Wolf Sirens: Forbidden: Discover The Legend Read Free

I was the only one who noticed them. I tried not
to stare, pulling my eyes away. I looked down at my
grey tracksuit pants and street sneakers and knew in
that moment my dance/street look was just frumpy.
My hair was all split ends and washed-out blonde
highlights. I had gained weight since being grounded
permanently, so baggy sweatpants and a brand name
t-shirt was my uniform. I told Sophie I wasn’t going to make an effort here. I had refused her offer to
purchase the school jacket, glad to not have to wear a
uniform after St Agatha’s. But right then I felt decidedly underdressed.
I had considered that if I was smart maybe I
should try to fit in. It sounded like something Sophie
would have said if she’d had less of an abandoning
parenting style. I was lucky in that way; neither of
my parents cared to look closely at anything I did.
I was acutely aware that was how my mother and I
had ended up here in Shade, and why I reluctantly
accepted my sentence.
I pulled my sleeve over my tattoo, looking ahead
as a stare came from the desk adjacent, from the
most unnaturally bright eyes, belonging to the curlyhaired one. I thought she must have been wearing
contacts.
She looked alarmed as I caught sight of her
raised brow. Not bothering to return the glare, or
not brave enough to, I slouched further in my chair.
My hand instinctively covered my wrist. Judging by
her expression, I assumed right then that I was too
imperfect for these affluent looking country kids. I
wasn’t going to fit in.
    How could I know that my innocent presence terrified them far more than they threatened me, or what
I had just triggered? I was what they had feared, what
they had been hoping wouldn’t come. I had no way
of knowing that I had surprised them or what they
had sparked in me, which would soon ignite. I was simultaneously smashed into a thousand pieces inside
and mysteriously, very slowly, began to reform from
within, shard by shard.
    The next few days passed in a grey haze, illuminated
only by the penetrating eyes of the aloof clique, with
that same alarmed look on their faces.
    The school was surprisingly large for a country
town, but families were big and nearly all the surrounding town’s teenage population attended the
public high in Shade Valley. I was an outsider, an
introvert, and clumsy. Locals didn’t welcome newcomers from the city. The vernacular for me was ‘city
slicker’, ‘tourist’ and my personal favourite: ‘yuppie’.
    I fumbled and dropped my math’s workbook
on the linoleum on my way to class. I saw them
again. They had that same look on their faces as
they passed, like I offended their sense of smell.
The darker boy’s amber brown irises glared at me
as they glided past. I flushed crimson as his wideshouldered friend brushed by and looked me over
with his sapphire eyes.
    Shrugging off all the icy stares that followed, I
told myself it was just that I was new. Maybe I would
grow on them but I felt like a trespasser and by the
second day I wasn’t being ignored so much as avoided
- by everyone, including the popular clique, who eyed
me apprehensively from across the canteen as they
downed their food.
    Lunch hour was spent staring at my sandwich
miserably. The minutes dragged as I became agonizingly self-conscious. I didn’t need to look around to
feel the silence from all directions. I wasn’t a native
inhabitant and I was beginning to feel like a freak. I
failed to relax as I breathed out in relief on the bus
home, unable to shake the agonizing discomfort from
school as I watched the grey sky from my window
seat. When I arrived home, throwing my backpack
off, I wilted onto the floor against one of the cream
walls of our new house, my head in my hands. Every
shuffle was amplified in the shell of a house, scattered
with half emptied boxes. Sophie wasn’t home.
    I spent the rest of the late afternoon diligently
unpacking the remainder of our belongings. Trying
not