Red: The Untold Story Page 5

  “So who will look after George when you go back to school?” I asked.

  “Naki. She’s his carer, but she takes leave over the holidays.”

  “Does George like her?” I asked, worrying for him. “Is she nice?”

  Alex sat up, hugging his knees. “She’s the best person in the whole world.”

  “What makes—” I coughed out the word and smiled at Alex—at the way he laughed as Sacha landed hard beside me, placing her heavy paws over me.

  “Sacha.” He gave her a gentle push, but she refused to move.

  “She’s okay.” I put my hand on her head to say she could stay, even though I could hardly breathe. “Anyway, as I was saying,” I started again, “what makes her the best person in the whole world?”

  “I don’t know.” Alex lay back down again with the crown of his head against mine, tugging my ponytail a bit as he placed both hands under him like a pillow. “I guess it’s just because she cares for George. Or maybe because she always smiles, or maybe that even the biggest problems just aren’t a problem to her.”

  I knew a few people like that. My mom was one of them. “She sounds great.”

  “She is. And she’s so funny, Red. She moved over here from Africa ten years ago and her accent is still so thick that sometimes I can’t understand her.” He laughed shyly. “She teases me about it. All the time.”

  “Teases you?”

  “Yeah. If she’s bored, just to mess with me, she puts on her serious face and says this jumble of fake words, makes it sound really important, like George really needs me for something. And just when I start to get distressed, she flicks my ear and says, ‘What’s wrong with you, boy? Your ears don’t work?’. Ha ha ha.”

  I laughed too. “I like her already.”

  “She’ll like you.”

  We laid in silence then for a while, lost in our own thoughts, until a flock of black birds flew overhead and covered our clouds. I counted them, saying the crow poem in my head. One for sorrow. Two for—

  “I have a poem,” Alex said out of the blue.

  “Oh?”

  “My own crow poem. It goes up to ten.”

  “There are only seven crows though.”

  He aimed a finger to the sky and whispered the numbers one to seven, just to check, in case I couldn’t count. “One for luck. Two for love. Three for a gift that comes from above. Four for sorrow. Five for rain. Six for something to ease the pain. Seven is the number to call, for it brings with it the end of fall.”

  I shifted in the grass, closing my hands over my tummy, and studied the sad sky. “Is it the end of fall then, Alex?”

  “Soon.” He rolled onto his belly, his chest sweeping past my nose as he leaned across and picked up my hand, laying it flat down by my side. “Can you feel how cold the grass is today?”

  “Mm-hm.” I nodded.

  “We’ll have our first snowfall in two weeks.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Aside from the change in the temperature, the Fawp also told me.”

  “The what?” I laughed.

  “The Fawp. Or F.A.W.P.”

  “What does that stand for?”

  “Freakishly Accurate Weather Predictor, of course.”

  “Oh, right. Of course.” My stomach heated with chuckles. It was just whacky enough to have most certainly been named by Plain. “And how does it predict snow?”

  “Ever notice that antennae sticking out of the roof at the front of my house?”

  “Yeah? All five of them. And the satellites.”

  Alex laughed. “Yep, well, it predicts weather the same way the weather man on TV does, but it’s always right, and it’s much louder about it.”

  “Louder?” I held myself on the cusp of laughing, waiting for the next crazy answer.

  “You might imagine a chicken-shaped barometer on the rooftop, but in fact, it’s a complex computer program that sends and receives data to computers all over the world and uses my dad’s insane algorithm to accurately predict very precise changes ahead. But on the Fawp, instead of showing graphs or mind-boggling data, a face pops up and, at full volume, when the first snows are only a week away, it shouts ‘Winter is coming!’” He yelled it at the top of his lungs, making me jump and cover my ears, giggling.

  “Sounds annoying.”

  “It is when it happens in the middle of the night.” He laughed and rolled back over, this time resting his head on the hollow of my shoulder.

  I shuffled up an inch more and put my head on his, the two of us connected like a pair of puzzle pieces. In the past, I’d only ever laid like this with my old best friend Hannah, but it felt oddly comfortable with Alex, even though we’d only been friends a week. And he didn’t seem bothered by it. The only one bothered was Sacha, because she had to move her own body up a few inches to put her head back where it had been before.

  “So what kind of face does it have?” I asked.

  “Face?”

  “Yeah, you said the Fawp had a face.”

  “Oh, yeah. Have you ever seen Game of Thrones?”

  “No. My mom won’t let me watch it.”

  “Well, it’s a character from that show.”

  “Oh.” I nodded, guessing it would be funnier if I knew anything about that show. We both sighed, a relaxed, happy kind of sigh, and moved our gazes back to the sky. Up there the clouds moved over us swiftly, fleeing from the winter I supposed. A few times, as I thought about the snow and how it closed off the path to the mansion, I almost told Alex about my upcoming nuptials, but something about saying it aloud made it seem so final. I accepted that ring last night—a gaudy iron wolf head on one end of the circle and a raven on the other, joining cheek-to-cheek in the middle—but I still hadn’t put it on. I still hadn’t truly accepted it. I wanted it so bad the other day, and now… I think I just wanted to lay here with Alex and watch fall blow away.

  “Do you like winter?” I asked.

  “It’s my favorite season,” he said in an informative tone.

  “Why?”

  “Because it lays a disguise over the world. Only those that have seen spring and summer know how magical it all is. It’s like a secret. And I like secrets.”

  “You like good secrets,” I corrected. “My parents taught me early that there’s a difference between a good secret and a bad secret.”

  “Yes. I like good secrets.” He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Do you like winter?”

  “I do.” I closed my eyes and pictured my imaginary painted bedroom walls. “Sometimes I picture it while I’m lying in bed. I imagine I’m in a sleigh and there’s snowy hills all over my room, and bare, straight trees that almost touch the moon.”

  “I do that too,” he said. “But I imagine I’m in space. So my dad made stars in my room.”

  “How did he make stars?”

  “I’ll have to show you. Words can’t describe it.”

  “I’d like that.” I looked over at the tree, where a small bird was sitting with its feathers puffed up around its chest. If Alex had seen it too, he would have invented some crazy tale about where the bird had been all day and why it was feeling so cold while the sun was still out. It was colder today than usual, but not cold enough for the bird to be behaving in such a way. Maybe he just had bad news. I always felt cold when I got bad news.

  “Oh, by the way, George told me not to tell you this,” Alex said, his voice soft in the calm day.

  “Tell me what?”

  “He says he likes your hair.”

  I laughed. “Why did he tell you not to tell me that?”

  Alex’s shoulders moved up, making my head jostle. “I guess he doesn’t want to scare you away.”

  “Why would that scare me?”

  “Because people are afraid of what they don’t understand.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Well, see… if he wasn’t in that chair, he’d have asked you out by now.”

  “Really? Me?”

&nb
sp; “You didn’t know my brother before the accident. He dated everyone.”

  “Oh. So I’m nothing special then?” I laughed.

  “Nope,” he said, but I could hear a smile in his tone.

  I thought about it all for a moment—picturing George in that Book Boyfriend shirt—maybe standing in the doorway with a smile like Alex’s. I liked George, but not in that way. “He’s too old for me anyway.”

  “That wouldn’t have stopped him asking you.”

  “Then what about the fact that I’m your friend?”

  “Why should that stop him?” he said, his curls brushing my cheek as he shrugged a bit. “We’re only friends.”

  “I know, but—”

  “It’s the chair.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He thinks no one will ever love him because he can’t control his body, and he’s scared that if you knew he thought of you as anything other than a playmate, you’d be too freaked out to come back.”

  Even though Alex couldn’t see my face, I pouted for George. He was clever and still very switched on inside of himself, but there were a few things ‘missing’ too, which I guess is why Alex and George thought no one would ever want him. George was a Sometimes: sometimes he was alert; sometimes he was the George Alex knew before the accident; and sometimes he was ‘elsewhere’. But he wasn’t lost completely. And any girl would be lucky to be asked out by him. “He just needs someone to get to know him.”

  “Who would try?”

  He had a point. Even I had brushed George off a bit when we first met. I didn’t realize he was still ‘in there’, and I felt really cheap and nasty for that now, especially knowing how funny and imaginative and kind he was. “I wish I could understand him as well as you do.”

  “You do understand him—in all the ways that matter.”

  “Yes, but I can’t understand him when he talks.”

  “You will one day. You just need to get used to the way he shapes his words. It’s a bit like learning another language. But what’s important is the trying,” he said, his voice vibrating through his head and against my shoulder. “That’s what matters to George, and the doc says it’s important that George is even trying to communicate, because, according to his head scans, they can’t understand how he’s doing it.”

  “As in… what? He should be in a coma?”

  “Something along those lines. It’s all very doctor-ish. Dad gets it. He dumbed it down for me.”

  “Okay, give me the dumbed-down version then.”

  “Basically, right now, George should be nothing but a sack of meat that can eat slop, like a baby.”

  “Does it mean there’s hope for him since he’s not like that?”

  “It depends on what your definition of hope is. If you hope, say… that he’ll be like you and me again, then no. Not given our current medical technology. But if you hope that he can live a good life, surrounded by friends and love, then yes. There is plenty of hope.”

  “What about his future, though?” I asked. “I mean, he’s brilliant. What are you doing to help him make his mark on the world?”

  Alex was silent for a moment, until he took another long, thoughtful breath and let it out slowly. “He was going to be an engineer. He had dreams of participating in the Mars program.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” he said sadly.

  “He still can, right?”

  “No. He’s still smart, Red, but without being able to control his body, and with the seizures, I don’t know that he’ll ever do anything with his life.”

  I rolled over to look at his face, forcing Sacha to back up and lay her head on the grass now. But she put it back down on my butt cheek instead. “Why wouldn’t he? And what do the siezures have to do with it?”

  “After his last one, he couldn’t tell me what a prime number is.”

  “So he’s getting worse? Not better?”

  “Something like that.” His eyes came up to meet mine then, and with my head casting a shadow over his face, I could see each tiny hair poking out of his chin, ready to become a beard by tomorrow. I hated talking about George’s sad future—thinking now how he’d never shave his own beard again. But I liked thinking about Alex. I liked thinking about him with a beard, so I brought my hand up and touched his chin.

  “What are you doing?” He smiled.

  “Feeling your prickles.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, a week ago, before I met you, I would’ve looked at them and thought about the texture, but only wondered what they felt like. But… I don’t know…” I made his skin move a bit with the top of my thumb, “now I feel like life should be a series of go-for-its, not sit-and-wonders.”

  He smiled, his pretty lips staying closed as if he was trying not to breathe all over me. “Do you think I’d look good with a beard?”

  My lips pursed and my eyes flicked off to the left as I imagined it: the Alex with a beard grinned at me from where he stood under the tree. He looked cute. “Yes, but a scruffy, sort-of short one. Not the chiseled line of perfection that I see on most guys.”

  “On wolf guys?”

  “Yeah. They have such thick hair that they get these perfect lines. It’s almost too pretty,” I said, breathing in the smell of him; a rich, musk cologne and the fresh, clean scent of soap. Human boys smelled much better than wolf boys.

  “And you like guys more ruggedly handsome than pretty, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  Alex rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Do you think you’d like me if I was ruggedly handsome?”

  “I think I’d like you better if you were strange and unremarkable.”

  He laughed, pressing his hand to the back of my head to bring it down onto his shoulder. I readjusted my arms, tucking them into my chest so I was comfortable, and just laid there with him for a while, the bridge of my nose against his neck, always half on the edge of telling him I would be married soon.

  “Hey, Red?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell me more about your world.”

  “My world?”

  “Yes.” He angled his chin down awkwardly so he could see my face, our noses pretty much touching. “I want to know more about your wolf world.”

  I laughed. The way he asked made it sound like my ‘wolf world’ was a story I’d made up. “Okay, well… let me see… So… all wolves are descendants of a god called Carne. He had an immortal son named Luther, who had a son named Theowulf, whose two sons went on to make many packs.”

  “Was Theowulf immortal too?”

  “Yes, but his sons were mortal, so when they turn into a wolf they don’t Shed.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Shedding?” I confirmed; he nodded. “It’s when their skin and flesh comes off like a coat every time they turn. It renews their human form to their youthful state—the age they were when they first turned.”

  “First turned? So they don’t turn from birth?”

  “No. None of us do. It sets in around puberty or sometime after. If you haven’t turned by around seventeen, it’s pretty clear you never will.” Like me.

  “But you, well, the wolves that descended from Theowulf’s sons, they don’t Shed?”

  “No.”

  “So how do they turn? Do their clothes turn with them, like in movies?”

  I laughed. “No. And they don’t rip either. Werewolves, as you all call them, aren’t any bigger than wild wolves. When they turn, if they’re still wearing their clothes, then they’re just a wolf wearing human clothing.”

  Alex laughed loudly. “Sounds like a phrase, you know: wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

  “Yeah.” I smiled. “It kinda does.”

  “So what about the way it’s organized? You said there’s an alpha and Elders.”

  “Yeah. All packs have both. The Elders carry out the day-to-day running of the pack, and the alpha takes care of the bigger things, like when a wolf breaks a supreme law.”

  “Like wha
t? What kinds of laws are supreme?”

  “Killing a pack member, for one. It’s punishable by death.”

  “Damn. And how many wolves are there in the world?”

  “Um, I mean, there are hundreds of packs all around the world, but each pack has a different number of wolves—”

  “And these are all descendants of the god Carne?”

  “No. I mean, yes, but really, we modern wolves class ourselves as Theowolves, because we’re descendants of his two sons Aerik the Gray and Bayon the Black.”

  “Why are they called that? The Black and the Gray.”

  “Because when they were born, people didn’t use surnames. Aerik was a wise gray wolf, and Bayon was a warrior of the greatest skill. He taught our army, also known as the Black Death.”

  “Army?”

  “Mm-hm.” I nodded, about to roll onto my back but thinking better of it because I didn’t want to disturb Sacha again. “The army is made up of Luther’s sons—”

  “That immortal dude—the son of Carne?”

  “Yep. He’s also my pack leader,” —and soon-to-be husband— “and he’s super powerful. It’s why no one has ever challenged our pack. There are packs that have had nothing but war, territorial wars, religious wars, wars over money, but we’re direct descendants of the original wolves here, so we’ve had peace. Some kids my age have never known peace among their pack, so I’m really lucky in that sense.”

  “I’ll say.” He put one hand under his head and looked up at the sky. “So, you were telling me about your political structure.”

  “Yeah. Um, so like I said, Luther is our alpha, but we only bother him if there’s a major issue in the pack—”

  “Like murder?”

  “Well, no. See, in other packs, the alpha usually does take care of that, but there hasn’t ever been an issue big enough for us to call on Luther. He kind of makes the Elders handle everything—”

  “How many Elders are there?”

  “Four.”

  “Anyone I’d know?”

  “Yep. Dorian Canin, the mayor.”

  “Really?” He laughed. “I guess I can see that now.”

  “Mm-hm.” I nodded. “Then there’s also Mr. and Mrs. Frost—from down the road,” I said in a questioning tone, wondering if he knew them.