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That night, I found it impossible to sleep. It was already a hot night, and the memory of the pool party from which I had been excluded still stung hours later, sending tiny needles of shame, hurt, humiliation, and overwhelming loneliness through my body.
It didn't help that Sarah had bragged at dinner about the massive party she planned for her sixteenth. It was apparently going to be quite the affair, and I had had to fight to keep a straight face as she went into elaborate detail about how it was going to be the party of the millennium. Not only was every pack who was any pack going to be in attendance, but she also planned to "find (her) mate."
I'd grimaced even harder at that. Usually a mate was chosen for you from birth, but you never knew who that was until the moment you were in the same room. A friend of mine told me of a friend of hers who had discovered her mate in a pub; Ashley had had no idea, not until she was locked in a passionate embrace with her new mate. That was normally how it worked. Sometimes, though, you ended up being friends with your mate long before the actual discovery itself; that had happened with another friend, coicindentally in the same pub where Ashley had found her mate.
Sometimes, though, if you didn't want to wait for destiny to take hold, you went out there and decided to find a mate of your own. It was an unbelievably risky process that could go wrong in half a hundred ways, and, nine times out of ten, it always ended in disaster. However, it sometimes did manage to work, but even then, there were no guarantees that such a pairing would last.
I hadn't been surprised, therefore, to discover that Sarah was planning on going against tradition in the most blatant way possible, and I had a bad feeling it was going to go horrendously wrong. How, I had no idea, but the bad feeling pooling around in my gut refused to go away, even several hours later, and with a groan of frustration, I threw the covers aside and sat up. There was only one thing that was going to calm my nerves enough to allow me to sleep.
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Five minutes later, I floated on my back, looking up at the sky as the water gently lapped at my ears. I could just make out the distant sounds of traffic on the motorway, as well as the nearer song of the cicadas, up late but still giving a wonderful chorus for any who was up to appreciate it. The stars shone brightly overhead, and I relaxed, feeling the afternoon's hurt melt away.
I never went to the pool during the day, but at least at night I had it all to myself, and I let out a soft sigh of contentment, allowing the water to gently caress me. I always felt better when it was me and the water, and no one or nothing else to get in my way. Here, I wasn't the "freak". I was just me, a teenage girl with aspirations to be a ballet dancer. And be a ballet dancer I would be, no matter what Sarah and her stupid cohorts said. No matter the taunts, the torment, the abuse, I was going to succeed. Already I could picture myself on the world stage, and I almost grinned at the horror Sarah would surely suffer at seeing her "freak" cousin making it big. It'd serve her right too, I thought, somewhat spitefully. All my life she'd belittled me for having no wolf, but the time would come when the shoe would be on the other foot, and I longed for that day to come so I could show her what this "freak" could do.
And I wouldn't need a wolf to do it either. I was good enough on my own to make it all the way to the top, and Sarah's abuse would finally lose its hold over me. I knew that day was a long way off, of course, but the thought was enough to stiffen my spine and galvanise my spirit, reducing this afternoon's painful events to no more than a meaningless babble in the back of my mind. That, more than my uncle Ben's promise to protect me, was enough to soothe the hurt, and I let out another sigh, this time one of contentment. I was going to make it big, and I was going to leave Sarah and her stupid friends behind in the dust.
Where they belonged.
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