Fated to the Alpha

13

Alice

The girls in my class clung to their Cosmos like they were the Bible. It was like watching a museum exhibit up close. Back in Chicago, you couldn’t make the girls get off their phones, always uploading crap on i********:, doing streaks on Snapchat, trolling people on Reddit, keeping up with the Kardashians, and whatnot.

Here, in Rapid Falls, where the internet was more of a commodity, people behaved like they were perpetually stuck in the ‘80s, listening to Kate Bush, driving old American Muscle cars, smoking cigarettes, and reading actual physical books and magazines instead of being on their phones.

Cheryl, Lacy, and Bethanie were three girls who sat with me in most classes. They had declared out of the blue that I was now a part of their clique, whatever that meant. Except, I know what that meant. It meant my access to an endless amount of Cosmo magazines, bubblegum during lectures, and sometimes, during basketball games, we drank whatever Bethanie managed to procure from her mother’s liquor cabinet.

They didn’t care about who I was, where I’d come from, or what I was all about as long as I was there with them, doing the stupid teenager stuff they were doing. Sometimes, on the weekends, we’d go to the strip mall and drink slushies while ogling the boys in the skating rink across the road.

It was ridiculous.

Of course, I was only indulging myself in all this crap because I was trying to get over Brandon. Trying to forget about everything I had learned that night in the teepee. Trying to understand that I might be a wolf. Coping with the knowledge that one of my parents might secretly have been a werewolf. Not to mention that goddamn vision I had. Every night, it haunted me. It was the last thing I thought of when I went to bed and the first thing I was reminded of when I woke up.

Being with these girls was the only time when I felt like I was a sane girl. Was it selfish? I didn’t care. I needed to be normal. I needed to fit in.

“Hey, Alice,” Lacy said as she uncorked the champagne bottle Bethanie had so kindly provided. All four of us were in Cheryl’s basement, where she kept her records, her novels, and her giant plasma TV.

“What’s up?” I asked absentmindedly as I rifled through Lacy’s DVD collection.

“Alice! Did you have a boo back in Chicago?” Lacy asked blatantly.

“I haven’t had a boyfriend. Ever. I did go on a weird, weird date with Tony Montello yesterday,” I said.

“The car mechanic? Eww, he uses a ton of hair gel. What did you go on a date with him for?” Bethanie said.

I’d decided to take my mom’s car for a ride through town yesterday. The front tire practically came off the Prius a mile away from the house. I called for the local mechanic, and Tony Montello showed up.

After grunting and pulling and moaning and grumbling for twenty minutes, he fixed the tire, all covered in tar and grease. Rather than accept my money, he kept insisting that I go out with him for a drink.

I decided that rather than argue with him, I’d have a drink with him and put an end to the matter right there and then. It wasn’t even a date, but Tony insisted that I call it that.

“Babes, you did go on a date with him. I don’t know how things work in Chicago, but in Rapid Falls, you get a drink with someone, you’ve dated them. Tony’s probably telling the entire town that he slept with you,” Bethanie said.

Lacy shook her head, indicating that Bethanie probably had too much to drink and was speaking out of her ass.

I chuckled. Date or not, Tony had served as comic relief, a palette cleanser.

“I once frenched Tony when I crashed my truck in a tree,” Cheryl whispered, which was enough to send us all into fits of wild laughter.

Later that night, I made a serious mistake. Cheryl dropped me off in her truck in the evening, a remarkable feat considering that both of us were inebriated. When I went inside the house, Mom and Elma were already at the dinner table.

“Someone’s home late,” Elma said.

“Shut up, Elms,” I called out. That should have been the first warning. I was drunk, not behaving like my usual docile self. I should have gone upstairs and slept it off. Instead, feeling confrontational, charged by the booze that were flowing through me, I went and sat at the dinner table.

Mom glared at me ferociously from across the table.

“Ooh, steak for dinner, my favorite,” I said, unable to control my giddiness.

“What’s gotten into you?” Mom asked.

“Oh, please. Like you haven’t relaxed once in a while,” I said. It did not occur to me that I was being condescending, rude.

“Are you drunk?” Elma asked nervously.

“Shhh. Don’t tell Mom,” I said, battling to keep my eyes open.

“Maybe it’s for the better that you go to your room. We’ll talk about this later,” Mom said.

“Except, here’s the thing. We never talk about anything, do we, Mom? You always skirt around the important stuff. Maybe I don’t have to go to my room. Maybe we can get some stuff off the table,” I said as I helped myself to some steaks and tartar sauce.

Mom put down her fork and knife and looked at me sternly.

“Fine. If that’s how you want to behave, let’s do that,” she said, gripping her wine glass tightly.

“Elma, did you know that you and I might be wolves?” I slurred. It was difficult for me to control myself in this state, and even more difficult to form words completely.

“That’s enough!” Mom slammed her hand on the table.

“Mom, what’s she talking about?” Elma asked.

“Your sister’s not right in the head right now. She’s drunk a little too much for her own good. I’ll have a talk with her friends’ moms tomorrow, let them know what kind of company these girls are keeping.”

“Mom, for once in your life can you shut up and not change the subject?” I snapped.

Her mouth gaped open at my audacity.

“Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been hiding? You’ve never once talked to us about Dad disappearing. You haven’t mentioned anything about anything! I had to give the birds and the bees talk to myself. Elma doesn’t even know how to shave her pubes correctly. You’re never there. You never talk to us. Your genius solution to my mental episode in Chicago was to move to a strange new town!” I said. Everything was going really blurry, and I could barely make out my mom’s outline.

“This is the thanks I get for all the effort I put in. I’ve been playing both roles of mother and father to you girls and this is how you repay me. Did you ever ask me, hey, Mom, how are you holding up? I take care of both of you, but who takes care of me!?” Mom yelled.

Elma was scared. Her face was strained and on the verge of tears. She got up from her seat and ran to her room, sobbing.

“You made Elma cry!” I screamed at Mom.

“No, you did, Alice. You’re having one of your episodes,” she said.

Even though I was drunk, and things didn’t make much sense to me, her words stung. I could see how she saw me. Like a freak. Like I was always just a few seconds away from having one of my “episodes.”

“As for your dad,” she said, getting up and walking over to me menacingly. “He clearly didn’t give a s**t about you, me, or Elma. Never came back. Never asked if I needed any help. You really wanna know what I think? He might as well be dead!”

That was it. The last stone that broke the dam. Hearing those words from her completely shattered the remnants of my self-control. The thought that my dad might be dead pierced through my heart, suffocating it with pain.

I burst into uncontrollable tears. I wanted to be away from this place. I didn’t care where. I got up and ran out through the back door, weeping, drunk, staggering.

“Alice! Come back! I didn’t mean that!” Mom called from behind.

Too late, Mom. The damage was done. You’d let out how you really felt, revealing the vile person you were hiding from me all this time.

My dad couldn’t be dead. I would have known. I should have known.

I just wanted to escape. I ran wildly through the forest, along the river in which I had once almost drowned and kept running until all I could hear was the sound of running water under my feet and the howl of the wind in my face.

I had never felt so truly miserable before.

I fell to my knees, feeling the alcohol content in my stomach lurching to come out. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I vomited along the riverbank, heaving out the champagne, the beer, and the mimosas I had with the girls.

Surprisingly, the puking helped me sober up a little. As I got up from the ground, I looked around to see how far and where I’d run. My heart sank as I realized that I was outside of the town limit, staring ahead at the forest.

I gasped aloud as I saw something move behind the trees. Black silhouettes with brimming red eyes bulging from the darkness.

From behind the trees, the wolves appeared, snarling at me, baring their teeth as they circled me, trapping me between them.