Two Wolves

 

 

I was dead.

Not literally, not dead-dead. I just told her, while gazing out my window at the bleak, dark, and unfamiliar surroundings, that I felt dead inside.

My mom said, “Remember when you insisted that I give you a heads-up if you got too morbid? Heads-up, kiddo.”

“Don’t you want to know why I feel this inner deadness?” I asked.

“Pretty sure I already do, Bertie,” she said.

We had been driving for nine hours. Nearly all that time, Mom wore a freakish perma-smile. I sat beside her, Leon resting on my lap. My small and beloved and extremely lazy rescue dog farted so often, I practically needed a Hazmat suit.

“The reason I feel dead inside is because someone in this car stole my life,” I said, speaking to both Mom and Leon. “Now, I’m not the kind of girl who likes to name names, so I’ll just look at the guilty party and whistle.”

Gazing in Mom’s direction, I gave her a quick whistle.

Still smiling, she said, “Grab a ticket, Leon, we are going on a guilt trip.”

Ignoring Mom’s comment, I kept talking. “And now everything about my amazing life as an adorably disagreeable girl growing up in a happy house with the perfect amount of friends, and a super-fantastic father, is deader than those bugs on our windshield. Which, by my count, is like one hundred.”

SPLAT!

“Make that one hundred and one,” I said as a giant dragonfly stuck itself to the windshield. I sighed dramatically, like a cruddy stage actress.

“Hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but no one can steal your happiness,” Mom said. “But you can throw it away.”

I groaned. Not at Mom’s fortune cookie wisdom, but at the big green road sign up ahead: Welcome to Altoona, Pennsylvania. After an endless day of road travel, bad feelings, and stiff legs, Mom, Leon, and I had officially crossed over into our new, tangled-up, awful lives.

“When in doubt, Bertie, go for kindness,” Mom said, as we drove through the city, just past eleven PM. “You’ll make everyone’s life easier, especially your own.”

The odds were stacked against her on that one. I didn’t feel like being kind. And I had zero interest in making anyone’s life easier. I just wanted to go back home to Carver City, North Carolina. But it was five hundred and fifty-six miles in the wrong direction. I’d been watching our odometer turn and turn and turn.

Two years ago after my parents divorced, Mom and I became a package deal. Up until now we’d made it work. Mom didn’t have my father’s flamboyant style––he’s a dashing attorney with a flair for courtroom theatrics he called his “Barcelona blood”––and she wasn’t quite as much fun, but Mom was as solid and true as the Great Smoky Mountains. She made me her number one priority in all things. In her heart I know she thought this move would be good for both of us.

But she needed to think again.

Here are the distressing details of my mother’s “fresh start” plan. Mom, Leon, and I were going to live with Mom’s boyfriend, Howard Morton. Howard is an optometrist and a widower who lives with his two kids––Mac was eight, and Tabitha was my age, twelve––in Altoona. In September, when Mom and Howard got hitched, Howard would be my stepdad, and Tabitha and Mac would become my stepsister and stepbrother.

The moment I learned of Mom’s plan, I fought it with everything I had. Nothing worked. Not my threats to run away, nor my broccoli hunger strike, nor my crying fits whenever Mom said the words “fresh start” or “Howard Morton.”

Bump-thump. Bumpity-thump-thump-thump.

Behind our station wagon we dragged a U-Haul trailer that threatened to disconnect from the hitch with each big bump in the road. In my mind it was a treasure chest of the life I left behind. Up ahead, headlights from oncoming cars cast my mom in a haunting mix of lights and shadows. It made her look like two different people.

Good mama.

Bad mama.

Good mama.

Bad mama.

And this is precisely when things turned from bad to spooky.

Check it out. Mom was driving a little too eagerly through the strange city streets, when a bizarre wave of dread shot up my spine and exploded into my brain. It’s super important that you understand this was not the normal dread I had become accustomed to carrying around with me like my school backpack. No, this was mega-dread. Horror movie dread. I tried to ignore it, but I couldn’t. It felt like someone was whispering in my ear that something horrible would happen. Now, no actual words were said, but I got the message loud and clear—we were driving toward disaster.

Hugging Leon tighter, I rubbed his velvety ears and mentally promised to protect him from whatever monsters were lurking in the dark. He had no reaction whatsoever. Leon isn’t what you’d call an “emotional dog.”

I wanted to warn my mom, but I stopped myself. She knew I didn’t want to be in Pennsylvania, so she would never believe me. Plus, I wasn’t exactly sure if I believed me.

“When I was your age, your great-aunt Tillie told me a legend about how we shape our fates,” Mom said, switching to her softer storytelling voice. “According to the legend, every person is born with two wolves inside them.”

“So that would mean I have two wolves inside me right now?” I said.

“Can I finish the story, please? Yes, you have two wolves inside you, and they are fighting to survive. One wolf is kind and loving and generous. The other wolf is mean and angry and selfish. The person you become, Bertie, depends upon which wolf you feed.”

“You’re done, right?” I asked, trying to keep fear out of my voice.

Mom nodded.

“Cool. It’s a nice legend, Mom, but there’s one problem. If I have two wolves inside me, I’m pretty sure I’ll need to buy bigger pants …” Before I could finish my smart-aleck remark, Mom shouted a swear word she told me to never say, and cut the steering wheel hard to the right.

Through the windshield I spotted two huge dogs in the middle of the road looking straight at us. Wait, not dogs—wolves. One was grayish and white with icy diamond blue eyes, and the other was grayish and black with hot ruby red eyes. The wolves were big and scary and beautiful, and they were about to become fury road pizzas.

“AHHH!” Mom and I screamed.

Swerving just enough to miraculously avoid hitting the wolves, Mom skidded to a hard stop. We swapped terrified looks. When I looked back at the road, it was empty of wolves.

“Where’d they go?” I said, breathless. “How could they be gone already?”

Mom shook her head in shock. “How bizarre was that?”

“Beyond bizarre. Freaky bizarre! I mean, come on, you were talking about two wolves, and out of nowhere, wham, there were two wolves in the road.”

“No, Bertie, those were not wolves. This is Pennsylvania. No wolves.”

“Those were wolves, Mom!”

“They were probably Siberian Huskies. Those dogs look a lot like wolves.”

“And the wolves in the road looked exactly like wolf-wolves,” I protested.

“Yeah… maybe,” Mom said, swallowing a jagged breath.

We sat in silence, gathering our bearings.

“Alright, I have no idea what just happened, but it happened, and it was freaky, and now it’s over,” Mom said, wanting me to feel safe. “Howard’s house is only ten minutes from here, Bertie. I’ll call and ask him if there are wolves in Altoona, okay?” She squeezed my hand and smiled.

“Okay, cool,” I said, gripping her hand.

Neither of us realized the wolves were an omen.

And I didn’t know the omen would launch a long parade of cosmic craziness that would forever change how I saw the world, or that my life was about to crack wide open like an egg falling onto the kitchen floor. If I had known the tragic details of the disaster coming my way, I would’ve done things differently. I would’ve found the courage to warn my mother. And I would’ve been a whole lot kinder to everyone involved.

Another wave of dread hit me as Mom pulled forward.

Another frozen whisper.

One last final warning.

Altoona is not a fresh start. It’s the beginning of the end.