The Witch and her Wolf

Chapter 3

The drive back home was mostly silent. My eyes teared up and the tears started flowing down my face but I didn’t dare make a sound. I couldn’t cry in front of my mom while she was just giving  up with her life. I didn’t want to just let it happen but what was I supposed to do when she doesn’t want to get better. 

I pull into the driveway of our small two bedroom house and before I get the chance to open my door my mom pulls on my arm and pulls me into a hug. From there, I break down into the crevice of my mother's shoulder. 

“I know, baby, I know.” she says with sympathy. Shouldn’t this be the other way around? I pull up from my mother's shoulder and attempt to stop crying as fast as possible. But the attempt burns at my throat as I look into my moms eyes for the first time since we left the doctors office. 

“Let's get inside and we can talk about this,” she said with a sympathetic smile. How can she be smiling? I nod and open my car door, grabbing my stuff before I get out and rush over to her side of the car and help her out. I gently grab her arm and help her to the door,

Once we got to the porch I quickly let go of her arm and unlock the door. I wrap my arm into hers again and gently set her in her favorite chair in the living room.

“What do you want for dinner?” I ask to try to temporarily forget that my mother is dying.

“Sit down, we need to talk,” she says seriously.

I sigh and I sit in the spot in front of her. Whatever she wants to say to me, I’m not ready to hear it. 

“I know you're not happy with my decision,” she starts. 

‘Well no s**t’ I wanna say, but I don't and remain silent.

“But I’m ready. I’ve made peace with it and I want you to too” she finishes with a sigh of release. 

I’m shocked, “You want me to make peace with you choosing death over fighting your cancer?” 

“Yes,” she simply says.

“No,” I replied, not ready to give up.

“Yes”

“No”

“Yes! Now stop arguing! I fought my fight and I am tired. It's my time, baby, and you need to accept that. I know it’s going to be hard for you but I’m just so done.” She says trying to hide the tear that I just saw slide down her cheek. 

“Is this what you really want?” I ask with one last push.

“Yes, but I don’t want you to worry about it. Right now, I want you to forget about it for now.” she says with a shaky breath.

“Fine” I say, not wanting to challenge her. Because if I challenge her, she might over exert herself and with her just being done with life, won’t be food for either of us. 

“What do you want for dinner?” I ask for the second time tonight. 

“Barbecue chicken pizza from Joey's Pizza” we sat at the same time and a giggle escaped my lips. It’s been our favorite since the restaurant opened five years ago.

“I’ll order it and then I’m gonna hop in the shower, Kay?” I say getting up from my chair and reaching for my phone. It takes me a couple of minutes to order the pizza and I go to tell my mom that I’m about to hop into the shower but I realize that she won't pay any attention to me because her favorite show, Golden Girls, is on. 

I have to make this shower quick cause the pizza should be here in about thirty minutes. I rush over to our small bathroom space and turn on the hot water. I scrub my shampoo into my scalp and wash my face. Rinsing my hair in under the hot water then moving onto my conditioner and body wash. While scrubbing my body I hear our home phone ringing. Two or three rings go by and it stops, either they gave up or my mom answered it. 

I quickly wrap up my shower and get out. Wrapping myself in a towel and quickly drying my hair with an old Panic at the Disco t-shirt from my emo phase in middle school, even if you could call it an emo phase. I open the bathroom door to get to my bedroom and change but my body shudders at the temperature difference from the bathroom and the rest of the house. I raced to my small bedroom, and quickly put on a large t-shirt and a pair of athletic shorts, not bothering to put on a bra because I’m not going to be leaving the house for the rest of the night. 

I look across the room, opposite of my bed, to see my babies in their cage. Not real babies, of course, but my fur babies. Two sugar gliders. A brother and sister named Duke and Pepper. Open their cage for a minute to give them their dinner and they take this opportunity to climb up my arm and rest on my right shoulder. I got two of them because sugar gliders are social animals. They need a companion. I really love these little guys.

I put their food in their cage and pick them up one by one, place them into their cage and close it. Once Duke and Pepper were fed, I dried my hair again with the same t-shirt from before because my hair is still sopping wet.

I get my hair dry enough to the point where it's no longer dripping and I hear the doorbell ring. I get to the front door to answer it as quickly as possible. I open the door and take the pizza from the sandy-blond haired boy, whom I think is in my English class. It takes me a minute to realize that my mother is no longer in the living room where I left her. I walk around the couch and place the pizza on the coffee table. I get up and grab paper plates, cause I don't feel like doing dishes tonight, and I refill our glasses. I set the paper plates, and our glasses, on the coffee table and I started to call for my mom. But before I got the chance to call for her, I realized that she was standing in the archway between the kitchen and the living room with a terrified look on her face, and our home phone in her hand.

“Mom?” I manage to say, scared about all the possibilities that could be wrong.

“Mom? What's wrong?” I manage to get out.

“That was the school. What happened at detention today.” she said with her eyes wide. 

“Mom, I’m sorry I got detention. I fell asle-” I begin, trying to explain myself but she cuts me off.

“I don’t give a damn that you got detention! I want to know what happened. The school called to make sure that you were ok. They said that there was some type of accident.” she said as a matter of fact and inched closer to me.

I sat her down and explained what happened in detention. She pushed me for more details so I repeated the story in specific detail. Her shoulders tensed about half way through the second time I told the story of the second time around. Our pizza was probably getting cold by now. Not cold, just not hot like the way we like it. 

There was a stiff silence and the tension in this room could be cut with a knife. After a minute or two of her staring into space in thought so deep that you could see it on her face, she spoke.

“There is something that I’ve kept from you for a long time. I was hoping it would skip your generation but I was clearly wrong.” she looked up at me and looked into my eyes before continuing. 

“It skipped me and my mother, but… not you.” she finished and I’m starting to get worried.

“What are you talking about, mom? I ask shakily. 

“What happened in the chemistry room today… It was you” she said with absolute seriousness. 

“Mom, I didn’t do anything to those chemicals” I say truthfully, a little insulted for thinking that I would do anything like that. Someone could have gotten seriously hurt. I didn’t even know what chemicals were even in there.

“Not knowingly, but you did.” she said with full seriousness.

“How?” I asked scared of the answer that awaited me.

“Addison, my dear. You. Are a witch”