1: My Golden God

Quincy St. Martin

I am an expert at picking locks.

When you’ve been getting locked in a room every week since you turned nine, you have no choice but to master the skill set.

Yet today’s lock is giving me grief. Or maybe it’s just the unbearable stuffiness in the attic.

I wipe the sweat from my brow, frustrated at its stubbornness.

~When was the last time I ate?~

Dropping my makeshift tools, I give up, slipping into a haze of exhaustion. Submitting to it, I drift into the darkness.

~I’m running.~

~As fast as my legs will carry me. I can’t catch my breath under the hot California sun.~

~All I have to do is make it around this next corner and…~

~I skid to a halt. A fence looms in front of me. I’m trapped.~

~I turn around and see ~him~.~

~He has his thumbs hooked into the front pockets of his dark designer jeans. His blue-gray Henley stretches across his broad shoulders and chest.~

~His golden hair glints in the sun. My golden god. Oh, no, no, no… He’s not mine.~

~He lifts his chin up finally as if challenging me.~

~This close, he looks even more breathtakingly beautiful.~

~His skin is flawless. Every feature is sharp like it’s carved from granite. The tips of his thick golden eyelashes glint in the sun.~

~His eyes are bright, vivid green, like fresh grass in early spring.~

Somebody’s pounding on my door.

~No, let me sleep. I’ve never gotten this far before.~

~The air sizzles between us. There’s fierce possessiveness in the way he looks at me, and I can’t tear my eyes away even if my life depended on it.~

~The sound of our heavy breathing is all I can hear.~

“Quincy, wake up!”

~No, please, just five more minutes.~

~He leans in. His full red lips inches from mine.~

~Splash! I’m ripped from sleep as somebody dumps icy water all over me.~

I sit up, spluttering, and look around to see who’s there.

My golden god is gone. I’m not standing in the sunlight of California.

Instead, I’m in damp old West Virginia, staring into the prissy face of my nemesis and torturer supreme herself: Joelle.

She’s smirking at me like tossing a bucket of water over my sleeping head is the highlight of her day.

“Why are you sleeping on the floor?” she asks in her usual snarky tone.

“I don’t know,” I snap back, rubbing my eyes. “Why don’t you find another hobby apart from terrorizing me? Maybe something you can put on a college application?”

This seems to strike a chord in Joelle, because her face hardens.

“You burned the eggs yesterday, St. Martin. And now it’s time to pay the piper,” she cackles excitedly.

It takes me a second to remember what she’s raving about this time.

Oh right, I burned the eggs last night.

That’s why I am locked in the attic and now sopping wet on the floor.

So, I can’t cook. Sue me. Ever since I moved into the pack house, the whole pack has wanted me to be one of the cooks.

I told them that’s a recipe for disaster, no pun intended. Every time I set foot in a kitchen, somebody ends up on fire or in tears. And it’s usually me.

But I’m a human living among werewolves so I pretty much have to do whatever they say.

I groan and get up, ignoring Joelle the shrew as best I can.

She flounces out of the room with her pigtails bobbing stupidly.

Yeah, she literally has pigtails. Could she be more of a stereotype?

Making my way downstairs, I find Jorden, my cousin, already in the kitchen.

“Why are you wet?” he asks.

“I have this fun new alarm clock,” I explain. “It’s called Joelle.”

“Oh yeah,” he says, “she’s in an extra terrible mood today.”

“Why?”

“Haven’t you heard?”

***

The importance of today’s date had completely slipped my mind.

I suppressed it, worried about the rejection.

College acceptances arrive today. Or rather, they had arrived earlier this morning, while I sat in the attic picking a stupid lock.

Joelle wanted nothing more than to go to school in sunny California. Apparently, that dream was thwarted by a slew of rejection letters. Maybe the admission boards sensed her awful personality.

I had also secretly applied to schools in California, never once mentioning it to anyone, especially not Joelle.

I would have to sneak off to the mailbox after I did my chores out in the yard.

I pull a wheelbarrow full of mulch through the muggy backyard, helping the gardeners plant next year’s harvest. I miss the sunlight of my dream.

And staring into the eyes of my beautiful golden god.

Stupid Quincy.

I shake my head to clear it of those unhelpful thoughts.

I wish I had werewolf strength. That would make lugging this wheelbarrow all over the pack lands much faster. But alas, I’m only a human.

How does a human like me get to live in a pack house with a bunch of werewolves, you ask?

Well, it’s a long story, but the short version is, my mom is a werewolf.

She had a drunken night in town in her rebellion days. Had too much fun with a human. Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo! Nine months later. ~Voilà~! Me!!!

So how come I’m a human, you ask? Doesn’t that make me half werewolf?

Well, technically, yes, but I smell like a human, and I don’t have that inner wolf in me to change into one.

Unlike others, I didn’t get the name of my werewolf whispered to me in a dream, signaling my change was about to happen in a few days’ time when I was thirteen or fifteen.

So I’m considered a human.

Who wants to be a werewolf anyway?

Who wants to change into an ugly, furry...but somewhat cute, yet fierce-looking animal and run free...and have parents who are proud of them and get treated so much better?

Well, not me. Obviously!

I guess that means I won’t be sensing my mate when I turn eighteen in a few days’ time.

Well, good! Who wants a mate who will be so possessive and restrictive...yet so protective and loving, no matter what?

I don’t need a mate! Nope. Don’t want it. Don’t need it.

My mom met her mate a month or so after she had me. She left me with her mom, my Nana, who was living on her own after her mate died not too long before that.

So, my Nana raised me. She was the only one who loved me. I lived with her until three months ago, when she passed away.

I feel my eyes stinging with unwanted tears and grit my teeth until they go away.

My Nana was everything to me. I would have done anything for her.

I’m even considering staying on the East Coast to go to West Virginia University because her last wish was for me to stay near my ‘family.’

“Human, pick up the pace!” shouts the meanest of the gardeners as I lag behind.

***

The TV is on in the family room when I finally get done with my hours of work.

My mom is sitting in the middle of the sofa. Jon has his arm around her. My half sister, Caitlin Rose, is sitting on the other side with her head on Mom’s shoulder.

Mom’s finger is playing gently with her soft brown hair. They’re a picture of a perfect family. Three sets of eyes land on me simultaneously as I cross the family room from behind the sofa.

That darn werewolf hearing!

~Did you enjoy sitting on your asses all day while you made the weak human work? Like always?~

I stare at them, and they stare right back. I shuffle my feet a bit, shifting my weight from one foot to another.

“I’m uh...gonna get some eggs for lunch,” I mutter. Nobody says anything.

“Well, okay,” I add, then awkwardly make my way out the door with three sets of eyes still staring at me.

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to really feel like you belong somewhere, you know. To feel like you’re really wanted, not just tolerated.

To be like Caitlin Rose.

Still, I won’t dwell on that. I have a pretty okay life. Really lucky if you ask me.

I make it into the kitchen without encountering anybody. I look around and find a big plastic container of burned eggs on the floor near the sink.

I groan. They have the money to buy a hundred cartons of eggs, yet they’re making me eat the ones I accidentally burned. Nice.

I lift the container up onto the kitchen counter and take the lid off. The awful smell wafts out into the air. I stare dispassionately at the black matter in the container. My stomach rumbles, but eating this is akin to eating soot.

“Oh, look! She’s going to eat those eggs!” Joelle exclaims from the doorway.

“We should take pictures of this,” her bitch clone, sorry, I mean her best friend, Kelly, joins in.

“No, take a video!” exclaims another girl.

A group of eight or so teenagers is standing behind them. All of their faces are excited. They are eager to watch me eat the blackened, burned eggs. All except Jorden and his best friend, Trey.

“Come on, hoover it!” yells Joelle. Her iPhone is at the ready.

“Awesome! We can post the picture so everyone can see it,” says Dan, another moron in the group.

I glance at Jorden and Trey. Jorden has his jaw clenched and his lips pressed together, while Trey avoids looking at me altogether.

I scoop the blackened mash of destroyed eggs, and they get even louder. I see their eyes bright with excitement. Stupid werewolves! Not enough entertainment in the pack house, it seems. They should get Netflix for this place. My Nana did.

I keep my focus on Joelle’s big forehead, and my lips stretch out into a grin.

~Thwack~! Bull’s-eye!!! The room falls silent.

Joelle has a big glob of egg pulp in the middle of her forehead. The black goo with a little bit of gray and yellowish mush is now dripping down her face slowly.

Then it falls onto the floor with another ~sput~, splashing black goo. Her friends jump back.

“How dare you, stupid human whore!!!! I am so going to make you pay for this!” yells Joelle.

She suddenly advances. Her hands are tightly balled into fists at her sides. Her hazel eyes flash and darken.

“Hey! What are you kids doing here?” snaps old Mr. Maddox, our former alpha.

They stop in their tracks and quickly lower their heads in submission. Even though old Mr. Maddox is no longer our alpha, he still emanates alpha power.

“What’s going on here?” he asks again. Maddox is really old, though he is still tough looking.

“Get out of here. Leave the poor girl alone,” he shouts, his words echoing around the walls.

Something in the way that Joelle glares at me before she scuttles away with her friends warns me that this isn’t over.

Jorden flashes me a worried look before he disappears through the doorway.

“Are you okay, Quincy my dear?” asks Mr. Maddox, turning to look at me with concern.

“Uh…yeah. I’m fine…thanks,” I notice he’s moved in much closer to me now. Much too close. Before I can take a step away, he places his hand on my back.

There is something in his eyes and the way he looks at me that creeps me out.

“You poor girl.” His hand starts rubbing up and down my back. My skin crawls.

“I’m okay. Really, I’m fine.” I move forward, trying to get away from his seeking hand, but he steps in to press his body to mine. Oh, fuck! I mean, fiddlesticks!

I pull away while forcefully pushing him back. Suddenly I don’t care if I will get punished for being disrespectful to a high-ranking werewolf.

“I should really get going,” I excuse myself, relieved to get away. “I have so many errands to run.”

Luckily, he lets me go.

My life is just great. I’m like Harry Fucking Potter. Treated like dirt by the Muggles until his golden god comes to save him.

That’s what happens in Harry Potter, right?

***

Just as I expected, there is a letter addressed to me in the mailbox.

Without even looking at it, I tuck the envelope under my shirt and rush to my bedroom, careful to close the door behind me.

Noticing the sender begins with ‘University of—’ my heart sinks, I walk over to the trash can to throw it away. Like I said, Nana wanted me to go to WVU, and I can’t go back on fulfilling her dying wish. Can I?

When I reach the trash can, something stops me from throwing out the letter.

I turn it over, and that’s when the return address catches my attention. It’s in California.

My heartrate quickening, I pull open the letter and read it hungrily.

~Dear Ms. St Martin,~

~We are happy to inform you that you have been accepted into the fall class.~

~We can’t wait to see you here in sunny California…~

The paper trembles in my hands as I look down at the printed words.

So many different emotions flood my body all at once.

The last school. The one I’d argued and argued with my Nana to let me apply to.

I had to apply in secret, all because something was telling me I belonged in California.

And I got in. I stumble back to my bed, fingers trembling.

~I can’t go to California, right?~

The laughing, carefree face of my golden god bursts into my mind. He probably doesn’t even exist. He’s just a figment of my sad, lonely imagination.

But still, can I really pass up the opportunity to see if he’s real?

Was my dream a premonition? Did that make me psychic?