Chapter 2
She sat, looking down at her hand. It was rimmed with blood, cut by the damn necklace she had to – for some reason unbeknownst to her – protect. The necklace lay beside her as if it required its own space on the empty central park bench. She had remembered clasping it in her hand while she ran out of the house to the subway. She rode the train, tears streaking down her face, feeling pathetic. The only one in her train was an old lady clutching her grocery bags to her chest, apparently scared of the crazy crying girl. This just made Lizzie glare at her more in the typical New York way, as if to say, “what are you looking at”. She knew her anger was unfounded but if there were a puppy around, she probably would have glared at that too. The doors had opened at the central park north station, and it had been a race to see who could barrel through the doors of the train fastest, Lizzie, or the old lady? Lizzie was already nervous, she had been still too long, Lacey said not to stop, to keep running until she found Ben. So that’s what she would do. Mind set, when the doors opened at her stop she bolted out and up the stairs. She didn’t stop running. Not till she ran out of breath and collapsed on the bench. There was no telling how long she was there. All she knew was that when a figures silhouette was cast across her face she was covered in a thin coat of snow. The face was in the dark, all her nerves were on edge but she figured, whatever it was she had no means, nor the energy to fight it. Finally the light caught his face, and Lizzie recognized the slightly upturned nose, the elegant cheekbones, as if carved into his face by an artist. His brown hair fell in waves around his face, flecked with snow. When Ben saw her he started running.
“Lizzie…” his voice was soft and tender, but having known him too long Lizzie could hear the underlying fear there too. Yeah, there was definitely some of that going around.
“Hey Ben.” She was not up to her usually sarcastic self, it was as if a pin had pricked her large balloon of witty replies, and it lay there quite deflated like herself.
Then Ben did something she had not thought him capable of doing – clumsy, tall, geeky Ben, had scooped her up, as light as a feather into his strong arms. She had just enough time to look up at him, her arms lying numbly around his neck, before her eyelids fluttered closed. Lizzie would be the first to admit she made mistakes, she wasn’t the smartest in class, and she always had lapses in judgment, but in that instant, she was almost positive she saw Ben’s lips drawn back in a snarl.
Lizzie woke with a start. She was in a familiar place, but it was not her own house. She rubbed her eyes, brushing away the grasp of sleep, and looked around. She was in Ben’s room. Ben’s familiar green room, walls covered with pictures of his favorite bands, and (She bugged him incessantly for this) a math calendar with a different equation for each day. All this made her smile until she turned on the light across from the bed and flinched, her head hurt. A torrent of images flooded her vision, Lacey with the dagger, the necklace in her bleeding palm, Ben snarling like an animal. She fell back down against the bed and closed her eyes.
When she was little, her mom had told her if you closed your eyes hard enough, all the bad stuff went away. She tried this now, eyes shut. After about a minute she decided this tactic only worked against the monsters under the bed, and not the three-legged monsters fighting her sister. She snapped her eyes open.
With a great effort she got out of bed and went to the bathroom that connected to Ben’s room. She loved Ben for who he was, but sometimes having a best friend who was one of the richest teens in America was awesome. She stepped into the shower, and chose her temperature. Minutes later she was dry and smelled faintly of lemons. The tiles on the floor were warm against her bare feet, one of the only comforts in the hostile house. She padded out into the room and rummaged through Ben’s drawers. She grabbed a black t-shirt that looked like it had shrunk in the wash, and pulled on old jeans, still slightly damp from the snow last night.
She found Ben flipping pancakes in the ultra-modern white kitchen. There was an island in the middle, laden with fruits and cereal. The kitchen was of a pristine white, interrupted only by the gleam of stainless steel. He didn’t seem to notice her standing in the hallway, so she took the time to watch him. Lizzie had not really looked at him in some time, but now she saw changes that were not so evident before. His shoulders were broader, and he had muscles, real muscles that rippled when he lifted. His long eyelashes cast shadows against his face, and in this moment he looked much older than his fifteen years. His head snapped up and he smirked
“Stalking me?”
“Only on the days that end in Y.” I retorted. I pulled up a chair at the island and snatched a strawberry off the top of the pile. He was silent. The awkward tension was weighing down on them like Atlas and the sky. It was too much for Lizzie
“Okay Ben I know you know something I don’t know.” Being her best friend Lizzie knew Ben understood what she meant, so it bugged her when he cocked his head sideways with a puzzled expression and said
“What?”
“Don’t play that game!” she yelled exasperated, “You know what happened to Lacey, or else she wouldn’t have told me to come here!” her voice turned to a whisper, “Ben just, please, give me something…”
He looked sad and gave Lizzie that sympathetic smile she had seen her sister wearing just hours ago. Bad idea, if there was one thing Lizzie hated it was being pitied. She stood up from her stool and said “Benjamin if you do not tell me what is going on this instant,” she gestured theatrically at the front door, “I will be out of that door faster than you can say Jack Robinson.”
They locked eyes, and Lizzie could tell he was trying to make a decision. She’d had enough; she turned her back on him and walked furiously towards the door. Between one blink of an eye and the other he was in front of her, blocking her path. She let out a surprised gasp and cried
“Ben! What the hell don’t scare me like that!” she calmed down and said in a measured voice apprehensive of the answer, “Ben, how did you do that?”
He wiggled his fingers and said, “Magic superpowers.”
Now she could tell he was making fun of her. She tried to move past him to the door, but his arm shot out as quick as lighting and he trapped her in his arms.
“Let go of me!”
“Lizzie calm down! Ill tell you what I know but you have to trust me okay? I’m breaking all sorts of rules here.”
She relaxed in his embrace, and said more calmly this time
“Let me go… please?”
His grip on her relaxed a bit. She gave him her best glare to let him know she was still angry, marched back to the stool at the island where she grabbed herself a plate of pancakes. She was famished, and she eaten at least half of the batch in silence before she set her knife down and pointed the fork threateningly at Ben
“Talk.”
He sat down in the stool next to her and swiveled her chair so that she was facing him. He gently pushed her hand that was wielding the fork down onto the table, and said in an ominous tone
“First off, I’m a werewolf.”
