Werecats and Werewolves chp. 8

Chapter 8: Zain

Thankfully, my mom got me the curtains that I asked for, so that I wouldn’t have a repeat of that one accidental look-in while Keely was putting on her jeans, or worse, something else.
Unfortunately, the rain didn’t let up, so I couldn’t talk to Keely through the windows like I wanted to so badly. I wonder if she wanted to talk to me too…. Well, I won’t find out anytime tonight, that’s for sure.
I sat on my bed most of the night, my parents allowing me to eat my dinner in my room. I finally managed to convince them to let me eat in my room after about ten minutes of saying that I had all this homework that I needed to do, which was a complete lie. But they bought it, and so I sat there, picking at my steak, wondering what to do.
I couldn’t get her beautiful face out of my mind. I wanted to capture it and keep it with me forever. A picture in my mind wasn’t enough; I needed something else. A drawing, a photo, a sketch, something that I could physically hold in my hand.
Maybe I could draw her….Of course, it wouldn’t turn out nearly as beautiful as the real thing, but it would have to do. I went to my desk and dug out my old sketchbook from a few years ago. Wow. The book was dusty. Has it really been a few years since I last drew in this sketchbook?
I flipped through some of the pages, surprised at how my old drawings sucked. Of course, even the best one that I could draw now couldn’t compare to Keely’s doodles. Doodles my tail… they were wonderful!
I finally came upon a blank page, and I scavenged around my room for a pencil. It took me ten minutes just to find a pencil. I found a billion pens though. Figures.
So I sat there, my back against the wall, my pencil frozen on the paper. I didn’t know where to start; her vibrant amber eyes, or her bright pink lips?
My pencil started moving, outlining the shape of her pretty face, giving me a starting point for it. Then I lost all sense of thought and just drew.





A knock on my door broke my artistic streak, and I growled slightly. So did my stomach. My mom opened the door, and raised an eyebrow at me.
“You haven’t touched your steak; are you feeling okay?” She asked, standing in the doorway.
“I’m fine, just a little tired,” I replied. Not a complete lie; I hadn’t felt hungry until a few minutes ago, and judging the fact the my back was aching like hell, my steak was probably stone cold. My mom nodded and left the doorway without another word, leaving me alone again. Ignoring my hunger, I pushed my steak into my nearby trashcan and stood up to stretch.
My clock told me it was nine something, and I could just barely hear a few sprinkles of rain on my window. I smiled, thinking that I could maybe talk to her if she was still awake. I walked over to my window and pulled back the curtains slightly, trying to see if she was still awake.
She was awake, alright, and she was also just about to jump out of her window to the wet grass below.
She jumped, and I felt my muscle tense up, as if they were going to spring out the window involuntary to catch her before she hits the ground. But she landed safely on her feet, bending her knees slightly, and she was soon walking away.
I wanted to follow her, to make sure that she would be safe getting to wherever she was going. But what would I do and how would I get out?
An idea sprung into my head, and I quickly said loudly, “Mom! I’m going to bed!”
“Okay, goodnight!” She called back from downstairs.
I smiled, and then opened my window as quietly as I could, preparing myself for the jump. It was smaller than the jump from the top of the school building that Keely did yesterday. Was it only yesterday?
Sitting on the window sill, I jumped down, feeling the impact in my knees. Slight pin pricks of pain needled their way through the bottom of my feet, but I ignored it, and looked around for any sight of Keely.
Her red hair wasn’t very hard to notice, but I could see that she had made some distance in the few minutes that it took me to prepare to follow her. I began to jog after her, noticing that she was walking at a very fast pace. Her limbs looked longer than usual, but I shrugged it off.
When I got closer to her, staying about thirty to forty feet from her, I noticed that there was something very different about her; the way she walked was all wrong, the strides she was taking were too wide, her limbs definitely looked longer than usual, and there were the unmistakable orange and white ears that were moving around on the top of her head. And there was a striped tail sticking out from her jeans.
I had seen clues that she was a werecat, but this confirmed it completely, and a wave of unexpected fear had surged through my entire body, making my heart rate go up a few beats. My chest felt tight, but I kept walking behind her, staying as close as I dared.
I followed her deep into the forest, watching her, and she kept walking on some unknown path that she seems to have memorized. She jumped over fallen trees, moved branches and leaves out of the way, and sniffed the air dozens of times. Unfortunately, the rain had dampened a lot of my sense of smell, and I was forced to follow her by hearing and sight. I never really lost sight of her bright red hair; it was like a lighthouse in the darkness, always shining brightly. I almost tripped over the roots of trees that had grown above ground a few times, and I stopped walking a lot for fear of her hearing me. But she never turned around, and it felt like hours before she stopped.
I recognized the place we were in almost instantly: it was the meadow that she had told me about. There was a large pond that was illuminated by the almost full moon, the waters painted almost white from the moonlight. There were cattails on the edge, and a dock that was situated on the other side of the pond. The grass was glittering from the recent rain, and it was very long, the blades about the length of my hand. There weren’t any trees to cover the area, and the water was calm, like it was just painted there on the grass.
I saw Keely unfold a large blanket, which I hadn’t noticed her carrying until then, and she stretched out, groaning slightly. I hoped she wasn’t groaning from any pain. She sighed as she laid down on the large blanket, and I could hear her breath deeply. I smiled, thinking about her. And then I saw the fireflies.
They were practically everywhere in the meadow, and they never seemed to go away. Keely laughed at some of them, but I couldn’t see what was so funny about them. I thought they were pretty, but after awhile they got boring. I saw her lift up her delicate hand, and a single firefly landed on it, its light shining brightly for the few seconds that it would. But then it flew away, and her hand moved back down. I moved closer to Keely, stepping lightly so that her sensitive ears couldn’t pick up any signal of me.
But unfortunately, I heard a very loud crack, and I stopped dead in my tracks. Keely sat up abruptly, looking around. Her cat ears were laying flat on her head, and her eyes were scanning the area carefully. I stepped back into the shadows, hoping that she wouldn’t see me.
“Who’s there?” She called out, her voice wavering slightly in fear. I didn’t move at all, but I wanted to step out and say that it was me. That choice would cause a lot of problems, and I didn’t want to ruin the friendship I had gained with her in a split second.
She called out the question again, standing up and walking up to the edge of the trees. I thought for a moment that she had seen me, because her eyes hung on where I was hiding for a few seconds, but then moved away. Her tail had fluffed up, revealing that she was alarmed, and it wasn’t swaying back and forth like it had been earlier when she was walking. After a few minutes, she backed up and went to her blanket, rolling it up, and jogging away.
I waited to follow her again, but this time she got far ahead and I almost lost sight of her. Her elongated legs were the source of her speed, and her fear probably played a part in it too. I was practically sprinting by the time I caught up. She ran out of the forest, and when she got to her house, she threw the blanket up into her window, and climbed the side of her house. Her window slammed shut, and then I breathed a sigh, walking up to my own house and scaling up to my window. I crawled in, shut the window quietly again, and closed my curtains. I fell back on my bed, staring up at my ceiling and thinking about her. Her ears, her tail, her limbs, her hair, her everything. Even though she was my total opposite, I still loved her more than anything.