Not Your Ordinary Wolf Girl

 

NOT YOUR ORDINARY WOLF GIRL

ALSO BY EMILY POHL-WEARY

Strange Times at Western High

Iron-On Constellations
(poetry)

A Girl Like Sugar

Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril

NOT
YOUR ORDINARY
WOLF GIRL

EMILY POHL -WEARY

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

—Henry David Thoreau

ONE

T
he final notes of “Tenement Girls,” my band's biggest hit, crashed into each other. Before the music could fade into nothingness, the crowd began to howl and smash up against the edge of the stage. I couldn't stop myself from recoiling. Screaming fans were nothing new, but they still made me want to duck and run.

My bandmates often accused me of being the worst rock star alive. Not the worst musician, fortunately. But I
had
been known to tell crazed autograph seekers to go learn how to play the guitar and leave me alone. I was a bit of a recluse. Okay, for an eighteen-year-old, I'd already developed some serious loner tendencies.

I also desperately needed to pee. My tongue felt like a boiled potato. White amoebas floated in front of
my eyes, thanks to the glaring spotlights. One day I'd discover they were permanently burned into my retinas.

“New York, we love you, bitches!” shouted Jules Darling, our lead singer (guitar/keyboard), then she scissor-kicked in the air, oblivious to the fact she was wearing a micro-short latex tutu. Or maybe
because
she was wearing it. Naturally that made the crowd even more feral.

While I waited for the roar to subside, I focused on gulping mouthfuls of cool air and tried not to hunch into myself. Compared to Jules's outfit, my black jeans and over-tight red and purple vintage Le Tigre T-shirt were tame. I shuffled a few steps downstage, away from the white stone wall of the historic bandshell. Sweaty, writhing people stretched out in front of me, shouting for an encore.

I tried to be Zenlike, squinting at what lay beyond the bright lights. One of those perfect October midnights. The air was chilled and heavy. Dark mist transformed Central Park's grassy hills and fields into a slasher-movie set. Shadowy autumn trees whispered that I could make it through this concert. Just ten minutes more and I could get off the stage. Thank god. My fingers hovered above Janis—my ruby red bass guitar, named in homage to Lady Joplin. The audience held its breath. Jules signalled for me to begin the intro
to our raucous encore, “Not Missing You.” Her pointy-toed ankle boot tapped insistently.

I couldn't stop myself from peering into the front row for a familiar face. Harris Wall's brown hair was damp and flattened to his forehead, but that didn't make him any less delicious. He noticed me looking and finger-waved. Between sets, whenever the stage lights were dim enough that I could actually see more than ten feet, I hadn't been able to keep my eyes off the guy. Our manager, Vinnie, must've comped him. I made a mental note to ask that he be given worse seats in the future. It was hard to focus.

Sweat dripped down my forehead into my eyes. I squeezed my lids shut, focusing on the salty sting. When I opened them again and glanced sideways at Malika Stuart, our drummer, my face spasmed. After two years in the band, you'd think I'd be done with stage fright. But I was still a total mess. Mali was a couple of years older than me and Jules. She was a lot calmer about everything. She could make me laugh, no matter what my headspace was like. She snapped one of her naughty-schoolgirl suspenders, winked, and blew me a saucy kiss, which forced me to crack a grin. At least my stupid face stopped twitching.

Pressed up against the stage, some fashionista fangirls with asymmetrical hairdos were close enough
to witness our personal moment. They whooped. Probably thought we were in love. I grinned wider. Then the universe closed inward, sucked me into a black hole, and I forgot everything. My fingers darted across the strings and picked the correct notes. Then they did it again, and again, and again. Muscle memory was an incredible thing.

I was enthralled by the music, and barely noticed Jules grinding and sashaying around the stage. I stepped farther away, out of the spotlight, to give her space. She deep-throated the mic and belted out the refrain: “You're not the one / I'm way off track / I need to get / My own life back / Go home, go out / Do what you do / Know that I'm / Not missing you!” The audience ate up the angry lyrics, as they always did.

And then it was over. Bam. I lowered my bass and mopped my wet forehead on the sleeve of my T-shirt.

“Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bogeyman bite!” crooned Jules over the mad clapping and whooping. That girl can make anything sound obscene. When the lights finally slammed off and the stage stayed dark, people were still going nuts.

I stood up from my half-assed curtsy and searched for Harris. He was talking to the people beside him: a younger blonde with a boppy ponytail; a curly-haired, freckled brunette; and two guys who looked
like brothers. They both had light brown skin, dark hair, and chiselled features. The thinner one had been dancing by himself all night. The more muscular guy hadn't danced at all. In fact, he'd been perfectly still in the storm, staring up at the stage. Kinda creepy.

I'd been reading Harris's comic,
Dream Rage,
since it launched four years ago, and I'd been mildly obsessed with him since we met at a party my recording studio threw in the spring. Okay, more than mildly. If my crush were an espresso, it would be twelve shots strong. He was an incredibly talented artist. Not to mention a great dancer, in a spazzy kind of way. His perfect girlfriend, Marie, wasn't around tonight. She was usually superglued to his side.

Banishing thoughts of Harris, I unplugged Janis and hurried off the stage, pausing just long enough to use the bathroom, wash the sweat and mascara off my face, and put Janis safely into her case. With the bass hanging over my shoulder, I jogged down the hallway past the room where Malika and Jules got dressed. My nose twitched when a cloud of pot wafted out from under the door.

There was a maintenance exit up ahead that no one would expect me to use. Between me and the door was one of the guys who'd been hanging with Harris—the muscular one with a staring problem—and the girl
with a blond ponytail bouncing on top of her head. She spotted me and gaped. A fan. Up close, I could see she was wearing more makeup than Jules—it was literally shovelled on. When she noticed her guy was also watching me with an appraising look, she pouted, reached up, and tried to tug his face back toward her. His gaze didn't waver from my face.

He stepped forward and blocked my path. I hadn't realized how huge he was. Over six feet. Also, gorgeous, in a hard, masculine kind of way. Not really my type. Refusing to be intimidated, I gave him a small shove and pushed past without slowing down.

“Sam!” he called out. “Wait! I came to this concert to meet you.”

Make that
very
creepy. Shaking my head, I kept going and opened the door. A handful of diehard fans and a couple of photographers were waiting near the performers' entrance, hoping to ambush us. A burly security guard hovered there to keep them in line. Jules and Malika didn't have as many personal-space issues as I did, so they'd go out that way.

As I considered my next move, the blond girl from the hall and her friend came outside through a different door. No sign of the guy. Snippets of their conversation drifted over.

“Jules Darling is the
coolest,
” said the girl with the
freckles. She was speaking much too loudly—deafened by the music. Maybe drunk, too. “Her hair, like, defied gravity.”

“Ugh. Total hipster. All that blue eyeliner …” said Ponytail Girl, scowling.

“Her eyes were on fire! If sapphires burned!” the brunette said. “Those boots had to be real Chantays. I totally want them.”

Ponytail Girl said something sarcastic, but too quiet for me to catch. Whatever it was, it didn't faze Freckles, who pulled a Jules-worthy scissor-kick. The bouncer frowned at them. Freckles smiled flirtatiously.

“Jules is a skank,” said Ponytail Girl. “Everyone knows Sam's the talented one. She writes all The Puffs' songs.”

“Yeah, well, I wonder who she was thinking about when she wrote that last one. I read on StarzStarzStarz it was Marco Belino.”

“No way!” said Ponytail Girl, at precisely the same time I thought it.

Freckles giggled.

Ha! As
if
I'd write a song about him! He was sweet, and a decent singer, but one hundred percent gay. When I was sure they were looking in another direction, I bolted. Phew! Having strangers gossip about
my nonexistent love life was nothing new, but I wasn't going to listen to any more than necessary.

The tree coverage allowed me to skulk along the fence to my pink dragster bike, which I'd locked just up the hill. With Janis strapped to my back, I rode off into the darkness. So much less hassle to sneak away in the park than to escape from a packed concert. Most people took the closest route out to Fifth Avenue because security ushered them that way. So I headed in the opposite direction and looped the long way around the park.

No sane person would choose to hang out here in the middle of the night. But then I'd never been accused of sanity, and I didn't shy away from dangerous places. Biking around New York at night was my passion. In general, I stuck to the places and hours that other people avoided.

Once I'd put some distance between me and the crowd, everything became quiet. A dense chill pressed in on all sides, and I pictured a vampire lying in wait in the woodsy shadows. Silence was so rare in the city that it made me feel like the only living creature on earth. My favourite view of the Big Apple was the one you got to see only in the wee hours. No traffic jams, business suits hustling the streets, dreamy-eyed sight-seers, or fans hoping to snap candid cell shots.

The knots in my shoulders loosened. I was still getting used to my Clark Kent double life: bass player for The Cream Puffs by night and an intense introvert by, well, the rest of the night and day. We recorded our first indie album in my junior year at the Brooklyn High School for the Arts—Jules was in my year, and Malika had graduated the year before—got signed to a major label, and had been making artsy teens freak out ever since.

Yes, it was bizarre. No, I wouldn't give it up, go Howard Hughes, and start peeing in bottles so I didn't have to leave my apartment. I wanted the world to hear what I created, or else there was no point to any of it.

Vinnie whined that the audience paid good money to see our shows
and
to watch Sam Lee the Underage Troubled Rock Star drink lemon-mint bubble tea with her famous girlfriends. When I didn't show my face at any of the after parties, fans went home disappointed.

Truth is, I didn't really care what Vinnie said. I was never much of a badass. Schmoozing and being mobbed just messed with my head and interfered with making music. What I did care about was Jules and Malika's resentment about having to cover for me. But they were like family, so they usually forgave my oddities. Or gave me crap about them.

Other than my mom, who'd raised me, my
bandmates were the closest thing to family I knew. My mother wasn't close with her parents, and my bio dad stuck around for only three years—the exact length of time it took to finish his PhD in sculpture at the New School—before heading back to Hong Kong. His number one passion was Chinese politics, and his sensationalist art had made him infamous back home. We kept in touch, but he'd only visited me a few times, when his work was part of an exhibit here. Not that I missed him. He was a stranger.

After being onstage, I was fired up inside and channelled that energy into my muscles. I decided to loop north through the park again so that I could enjoy the solitude a little longer. Street lamps and light from the surrounding buildings illuminated the road ahead. I pushed the pedals faster and faster, ignoring the slight stiffness in my legs. Wind whipped my skin, made my T-shirt flap like a sail, and scrubbed away the smell of my sweat and other people's smoke and alcohol.