Jamie, her feet pumping and her lungs blowing, ran through the rundown park and into the neighborhood next to hers. By the time she reached Cory’s house, her clothes were drenched on the outside from the rain and the inside from sweat. She pounded on the door. A minute later, Cory’s mom opened the door, letting her in.
“Oh, sweetie, what happened to you? You’re positively soaked. Oh my… What happened to your face? Did your father do that?”
Jamie shook her head.
“Wait here, dear. I’ll go get you a towel.”
“Mom?” Cory called, rumbling down the stairs. “Is Jamie here?” He stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “Damn. What the heck happened? I would have picked you up…”
She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t force the words from her lips. Her tears, which had slowed to a trickle on the harsh run over, started again. Cory’s mom, Linda, reemerged with a towel and a pair of jeans.
“Here’s a towel and some dry jeans and socks for you. They should work well enough. Cory, grab her a t-shirt and let her change in your room,” Linda said.
They both responded to her kind but firm voice. Cory lead her to his room and dug out a black t-shirt, setting it on his bed. He also dug out a hoodie and set it next to the shirt.
“I’ll wait outside the room for you.”
Jamie nodded and sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Cory squeezed her shoulder on the way by, shutting the door behind him.
“Let’s get out of here so Mom doesn’t interrogate you. She means well. I’ll treat you to burgers and shakes. I’ll meet you downstairs. I’m going to see if Mom will give me a twenty,” Cory said through the door.
While he talked, she stripped down to her underwear and bra. Using her wet t-shirt, she swiped it over her face to sop up the mix of sweat, rain, and tears. Once she had on her baggy mix of borrowed clothes, she slipped out to the bathroom to give her face a proper wash and finger comb her hair. When she felt put together enough to head downstairs, she took a deep breath and fixed her best attempt at a neutral expression onto her face—anything beyond that wouldn’t have been possible.
Cory and Linda were waiting for her in the living room when she emerged. As Linda stepped closer to Jaime and pulled her into a hug, Cory gave her an eyeroll. Wrapping her arms around Cory’s mom, Jamie welcomed the warm embrace and the affection of her best friend’s mother.
“You don’t have to say anything, but if you ever need to talk, I’m here for you,” Linda said.
Jamie sniffed, trying to keep the tears from returning. “I know. Thank you, Linda.”
Linda released her with a final squeeze. “You two get out of here and try to enjoy your Friday. Call me if you need anything.”
“I will.” Jaime stared down, not wanting to make eye contact with Linda in case her eyes held pity.
“You ready, Jaime?” Cory asked.
She nodded and followed Cory to the door.
“Have fun and be safe.”
“We will, Mom.” Cory smiled at his mother and held the door for Jaime.
They didn’t say anything until they were buckled into Cory’s Kia. Turning on the engine, Cory turned to face her, patting her knee. “Do you want to go for a run first? I heard about a place that sounds great. It’s mostly stopped raining, but I have some towels in the trunk.”
She thought about it. The run over hadn’t relieved her stress, only adding to the desperation that had driven her to run all the way to Cory’s in the pouring rain.
“Do you want to pick some road music? Or do you want me to handle it?” Cory asked.
“You do it,” she replied, turning to stair out the window at the front of Cory’s house. It had been her sanctuary for too many of her few years. She and Cory had been friends since first grade and for all that time, she’d been fleeing to his house whenever things got bad at home, which seemed too often, especially the last few years as her dad’s gambling addiction grew worse. When his boss fired him, it should have served as a wakeup call, but instead he ran through the meager money Mom had stashed aside for emergencies.
She sighed and stared out the rain spattered window, letting her eyes go unfocused at the passing lights sparkling through the drops. As she tried to empty her mind, she found her head bobbing to [music]. Then, the lights grew thinner eventually disappearing as they left the city limits of Redemption City behind them. After a few turns, Cory pulled off the road and stashed the car behind a small stand of trees.
Cory unbuckled his seatbelt and pealed off his hoodie and t-shirt. “This is it. Just on the other side of the hills there is a nice forest we can run through.”
Jamie kicked off her shoes and socks then stepped out of the car and stripped the rest of the way, throwing her clothes into the passenger seat and closing the door. Before the cold could eat all her body heat, she made the shift. Falling onto all fours, she shook out her silvery-gray fur and jogged around the Kia, meeting Cory on the other side just as he sifted.
He sneezed and shook out his mostly black fur. Stepping closer to Jamie, his tongue lolled out before he darted forward and licked her wolfy face before turning and loping off toward the hills he’d pointed to a minute ago. He stopped after fifteen feet to make sure Jamie was following. She caught up and let him lead as she kept pace off his right side.
The rainy damp air felt pure and cleansing outside the city. The smell of decaying leaves and rich soil added to the heady aroma. But mostly, she reveled in the feel of her muscular lupine body stretching and bunching as her nails dug into the soil to propel her forward. She wanted to raise her muzzle to the sky and howl her joy but restrained herself. There’d be time once they were deeper in the woods.
Once they disappeared into the woods, a mix of firs and denuded deciduous varieties, they played a game they’d been playing since they were old enough to disappear and shift which resembled a mix of hide and seek and tag. Once they decided they were finished, the flopped out under a particularly large fir tree which had shaded a large swath of ground from most of the rain and panted.
Cory rolled onto his side, letting Jamie rest her head on his thick barrel of a chest. They lay there, listening to the sounds of the night as they mingled with the wolves’ breath and the beating of their hearts. When the gurgling of Cory’s hunger injected itself into the quiet symphony, Jamie stood up and let her tongue loll out in a wolfy laugh and gestured in the direction of their parked car with her head.
Cory launched to his feet and jumped up on his hind paws, gamboling around to amuse her, then dashed off at a speed that was a bit foolhardy for as tightly packed as the trees were. Instead of following at her own pace, she took off after him enjoying the recklessness of sprinting through the trees, dodging around to miss them. When she caught up to him, he slowed to a more respectable pace. Once they broke free of the trees, he slowed down even further to allow them time to cool down before they got back to the car.
Jamie’s stomach was growling too now that she’d worked off the worst of her emotions. She looked forward to wherever Cory had planned for dinner. He always knew the best places to get burgers and delighted in finding new places to try out. He no doubt had found one out this way and then found the place to go running so they could stop for burgers after.
The already cold night had dipped down close to freezing. Her breath fogged in front of her as she scrambled to dive into her clothes as fast as she could before flopping into the passenger seat and slamming the door shut.
“Careful with my baby, she’s not as spry as she used to be,” Cory complained.
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Take me to the burger joint, driver. And make it snappy.”
Cory laughed. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
He fired up the car and pulled back onto the road. Winding through the countryside, he led them to a small town and to what looked like a hopping local burger joint.
“Do you want to go in or drive through?” Cory asked.
“I don’t feel like peopling in a strange new town.”
“Drive through it is.” He pulled into the line.
When he rolled down his window to place the order with a person in a window, the smells rolling out of the restaurant intensified the growl in her stomach as she salivated in anticipation. After they collected their burgers, fries, milkshakes, and sodas, Cory pulled back onto the road and headed back toward Red City. They nibbled on their fries while he drove to their next destination. Fortunately, it wasn’t too far away when they pulled onto the road that led up to the bluff that overlooked the city.
They were the only ones in the parking lot, so they found a great spot that allowed them to overlook the city below them. The lights twinkled while flashes of shifting neon in various neighborhoods spilled their garish light pollution into the night sky.
“From up here, you can forget the city is an utter shithole,” Cory said around bites of his burger.
“Almost.” She dipped a few fries into her chocolate shake before popping them into her mouth.
Cory gave her a long look before returning to staring out the window at the city and focused on his food. When they’d finished everything and stuffed all the wrappers and boxes back into the bag, they sipped on their sodas as the [music] played.
After he sucked down the last of his soda, he turned to her. “So. Are you going to tell me what happened? I mean it’s OK if you don’t want to, but I’m here if you need to talk.”
She sighed and paused before launching into what she’s been subjected to after he’d dropped her off that afternoon. “It’s my dad…”
Cory listened raptly, only interrupting a couple times to ask clarifying questions. After the last words tumbled from her lips, they sat silently. Reaching over, Cory grabbed her hand and squeezed it. The warmth of his hand fought off a bit of the cold the retelling had filled her with.
“And so you have to do something for a gang of dirt bag bikers to pay off your dad’s debt? That’s fucked up. I’m so sorry.” Cory ran his hands through his shaggy brown hair.
“Yeah. I can’t wait to graduate and get out.”
“Jamie, you don’t have to do this alone. I’ll help you.”
The earnestness in his eyes nearly broke her heart. “You can’t get involved. Not with these guys. They’re bad bad people.”
“We’ve been best friends since we were six. I’m not going to abandon you when you need me most. Two of us together will do better than just you by yourself.”
“Look, Cory. It’s not going to be something like fetch a rare herb for a far off mountain. This isn’t a video game. It’s going to be something illegal. I can’t drag you into that. Your mom would kill me. I’m probably going to get killed in the process.” She sagged forward, resting her head on the dash.
Cory rubbed her back. “I don’t care.” Cory injected steel into her voice. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily. We’ve been getting in and out of trouble together for twelve years. We work better together. You know it. We’ll do this together.”
Sitting back, Jamie stared at Cory, tears brimming in her eyes, before lunging across the car to hug him. “Thank you.”
“We’re in this together, right?”
She nodded into his shoulder.
“Pinky swear you won’t hide anything from me?”
Jamie sat back and clasped Cory’s pinky with hers. “I promise.”