Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
I didn’t think I’d be able to fall asleep after that, but I was so out of it that Mom had to shake me awake, which activated some residual panic.
“It’s okay, Clarity. You’re safe,” she said when I bolted upright. “It’s morning. Time for school.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “School? You’re kidding, right? A dog used my neck as a chew toy last night.”
She rolled her eyes.
“It did not. In fact, it only broke the skin in three tiny spots.”
“That doesn’t make what happened less traumatizing. Do I really have to go?”
“Yes. I have to go to work, and I don’t want you home alone with a broken window.”
“Good point.”
I got out of bed and watched Mom cautiously open the bedroom door.
After she checked things out, I went to my room and turned on the light. Seeing the chaos—boarded window, broken glass, tossed blankets—made me pause.
“Why didn’t the police show up last night? Didn’t you call them? Didn’t the neighbors? You shot twice.”
“I did call. I reported the attack and the shots.”
“And?”
“Due to the nature of the situation, they felt it wasn’t a police matter.”
“That’s stupid. Who did they think you should call? Animal control?”
“Something like that. Get dressed. I’ll make you breakfast.”
“Really?” She made the best yogurt parfaits.
“Really. Just hurry up. I want to drop you off on my way to work.”
Grateful she wouldn’t make me walk again, I hurried to dress. Faded, comfy jeans and an oversized sweater did little to detract from the obvious bandages on my neck. Mom caught me trying to arrange my long, dark hair to cover them.
“Hold on. I’ve got something you can use.”
When she came back with a hand-knit scarf in her hands, I grinned.
“A red scarf? Sweet.” I looped it around my neck. “I’ll look like Aurora Sky for a while.”
“Who’s that?”
“A fictional person. A kickass vampire hunter from Alaska.”
“First, don’t swear. And, second, that’s not even funny. It’s bad enough that werewolves exist. We don’t need vampires, too.”
I snorted and turned to laugh with Mom. But she wasn’t laughing.
“Come on, Mom. Those videos from over twenty years ago aren’t real. If they were, where are the werewolves now?”
I’d watched those videos so many times, I’d lost count. I’d also searched the internet for more information. Too many sites said it was just a hoax, though.
Mom looked down for a moment. “It’s very real, Clarity. And werewolves are around. After those videos aired…” She shook her head. “The world went crazy.”
I couldn’t believe she was being serious.
That she actually believed. Oh, the world-went-crazy part was real.
The news from back then was filled with neighbors turning on neighbors, convinced they were hunting monsters instead of people, until some senator—Anton, Something—pushed through a media reform.
After that, the news stopped airing violence.
No speculation. No panic pieces. Just facts. Anything else came with heavy fines.
And the facts were: Other than those questionable videos from two decades ago, no one had spotted any kind of furry monster.
“And yet, no one I know has ever seen one since then,” I said. “Their existence is just the urban myth behind why they legalized weed.”
She gave me a hard stare. “People needed it to calm down. We still do.”
I knew better than to say anything else, so I turned back to the mirror to study myself.
It would kick ass if werewolves were real.
After such an eventful night, I kind of expected something cool to happen at school. But it didn’t. No one noticed the scarf, the bandages, or...well, me.
So for seven hours, I listened, I studied, and I did homework, like every other day of my high school career. Then, I waited for Mom on the sidewalk in front of school.
Instead of Mom’s tiny blue eco-car, a dark SUV pulled up in front of me. I retreated a few steps, not because I was worried about being taken or anything, but because I might be in the way. The window rolled down, and a good-looking older man with auburn hair and hazel eyes smiled at me.
“Hello, Ms. Carstein?” he asked with a slight accent.
Curious and a little surprised, I glanced from him to the man with an impressive beard behind the wheel. If he was smiling, I couldn’t tell.
“I think you’re looking for my mom.”
A single woman who just happened to like accents, I thought.
“No. We’re looking for you. We’d like to talk to you about what happened last night.”
Mom’s car pulled up behind the SUV. She laid on the horn and started waving at me like a madwoman.
I internally groaned.
My horrible first impression abilities come from her.
“Perhaps tomorrow,” the man said.
They drove off.
Mom stopped honking and pulled up beside me. She was staring after the SUV.
“Well, that was weird,” I said, getting in.
“Who was it? What did they say?” she asked.
“Two men pulled up and said they wanted to talk to me about last night. They were about your age. Good looking, too. I would have gotten their numbers for you.”
“Not interested.”
“What was up with the horn show?”
“You were talking to two strangers.”
“Seriously? A stranger danger drill in the middle of the day in front of the school? And you wonder why I have no friends.”
She pulled out of the school’s parking lot and said the four worst words a mom could ever say.
“We need to talk.”
“Pretty sure we don’t. Every conversation that started with those words has ended badly.”
“Oh, come on.”
“The day my fish died, the birds and the bees, and the day you told me we were moving. I have no pets, already know about sex, and I will put myself up for adoption if you try moving me with less than a year until graduation. So, what’s left?”
She glanced at me, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, before focusing on the road. I knew this tactic. She had something on her mind, but wouldn’t bring it up until I asked. I wasn’t going to ask.
She liked her nightly puff and would forget eventually. I sure planned to.
Yet the more she tapped, the more I worried.
“Leftover pizza tonight?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“Vanilla or chocolate ice cream for dessert.”
“Chocolate.”
Crap. She was giving in to pizza and ice cream on the same night. Whatever she was holding wasn’t good. No way I was going to bring it up.
When she pulled into the garage, I was out of the door before she cut the engine. Time for an audiobook.
With my earphones preventing any unwanted conversation, I went to the kitchen and warmed our pizza.
Mom watched me, but she didn’t try to engage.
Good.
I sat down and ate, listening to the new woes of a girl who could disappear at will. It wasn’t very interesting. I mean, I disappeared every day at school.
Once the pizza was gone, I dished up a sensible serving of ice cream. This time, when I sat at the table, she reached out and tugged the earphones from my ears.
“I think it’s a werewolf bite.”
Since my head was still stuck on the book, I had no idea what she was talking about at first. When it clicked that she meant the dog from last night, I started to laugh.
“Mom, you don’t even need fiction to use your imagination, do you? I love you.” I leaned over and kissed her cheek as I stole back the headphones from her loose grasp.
“We are moving, Clarity. Tomorrow. You need to start packing.”
“Mom, a werewolf did not bite me, and we are not moving,” I said firmly. “Moving is my line. If you try anything, I’ll file for emancipation.”
She studied me quietly, her expression turning sad.
“I love you, Clarity Marie. I will always love you.”
Then she got up from the table and closed herself in her room.
A few minutes later, I smelled her nasty smoke and shook my head.
The following day, I braved a peek under my bandage. I really didn’t have much of a choice. After the hot shower, the thing was dangling on my neck by a tiny bit of tape. Thankfully, there wasn’t much to see. Just a modestly sized—okay, tiny—hole like Mom had said.
While I applied fresh antibiotic salve and new bandages over each mark, someone knocked on our front door. I poked my head around the corner as Mom answered it and saw Mrs. Timbly, our next-door neighbor.
She immediately started talking about a retirement miracle.
“Gary swears he didn’t enter anything, but we checked with the bank, and the condo is already in our names. The company just needs us to sign over the deed to our house. Can you believe it? Wasn’t I just telling you last week—”
I closed my door to finish getting ready.
Mrs. Timbly talked a lot and knew more than she should about everyone’s business, but she was nice.
She’d paid me to mow their lawn this summer because Gary couldn’t do it anymore due to his heart.
So it was cool they’d won a condo. Especially since I was hoping to work at the library by next summer.
Peeking out my newly replaced window, I spotted Gary through the partially leaf-barren shrubs separating our front yards. He was directing the men who were carrying boxes out of their house.
Wow. They were moving fast.
After looping the scarf around my neck, I left my room. The front door was closed, and Mom was in the kitchen, packing our lunches.
“Did you hear the good news?” she asked without looking up. “The Timblys are moving. They’re really excited about it. New adventures and all that.”
“Mom, we’re not moving,” I said, grabbing a banana.
She sighed, glanced at the banana, and put half of a sandwich in my lunch. I was going to starve again because of last night’s ice cream.
She dropped me off at school, and I endured another dull day by rushing through homework and reading my book whenever possible.
Mom’s car was already waiting at the curb when I walked out.
“You’re early,” I said, getting in.
“There wasn’t much going on at the office. How was school?”
“It was school. Long and boring.”
“What are you in the mood to have for dinner tonight?”
Starving after my pathetic lunch, I wanted a full seven-course meal. Meat, meat, and more meat. But I knew there was only one right answer in Mom’s mind. So I slumped in my seat and responded with the words that would keep the peace.
“We should finish the pizza and have a side salad.” That meant half a piece of pizza and a side salad. It also meant I would need to draw from my meager savings to buy another bag of chocolate soon.
When we turned onto our road, I saw a cleaning truck parked in front of the Timblys’ house and a new moving company van parked in the driveway.
Mom slowed to a stop a good distance away, her eyes glued to the movers.
“Creeping on the neighbors?”
“It’s weird there’s someone moving in already.”
“No weirder than the Timblys winning a condo.”
“Exactly.” She started forward again.
A woman appeared on the Timblys’ front stoop and said something to the movers carrying in boxes.
When we pulled into our driveway, she looked our way and waved.
I smiled and waved back. Mom kept her gaze locked on the garage.
It would obviously take a few extra puffs and some time for her to warm up to our new neighbors.
“I’ll heat the pizza,” I said, getting out of the car.
“Not a chance. I’m fixing dinner. You go read.”
Crap. So much for adding extra cheese to my salad.
“Fine, but keep in mind that countries have revolted because of starvation.”
“Only when the dictators are eating better than the suppressed.”
“Starving alongside me isn’t going to make dinner any better,” I said with a roll of my eyes.
“You’re not starving. If you were, you’d be all bones and sharp angles.”
“Ouch, Mom.”
Shaking my head at her, I went to my room and tossed my bag onto the bed.
Through my window, I saw motion between the shrubs. No matter what Mom said, moving didn’t look fun. More like a chaotic scramble.
Within minutes of lounging on my bed, her weird paranoia, the neighbor’s shuffle, and my dull day drifted from my mind as I lost myself in a fictional world.
My preferred genres were thrillers and contemporary romance.
But after Mom’s mention of werewolves, I’d dug into some of the old genres again.
It was too bad paranormal fiction died off before I was born.
Classics like the Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter, Immortals: A Runes Novel, and Relentless were amazing.
My cramping stomach and the smell of pizza eventually drew me back to the real world.
“Just in time,” Mom said when I joined her. “You know, it’s been five years since our last vacation. We should take one soon.”
She had my attention.
“Where?”
Please say somewhere cool.
“I thought we could pick together.”
I grinned, liking the sound of that.
“What’s our budget?”
“Two thousand dollars.”
It wasn’t much. Flying would eat over two-thirds of that amount.
“How long can the vacation be?”
“I have four weeks.”
“So, a summer vacation.” It would give us time to plan.
“Not necessarily. We could talk to the school and bring your work with us.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, seeing exactly what she was doing.
“That’s not a vacation, then.”
She shrugged and looked down at her plate.
“All right. We need to straighten this out.”
I stood and was out the door before she could stop me.
Crossing the lawn, I wedged through a narrow gap in the shrubs. Mom called my name. She was seconds behind me when I knocked on the neighbor's door.
The woman who’d waved earlier immediately opened it. She had blonde hair and a kind smile, with laugh lines around her eyes.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hi. We just wanted to come over and introduce ourselves.” I offered my hand. “I’m Clarity, and this is my Mom, Elizabeth. We’re your neighbors to the right.”
“Nice to meet you, Clarity. I’m Gabby Lawe.”
She shook my hand as Mom stood a few steps behind me, saying nothing.
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” I said.
A waft of grilling meat hit my nose, and my stomach growled aggressively.
“Sorry. It has a mind of its own.” I could feel myself blushing. “We just wanted to introduce ourselves and officially welcome you to the neighborhood. If you need anything, our door is open.”
“Same. Stop by any time.”
I nodded and turned around to give my mom an I-told-you-so look as we headed back to our yard.
“Normal,” I said, closing the front door behind us. “Well, at least she was. I think you might need to see a doctor.”
“Don’t be smart. I can still ground you.”
“Rightly reprimanded and shutting up.”
We sat back down at the table and finished our meal in silence.
Mom’s sudden weirdness didn’t really bother me. It was something interesting in an otherwise very mundane life.
Not that moving was an acceptable solution to livening things up.
No way. No thanks.