Memoirs of a Girl Wolf by Xandra Lawrence

me instead he stood and disappeared in the house.
    The dog remained in the front yard until I heard the man call, “Phoebe!” and the dog’s ears lifted and it ran inside after the man, but the dog’s booming bark echoed behind it all the way across the pond.
    I sat up straighter.
    Phoebe?
    I knew the name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why until Reign’s face flashed in my mind and I remembered he had mentioned his dog’s name was Phoebe.
    I moved my bookmark, the black and white photo of the pregnant woman, and closed the book then stood and walked to the railing of the porch.
    Squinting my eyes, I studied the house which was an eye sore no more. Just in the past weeks it had evolved into a charming two story white house.
    I shuddered. It was probably a coincidence.
    A lot of people could have a dog named Phoebe.
    But I knew that in a small town like Petoskey there weren’t a lot of coincidences.
    11
    Near the end of September we had an encounter again. I tried my best to avoid Reign which meant carrying most of my books with me at all times. This year was sharing a lot of similarities with last year. But on a rainy Tuesday morning, I didn’t want to lug around my umbrella and wet coat, so I was forced to use my locker. I waited until the hallway was mostly cleared of students and dangerously close to the bell, but I figured the longer I waited the more likely it was Reign would be sitting in class. When I felt like I couldn’t spare another second, I ran down the hall and to my locker. As if he had been secretly waiting for me the entire time, I was almost immediately joined by him, unlocking his own locker. He didn’t say anything to me, but he didn’t have to just his presence annoyed me and his smell: wood smoke, which actually happened to be one of my favorite scents, but I didn’t like it on him.
    “Do we have a quiz today in Ms. Stewart’s class?” he asked, with a small grin.
    I didn’t look at him instead I fished out The Great Gatsby from my bag and dropped it into my locker. During lunch and free time during class, I found solace in reading since I had no one to talk with.
    “I don’t have her for English. I have Mr. Arnold,” I replied.
    He closed his locker. “I guess I’ll ask Kristy.”
    I slammed my locker shut and turned to face him with a tense expression. “Her name is Kristen,” I said, turning on my heel to walk away briskly with my head held high as I flipped my wavy, red hair over my shoulder.
    “Hey, wait,” he said.
    I didn’t stop until he called to me again and said, “You dropped something.”
    My first thought was that it was a tampon and I died a little inside. I turned slowly, my face as red as my hair, but I was relieved to see it was nothing personal. The black and white photo of the pregnant woman had slipped from in between the pages of my book and had fallen on to the muddy, wet floor. He kneeled down to pick up the photo, but froze with it in his hand when he flipped it over.
    I walked up to him and snatched it from his long fingers. I tucked it into my back pocket and turned dramatically again, but this time I slid a little because the floors were wet and when I tried flipping my hair my fingers got caught in the strands. I checked to see if he was staring after me. He wasn’t. Instead, he still stood staring at his hand where the picture had been with a perplexed and astonished look on his face.
     
    I stopped sitting in the cafeteria. It was too much for me to have to sit alone at a table in the back under the dim, flickering lights and put up with the snickering and glances of my peers. Though it had subsided some. I went from the center of gossip and rumors to regressing to the status I was the year before: invisible.
    I started eating lunch in the library, but I was told by the librarian, Mr. Jones, a bald, wrinkly, liver spotted man who wore worn loafers and navy blue, flannel shirts that no food was allowed in his library, so I ended up