Another missing person in our idyllic little town... shit, Forest Hills is going to hell. In more hopeful news, a new hottie just rolled into the suburbs and the ravens say she’s a feisty redhead from Orange County. — Tweet from the Raven_Eye.
I don’t like stories that start with someone moving into a new town, which, ironically enough, is exactly what this was. But I guess it’s more of a homecoming for my dad. I was just the seventeen-year-old girl who was along for the ride because I wasn’t old enough to live on my own yet.
“It’s going to be great, Jess, I promise,” dad said.
“Sure, great, who wouldn’t want to restart senior year at a school full of strangers in a town like Forest Hills, last stop in the middle of nowhere,” I replied wryly.
My dad had grown up in Forest Hills back in the nineties, which he claimed had been the best time of his life, although he’d never been able to answer just why he’d moved away if his hometown really had been “the bomb!” as he liked to put it, and there was always this deep kind of sadness showing on his face whenever he talked about it like something tragic had happened to him there. Weirdly enough, something tragic was the reason we were moving back to Forest Hills.
Dad had gotten an email from one of his old friends about his ex-girlfriend and her family dying under mysterious circumstances. Apparently, the mystery of her death was enough to uproot our family of three from our cozy bungalow in California to the back end of Oregon so quickly that I barely got to say goodbye to my best friends, Kim and Lori. Sigh, boys and their first loves.
The unfairness of this situation brought out a tantrum in me that lasted through two states’ worth of driving on the freeway. My anger petered out eventually though, and I settled on a moody kind of quiet that made even my sister, June, the queen of annoying little sisters, not want to bother me for that last leg of the trip.
Meanwhile, Dad did his best to sound positive and hopeful during the ride, two things that just set me off more.
“You’ll make new friends,” he promised.
“Probably not,” I replied.
I wasn’t exactly what you would call a social butterfly. I was more of that redheaded wallflower most people looked at once but ignored as soon as they were finished deciding the color of my hair was the only interesting thing about me. Nope, Kim and Lori were the exceptions while most of the kids of my school were the aliens I just couldn’t get with... even the cute ones.
“You’ll love the old house,” he insisted.
The word ‘old’ made me sigh. I wasn’t into antiques.
“We’ve got a pool too,” he added.
This made June perk up considerably as she was part-dolphin and the former captain of her middle school swim team.
I wished I could be as perky as June was, with her bright green eyes — a replica of mine — widening at every speck of new-home-trivia dad threw at us, but I just wasn’t built like that. And seeing her face light up that way made me guilty about being such a bitch throughout the trip. After all, mine wasn’t the only life that had been derailed by the move. It was a seriously sobering thought that softened my mood toward June so that I actually passed her my cup of dark mocha frap when she asked for a sip. Yes, that was a big deal, because I only share when I’m extra guilty over something.
Besides, the email dad got was pretty dark, like seriously morbid. So morbid, in fact, that I can’t bring myself to write the details into this record yet. Also, I guessed the death of his friend hit him hard enough that he wanted to return to his roots. I hear old people get sentimental like that.
Wait, how did I know about the email, you ask? Easy, I hacked his account and found it there. Not that difficult when I knew his password — I knew all his passwords.
Soon enough, we pulled into Forest Hills’ suburbs, a single street of houses to either side of it with backyards covered in tall oaks and hiking trails. Our destination was dad’s childhood home, a two-story house of red bricks near the end of the long street. It was pretty big but old in that weathered down way. You could see the wear and tear in the dark stains of the bricks and in the missing tiles across the roof.
“It’s a fixer-upper,” dad claimed.
Well, I wasn’t waiting for him to give me a chore list, and I wasn’t in the mood to be helpful either. So, after unloading what few boxes we brought over with our truck onto the front porch, I went out for a run on the trail behind the house which I thought was the only charming thing about Forest Hills.
Dad didn’t stop me. He was probably hoping the cold Oregon air would help cool me down. It didn’t. If anything, the sight of endless trees and shrubs all around me just made me miss the warm California sun more.
Later in the jog, I’d become so lost in thought that I didn’t even notice how deep I’d dived into the forest trail. I couldn’t even see the roofs of the suburbs past the tree line anymore.
“It’s fine.” I pulled up my hood and slowed down my pace. “It’s not like there are any perverts out here... I’m not that unlucky...”
No, it wasn’t lost on me that I was sporting a red hoodie while running through the woods, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been so shocked when something strange and otherworldly happened to me there in the forest.
The moon had risen by the time I made my way back to dad’s old house — I refuse to call it anything but that — and it was only then that I realized the trail was gone. I was lost. How that happened, I didn’t have a clue. It’s not like I was so immersed in my ear-pods and the scenery that I would forget taking a wrong turn somewhere. And despite the uncommonly bright light of the moon shining down on me, I didn’t know whether to turn back or press forward.
Then I heard it in the underbrush not far off from where I stood between pines. It was a low growl that I’d only ever heard on a TV screen.
I frowned. “Seriously...?”
It stepped into view a moment or two later, its shaggy form revealed by the moon’s light. Gray-furred with a snout baring sharp fangs in my direction, the large wolf sent me an icy stare that caused a shiver to run up and down my spine.
“Oh my God...” I breathed.
