Chapter 11
One day, a few months ago, Aden had told us before a shift that we were going to pool our money together to get a mobile home or trailer to put up on the mountain for our shifts. There was no use going up and down the treacherous mountain for the three nights of the full moon, when we could just stay up there and deal with our curse before returning to our schools, our families, our jobs, and our lives. Nobody really disagreed with him.
A couple months later, he had towed a double-wide trailer up there, and while we still didn’t have electricity, it didn’t seem to matter. For whatever reason, we didn’t seem to need it. But, it was late spring/early summer, and I worried about what we would do in the middle of winter when temperatures reached what was sure to be below zero at this elevation. I was sure Aden would figure it out.
As Ryder and I approached the mobile home, we saw a few of our brothers and sisters sitting in front in lawn chairs holding drinks encased in koozies. They looked up when they heard Ryder’s car approach. He parked next to Aden’s truck, and we got out after grabbing our bags.
The heavy scent of a campfire burning hit my nose first, and then the cool, mild, dry air around me felt wonderful against my skin, which was beginning to heat up. I always ran near fever-pitch on the first day of the full moon.
Ryder fist-bumped a few of the others, and I said my hellos, still not knowing all of their names and feeling like an asshole about it. But I knew in a few months’ time I would. In my defense, a lot of them were new. Older teenagers who had just started their shifts.
Aden greeted us from the door of the mobile home. “Hey, guys. Come inside. I’ll show you around,” he said, opening the door and ushering us inside like we were VIP in his mountain cabin-but-really-it’s-a-trailer home.
“How many wolves are going to be staying in here?” Ryder asked, standing in the small kitchen, which was pretty much a joke. It had a microwave and a sink, but not much more.
“All of the pack,” Aden replied, lifting his chin.
Just then, Austyn came in. “Dude, it’s gonna be crowded A.F. in here. Seriously. But, it’s better than sleeping outside on the ground, I guess.”
Ryder said, “Did you just say A.F. in a sentence, man?”
“Yeah, so?” Austyn replied.
I chuckled. “You can say ‘as fuck’, you know.”
“Fuck you, Ayla. Don’t tell me what to do,” Austyn said, storming out of the trailer and back outside.
Idiot brother of mine. I shook my head and shouted out the door, “I was joking, you turd. Stop taking everything so seriously!”
Without turning around, he gave me the finger and kept walking.
“Geez, touchy,” I murmured with a giggle.
Ryder leaned down and kissed my nose. Then he pulled a bag out of his pocket and held it up. “Maybe we should give him some of this. Might help him lighten up.”
I looked at the small, clear bag, which contained a green, leafy substance, and a small package of white papers. My eyes went big.
“Where did you get that?” I asked.
Ryder chuckled. “Anywhere. Everywhere. Does it matter? Let’s smoke a little before our shift.”
I worried my lip. “I’m not quite sure that’s such a good idea. Why don’t we try it on another night?”
I looked up to see the clouds dancing in and out of the moon’s reflection. I began to feel twitchy.
“Try it?” Ryder said. “I’ve already ‘tried it’. I want to ‘try it’ again. Come on, it’ll relax us. Maybe make the shift less… uncomfortable.”
Well, I had never tried weed and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. But the thought of maybe easing the pain of the shift, and relaxing me was a bit appealing.
Ryder sat at one of the small tables that surrounded the trailer and pulled the rolling papers from the baggie. Laying a paper flat on the table, he then withdrew a pinch of the drug, and sprinkled it into a straight line across the paper. Then he rolled it tight, licked the paper to seal it, pressed the seal to make sure it stuck, and then twisted the ends. He placed the joint on the table, and then continued to roll and stuff the remaining papers with the smelly green leaves.
“You sharing?” Aden asked, coming up to us and sitting at an empty chair at the table.
Ryder lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Sure, but just with you.”
“And me,” Austyn said, seeming to come out of nowhere.
I looked at my brothers nervously, and asked again, “Should we be doing this right before a shift? I mean, what do high werewolves do?”
Austyn chuckled, and said, “Dude, I don’t know, actually. Might be kinda fun to be all fucked up when we shift.” He ended on a deep, unintelligent laugh.
I shook my head. “Yeah, being high while there are vampires around sounds like a great idea. We could get killed.”
“Our body temperatures probably won’t keep us high for very long,” Ryder said, still working at his task. “I’m only doing this to try to reduce the pain of the shift.”
Aden looked at him curiously. “I hardly feel it anymore, it goes so fast.”
Ryder stopped what he was doing, glanced at me, then at Aden. “Yeah, but I don’t think Ayla’s there yet.”
My heart softened at his concern for me, and then I felt obligated to smoke one of the blunts. I really hadn’t planned on it.
“I’m sorry, sis,” Aden said, looking at me with sympathy. “Sometimes I forget what it was like in the beginning.”
I shrugged like it was no big deal. “It’s okay. I’ll live. It’s not like I have a choice.”
The three boys nodded in agreement.
Nothing else was said until Ryder was done with his rolling and licking, and he had a neat line of joints on the table. “Help yourself, dudes,” he said.
Austyn picked up one immediately, and then produced a lighter from his jeans pocket. With an expertise that both impressed and horrified me, I watched as he put the blunt between his lips, lit the very tip with the flame, and then pocketed the lighter as he took a long drag from the cigarette.
Holding it in for a few seconds, he then blew the smoke out and almost seemed relieved as it left his mouth in a big, blue rush.
“What the hell, Austyn? How many times have you smoked this stuff?” I pointed to the table where there were still joints lined up.
He rolled his eyes and put the joint back up to his lips. “You seriously sounded like Mom just now.”
I lifted an eyebrow, about to defend myself, when Ryder lifted one to his lips, his forefinger and thumb holding the cigarette. He lit it, took a long pull from the end, and then handed it to me. I looked down at the cigarette, then up to his face, which was a bit red until he finally let the smoke out.
“Take it, babe. Please?”
I chewed my lip, and then eventually took the smoldering thing from him. I reluctantly lifted it to my lips and then wrapped them around it.
“Suck it in slowly, hold it for a few seconds, and then let the smoke out,” Ryder instructed.
Sounded simple enough, so I did exactly what he said. With my lips still wrapped around the cigarette, I took a big, long drag from it and held it. I began to count in my head. One, two, three, four… ohmigod, I need to cough… shit! Five, six, seven… crap, I’m gonna choke, eight, nine… I let the smoke out and began to cough my head off. I coughed, and then coughed some more, and then coughed and coughed until I thought I might throw up. I bent at the waist and put my hands on my bare knees to steady myself.
Then I heard laughter, and looked up to see my two brothers chuckling at me. Well, Aden was mildly chuckling, Austyn was flat-out laughing and pointing. Once my coughing fit subsided, I launched myself at my irritating brother. He let out a yelp and tried to move out of my way, but he was too slow. Probably thanks to the weed. I tackled him to the ground, the sound of his head hitting the hard dirt giving me some kind of sick satisfaction.
“Don’t you laugh at me, you dick!” I said, now completely straddling him around his chest like when we were kids. “I will beat your ass!” Cough.
He tried to buck me off but I squeezed my thighs onto either side of his torso.
“Get off me, Ayla! Get off me!” He had a look of paranoia and panic in his dark blue eyes. I saw them flash between blue and yellow as he looked up at me.
“Say you’re”—cough—“sorry!” I bellowed at him, raspy, at the top of my lungs.
“No, just let her,” I heard a voice behind me say.
I glanced behind me to see Ryder with a look on his face, something mixed between concern and panic, and Aden with a restraining hand on Ryder’s arm.
Austyn took that opportunity to shove me off of him. When I landed on my back in the dirt, I burst into a fit of giggles that was so unlike me.
My brothers and my boyfriend… and a few other of the pack, it seemed, looked down on me, forming a circle around my prone body. I looked up at them, still laughing uncontrollably, and said, “Hey! Take a picture! It’ll last longer!” Then I continued to laugh, my hands on my stomach, rolling around, even though nothing was funny.
I watched as a few more of my brothers and sisters picked up the joints and began to light them and puff away. None of them had a sputtering coughing fit like I did, but just coolly began to strip off their clothes with cigarettes dangling from the side of their mouths. But for some reason I thought that was funny. So I howled in laughter some more.
“Rookie,” I heard Austyn mutter as he got up and brushed dirt from his pants.
“What in the fuuuuuuck is that supposed to mean, Austie?” I asked, not caring that everyone could hear me.
I laughed some more.
Then Austyn laughed, and said, “I hate that nickname, Ayla the Yeti!”
More laughter spilled from my gut, as I was still lying on the ground. “Ayla”—uncontrollable laughter— “doesn’t even rhyme with yeti! And there’s no such thing as a yeti!”
Austyn plopped down on the ground next to me. “Yes there is. It’s like the abominable snowman. Right?” He started laughing.
“I think so?” I replied, trying to recall all of the Backyardigans cartoons we’d watched as kids. Then something hit me. “Oh, my God. That show had a character named Austin on it.”
Then I broke out in a gut-wrenching fit of laughter again. “Austyn, you’re a Backyardigan!”
He laughed right along with me, and then said, “I’m gonna start calling you Uniqua!”
I roared with laughter, joining in his silliness, until the first spurt of pain hit me. It started in my head and seemed to move into my face, then my neck.
“Shit,” I groaned, curling up into a ball. “Time to be a wolfie!”
And that was it. The bone-breaking pain began, but as soon as it started, it stopped, and there I stood, a furry wolf with a pile of shredded clothes next to her, wagging her tail in triumph.
“Well, shit, there went my clothes,” I said.
“You can’t handle your weed!” I heard Aden’s wolf say in my head.
I was about to respond when all my brothers and sisters stopped suddenly. I watched their wolf forms go stock-still. I followed their line of sight to two deer grazing grass. A small rabbit and a squirrel weren’t far away, seemingly oblivious to us.
My stomach summersaulted with hunger.
“Gross,” I thought.
“Delicious,” I heard Benson say.
I would never learn to keep my thoughts to myself.
“Let’s go!” I heard Aden say, and they all took off running toward our dinner. Why we never tried to be stealthy and sneak up on them was beyond me. I had suggested it once and got laughed at, so I never said anything again.
As we bounded toward the deer, squirrel, and rabbit, they, of course, took off running. I had to admit the chase was pretty fun, knowing they probably couldn’t outrun us. The adrenaline rush was great, and I started laughing as I watched the deer run away from us.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” I giggled in my mind, finding this all too amusing.
One of the other girl wolves, Maria, started laughing, too. I had seen her smoking a joint also before I shifted.
Her laughing made me laugh, and then I heard a third gaggle of laughter join us, another female voice. It must have been Andrea, she was smoking, too. Her laughter made me laugh, and soon, the three of us stopped our chase and were rolling around on the ground, in our wolf forms, laughing some more.
“Just leave them,” Aden growled as I saw Ryder’s big, black wolf turn around and look at us.
We giggled some more as we watched the pack take off toward the prey.
“What’s wrong with them?” Austyn asked. “My high is pretty much gone.”
“Guess it affects the females differently,” someone responded. I don’t even know who it was, and I didn’t care.
We were still laughing on the ground, but laughing as a wolf didn’t feel like it did as a human. My stomach didn’t burn with a stitch, and tears didn’t pour from my eyes. It actually felt more fun and freer, and I actually really, really liked it.
After I don’t know how many minutes the three of us spent rolling around on the ground like a bunch of pigs in the mud, we all stopped laughing immediately and froze. The scent of fresh deer blood and meat hit our noses.
“I’m starving!” Maria said, getting up and shaking her whole body like a wet dog.
“Me, too!” I said, suddenly ravenous. “I could eat a whole deer!” I also shook the dirt off of my grayish-blonde fur.
“Well there’s not much left, bitches, so you better hurry,” Benson said with his mouth full.
The three of us giggled at his bitch comment, and we took off running to join the feast.