The Girl Cried Wolf

Their faces were flushed and the dark night left very little light to see with inside the room. They were two shadows on the floor and the sound of their breathing seemed to fill the otherwise empty room.

"What . . . what do you mean by that?" the girl shadow asked the boy shadow.

The boy shadow seemed to respond only in panted breathing.

Ash bit her lip. She wasn"t sure what Hunter meant by "taking her home" and the longer he didn"t answer, the more conscious she became of their bodies touching. She could see Hunter"s eyes in the half light and they were still blue. She wondered what she looked like, what he saw as he looked back at her.

She tried to move off of his lap, but he tightened his arms around her.

"I wanna take you home, Boots," he said, resting his chin on her shoulder.

"I heard you the first time, Hunter," Ash replied.

Hunter dug his chin into her shoulder and turned his face toward her neck. Feeling tender toward him, she stroked his hair.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked him again.

"I want you to meet my parents," he said, nuzzling her neck.

"Why?" she asked, still stroking his hair.

"I think you should meet your people, Boots."

"And you think your parents are my people?"

"Well, I am. And my dad is. And my mom is basically an honorary member of the pack with everything she knows---"

Ash squirmed as Hunter talked into her neck. His breath as he spoke tickled her and she started to giggle, despite Hunter"s serious tone.

"What?" Hunter looked up at her, smiling.

"That tickles when you talk like that."

"Oh," he said, still smiling.

Ash marveled at how easy it was to be with Hunter. She was sitting on his lap and they were talking casually as though they have always been together. Just that morning she couldn"t even string two words in a sentence to respond to him, and a week before that she would have dived headfirst into a bush just to avoid directly crossing paths with him.

The Ash from last week would have called her a liar outright if she traveled back in time and told her that she made out heavily with Hunter Guzman twice in one day. The Ash from last week also would have called her crazy and walked away from her for saying they were werewolves.

[What a difference a day makes,] Ash thought to herself.

"So, will you come home with me?" Hunter asked, tracing a line along Ash"s jaw down to her chin.

"To meet your people?" Ash said, teasing.

Hunter smiled back. He was about to answer, when suddenly, they heard footsteps approaching.

They quickly scrambled toward a corner of the room away from the open door. They ducked behind some large boxes stacked off to the side and sat on the floor.

"Hey, you left the door open!" said a woman"s voice from the outside.

"Yeah, sorry! It doesn"t really catch anymore. I think the lock"s broken too!"

Hunter and Ash stared at each other as the voices continued to talk just outside the open door. The pa.s.sing seconds seemed to stretch into hours as they waited behind the boxes. At last, the door was slammed closed and the sound of talking voices receded until they could no longer be heard.

The two sat facing each other on the floor, listening to the sounds of the night. When they were sure that the staff were no longer there, Ash dusted off her sweatpants and got up.

"I think we should pick this up some other time," she said.

"Yeah, tomorrow then."

As Ash reached for the door, Hunter caught her hand. Ash looked back at him, thinking that he just wanted to say goodbye. He lowered his head and whispered in her ear.

"Don"t tell your friends."

Ash nodded quietly in response and slowly opened the door.

Hunter watched her leave. He stood alone in the dark room for a while, giving Ash time to walk away and put a little distance between them. On the off chance that someone was around, he didn"t want people to see them leaving together as it would have looked bad for Ash.

It wouldn"t have bothered Ash, but Hunter wanted to protect her anyway.

***

"Hey, have a nice nap?" Celia asked Ash as she sat down with them at the cafeteria.

Ash noticed that Celia and Izzy had changed out of their jogging clothes and were both wearing lounge wear. She knew from the question that Celia was trying to catch her in a lie. She sat down beside Celia and looked straight at her.

"I couldn"t really sleep so I went out for a walk," she said, casually.

"You must"ve been walking a long time. Did you run into anyone?" Izzy asked.

Ash felt her stomach turn. Was Izzy trying to catch her in a lie too? Ash couldn"t tell if she was just being paranoid, but Izzy"s questioning seemed suspicious. She decided to play it cool.

"No, it was just me. The other girls still don"t like me."

"Oh, well, that"s their loss, isn"t it?" Izzy responded.

There was a tension between the girls as they quietly ate dinner. Hunter"s words echoed in Ash"s head [Don"t tell your friends] and she worried that they suspected her and Hunter of being monsters. Celia and Izzy for their part suspected that Ash and Hunter were having secret s.e.x behind their backs and they were upset that Ash was keeping it a secret from them.

"You wouldn"t keep any secrets from us, would you Ash?" Celia asked. Celia didn"t have the patience for mind games. When she wanted to know something, she was blunt and just asked outright.

Ash knew this about Celia, and yet, she couldn"t tell her friends anything. Hunter was her people now, he had said so himself. And she had to protect him, even if it meant lying to her friends.

"No, I wouldn"t keep any secrets from either of you, Celia," Ash said.

Even as the words fell from her mouth, Ash knew that there was no taking it back.

It was a mistake. All three girls at the table knew that Ash was lying.

And the lies were just beginning.