Ice (11 page)

“You know…” he said, nudging my knee with his, “I wouldn’t mind being your pet.”

Now I was the one caught off guard. He wasn’t smiling, and I was surprised that he was being serious. At least, he seemed serious. There was no way he could have meant those words, though.

“Really?” I finally asked with a raised eyebrow. I was now both amused and intrigued.

“Yeah,” he said with a sweet, little smile barely pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“And why would you want that?”

“Well, Big John seems to be pretty happy,” he said, tilting his head down toward the said pet lying comfortably on the floor next to my feet. He had wanted to follow me into my room when I went to bed, so I had decided to let him in if I could keep him on the floor where his intense shedding wouldn’t be as big of an issue.

He grinned and added, “But if I ever do agree to it, we’re going to have to work something out, ‘cause I’m not sleeping on the floor. I get to sleep in the bed with you.”

I couldn’t help but laugh again. “You pervert!” I teased, making his pale cheeks turn pink.

“What?! No! That’s not what I meant! That came out wrong!” His face was red and he couldn’t stop stuttering. “Wha-what I meant was…it’s cold down there, you know…i-it’s not comfortable…”

“I know,” I said, still giggling softly.

Suddenly, Kavick jerked his head toward my bedroom door. I instantly stopped giggling, and clamped my hands over my mouth again. We were still for a few seconds…and then we both heard a loud snore from Uncle Justin down the hall.

We burst out laughing again. He leaned back, clutching his side and
I
leaned forward. After a few seconds, the laughing died down and we were able to breathe again.

I grabbed my laptop from beside him and sat it on my lap, remembering the e-mail I had been writing to Marcus just before Kavick had knocked on my window. As I closed the e-mail I said, “I can sneak some hot chocolate in here if you’re still cold.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see him shake his head. “I’m fine, thanks.”

That reminded me of something I wanted to ask him. “So, does that mean your body temperature is higher than normal, because you’re a werewolf?”

He laughed and sat back up to look over at my laptop’s screen. “What kind of crazy stuff have you been reading? I’m not a werewolf!”

I brought up a page I had visited before. I watched his blue eyes scan over the webpage about werewolves and other mythical creatures.

“I’ve been doing my research,” I said, struggling to keep a straight face. He looked back up at me, chuckling. He clearly thought the theories and lore were laughable.

Then I clicked a link to another page. “So are you an Adlet then?”

His eyebrows furrowed as he read the small text. After a few seconds he whispered, “Nope…not exactly.”

He then looked back up at me and said, “I’m not quite sure what I am, to be honest, but I know I’m not a bloodthirsty beast.”

“Then how do you know you’re not a werewolf?”

“According to this,” he said as he pointed to the screen with an amused look, “they can’t keep their cool for long.”

He raised is eyebrows for a second and added with a note of intrigue, “That actually sounds like my brother. However, I’m pretty good about keeping my cool…most of the time.”

We shared another soft chuckle and I said, “I heard about how you threw a chair at a jerk one time.”

Kavick gave an awkward laugh, obviously uncomfortable at th
e
mention of it. “Yeah…just for the record, he was a
really
big jerk. Usually that doesn’t happen.”

I nodded, understanding. “Molly told me what he was saying. I would have wanted to throw a chair at him, too. I don’t think that means you’re a werewolf, though; I think that just means you’re normal.”

“My people have a story about what we are,” he whispered, becoming comfortable again, and I found myself in a trance, his voice filling my mind and my gaze locked on his eyes. I couldn’t tear myself away from him if I had wanted to. “Legend has it that there was a man who was injured. A wolf found him and saw he was dying. The only way to save the man was for the wolf to give the man his life, or more specifically, his spirit. And so the wolf died and the man was able to live, but now the man shared his body with the soul of the wolf. Somehow the two spirits became one and the man was no longer just a man; he was wolf, as well. He was then able to take on the form of his other half and live as a wolf. And so, his descendants’ souls were altered, as well.”

“How did that happen?” I asked puzzled.

“My people believe the soul is capable of a lot of things. For example, some of us still think the Northern Lights are the souls of the deceased.”

“That’s kind of beautiful,” I said, remembering the gorgeous lights I had viewed with him. I hope he didn’t think that sounded weird, though. I had no idea what his beliefs were on the subject of life and death. I was almost certain I had messed up again.

To my surprise, he agreed with me. “Yeah, it is kind of a nice way to think of the dead.”

Kavick stayed until around two-thirty, (although I would have liked for him to stay longer; I could probably talk to him all night and never get tired) and came over nearly every night after that. We hung out in my room more than we went to the “
Magic Place” where we viewed the Lights, and he always left around the same time, because I had school the next morning, and he had work.

“So, where do you work, anyway?” I asked one night as he mentioned it in passing.

We were lying side by side, shoulder to shoulder, on my bed so that we could whisper in a lower tone. I had my laptop up on my stomach, surfin
g
the Internet with him.

“One of the other wolf families has a little store on the edge of town. It’s a souvenir shop with handmade jewelry and leather goods. Mrs. O’Connell makes a lot of the stuff herself, so when the shop’s not busy, I help her make the merchandise,” he explained. “Her son Jonathan used to work there, but he got tired of the slow pace and didn’t like making that stuff. He works at the diner now.”

Suddenly, my Instant Messenger popped up with a message from Charlotte. It was straight up nine o’clock, which meant it was ten o’clock in Cali. She must have decided to do that book report she was dreading before chatting with me.

You’re still on! Yay! :D

Kavick narrowed his eyes at the screen and asked, “Who’s Charlotte?”

“She’s one of my friends from
California,” I said, quickly typing a reply. I instantly felt the need to correct that statement. “I mean, she’s my only friend from California.”

“No, no, no!” Kavick said quickly, waving his hand over the keys to stop me
from telling her I couldn’t talk.

I stopped typing my apology to her and looked at Kavick. “What is it?”

“You don’t have to stop talking to her because of me,” he said, looking a little sad. He then waved at my hands and said, “Go on, talk to her. Like you said, she’s you’re only friend from California.”

I shook my head. “But, that would be rude to you, and…”

“Then let me type for you,” he said with a big grin as he quickly took my laptop from me, sat up, and placed it on his lap.

I sat up beside him and my jaw instantly dropped as I watched him type, pretending to be me. I didn’t know how to react. Part of me was curious of what he would say in my stead.

He typed a little awkwardly, saying he hadn’t been in front of a computer since his days at Riverton High. “And…there!”

He hit the enter key and his message appeared beneath
Charlotte’s.

Yay! :D Yes I am! How are you
Charlotte?

I wanted to slap my face. There’s no way he could pass as me. If this kept on much longer,
Charlotte would know something’s up.

Wow, you seem to be in a good mood for a change lol

Crap. She had already caught on.

Realizing he had done a bad job at impersonating me, he gave me a concerned look and said, “This is going to be harder than I thought. You’re not a very happy person.”

This time I did hit him with a pillow. I grabbed the one behind my back I was leaning on and swung it right into his pretty face.

“Ow!”

“Well, I’m sorry for not being more cheerful like you.”

He suddenly started typing
again, but more rapidly. That made me suspicious, so I started to read what he was typing. I felt my eyes widen in horror, but just as I started to stop him, he sent it.

Yeah, I’m much happier now because I’ve met a wonderful guy!

“What the hell, Kavick?!” I panicked, snatching my laptop from him and firmly placing it back onto my lap. I wasn’t letting go of it this time.

“Well, haven’t you?” he said with that big grin as he flung some hair over his shoulder with an air of playful arrogance.

“No!” I said, thrown by the turn of events.

“What?” he said pitifully, playing like I had hurt his feelings. “You don’t think I’m wonderful?”

I stared at him, grasping for the right words to say. It was then I realized he was actually giving me puppy dog eyes.

Puppy
dog
eyes…the sense of irony was almost unbearable. I wanted to hit him in the face with the pillow again.

Before I got a cha
nce to respond, Kavick jerked his head away and sat up straight in one quick motion, looking towards my window.

“What is it?” I asked, feeling fear creep up inside my chest.

A second later, Big John was howling from down the hall in Justin’
s
room, having gone to bed with him that night. I jumped off my bed and locked my door, cursing under my breath. Justin would be up, for sure. I turned around, about to tell him to hide, but he was already racing toward my window. He lifted it up and looked over his shoulder at me for a second. He looked worried, panicked even. “I’m sorry, Christine. I have to go.”

Before I could say goodbye, he was already out the window. I ran over to my window after
him, but he had disappeared, and the next thing I saw was a Husky running off toward the trees.

I could hear Justin trying to quiet Big John, but he kept howling like a siren. I quickly climbed out my window and grabbed Kavick’s clothes and boots off the ground. I tossed them through my window, working fast, and then struggled to pull myself back up into my room. It wasn’t so easy without Kavick’s help. He would always grab me around the waist and lift me up the extra inches I needed. After a few tries, I somehow made it, and my sock feet wet with snow slipped on my hardwood floor. I fell on my butt, of course, with a loud thump. I quickly scrambled up to my feet and shut the window and pulled my blinds down. I grabbed Kavick’s cape and threw it under my bed as I kicked the other pieces of Kavi
ck’s attire under there, too, and jumped into bed.

Justin was checking on me a second later. “Christine? Are you okay in there?” he called from the end of the hall. Big John had only just stopped howling.

“Yeah, I fell out of bed when Big John woke me up,” I called back. “I’m fine.”

“Okay.” And then there was the sound of Justin closing his door and talking to Big John.

I didn’t see Kavick for a while after that. Halloween went by rather uneventfully. Justin didn’t get any Trick-or-Treaters (not that we were expecting any that far out of town), and we spent the evening watching old westerns while we ate caramel apples Justin had made.

During the time I didn’t see Kavick, all I could think about was how he had taken off that night. I was still wondering what it was, why he hadn’t come back for his things yet, and if he was alright. What if the hunter had finally killed him, just like his parents and his brothers?

I was tempted to do an
Internet search on the O’Connell’s shop to get an exact address so that I could see if he was okay and give him his clothes. It seemed like every second of the day I thought about him, worrying, even at school when I was supposed to be focusing on quizzes and tests.

Finally, I got tired of it and decided to try to get my mind off of it one evening by going through some of the boxes under my bed I hadn’t touched since I arrived in
Alaska. I had folded Kavick’s clothes neatly long ago, but I still kept them tucked under my bed, safely hidden from sight, along with his shoes. I sat on the floor with my laptop on my knees. I figured I could take my time going through the boxes, chatting to Charlotte while I did it.

Marcus said he missed you today.

Charlotte hadn’t mentioned Marcus for ages.

I sat there a moment, staring at the screen, surprised by this news. Why was she finally mentioning him again? How much did he miss me? And did he really? Perhaps
Charlotte was just trying to make me feel better, or maybe she was trying to get me to contact him since she was clearly adamant in her belief I shouldn’t have let his girlfriend have her way. But, how could I tell him how I felt after all that time?

I suddenly remembered the draft I had wrote up months ago when I first came to
Alaska. I brought up my inbox in a separate window and opened the old draft. I couldn’t type my feelings now, but I already had.