When Everything Changes

Seven: "That Would Be Ironic"

They stare at us with their mouths wide open in a mixture of shock and disbelief. They look at us as if they can’t comprehend what they’re hearing from Olivia’s mouth. I thought that with Aidens red rank and Peter’s yellow they would believe in some sort of anomaly, not look at us as if they learned the world is going to be taken over by werewolves. In fact, they look at us like we’re the werewolves. 

“You guys are…” Peter trails off, not sure how to end his sentence with all the options he could tack onto the end of it. 

In fact, I’m not sure how to fill in the blanks myself. We have a lot going on and I can see how each of them are trying to fill in the blanks themselves with the information we’ve given them. 

I didn’t want to tell them everything at first, and that was the plan in the beginning. It started hesitant and careful, we tip-toed around everything we could. But it eventually came to be that we couldn’t stop. It was like a rushing waterfall where the words fell from our mouths, desperate to be free after so long of being kept in. 

When we started, their reactions came and went like a tide. Initially, no words were said, trying to figure out if we were serious or crazy. Then questions and comments came pouring out like their words were water trying to put out a fire we started. Eventually, supposedly when the shock set in, they became quiet. Peter was the only one to continue talking once we finished. 

He looks at us now with calculating eyes. It makes me feel itchy. The look makes me feel like I am a stranger to myself. It’s a look I’m not sure how to decipher. So I look away. 

Peter sighs and rubs his hands together as if he were cold. “This is insane,” he laughs quietly to himself “utterly insane” 

“It all makes sense now. The weird place you lived in, the way you all sneaked around like it was natural, the peanuts”

It was now our turn to stay quiet. We sat in a suffocating silence as Peter quieted down. My mind was whirring with questions and possibilities. This could have been a mistake. Was it? I’m not sure. They could easily turn us in, but would they? Would they risk themselves to turn us in? Would they risk themselves to help us? 

“I should kill you right here” 

My eyes snap to Aiden, his face cool and calm as he looks at me. 

“You’re a danger to both my family and myself” he doesn’t move, sitting perfectly still like a statue. That made me feel more uneasy than if he were moving. I feel like an unsuspecting deer, just before a lion digs its claws into its flesh.

While I remain where I am, periodically looking from anywhere to Aiden, Olivia is up in an instant. She shoots to her feet and she takes on a defensive stance, one I’ve experienced many times when we fight or she gets upset. She puts her right foot in front of her left, her hands clenched into fists. 

“We’re not a danger, if anything, you’re the danger” she narrows her eyes at them accusingly but Aiden isn’t finished. 

“We don’t know anything about you! Just being around you puts us at risk by association” he argues. 

“Then leave” Olivia throws her arm in the direction of the opening we came from. My whole body stills at her words.Leave?

We’re just going to let them...go? I thought we needed them. We do need them. They know everything and now we’re just going to let them leave without giving us anything to work with? 

My mind races with ways to get something, to get them to talk to us, to promise they won’t tell, to stay. But my mind comes up blank in a flurry of panic. 

Aiden stands up and casually wipes the dirt off his pants. He turns to Peter and holds his hand out to him. When Peter looks from his hand to his face, Aiden elaborates on his actions. “C’mon, we’re leaving” he looks at Olivia as he says it, quoting her words back at her. 

Peter hesitates, but after a moment he takes Aiden’s hand and he stands. I watch as they gather their things from where we put them. Peter occasionally looks back at us, Aiden does not. 

Olivia and I don’t move, we just watch as they walk together towards the entrance, and disappear through the trees. 

-*-

I’m on fire. 

And it hurts like hell. 

Running through the trees before my arm got torn open was certainly easier than now. The gauze on my shoulder may stop the bleeding, but it does nothing to dull the pain which it emits through my body. 

I’m breathing harshly through my teeth as I clench them together trying to keep it together long enough to make it somewhere safe. 

We had to leave the clearing because we had yet to know if Aiden and Peter were going to play tattle tale on us. We had to keep moving, even when it felt wrong. 

I’ve decided I don’t like rushing through the forest. The trees make it hard to run, the roots could easily be our end, and the dead leaves and sticks make it easier to hear us for anyone who’s listening. 

When we make it to the forest’s edge, we pause, both of us breathing heavily. 

“Where are we going?” I ask 

Olivia looks at me like I’m crazy. “Why are you asking me?”

“Because I said I would let you make more choices for yourself” 

“Well I don’t know where to go”

I close my eyes and tilt my head up to the sky, inhaling deeply and letting it out, trying to relax despite our predicament. When I open my eyes, everything is a little too bright and the colors pop out a bit too much, making me dizzy. 

“Are you okay?” Olivia asks, her eyes looking at me with concern. 

I nod and take another breath. This whole thing just feels like too much. I don’t know what to do or how to survive. I’m afraid.

What to do, what to do, what do I do?

I try to relax my arm, the burning still prominent. 

I watch as Olivia holds her arms over herself like she’s cold. The air is getting colder and the snow is sure to come and freeze us if we can’t find a place to keep warm. 

What was the plan?

“Okay,” I let out a breath “We should find a place to stay before it gets dark, then we can come up with a plan for tomorrow. Most likely find a way to get far away from here” 

Olivia nods slowly while looking out at the street in front of us. Her eyebrows are pulled together in concentration as she looks around. “I think I know a place” 

I blink in surprise. “You do?” 

She pulls her eyes away from the street and looks back at me. “I used to walk around here with my friends when we would go the park just around the corner” 

“So?” I ask

She looks at me expectantly “that means I know where we are. So if I’m correct, I could lead us back to our old house” 

“How do you know it’s empty? Do you think anyone would have been moved in there by now?” it would be a miracle if it were empty, if we could go there and for a moment, pretend we are normal, that we are waiting for our parents to come home.

“Dad..” I whisper 

Suddenly everything is back and working in my mind. Everything is moving and electric. My emotions are on overdrive and I’m not sure if I should be excited or scared.

“Do you think dad will be there?” I ask hesitantly 

Olivia just stares at me wide-eyed, not moving. I guess she doesn’t know what to think or how to feel. If I were to see him, I don’t think I would know what to do either. Maybe I would cry at his feet, relieved that after so long I got to see him again. That he isn’t dead. Maybe I would scream at him, scream at him for leaving, for disappearing like he was some sort of batman. Maybe I would run away, would I even want to see him? Would adding him into the mix just make things more complicated? 

Finally, Olivia finds her words and takes my hand. “It’s our best bet. At least for one night.” 

She didn’t give me an answer, but if she doesn’t want to talk about it, I won’t force her. Not that I could, she can hold her ground better than a boulder. 

We look each other over, trying to seem as presentable as we can before we go out into daylight. The chime just rang out signaling five minutes before the end of free time and everyone has to head home. We decided it was best to leave during this time so it wouldn’t look incredibly suspicious when we came out of the woods. People come out of the woods all the time, we just need to blend in. 

I put on a jacket over my ripped shirt and put my hair up with a hair tie. With my suggestion, Olivia puts her hair up as well and wipes off her hands on her pants. “Ready?” I ask. She nods and smiles minimally at me.

We don’t have Peter this time to help us, so we link hands and both take a breath. We need to do this, we have to find a way. 

-*-

We decided to approach the house through the back yard. Not only will it bring less attention to us, but we don’t have a key anymore. 

We open the back gate, cringing slightly when the gate squeaks open like something from a horror movie. But this house looks nothing like a run down haunted mansion where kids dare each other to sleep in on Halloween night. This is my house.

And despite how quiet it is and how empty it seems, it still feels like home. This is where my memories are. Where I made tie-dye shirts and stained the grass blue for a whole week, where I would sit out and read, getting caught in a fairytale, this is where I would explore the woods just beyond the back gate. 

“Is that my baseball bat?” Olivia asks mainly to herself as she walks farther into the lawn and picks up an old worn out wooden bat. 

Olivia had wanted to play baseball for the longest time. She wanted to join the team at school, and when they denied her due to it being a boy’s team, she went into a fit of anger. She cursed at the coach and began throwing the baseballs at anyone who came too close. They eventually called our dad and he came and took her home, but not before she yelled at the coach once more before leaving the school. 

At home, our dad gave her and halfhearted scolding before telling her he was happy she fought for something she wanted, even if it was not in the best way. He took her into the garage and told her how when he was younger he was on his school’s baseball team. She glared at him, thinking he was gloating. But then he handed her his bat and ball and told her to “show them all what they lost” 

She went to the park every day after that. She practiced her swings and throws by herself. No one at the park volunteered to play with her, and she didn’t ask. She played for hours by herself, taking our dad’s words to heart. 

At home, our dad would help her catch and throw. He would throw the balls to her and she would catch them. He would throw the balls and she would swing at them. 

Eventually, on her fourteenth birthday, our dad got her her own glove and bat. She kept the glove he gave her because his old one was wearing down with use. But she refused the shiny new metal bat, wanting to keep his wooden one. She said it held more meaning to her and she liked it better, because it was from him. 

She gives it a swing and she smiles with a satisfied look. 

With the bat in her hand and jerks her head in the direction of the house “come on” 

Half joking, I ask “you’re not going to hit him with that, are you?” 

On the porch, she smirks at me. “That would be ironic” 

“I’m serious” I scold her

“I am too,” she sighs “but no, not today” 

I ignore the “not today” part and turn the doorknob apprehensively. The door opens and everything almost feels...normal. 

We stand in front of the door for a moment. Olivia and I look at each other before she lifts the bat in a swinging position and tilts her head side to side making it c***k. “I’ll go first” 

“No” I don’t believe she won’t hit the first moving thing in the house so I nudge in front of her before she can get through, getting in front. I walk through the hall and slow down at every room we pass. The kitchen, the living room, the dining room, they all look just as we left them. 

Coming to the front door, we stop. 

“Well, what do we do now?” Olivia asks 

“Let’s not settle in, there is no way this place is safe forever. This is only temporary, so we take what we can get but without it looking like we were here. If they know we were here, we’ll never be safe. So we stay the night and then make our plan.”

Olivia nods along and when I finish, she looks around again before going to fill up on needed supplies. 

I walk upstairs and carefully look in each of the rooms. I come to my old room and pause. My things are just as I left them, the clothes I left behind are neatly tucked into the drawers in my dresser. My shoes are haphazardly thrown in the closet, my bed sheets are still slightly wrinkled from the last time I slept in them.

It’s been so long since I slept in a bed. 

“Ella,” Olivia calls “you might want to see this” 

I rush downstairs, panicked at what she might have found. 

I find her in our dad’s office, looking through a pile of envelopes. 

“What? What is it?” I walk over to her and stand next to her, looking at the envelope in her hand. 

“It’s a letter,” she mumbles. She flips it over, checking both sides “addressed to the center” 

“Wait,” I swallow harshly, not sure how to process this information “that means he’s...alive” 

Olivia remains silent and in an instant, she’s ripping the envelope open and pulling out the letter. 

“What are you doing?” I ask frantically. If someone comes in here and sees an open envelope that was clearly not opened before, it’ll raise suspicion. It could be traced back to us. 

“More like what is he doing?”

Her eyes scan over the letter before she cries out and slams the letter on the table. She rushes out of the room quickly and I call out to her. “Olivia!” She doesn’t answer.

I think of going after her, but the letter sits on the table, slightly crumbled due to Olivia’s tight grip and I pick it up. My hands are shaking. 

John, 

We are almost ready for the RCP to be put into action. Things have been quiet in sectors C and B so I believe things are ready to move along. I have yet to locate either of the girls but I am staying in the area to see if they come around here. I will be coming in for a debrief with you and will update you and will fill you in with more detail then. 

- Harrison

Air seemed paper thin.

And I couldn’t seem to get it in my lungs and make it stick. 

My dad wasn’t dead, he wasn’t missing, he was perfectly fine. 

I was right. I should have screamed at him. I should have kicked at him like I would when I was a little girl and I was upset. He may have disappeared like he was batman, but he’s no superhero. He conformed and he complied, and he jumped right into the arms of the center like I would do to him after a long day. He’s working for the center. The very establishment that puts me in danger, the very establishment that killed mom. 

And now, if I were to ever see him again, I could die, just like her.