Silent Heroes: Wildcat

Chapter 30: Doubts and Discussions

A month ago, if Lucas had asked me out, I would have been ecstatic.  I would have been bouncing off the walls.  Lucas, the tall, handsome bad-boy.  Lucas, the hottest guy in school.  (my old school anyway, the competition was much stiffer around here).  The guy who every girl wanted to date.  The guy who could have anyone he wanted, had asked to go on a date with me.  It would have been incredible, amazing, too good to be true.

But now… now I just felt lost.  Confused.

Lucas wasn’t exactly the person I had thought he was.  During those rare moments when I had allowed myself to daydream about being his girlfriend, I had imagined him to be fun and kind and roguishly charming.  A sensitive soul hiding behind a tough outer shell.  I had not imagined this serious and moody young man who made asking me out on a date sound more like a military command.

I couldn’t help but wonder at his sudden change of heart.  For the longest time, he had seemed so utterly indifferent towards me.  Not once during my punishment had I gotten the impression from him that I was anything more than an annoyance.  So, why the sudden interest?  What had changed his mind and why?  Could it be some kind of trick?  Was he setting me up?

No.  I refused to believe that.  Maybe he wasn’t exactly the nicest guy in the world.  Maybe he was difficult and frustrating and impossible to please, but he couldn’t be that much of a jerk.

Could he?

I spent all the next day agonizing over what to do.  After all, I hadn’t technically said “yes.”  Lucas had simply walked away, assuming (evidently) that he already knew my answer.  If I chose not to show up, I would have a perfectly valid excuse.

But what if this was my only chance with Lucas?  I had liked him for ages.  Part of me still did.  Shouldn’t I at least give it try?

In an attempt to keep my animal under control, I had adopted the habit of going for a long, hard sprint every morning.  Normally, it was enough to get my wildcat purring with happiness, but today I just couldn’t seem to find my rhythm. I ran in fits and bursts that would quickly lose steam the moment my troubled thoughts began to take over.

When I got to class, my wildcat was pacing in restless circles.  Dealing with conflicting emotions had become about a hundred times more complicated since my first shift, because everything that affected me also affected my inner animal, and the animal did not always respond appropriately.  Especially when faced with very human emotions it had no idea how to process.

Deanna showed up with a live mouse, yet another method of testing our self-control.  We were expected to sit calmly in cat-form while the little creature scurried between our legs and over our paws.

I held on for about twenty minutes by sheer strength of will.  I almost forgot all about Lucas as I gritted my teeth, fighting to hold the animal back.  But it was like trying to hold back a lunging, snarling grizzly bear at the end of a chain. 

The poor mouse never stood a chance.

“Eve, are you okay?” Jewel asked me during lunch.  “You seem a little… tense.”

I squirmed in my seat avoiding her eyes.  “It’s nothing.  I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?  I haven’t seen you lose control like that in days.”

“And you’re barely eating,” Danielle added.  “You’re normally starving at lunch time.”

“Is that mouse giving you indigestion?” Reza said.

I smiled a little.  Reza had this way of making my problems feel smaller.  “Maybe.  I did swallow the whole thing,”  another thought stuck me suddenly.  “Should I be worried about getting like… salmonella or something?”