The Werewolf and the Human

A Heroic Conversation

So, Jackie and I had been chilling at the museum for maybe five minutes. I had gotten comfortable in the silence. I think that Jackie knew that because she started playing on her phone and just let me sit in silence. However, after five minutes, someone walking up to us disturbed that silence. “Hello,” he said.

              I looked him over. I saw his blue eyes looking over me, and his blond hair seemed to be slicked back. He was wearing a green shirt and dark blue jeans. “She has a boyfriend,” I said, looking at Jackie. Jackie, who had missed him walking up, simply looked at me. “What, you do?”

              She looked at the man, then at me, and then again back at the man. “She doesn’t, though.” I looked at her, and she looked at me, and then I looked at her one more time before she said, “What, you don’t.”

              I sighed and then laughed. I didn’t say anything, though. The blond man did. “I’m sorry if you thought I was coming over here to hit on you. I just wanted to meet the girl who tried to save the wolf.”

              I tilted my head. “Oh, OK. I don’t actually know what happened to the wolf. I had been out of it for a little while when the game commission arrived. They said that the wolf was gone, and so were the hunters. So, I probably didn’t do as much as I had hoped.”

              The man laughed and flashed me a very toothy grin. “I think that things worked out.”

              I smiled and pulled my head from my knee. “I doubt that everything worked out for that wolf. I feel so bad for her.”

              He found a little bit of the bench that Jackie or I weren’t sitting on, and he sat down beside me. He put his hand gently on my knee. “Have a little faith.”

              I smiled at him. “I have faith in a lot of things. I had faith, and that is what saved my little bit of dignity,” I said, looking down at the ground. I felt Jackie put her hand on my shoulder. She knew what I was talking about. I didn’t want to think about it, but it still would occasionally slip from my mind onto my lips. I was trying to force them to stay shut. I tried to force them to stay in my head, but it wasn’t working. “That wolf saved my life.”

              The blond man looked at me. “How can you be sure?”

              I smiled and looked over at Jackie again. “I can’t be. Just as you can’t be sure, the wolf made it, but we have our faith in that. We have put our faith in something, and that should be the only thing that matters.”

              “You seem to have a strong belief in that,” he said, shaking his head.

              “I have to have a strong belief in something,” I said, looking at him.

              “And why is that?” he asked, his hand resting just beside my leg.

              “Because why not believe in something? Why shouldn’t we believe in something? What will we fight for if we don’t believe in anything at all? Who will we help if we don’t believe in anything at all?” I asked, my voice both strong and shaking. As if at any moment it would break because I don’t have the confidence that I pretend to.

              The man smiled at me as if what I had just told him was some novel secret. “Interesting.” Was it? I didn’t think so. How could anything be interesting in what I said? I shrugged. There was nothing else I could do. It hurt like hell doing it, though. I didn’t know if I was supposed to agree or argue, so I did neither. “How much longer are you in town for?”

              “Only until we can get our car fixed,” I said, looking at Jackie. Was I wrong in that idea? She would be the one to tell me that. She would be the one with that answer. She always was.

              “Yeah,” Jackie said, nodding. “And then we need to go. We both should get home and get some sleep.”

              “Well, you can sleep anywhere,” the guy said, leaning a little into me.

              I almost fell off the seat. “s**t,” I mumbled as I began to catch myself.

              Jackie got up and walked over to me. “You good?” she asked, kneeling down in front of me.

              I rubbed my left hand for a few seconds. “Yeah, I think so,” I muttered, barely thinking about the words that I was saying.

              “You sure?” she asked, watching me bite my lip. I nodded. My head spinning. I shouldn’t have nodded. She took that response as a yes, though it was a cautious yes.

              “You’re still a hero,” he said, ignoring what he had just done.

              “Thanks,” I mumbled.

              “And I am sure that your car won’t be much longer,” he said, laughing a little. “The mechanics are pretty quick.”

              I sighed. Nothing else that I could do. Not really. “Nothing else has been.” I let slip from my lips.

              “What?”

              “Nothing,” I said, deciding that trying to explain would be impossible.

              “You can tell me,” he said, putting his hand on my knee.

              I looked down at his hand for a second before I looked away from it. “It’s nothing. It just feels like this town has a speed all its own.”

              I heard him chuckle just slightly. “It can feel that way at times, but I can be sure that we do live a fast-paced life here.”

              I was about to say something, but then a phone rang. Now, I realized it wasn’t my phone right away, nor was it Jackie’s. I looked over to the man to see if it was his, but he seemed to know it wasn’t his. The museum curator didn’t show his face anywhere around the area, so I didn’t think it was his, so I had to wonder whose it was. Then I noticed a man in the corner. I hadn’t noticed him before. How hadn’t I noticed him before? I don’t know.

              He answered the phone and talked for only a few seconds before hanging up and walking over to us. “We have to be going,” he said to the man that was sitting in front of me.

              “Are you sure? We were having a lovely discussion?” the man said, giving me a smile.

              “I couldn’t keep you,” I told him. He said goodbye to me, and I said goodbye to him, and the two men walked away.