Forsaken, A Werewolf Story (Rewrite)

Chapter 1

There is one absolute truth in life; Moving fucking sucks.

Our parents always told Nicolas, Diana, and I and to follow our dreams; and now was their time. When the chance to trade out working for someone else and instead go open their own dream restaurant in a cozy little tourist town, Mom had jumped at the occasion with dad's blessing.

So here we were; packed like sardines in our car for the nine hours drive down from Tacoma to Redwood Harbor, California, driving through the night.

The trip itself was a haze in my mind, endless stretches of highways and small towns mixed in together with the mental fog of fibromyalgia and joint pain. I don't remember us passing the California border but I remember the drive through massive sequoia forests and the towering sequoia tree.

"We're almost there!" Mom said.

She was right, just a few minutes later we came into town proper, 'town' was maybe a generous descriptor; Redwood Harbor was minuscule, a dozen streets perhaps stretching across the pacific shoreline. We drove through the main street, a long stretch of brick shops, not a Mcdonald's in sight, the only place where anything had more than one story.

"Juno, Nicolas," Mom called, "This is going to be your new school."

"Uh-huh." Was all I could muster. After this drive, I was well and truly out of spoons.

After a 'tour' of the town, if you could call it that, we stopped in front of the world's ugliest one and a half-story bungalow, with mustard yellow sliding. A U-Haul was parked in front, Dad had gone ahead of us two days ago to make sure everything would be mostly set when we moved in.

I shambled out of the car along with everyone else as dad came out to greet us.

"Hola cariña," Dad said in our familial language as he embraced mom.

They talked for a moment in Spanish and I struggled to follow, they'd always emphasized English over Spanish and assimilating in our new country, even if we'd been born there.

We went in and my dad showed us around. The front door came into the living room, a few yards long hallway led to the kitchen, it also had a door leading to an enclosed room and a set of stairs leading downstairs. There was a steep and narrow set of stairs in the kitchen leading to the half-story bedroom on top of the house.

"Juno and Nic, your rooms are downstairs, Diana, yours is the one right by the kitchen. Your mom and I will be up on the second floor." Diana was my little sister, only seven years old.

I went down and found my room. All the furniture was set up but everything else was still in bags and boxes for me to take out and organize as I pleased. However, after spending nine hours in a car, I needed to stretch my poor arthritic legs.

"You look like shit, Juno," Nico said.

"Thanks, you too."

Nico was my twin brother, the closest thing I had to a friend in my sixteen years of life. He'd gotten the looks, social skills, and health, I was too awkward to make friends even when I wasn't sleeping through entire days...

"Where are you going?" He asked.

"I need to stretch my limbs,"

"Gotcha. Don't get lost?"

"I don't think I could if I tried."

I grabbed my cane and went out, our house was on a little hill overseeing the beach proper. That's where I went, Just a few houses down from ours, the little hill the town sat on gave away to a long stretch of pristine beach sand meeting the pacific ocean. Although the sun rose opposite the beach, it still cast pretty shades of pink and orange, making the scene quite gorgeous. I found a large flat rock and sat down before taking my sketchpad out of my bag, just doodling the scene absently.