If there were any justice in the world, I would have been born a wolf. Instead, I’m a seventh grader.
If there were any justice in the world, I would have been born a wolf. Instead, I’m a seventh grader. I should be in the eighth grade, but I was held back in kindergarten for biting. A wolf’s normal bite force is around four hundred pounds per square inch, and if it is protecting itself, a wolf’s bite force can go up to twelve hundred pounds psi. I never even broke skin, but they held me back anyway, so what the hell.
I don’t bite anymore, but I still don’t have friends. I’m at Adishree’s thirteenth birthday party sleepover, but that doesn’t mean we are friends. All it means is I got the solo in the seventh-grade-choir spring concert, so for the next four weeks I am special.
We’re sitting on our sleeping bags in Adishree’s basement, surrounded by empty pizza boxes and soda cans, and we, or rather they, are playing Truth or Dare: Adishree, Hailey, Mason, Bethany, Chloe, Devin. I’m not playing because I didn’t realize a circle was being formed until the circle was already formed and I was outside it.
“I dare you,” Adishree says to Chloe. She drags each word out, giving herself time to think of something good. Then there is a knock on the door, boots clomping down the stairs. This is Adishree’s older sister Vi, allegedly in charge because Adishree’s parents are cool and went out for the night. Adishree has assured everyone that Vi is cool too. This is the first time we’ve seen her all night.
Vi has long shiny hair in a braid, two nose piercings, and a tattoo on her bicep of a four-armed woman holding a curved sword and a man’s severed head.
“I’m going to the CVS for ice cream,” she says. “Y’all want anything?”
“Can we come with you?” Adishree asks.
Vi nods and tosses her braid over her shoulder. If Vi were a wolf, she would be Canis lupus occidentalis, the Northwestern wolf. The female of the species is, on average, 101 pounds in weight and eighty centimeters at the shoulder. They kill elk and even bison. In short, they are the strongest of all wolf subspecies. They are beautiful and no one can fuck with them.
*
The dare is to steal something from the CVS. Actually, it’s not stealing, Adishree says, just shoplifting, which is totally different and basically not a crime and she’s done it tons of times before so don’t be pussies, Chloe did choose dare.
Adishree is what people would call an alpha wolf, except wild wolves don’t actually use aggression to claim a dominant position in the pack. That’s just another reason why I’d rather be a wolf than a human. Chloe says she’ll do it if the rest of us do it. Adishree says okay. We fan out into the CVS.
I don’t bite anymore, but I still don’t have friends.
I don’t know if I am actually part of the dare. I end up standing next to Vi. She’s looking at the Ben & Jerry’s. When she notices me, it’s like I’m an afterthought to choosing between Phish Food and Cherry Garcia.
“A grown wolf can run up to thirty-seven miles an hour,” I tell her.
“That’s pretty fast.” She takes a pint of Cherry Garcia out of the freezer and heads to the checkout kiosk.
I follow her. “Who’s your tattoo of?”
Vi explains that she is Kali, mother of the universe and incarnation of Shakti, i.e. a form in which Shakti manifests, not to be confused with reincarnation, which is when your karma, i.e. your good and bad deeds, determine how you will be reborn, like as a human, if you’re really good, or an animal, if you’re not so good. Then we’re standing in line next to Adishree, who says, “Vi, you promised you wouldn’t embarrass me.” Vi rolls her eyes. I look at Adishree to see if I can tell where she is hiding her shoplifted object. Now that I know bad karma is the only thing standing between me and reincarnation as a wolf, I am ready to fuck my karma the hell up.
When we’re out of the store, I show the girls the packet of gum I slipped in my pocket at the checkout. I sort of expect them to say something so small doesn’t count, but Hailey and Mason go, “Ooh, ahh,” like I have heisted a rare treasure, and Bethany gives me a high five.
“I couldn’t do it,” Chloe admits. “My mom would kill me if I got caught.”
The other girls shake their heads in defeat too.
“What did you take?” I ask Adishree.
“Actually, I was just joking.”
“No way, you chickened out!” Devin whisper-gasps.
“I can’t believe you think I would actually shoplift, that’s so trashy.” She laughs like we’re just all friends having fun, making jokes, but there’s a sort of snarl in the edge of her voice that makes me think of cornered animals.
“I can’t believe you’re that gullible,” Adishree says to me. “I think you should go home.”
Vi offers to drive me home. I want to be in a car with her and I want her to say something like, “Sorry about my sister.” It’s all just too much on top of the many other things I want, so I say, “No, thank you, I can walk.” Though no one else is outside, nearly every house in the subdivision has their porch lights on, so the night is goldish instead of dark. It’s a nice night for a walk, I guess, except my sleeping bag is starting to unroll and slip from my arms. I sit down on the curb to readjust it; then I am sitting on the curb just to sit and look up at the moon. My mom will probably have a lot of questions about why I came home early. I don’t want to answer any of them.
I take the gum out of my shorts pocket, slide out a piece, unfold the silver wrapping, put it in my mouth. I chew, I think, Fuck Adishree, I say out loud, “Fuck Adishree.” I unwrap another piece of gum, shove it in my mouth, then another and another until the whole pack is a thick rubbery mass in my mouth. I chew and chew and chew, and saliva hangs from my lips in thick strings like saliva hanging from the maw of a Northwestern wolf who has just gorged herself on the soft, bloody, nutrient-rich organs of an elk. Then I spit it out and howl.
I howl to the moon at the top of my lungs. A wolf’s howl can carry up to ten miles. From somewhere, up to ten miles away, I hear a reply.
Mar Stratford is a writer from the Mid-Atlantic, and friend to all animals.
