Overcoming Her (Another Werewolf Story)

Memory Loss

We started playing on the Xbox shortly after. Leo was back, acting like his usual childish, cheerful self. We were playing Mario Kart, and he was in the lead. Despite how much I enjoyed gaming, I really didn’t have time for that while I was caring for my mother.

On the last lap, I was on Leo’s tail and about to pass him when he led me right to a banana peel and I slid off, and he got first place.

“That was cheap!” I laughed, pouting a little.

“All’s fair in Mario Kart, baby.” He winked with a smile. “Do you like war games? I have Call of Duty if you want to play.”

“I’m down to trying it!” I was actually really excited. “I’ve never really had the time or the opportunity to play, so whatever your recommendations are, I’m down.”

Leo laughed. “You’re a senior in high school, and you’ve never had the opportunity in all this time?”

I played with the controls a little, looking down sheepishly. “Well, yeah… My mom’s been like that a little…You know… Hectic throughout my growing up. I’ve always been around to help her. Since my dad disappeared, I kind of felt as if it was my duty to do it.”

“Why?” He asked, looking at me intently.

I was already feeling raw, having exposed this much of myself. I took a deep breath and I looked at Leo, only to find that he wasn’t staring at me intently, but instead focusing on the screen. It was kind of comforting, knowing he wasn’t looking at me with a face of pity. I also realized that this was a prime opportunity to tell Leo that I may never be able to shift. “I’m sure you’ve heard about what happened when I was a child.”

He shrugged. “I’ve… Heard stories, but I prefer to hear them from the source. Gossip in small towns like these tends to hold too much weight to the truth.”

Leo was clearly mature, and had been through something similar, and I wished I could’ve known what that was. Unfortunately, many of my memories of before the attack have been completely stripped from my memories, except ones that my dad was involved with. I guess that’s common with PTSD and TBIs. “Well… When I was only 14, there was an incident. I don’t know how it started. I don’t remember many of the details. I just know that I regained consciousness and found my mom crawling across the floor, missing a leg.” The game had started, and I found comfort in talking about this while distracted by something else. “To a kid like me, someone so young and innocent, you can only imagine what that does to you. One minute, I’m listening to my mom begging me to run, the other I’m begging myself and the Moon Goddess to give me the strength and the power to save my mom. I didn’t even care if I died. I was even pretty prepared for it.”

I breathed, letting the feelings from that night rush through me. I had a target for the game so I focused on that. “I… I got him!” We took a break to high-five, and I went back to my story, unpressured. “Next thing I know, I just had this gut feeling that the Moon Goddess was there with me, and I did it… I shifted. What happened next was gory, and to be quite frank, I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to share the rest of it. I can still taste the blood of one of the intruders to this day.” I sighed, slightly recoiling. My eyes never leave the screen. “I just got really lucky, and the backup showed up. One of them was your father, I guess. I passed out and was in a coma for two weeks. When I came back, I guess I’d exhausted my wolf form. My body wasn’t prepared to transform so young, and when it did… Well, I may never shift again with how much scarring and damage it did to me. I look like a vampire when I go to the beach now.”

“My father,” I continued, “he just disappeared that day. He’d said he was going to the store to pick up breakfast, since it was a special day. I don’t remember what the special day was, and I don’t remember much of the days before this all happened. I just know what happened afterwards, and I know that my father never returned home. I know I got a gnarly TBI, and I suffer from extreme memory loss because of it.”

Leo sighed thoughtfully. “Yeah, it’s much better hearing it from you.” I looked over at him, curiously. He was very deep in thought, still playing the game. “It explains why you have avoided me for so long. I thought you were just embarrassed because of my father seeing what happened that day. Well, and my mother. She was there also. I tried to give you your space, but I just never understood why you stopped talking to me. Nobody understood why you stopped talking at all.”

“Was I… Friends with people?” I asked, searching for memories. I really couldn’t remember anything except the time I spent at home.

“You were… But the first year after your accident, you kind of just… Shrugged everyone off. It was like, we tried to be there for you. But you were so flat and just seemed so agitated that we were talking to you in the first place.” Leo took a deep breath. “Everyone gave you your time and space. Especially me… It cut me pretty deeply, in all honesty. I know it’s been 3 years since, but I just couldn’t let it continue anymore. I needed to know why.”

“Three years… Three years, you have all been waiting for me to come back?” I thought back on all of the times people would try to talk to me in the hallways. Was I dismissive? I know I wasn’t really focusing on how they were acting. “How long… How long were we friends?”

Leo, despite my confession, looked shocked despite himself. “We were practically friends fresh from the womb, Scottie Jay. We’ve been inseparable since you were born. I’m four months older than you, and our parents used to take turns with the two of us so they could still have date nights. If we didn’t know any better, we would’ve called each other siblings.”

I smiled at the thought of having someone I cared so much about besides my mother, and instantly felt guilty. Did I have this support before? If so, why did I have to lose such precious memories?

“Why didn’t we just call each other siblings?”

Leo put his controller down, facing me. “Because I’ve loved you since the day I knew what love was.”

Here was that shock factor again. I felt myself blushing, and fought through the embarrassment. “Well, that’s pointless. I mean, you’re almost ready to discover who your mate is.”

“I already know, you are my mate, Scottie. I can feel it in my bones.” Leo was sporting his childish smile all over again, and I found myself losing it. My heart pounded in my chest, and I was shaking a little despite my best efforts to control myself. “I’m not expecting anything from you, because this is my second confession to you and you’ve already shot me down once. But I’ll always love you, Scottie Jay Wiseman. I told you once and I’ll tell you again, I’m not letting you go if it’s the last thing I do. Which is also why I wanted to make sure that we resolved our issues. I don’t want this to be awkward in the next 10 months when you realize I was right all along, and that we weren’t just mates, but fated.”

This was a lot to wrap my head around, and I found myself feeling dizzy. I felt like small movies started twirling through my head, with excited laughs and some girl calling my name, screaming and laughing all at once. Her movie reached me, and I couldn’t make out who she was. She sounded like she was having a blast. And then another clip slowed down in front of me. There was a boy who looked like a 10-year-old version of Leo, looking angry. “You’re not my sister, Scottie. One day we’re going to be married. One day, you’re going to be my mate. I don’t care what you call me, but you’re not going to make it weird and call me your brother.” He stuck his tongue out and stomped away.

I felt like I was going to throw up suddenly, and panicked. I ran to the two doors and opened one, only to find that it was the closet. It was too late. I fell on my knees and I barfed all over the floor.

“Oh no…” I whined. “Leo, Leo I’m so sorry.. I’ll clean it up!” Tears started pouring out, and my head almost instantly started throbbing. “I don’t know what happened!”

Leo came up behind me and started rubbing my back. “It’s okay. It’s no big deal. Are you ready to go home? I realize that must’ve been a lot for you.”

I nodded profusely. “Please. I don’t understand what’s going on right now.”

“You will, Scottie. One step at a time.” Leo carried me out to his car, and took me home. I think I passed out in his car, because I woke up later that night sweating in my own bed. I don’t remember what I dreamed about, but I know my heart hurt and that I was crying.