Wolves of Alverton

Chapter 32

When I got home, it was almost one o'clock in the morning. Kelly hadn't given me a curfew, but I knew she wouldn't be happy about my arrival time, especially since I didn't return her text from earlier that night. As I walked up the driveway I looked up at the night sky and stared at the nearly-full moon. I thought to myself, "Why did he have to be out tonight?" Then I slowly opened the door. I closed it with as little force as possible, then crept upstairs to my room. No one was awake to confront me about my late arrival, and I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I woke up Sunday morning undisturbed. The house was quiet, but it smelled of breakfast food, so I knew everyone else was already up. I got out of bed and walked downstairs to the kitchen. When I sat down, Ryan was ranting about last night.

"You guys had to be there! It was amazing!" he shouted. He was excited as he shared his encounter from the night before.

"What was?" I asked. Ryan looked at me and smiled.

"You had to be there, Brooke," he sighed. Kelly turned around while she was cooking hash browns, and said,

"Your brother claims to have seen a wolf." My eyes widened. Ryan knew I wasn't a coyote or a lost dog.

"I did, mom! It was amazing," he shouted. I looked at him and raised one eyebrow in an inquisitive manner,

"Amazing?" I mocked.

"Yeah. The wolf was gray with an almost ghostly white bottom half. It stared at me with golden yellow eyes. It didn't even try to attack me. It actually seemed scared of me because it ran off so fast," he explained. My stomach churned as my head swarmed with fears. He definitely saw me, but he didn't know it was me, and our parents didn't believe him.

"It was dark, Ryan, and it was late. You must have been seeing things because wolves don't live in the desert. Not gray ones, anyway," said Dad. He was reading the Sunday paper and sipping a cup of coffee. It was the first time I had heard him speak in a while. Ryan lowered his head and quietly ate his breakfast. Rae walked over to me and whispered in my ear.

"He thinks he can find this wolf again. He wants to go find it tonight." I nearly choked on my food when she said that. Ryan was obsessed, and he wasn't going to rest until he found the gray wolf to prove to us that it was real. I texted the pack after breakfast and told them what was going on, and they told me to wait it out. They said it would blow over in a few days when he went out and found nothing. I felt bad for allowing myself to be seen, because now it was my fault that our family thought Ryan was crazy. I spent the rest of my Sunday wrestling with the situation, and I couldn't seem to forgive myself. I felt bad, so I let Ryan come into my room and tell me his story. We sat there all afternoon talking about what he saw, and I sat there pretending I had no idea about anything he was talking about. We talked all afternoon and into the night. He thanked me for listening to him, and on his way out of my room he turned to me and mumbled,

"At least there's one person in this house who doesn't think I'm crazy." And I managed to form a crooked smile as he closed my door and walked down the hallway. I instantly flopped backwards, collapsing onto my pillow. I spread my arms out and stared at the ceiling. I didn't sleep well that night, because I couldn't stop thinking about Ryan. I wanted to tell him that I was the gray wolf, but I knew I couldn't. Then again, he was only 13. No one would believe him if he talked about it at school. When I woke up in the morning, Ryan had stopped talking about the gray wolf, and I was able to relax again. All he needed was someone to listen to him. Kelly pointed out that he seemed quiet, and he just smiled and said, "I feel better today." She smiled and looked at me, mouthing the words "thank you." She knew I had talked to him last night, so she was thanking me for helping him get it off his chest.