Memoirs of a Girl Wolf by Xandra Lawrence

blaming me for the spill.
    Someone walking their dog a mile away came to a stop and turned to look at us. I was embarrassed. I hopped off the car and crossed my arms demanding he take me home.
    “What’s with your eyes?” Max asked pointing a finger at my face.
    He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone and turned it on then he held it in front of me as he ordered me to smile for the camera.
    I was growing madder by the second, the more he invaded my space and put his hands on my shoulders, ordering me to look at him, and when I refused to meet his cold stare, he grabbed hold of my face and lifted my chin.
    “Stop it,” I said loudly, showing my teeth and curling my lips into a snarl. We both found that weird, but he just laughed.
    The person walking their dog started to walk over to us.  
    Max reached for me again and pulled on me once he had hold of my arm. He wanted to get a video of my face for some reason, but I ripped my arm out of his grasp and swatted his hands away. The more he tried to grab me the more furious I became and I snarled at him and barred my teeth more. Suddenly, a third person was there and pushing Max away from me and a dog was barking.
    “Hey, leave her alone,” the person, a guy, was saying in a harsh tone. He put a hand on Max’s chest pushing him away from me.
    “Are you okay?”
    I was looking into Reign’s face who still stood in between me and Max breathing nearly as loud as his dog was growling, but then I realized it wasn’t the dog that was growing, but me making a low, guttural growl in the back of my throat.
    “Bitch,” Max said.
    My rumbling stomach, cold sweat, frizzy hair, and increasing anger was too much to deal with and all I wanted was to run. That’s all that made sense to me was to turn and run away, so I did. I ran straight through the parking lot and down the shore and into the woods. The last thing I remember was dropping to all fours the minute I reached the woods.
    9.
    I woke up in the late morning in the woods behind my house, curled on top of a bed of damp leaves. I sat up slowly and pressed my hand to my head to try to soothe a killer headache. My head throbbed all the way down my neck.
    Waking with no memory of how I got there, was almost as disturbing as decapitated dead rabbit beside me. I lay under a wrinkly, white sheet. Being so close to the house, I guessed that the sheet came from the clothes line in our side yard. On warm days Mom liked to use the clothes line rather than the dryer. Mom probably didn’t take in the laundry from yesterday and now, somehow, I was covered in one of her good sheets.
    Standing, I gathered the thin sheet around myself and slowly, stepping carefully through the wet grass, walked up to my house.
    The door, unlocked, creaked open to reveal a dark and quiet house. I assumed everyone was still sleeping, but I tiptoed further into the house.
    Mom slept at the kitchen table with the phone in her hand which meant she had tried waiting up for me. I was busted, but I had bigger things to worry about like why I woke up behind my house and how did I get there.
    The last thing I remembered from the night before was that Max pissed me off and Reign showed up with his dog.
    Leaving Mom asleep in the kitchen, I walked back through the house ad ascended the stairs still as quiet as possible. I wanted to go back to sleep, but in the comfort of my bed. I shook slightly under the sheet, and found temporary comfort in wrapping it tighter around me until I reached my bedroom where I dropped the sheet to the floor and pulled on some warmer pajamas and then slipped under my covers, but I must have made noise at some point because Eric came into my room and then throwing his head back yelled, “She’s home.”
    Seconds later, Mom replaced him in the doorway. She was still in the same outfit she had on yesterday. Her blonde hair fell from a plastic clip on top of her head. She paused a moment clutching the phone to her chest and then