my hand brushed against James' on the gearshift. I slowly adjusted the dial, and his pinky twitched against my skin, just the barest touch, feather-light. I just kept my hand there, frozen for some reason, needing that contact. He then linked our pinkies together, and I took it as a silent promise. Of what, I had no idea. I just know we basically held hands in the darkness until we got home.

In two days I would be going back to Redwood after having spent two weeks with my parents. No more month-long visits for this professional female, unfortunately, but it was still priceless to be with them. They were beyond proud of me, and dad even designed a new training plan for my group that would surely get them to hate me the next day. My wolf kept urging me to go for runs every evening, and she'd inevitably lead me to the football field behind the school. They’d just mowed it in preparation for the next season and she'd just roll around and lie there for an hour every night before bed. I didn't know what to make of that.