Arianna's Tale: The Beginning (10 page)

“It’s a really small school. Three-hundred
students is nothing,” Jack continued his attempt at reasoning, but
I was staring blankly at the table by then and didn’t really hear
him anymore.

I jolted in my seat when Austin’s hand
grazed mine, startling me out of whatever thoughts had distracted
me.

“What?” My voice came out sharper than I’d
meant, and my gaze that shot to him wasn’t as friendly as I’d
intended.

“Do you want dessert?” he gently queried and
I sighed faintly.

“Austin…” I sighed, shaking my head, “No…
thank you….”

He leaned right beside my ear before he
whispered ever-so-faintly, “Arianna… do you want to go home?”

I barely shook my head, his breath sending a
shiver down my spine that had my eyes wide as I resumed staring at
the table.

He’s my brother, my brother!
I
repeated the words over and over in my head, like a mantra, because
the shiver I felt sent warmth through me.

“What’s the name of the lake?” I asked out
loud, trying to stop my wandering thoughts and distract myself.

“Lake Fenrir,” Alex stated and my eyes
widened again. That name struck the same familiar chord as the
street names.

“What is with all of the road names and the
lake?” I muttered moreso to myself as I tried to figure it out;
they were all so familiar and I knew there was something about
them.

I didn’t notice it at the time, but Alex and
Jack very quickly changed the subject, or curved it.

“We do a huge bonfire out at the lake every
year; it’s kind of like a send-off for our graduated seniors and a
welcome for the rising freshmen. My closest friends and I do
several bonfires during the summer… if you like this one, you’re
welcome to join us for the others,” Jack offered, but I was still
trying to make sense of the names.

Alex contributed to the subject alteration
for a while, but he was watching me closely while I picked at the
remnants of vegetables on my plate and swirled my straw around in
my iced tea, all the while letting my mind wander.

“I bet a bonfire at the lake would be really
pretty on the night of a full moon,” I mumbled quietly, “I bet
anything around here… out in the middle of nowhere… would be pretty
on the night of a full moon… it would probably just be pretty after
dark in general….”

“You have to be really careful outside after
dark around here, Arianna,” Jack warned seriously, “There’s a lot
of undeveloped land and a lot of wildlife living in it. It’s
dangerous to be out alone after dark, and even sometimes the group
thing isn’t enough.”

“I hear you,” I distractedly replied, still
swirling my straw around my glass.

“If you want to go out after dark, I’d be
glad to accompany you,” Alex offered, and my straw briefly stopped,
“I’d be glad to take you out to the fields for stargazing; it’s the
best place in the whole town.”

“Right now tonight, you’d take me?” I
queried almost silently, finally looking over at him to find his
steady aqua gaze on me.

“Arianna, I don’t think that’s a good idea,”
Austin interrupted, but Alex didn’t look away and nodded.

“If you wish, Arianna; I would be happy to
take you,” Alex answered sweetly, but my stomach clenched into a
tight knot and I smiled faintly before resuming my distant stare at
the table and swirling straw.

“I do appreciate it… but not tonight…
sometime soon, perhaps…” I reasoned evasively.
I don’t know Alex
yet, and I’m certainly not feeling safe going off on my own just
yet. I guess I could’ve asked Jason to go with us, but I somehow
got the impression Alex meant it more as a date than anything
else.
The tension that had exponentially grown with my question
started to dissipate again, furthering my belief that Alex had
probably intended it as a date.

“Arianna,” Alex commented and I shifted only
my eyes to him, “Is there any particular reason you don’t want to
go tonight? It’s a lovely, clear evening tonight.”

“I just think it’s too soon after we’ve all
moved…” I lied, my eyes darting over to Jason, “Unless Jay comes
with us….”

“So you really just don’t want to be alone
with me,” Alex decided and I felt the knot tightening, threatening
to make me regret eating as much as I did.

“She’s just looking out for me,” Jason
contributed and my eyes darted to him in surprise, “My mom and I
really don’t get along and she’s staying at my dad’s tonight before
catching a flight in the morning; it’s all complicated and stupid,
but I don’t want to go straight home.”

I blinked in shock as I stared at Jason.
He lied perfectly, beautifully, actually; if I didn’t know that
he got along fine with Mom, or at least he did a month ago, then I
would’ve believed him, and I’m his sister.

“I’d rather just take Arianna,” Alex
reasoned softly, “So I suppose I’ll wait until another night.”

“Anna doesn’t date,” Austin growled beneath
his breath but Alex only briefly looked over at him.

“Isn’t that Arianna’s choice?” Alex calmly
countered while I bit hard on my lip as I felt Austin’s anger
getting worse.

“Please stop…” I whispered barely audibly,
“I swear… Why do boys always have to fight for the alpha position?”
And then it hit me, all of the names, were related to wolves. My
eyes were wide as I stared across the room, tallying the names up
in my mind. Nearly all of them I knew, but a few I felt I would
have to check on, but then the school name made more sense: London
High School;
Jack
London High School, I figured; but why?
Why was everything linked to wolves?

Things calmed back down,
again
, and
we parted ways a short while later.

“Stuff stays open really late around here,”
Jason commented on the way back to the house, “It’s really cool… I
mean… back where we were before, a restaurant like that would’ve
closed at 8 or 9, but it’s 1am already, and they were still
open.”

Weird, but very, very true.

“It’s always been like that around here,”
Austin admitted with a shrug, “I don’t really know why or anything,
just that it has been. You should’ve said something when we were
with Jack and Alex… maybe they would’ve known.”

But they wouldn’t have answered… They
totally changed the subject earlier when I was talking about going
out at night, and the alpha-male remark.

“Did you get all the details for the
bonfire?” I asked, catching Austin’s momentary glance at me.

“I did… When we get home, can I talk to
you?”

I only nodded since he was looking at me
again.

His “talk” was him worrying. Apparently, I’d
still been acting weird; it’s not like I noticed, so I couldn’t
really explain it to him, which only seemed to make him worry more.
I didn’t see Mom at all that night, for which I was ridiculously
thankful; I just didn’t have it in me to even try to play nice. I
tried really hard to sleep in my room, in my bed, by myself, but
around four, I went next door and knocked.

Okay, I know it’s wrong, but when Jason
shuffled over and opened his door, rubbing the sleep out of his
eyes with his hair all disheveled, I knew how he’d gotten to be
such a playboy; the faint grin he shot me didn’t help much.

“Come on,” he whispered, reaching out and
lightly taking my wrist to pull me inside before he closed his door
back. “You know I only have the one bed here… my stuff’s not all
unpacked… but it’s a queen….”

I climbed over to the far side of the
mattress, the side that was still relatively neat and obviously not
the tousled side he was sleeping on, and slipped under his blanket.
With a soft laugh he climbed back into his side and took hold of my
hand under the covers.

“You’re developing a bad habit, Anna,” he
quietly teased and, facing each other like we were, I couldn’t help
but look into his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, gently squeezing
his hand before he fell back asleep.

-Jason-

The girl I’ve watched grow
into the most beautiful creature in the world isn’t actually my
sister. What do I do with information like that? I’ve been working
for years to convince myself to look elsewhere, because she was my
sister, because that was weird and wrong, but now she’s not my
sister. When I saw what Mark had done to her, I was so pissed I
could have killed him! I mean, I really could have, and I wouldn’t
have felt the least bit sorry about it. You do
not
hurt my Arianna. She seems to
actually be starting to do better though. She’s eating at least,
that drawn look to her is gone. I don’t see as much terror in her
eyes every time a door closes…

Every once in a while, I
catch her looking at me as more than her little brother, she sees
me as a guy. But then it’s like her defenses take over and she
shuts it down. Don’t they call those “mixed signals” or something?
I can’t stop thinking about her, all the time I’m always thinking
about her. She keeps trying to get me to go off and hang out with
my friends, or make new ones now that we’ve moved, but why would I
want to spend my time with someone that isn’t her when she is
everything? She is perfect! Nobody understands me like she does;
nobody makes me feel the way she does… Part of her still sees her
little brother when she looks at me, but I think she’s getting over
that. I hope she’s getting over that…

Something will change
soon, I just know it.

Wolves. They were everywhere. Running
through the town, walking through the buildings like nothing more
than well-behaved dogs. I stood in the middle of them and looked
around in awe. One approached me, its eyes holding an intelligence
no animal should have. I blinked, and they were all gone.

I only partly woke up in the morning,
muttering, and snuggled deeper into my body pillow before my eyes
sped open to find the speckled gray pattern of Jason’s t-shirt in
front of my face.
Crap…
We were curled up in the middle of
the bed and he was holding me close to him; it was the best I’d
slept in a long time, but it was a really bad idea. When I tried to
wiggle carefully out of his arms, they tightened around me.

“Don’t go,” he mumbled, softly kissing my
forehead, “Please, don’t go….”

“Jay…” I whispered, but the door suddenly
slammed and I jumped away from him as he groaned.

“Go away, Austin,” Jason hissed, reaching
out to grab my hand at the same time that I spotted Austin standing
in front of the closed door.

“This is not okay,” Austin stated coldly,
“If Dad saw you he’d totally freak out! How could he trust you two
to not do something if he catches you sleeping together in Jason’s
bed?”

“
Sleeping
,” Jason grumbled the word,
“Exactly what we were doing until we were so rudely awakened.
There’s nothing wrong with sleeping in the same bed.”

“There would be nothing wrong with sleeping
in the same bed if you were actually brother and sister, but you’re
not and Jason, you don’t at all look at Arianna as your sister
anymore. What you’re doing is completely inappropriate,” Austin
continued his scolding while I scooted to the edge of the bed, but
Jason’s fingers twined in mine tightened further.

“I don’t think of her as my sister, but if
she’s having trouble sleeping, I’m not going to force her to sleep
by herself,” Jason reasoned, staring up into my eyes, “Really,
Austin… if it had been your door she knocked on, would you have
turned her away?”

“But it wasn’t my door; and to avoid this, I
insist we get all of our rooms unpacked and set up so that you have
other places to sleep if she needs company again tonight. Of
course, Mom’s gone already, so we can crash in the living room
again.”

“After the bonfire,” I included and Austin
sighed while he nodded, “You don’t seem to like them very
much….”

Austin just rolled his eyes. “We have rooms
to unpack.” He held the door open, staring pointedly at me until
Jason sighed and let go of my hand and I rushed out into the
hallway. “I’m making Dad aware of your feelings tonight… if you
don’t take care of it yourself before then,” Austin added, staring
at Jason as he rolled over on the bed to face his big brother with
a glare in his eyes.

“It’s none of his business,” Jason growled,
slowly sitting up, “I’m not going to do anything to Anna; there’s
no reason to tell anyone.”

“You tell him, or I do,” Austin finalized,
nearly slamming the door when he closed it and I quickly ducked
into my room, having been peeking out the door while they were
still arguing. Austin sighed before going back into his own room,
but he left his door wide open as he started unpacking his
things.

It was over an hour later before Jason
walked into my room and sat down, cross-legged, beside me, staring
at me with his blue-green eyes completely intent. When I glanced at
him, I couldn’t help but realize his normally spiked hair was still
hanging down shaggily into his eyes.

“Arianna,” he started and I flinched. It was
weird for Austin to use my full name, but it was even weirder when
Jason did it; it instantly made me worry about what extremely
serious thing he was about to say, especially with the events of
the morning.

“Jay, I know you wouldn’t ever do anything,
there’s no need to worry about it… just tell Dad to make Austin
happy…” I commented, trying to circumvent whatever bad thing he was
about to say while I resumed unpacking my things and staring into
the box.

“Arianna… I want to go on a date with you,”
he stated and I froze completely, dropping one of my favorite snow
globes which, thankfully, he caught with his lightning quick
reflexes. “I know I’m younger than you… but please, think about it
at least.”