The Choice: Part 8

The Choice
Part 8

I felt wonderful that night, looking up at the half moon. Caroline sat next to me, and we watched it from a hill of our own. Again I felt the itching at the back of my throat, and I brought it up to Caroline.
She smiled. “That's your body telling you to show gratitude?”
“How?” I asked.
She tilted her head back towards the moon and let out a high howl that sent shivers down my spine. At the end of it, she looked back at me with a grin.
“Care to try?”
I stuttered, “Well...I've never done it before.”
“There's a first time for everything,” she said, “especially in this business.”
I opened my mouth and let out a loud, “Awoooo!” at the end of which my voice went dead and I buried my head in shame. “That was terrible!” I said.
She was laughing so hard she fell over, and gave her a shove.
Caroline sat back up and said, “Alright, come on, try again. Feel it in the back of your throat, okay? Let that guide you. Don't try to make the noise you think you should, just... do it.”
I nodded and gave it a second try. It came out shaky and unsure, but at the end of it something inside felt liberated.
Caroline said, “You'll get the hang of it pretty quick. It feels good though, doesn't it?”
I said, “Yeah. I thought that was just some dumb movie thing.”
She shrugged. “Sometimes they get it right.” She laughed. “If only because they throw so much garbage out there, at least one of it is bound to be.”
Caroline curled up next to me then. “What's wrong?” I said.
“I'm cold.”
I put an arm around her. “That better.”
She shook her head.
“Well, I know one thing we could do, but this is hardly the place.”
She smiled and gave me a quick kiss. Her eyes were dancing.
“That's what makes it fun.”
She grabbed my hand and dragged me up and into the nearby woods. I asked her, “Where are we going?”
She said, “To someplace more secluded! Hell or high water, we're doing this!”
I tried to make an argument, but she turned on me and took my breath away with a kiss.
“Shut up you lummox,” she said, short of breath herself. Her smile was ten miles wide. “Are you a man, or are you wolf?”
Before I could answer, she turned back and pulled me behind her. We ran together through the woods, and soon I found myself laughing as my instincts made me jump and climb around whatever got in my way. Then we reached a clearing near a creek, and Caroline tackled me to the ground.
Now, for the sake of discrepancy, I'm not going to tell you exactly what it was we did that night, though I'm pretty sure you can hazard a guess. Suffice it to say, our witty quips very quickly devolved into grunts and growls as the night wore on.
I'm not going to say much else on the subject, but I feel it very important to note that a werewolf woman can be a devil to handle in bed, especially with a rising moon. And Caroline? She could kill a horse with those thighs.
When the sun came up the next morning and we were naked as the day we were born, we regarded each other with pride and satisfaction, and laughter. Despite what either one of us might have to say about the other, by god we were happy. We dressed each other up and kissed and found it very difficult not to strip back down again. But we both had to make appearances at our homes that morning, and we were both quite eager to shower in case any vital parts had been exposed to poison ivy.
We said our goodbyes and went our separate ways, and when I got home my parents regarded me without much pomp and circumstance. I went about my day as I normally would, did chores around the house and thought at great length about how fantastic the previous night had been. I went outside around noontime and spend three hours running around town. I got home and climbed on the roof, and just watched the sky until the sun set.
All that day felt like a dream. It felt like nothing in the world could have gone wrong which, right there, should have been a sign for me to start freaking out. But I went to sleep that night feeling like a kid on Christmas.
Except I had a nightmare. It was so simple and fundamental that it made me wake up screaming. I only remember shades of black and red from it, and I find that to be a blessing. I went back to sleep almost half an hour afterwords, and while my sleep was far from peaceful, I had no dreams to speak of.
I went to school the next day and felt a strange sort of gravity about the building. I shook it off and went inside, but as time wore on it came back, and with it came a great feeling of discomfort. I found Caroline and asked her if she felt the same way. She shrugged and said, “I don't know if I'd go as far as to say discomfort, but I do feel something.”
I nodded. I wanted to say that we should leave, but I didn't. It seemed like a foolish thing to jump at shadows.
One thing I've learned is to always trust your instincts.
As the day wore on, I felt a disconcerting urgency rise in my gut. I thought about the moon, and felt myself shaking, wishing the sun would sink and Caroline and I could bask beneath Luna's brilliance. But the anxiety kept pulling me away from that, kept sending my legs into spasms. It reached the point where I couldn't take it anymore. I asked the teacher if I could go to the bathroom, and he said yes.
I walked out of the classroom and went straight from there to where Caroline was taking math, and I stood by the door. I did not knock or make my presence known in any way, but just as soon as I thought for her to come out of the room, the door opened and there she was. She closed it behind her and looked up and down the halls.
“What's wrong?” she asked.
“You don't feel anything?” I said. “Are you sure?”
“I...nothing big, like I said, but-”
“Listen to me,” I said, putting my face in front of hers. “We have to get out of here. Now.”
She looked doubtfully back at her classroom, then at me. Her expression became sure.
“Alright.”
I took her by the arm and made for the nearest exit, which was several turns away. Every step I made with the purpose of leaving that place, which now to me was so hostile I felt it might collapse out of spite.
As we came to a corner, we saw a teacher come out of an office and come our way. Rather than still our progress with questions, I took a detour through what I knew to be the boy's changing room. Caroline gaped at the urinals as we passed through.
“Is that what you guys pee in? That's disgusting!”
“Hey!” shouted a familiar voice. I stopped in my tracks, putting Caroling behind me from the direction it had come.
Matt stood there with his shirt off, a towel over his shoulder.
“You,” he said.
“What are you doing here, Matt?” I asked, already sensing a bad situation.
“Coach told me to cool off,” he said. “What are you doing here?” He nodded towards Caroline. “If you wanted privacy, you should have gone for a stall.”
I sighed. “Thanks for the tip. We're leaving now,” I said.
Matt went back towards his locker. “Hang on, hag on! I've got something I want to say to you!”
When he turned the corner he had a small knife in his hand, and he stepped towards me with anger. “I saw what you really are, you-”
I grabbed the hand that held the knife and twisted it, ending his sentence with a shriek of pain. I dropped him to the ground and said,
“Yeah, you saw. And if you have any sense, you will never talk to me or my girlfriend ever again.”
He grunted as we pushed our way out of the doors. No teacher one way or the other, and the exit just a few hundred feet down the hall. We more or less ran from the changing room to the side door exit, and we burst out of the place with such ferocity we almost tripped over each other. We found ourselves trapped near the building, as the football and soccer teams practiced on either field. Not able to get to a street and leave, we circled around and waited at the abandoned ROTC field. We sat where we had our first conversation and sighed.
Caroline said, “God, I'm going to catch so much crap from my teacher.”
I shrugged. “It's worth the price,” I said. “I couldn't take it in there for another second, and it only would have been worse in there with you.”
She nodded. “I know. Thank you.”
I smiled wanly. “I'll always be there for you.”
She smiled back, and inched closer to me.
“Weird how much has happened in so short a time,” she said. “I don't think my life ever used to be this exciting.”
“I know mine wasn't,” I said. “Would you have it any other way?” I asked.
At this, she seemed unsure of the answer.
Then there came a shout from several yards away.
“Hey!” Matt screamed, nursing his hand. “You can't just walk away from me!”
I said to Caroline, “Stay here,” then stood up.
“Back off, Matt!” I said. “Just leave us alone, okay?”
He stopped outside the circle of logs and tires. “Nobody threatens me,” he said through gritted teeth.
“You threatened me first, Matt.”
“Because you stepped in on my territory!” he screamed.
I forced a laugh. “Territory? What are we, a couple of dogs here? I mean, come on.”
“Screw you. You have no idea what it's like to be the person everyone looks at, to be the guy people say yeah, he's a badass! I worked my whole life to make people respect me, and you just decide one day to stop being a nerd, and everyone loves you! That is a load of crap, and I'm not gonna take it!”
I rubbed my forehead. “Matt, please. You want me to stop playing sports? Fine. I'll stop. You can't take me in a fight, and I don't want to make this any worse than it already is.”
“I don't care,” he said. “I can't sleep because of you. What I saw in your eyes, that ain't natural! You're a messed up kid, and and you shouldn't be alive!”
“You're talking about things you couldn't begin to understand,” I said. “Please, just turn around and leave us in peace.”
He took several steps toward us, waving his knife around. I made to grab his good hand, but something stopped me.
Whatever Matt had been saying, he stopped in mid sentence.
I turned around and saw a man in a trench coat holding me by the back of the shirt. He yanked me backwards, and I landed on the ground.
Caroline screamed, but the sound was muffled midway through. Several others in dark clothes appeared, two of them grabbing Matt.
The werewolf with the glasses stood with a foot on my chest.
“You screwed up, pup,” he said.
I screamed, “How?”
“You showed that kid your face. You caused a ruckus.”
“How was I supposed to know?!” I yelled. “It was an honest mistake, and I'm trying to take care of it!”
He shrugged.
“Rules are rules. You ask me how you were supposed to know? I guess that's a fair question. It's her fault, then?” he said, nodding to Caroline.
I shook my head, “No, it's mine!”
“Hm,” he said, “too late.”
He drew a gun from the side of his coat and shot Caroline in the stomach. My vision went red, and I screamed.
The events that followed are a blur to me, and are very difficult to sort through.
All that I am sure of is that I managed to throw the bastard off of me and get to my feet, only to be pummeled by three of them at the same time. The guy made a self-satisfied speech as he demonstrated that he was wearing gloves, and explained police procedure, and put the gun in the hands of Matt, who yelled that he wasn't going to lie about what he saw.
The wolf then held Matt's hand and drew it up to his head, and pulled the trigger. Matt's body fell limp, and dropped to the ground.
I turned to look at Caroline, whose eyes were very distant.
“Why?!” I screamed at the man in the glasses. “This doesn't make any sense!”
He put a foot on my chest again and leaned down in front of me.
“Because,” he said, “I don't like you.”
And then he grabbed my head and slammed it into one of the logs, and everything went black.
I woke up to ambulances and cops, seeing Matt and Caroline's bodies being wheeled away. They struggled to hold me down, saying I had a concussion and needed to go to the hospital, and I screamed that I was going to kill the son of a bitch that shot Caroline.
They told me he was dead.
Over the next few days, the story got out that there was a shooting on the campus of my school. The official statement was that an unruly student, Matt, had a psychotic episode in which he shot Caroline, and then himself. His reasons for doing so were only put together after they heard my testimony.
Despite my anger, despite so much hatred and fury that was coursing through me, I was at least smart enough to lie. I told them that I had stolen away with Caroline to have an illicit sexual relationship in the ROTC field, and that Matt had followed us out there. I explained about the episode on the soccer field, and my recent emphasis on physical fitness. No one questioned it. And the forensic evidence spoke to its truthfulness.
They released me the same day, but I didn't go.
I was told very soon after interrogations were over that, on the scene, they'd found that Caroline still had a pulse. She was currently several rooms down the line, being resuscitated.
I almost cried from it, and I wanted to punch the bastard for not telling me sooner, and hug him for telling me at all.
Caroline was still alive.