Megan was suspiciously hard to track down at school that week.
The vexing girl had taken Monday as a sick day, and then Tuesday she continued to find excuses to use the hall pass to avoid being in class near Callie. During the breaks between classes she’d bolt for the door almost immediately, disappearing into the crowd before the taller girl could get close enough to talk to her. Ultimately the wolfgirl had been forced to corner her in the breezeway during lunch.
Taking Megan gently by the wrist, she pulled the other girl into one of the alcoves that served the unused art rooms, the shorter girl letting out a squeak of surprise.
“D-don’t kill me!” Megan shrieked as she threw up her arms to protect herself, cowering away from the taller girl.
“Why the fuck would I want to kill you?” Callie retorted, her obvious shock colouring her words with a fierceness she didn’t intend.
“Because I s-saw you,” the other girl stammered, frightened of the towering amazon. “I watched you k-kill … ⸻ I saw what you did to those police officers.”
Despite Callie’s complicated (and mostly negative) feelings towards Megan, the shorter girl’s words hit her like a straight shot to the gut. As a woman who had always struggled with her imposing and alienating stature, the fact that her mere presence instilled fear in her classmate wounded the wolf inside her, the poor creature whimpering and flattening her fluffy triangles in apology.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said quietly, her voice cracking under the strain. “I didn’t want to scare you.”
Eyes wide, Megan stared at her with a growing terror. “You’re one of those monsters they talk about at church, aren’t you? You’re demon-possessed.”
“... Not exactly,” Callie sighed, tortured by her use of the word ‘monster’. “It’s not possession or a curse or anything like that, it’s just … what I am.” Raking her fingers through her hair in a nervous gesture, she glanced away from the shorter girl, tamping down on her own sense of panic. “I feel kind of stupid admitting this out loud, but the truth is that I’m … a werewolf.”
“A werewolf…?” Megan returned incredulously, her skepticism arresting the frightened beating of her heart. “Like the boys in those romance movies?”
“The girl version, yeah,” she allowed, slightly annoyed at being compared to a fangbanger love interest regardless of how apt it might be. “Not the ‘full moon’ kind, obviously, but something like it.”
Working her jaw in slight motions, the shorter girl looked like she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words. Studying Callie’s face like she was searching for signs of monstrousness, she stayed quiet for a long moment as she tried to process the revelation.
“So you’re not trying to kill me?” she asked timidly, still shrinking back from the taller girl.
“I’m not looking to hurt you,” Callie agreed, trying to make herself seem as sincere and unthreatening as possible. “I wanted to see if you were okay.”
“... I’m fine,” Megan muttered, turning pink as her alarm gave way to embarrassed acknowledgement of the wolfgirl’s concern. “I hid in the bushes until the shooting stopped.”
“Did they do anything to you afterward?” she inquired as gently as she could.
“Not really,” she shrugged. “They asked some questions, but my dad made them let me go.”
“Questions about me?”
Megan shrugged again. “They wanted to know what I was doing outside, and if I saw what attacked those men. I told them I had too much to drink and went out back to puke, then ended up in the bushes and didn’t see anything.”
“That’s good,” Callie sighed in relief, grateful to the other girl for her discretion. “I’m glad they didn’t try to hold you or anything.”
Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, the shorter girl eyed the wolfgirl with an expectant appraisal. “I had to lie for you, Brambell.”
“And I appreciate it,” the amazon said truthfully. “I take it you grabbed my phone, too?”
“Plus your clothes,” Megan nodded sheepishly. “They were all ripped-up, so I waited until the officers left and then threw them out in the neighbour’s trash.”
“That’s awfully clever of you,” Callie replied, fixing the other girl with a suspicious stare. “When did a good christian girl learn how to cover up a crime?”
Megan’s actions were too forward-thinking for a scared highschooler to manage, especially a cop’s daughter who had been raised in an extremely religious environment. That sort of subterfuge was something Callie might’ve expected from Chad if the older boy was something of a regular partier, but the ‘innocent lamb’ act the other girl put on indicated that she wasn’t as blameless as she seemed.
“My mom taught me,” the shorter girl admitted guiltily. “She said if I ever needed to hide … something from my dad, not to throw it away in the house.”
“And what is that ‘something’?” Callie asked, incredibly curious what secrets the other girl might be hiding.
“... Girl stuff,” she mumbled abashedly, casting her eyeline away from the amazon.
“Ah.” The wolfgirl could easily imagine a number of personal feminine items that a religious father would punish his daughter for using. “He sounds like quite the asshole.”
“He’s looking out for me,” Megan protested, speaking someone else’s words. “He wants me to grow up to be a proper wife.”
“Sure,” Callie returned, rolling her eyes. “I don’t doubt that’s what he tells you, but I know you’re smart enough to understand the difference. Concerned fathers wouldn’t demonize their children for taking birth control.”
The other girl merely shrugged in response, the topic clearly making her uncomfortable. Perhaps to steer the conversation away from her father, the wolfgirl awkwardly attempted to segue into something else.
“So,” the amazon began hesitantly, “I don’t suppose I could get my phone back, now?”
“I don’t have it with me,” Megan said softly, more than a little guilt showing on her cute face.
“That’s fine,” Callie returned, holding in her frustration. “I can go with you after school or whatever and get it then.”
“I’m not keeping it at my dad’s house,” the shorter girl replied petulantly, as though the amazon should’ve already guessed where it was. “I literally just told you that I don’t keep things there.”
“So where is it?” she sighed exasperatedly, losing her patience.
“I’ll bring it to you later,” Megan started, finally making clear her intentions, “but I want you to promise to do something for me first.”
“Are you blackmailing me?” Callie snapped, her temper rising.
“I’m trading favours,” the shorter girl quipped defiantly. “I already hid a bunch of evidence and lied for you, so I think it’s only fair that you do something for me in return.”
“And what ‘favour’ are you extorting?” the wolfgirl demanded.
Weirdly, the smaller girl hesitated again, her blush spreading all the way to the tips of her ears. Starting and stopping several times, Megan wrung her hands together, finding it exceedingly difficult to simply ask for what it was that she desired of the wolf. New chapters come out on novelping(.)com first.
“... There’s a dance I want you to take me to,” she eventually said, forcing the syllables past her lips in a strained alto.
“As a date?” Callie asked warily, seeking the catch.
Squirming under the wolfgirl’s gaze, she shook her head. “I, um, want you to escort me … as my boyfriend.”
Callie stared at her for a long minute, watching the other girl writhe miserably. It was such a ridiculous request that she was momentarily stunned by the audacity of it, the other girl stubbornly refusing to accept her own sexuality, clinging to the familiar misogyny she’d been taught.
“I’ll tell my mom I need a new phone, then,” she said flippantly, making to leave.
Megan caught her sleeve, holding her back. “Please, Brambell,” she begged, hissing the words in a desperate whisper.
“If you need a boyfriend, then you should find a boy,” Callie snipped back unsympathetically. “I’m not playing this game with you anymore, Megan. You can turn my phone over to your dad or whatever else you want to do, but I’m tired of letting you insult me.” Advancing, she thrust a hand against the wall, cornering her smaller classmate as her towering figure loomed over the obstinate girl. “If you can’t be fucking bothered to treat me with even a little dignity, then I have zero interest in doing you any favours.”
Rather than intimidate her with her enormous presence, if anything the amazon appeared to be encouraging her. Despite the queer tension crackling between the two, the other girl seemed emboldened by the threatening display.
“You’re too close,” Megan protested; biting her lower lip, she reached out with cautious hands, seizing the lapels of Callie’s jacket. “Do you enjoy scaring girls with your ‘big bad wolf’ act?”
“You hardly look scared at all,” the wolfgirl snarled accusatorially.
“Trust me, I’m quivering in my trainers,” the other girl cooed, her small fists dragging the amazon even closer.
“Are you getting off on this?” Callie growled, her ire sounding so much more like an amused purr than the disgust she expected to feel. “I’m not some fetish you can indulge in at your leisure.”
“Just look at it this way,” Megan offered, her timbre becoming pitchier as she fumbled her salacious lines, “if you take me to the dance, I’ll let you do … a-anything you want to me afterwards.”
As quickly as it had stormed to life, the moment between them passed. Perhaps Megan believed she understood what that offer meant, but Callie had a far better measure of what it would entail. Sure, she might've liked either a chance to fool around or knock the frustrating girl down a peg, but she wasn't going to take advantage of someone weaker than herself.
“Don’t make promises you have no intention of keeping,” the taller girl advised seriously, straightening up and away from the shivering quarry. “Actual boys won’t be as chivalrous when it comes time to pay up, I assure you.”
Gently extricating her jacket from the other girl’s hands, she returned to her full height, pulling back to a more comfortable distance; rather than dampening Megan’s forwardness, however, the act instead encouraged her sincerity.
“... Okay,” she finally sighed, failing to hold Callie’s eyeline. “Can you go as the boy-type lesbian, then? I don’t … ⸻ I can’t go with any of the boys I know. They’re all part of it too.”
“Part of what?” Callie asked, intrigued.
“They call it the ‘Genesis Promise’,” Megan explained, distaste evidenced in her tone.
“I can guess why,” the wolfgirl nodded. “Chapter two, verse eighteen?”
“Exactly,” she agreed with a smile, amused that the taller girl had figured it out so easily. “They hold a dance a few times a year to make it easier for church members to find good wives and husbands.”
“And if I go with you, then they’ll know you’re not on the market,” Callie finished for her.
“Yeah, you get it,” Megan agreed, her apprehension melting into bashfulness. “Don’t get me wrong, I have every intention of honouring God through marriage, but I’m just not … quite ready for that.”
“Alright,” the amazon allowed, in spite of her reservations about attending a church function she knew she would absolutely loathe. “If you promise to stop being so shitty to me, I’ll make sure they don’t pair you off with somebody’s son.”
While the shorter girl was clearly thankful for her co-operation, her momentary happiness quickly faded. “... It’s not their sons I’m worried about,” she muttered eventually, her expression darkening. “The Genesis Promise ensures that every man and woman is properly equipped to ‘be fruitful and multiply’.”
Grimacing, Callie asked for the explanation she was sure she didn’t want. “So is it like, just first-time husbands and wives, or college kids in the dating pool …?”
“It’s for everyone,” Megan replied dourly, stressing the last word with a discomforting emphasis. “If I don’t show up with a date and a promise ring, they’ll expect me to find one before the end of the night.”
“And what happens if you don’t?” the wolf urged, knowing the answer was only going to infuriate her further.
“Then my dad will be very, very upset,” the smaller girl said softly, as though she were afraid of even the words themselves. “It … won’t be good.”
Clenching her hand into an angry fist, Callie’s already low opinion of Assistant Chief Baxter began to burrow deeper into rock-bottom. “Alright,” she promised, “I’ll come play ‘husband lesbian’ for you.”
And god help those motherfuckers if I see them putting their hands on a bunch of teenage girls, she snarled to herself, the wolf inside her eagerly awaiting her chance to hunt.
To Callie’s continued torment, Kelly insisted on making her perfunctory trip to purchase a set of ‘promise rings’ into a family outing.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” the wolfgirl whinged to her mum as they browsed jewelry in one of the city’s more-expensive stores. “They’re props, not real rings.”
“And they need to be convincing props, innit?” the curvaceous blonde grinned, thrilled to both embarrass her daughter as well as engage in one of her favourite hobbies: shopping. “It doesn’t matter if they’re new money or old money, they won’t believe your ruse if you show up with some cheap plastic you found in a Kinder Surprise.”
“Cracker Jack,” Callie corrected petulantly. “Kinder stuff is illegal here.”
“Those don’t include toys anymore,” Kelly argued back cheerfully, ribbing the ornery wolf. “It’s all QR codes, and has been for nearly a decade. Genie brought some back for the children one year, since her ‘master’ at that time had been quite fond of baseball.”
“Did she get hooked on it?” the amazon wondered sincerely.
“Not at all,” the other girl laughed. “Intellectually I think she enjoyed the chance to experience some VIP seats purely for the novelty of it, but she couldn’t stand the actual games. I believe she called them ‘pointless’ and ‘infuriating,’ if memory serves.”
“Sounds like she’d make a great Mets fan,” Callie returned wryly.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re brilliant at deflecting?” Kelly asked offhandedly, glancing at her daughter out of the corner of her eye. “You certainly know how to lose a conversation in the weeds.”
“Survival skill,” Callie shrugged, unbothered by the insinuation.
“And yet terrible for getting along with others,” her mum pointed out, her tone a little less than delicate.
“It keeps the peace,” the taller girl countered, pretending to focus intently on the task in front of her. “Hard to fight over anything if you’re always talking about nothing, right?”
“True,” she allowed, before returning sharply, “but it’s keeping you from making headway with Jersey.”
That, at least, caused Callie to pause. Looking up from the case in front of her, she glared at Kelly with an annoyed cast to her frown.
“What does Jersey have to do with anything?” the wolf growled, becoming rather testy.
“Being here is an opportunity,” her mum explained gently, approaching the topic slowly for the snappy amazon’s sake. “You can be thinking about what kind of ring to buy.”
“I am literally here to buy rings,” Callie returned drily. “I can tolerate you coming along since you’ve offered to pay, but bringing Jersey seems kind of mean, doesn’t it? ‘Go watch your sister pick out jewelry for some girl’.”
“The fact that you see it as a punishment means you know exactly what I’m talking about,” Kelly said smugly, grinning at the other girl. “This is your chance to see what kind of band Jersey might fancy.”
“Come off it,” Callie sighed, her shoulders slumping as their talk swung towards romance. “We’re just friends, alright? It’s been that way for almost a decade.”
“You’re too smart for me to believe you’re this daft,” Kelly chided, clicking her tongue. “The girl is all over you ⸻ and carrying your litter too, I bet.”
“That is wishful thinking at best,” the wolfgirl muttered, annoyed with how happy it would’ve made her if her mum’s supposition really was correct. “You know how magic works, right? So you know they’re Genie’s twins, not mine.”
“Biologically, sure,” the other woman hedged, “but not materially. What’s important here is that they’re Jersey’s little darlings, so what matters most is who she wants to raise them with.”
“I’m sure she’ll find someone perfectly agreeable to be ‘Mister Right’,” Callie said dismissively, ignoring the possessive ache in her heart. “She already had a husband once ⸻”
“And it didn’t work out for him, did it?” Kelly returned with a self-satisfied smirk. “Whether she fancies blokes or birds isn’t the question, sweetheart. It’s about who’s willing to be there to hold her hand and help raise her daughters.”
“Sure,” the wolfgirl conceded, “but that’s a job for ‘Auntie Callie,’ not … I don’t know. Whatever the hell she’d call her lover.”
“Maybe something like ‘puppy’?” her mum ventured, needling the taller girl with saccharine romantic fantasy. “I would say ‘pet’ but that’s a little too on the nose, likely.”
“You know what I mean,” she huffed, shooting an irritated glare at the other woman. “If she and I were going to be a thing together, it would’ve already happened. Everything that was holding us back is gone now, and yet she keeps her distance. I don’t know that it’s possible for either of us to get any hotter, but anything that exists between us stops at sex.”
“Have you considered that might be precisely the problem?” Kelly asked, eyeing the other girl with a hint of concern. “Genuinely.”
“How is being hot a problem?” Callie scoffed, unwilling to entertain the ridiculous notion. “Other than making girls like Megan be weird about me, I mean.”
“Because you’re exactly who you want to be now,” her mum insisted, like it was some meaningful phrase and her daughter was simply being obtuse on purpose. “Can’t you understand how intimidating that must be for her?”
“I’m not following,” the taller girl stated flatly, abandoning her task as she became absorbed in the other woman’s lecture.
“She used her wishes on you,” Kelly reminded her, emphasizing the pronouns with severe gravitas. “Her once-in-a-lifetime, dream-come-true wishes, and she spent at least one of them ⸻ and maybe more than one ⸻ to give you that masterpiece marble statue we’re calling your ‘body’.”
“So?” Callie demanded, crossing her arms under her bust. “That’s illustrative of how kind she is, not how much she does or does not like me.”
“Sweetheart,” her mum said reproachfully, giving her a look. “I’m begging you to look at this objectively. You’re an athletic hottie who has already been tearing through college courses way ahead of everyone else your age.”
“That’s because I’m in my thirties,” she retorted snidely. “I’ve already been ⸻”
“And what is Jersey?” Kelly interjected, forcing the wolfgirl back on track.
Callie rolled her eyes. “She’s also hot, and smart and talented and ⸻”
“Not how you see her,” her mum interrupted again, struggling to get her to see through an unclouded lense, “you need to be thinking about how other people see her. How Megan sees her.”
Incensed, the amazon was about to unleash a snappy and bitter remark, but then Kelly’s point began to dawn on her.
Callie had always known ‘Jersey March’ as ‘April May,’ a capable and intelligent woman gracefully making her way into middle age. Back then she’d been in a committed marriage, her fortunes and future staked on her life together with Mark. By contrast, the amazon herself had been ‘Catherine O’Neill,’ an unremarkable thirty-something grad-student barely holding the scattered pieces of her life together. Shackled to bodies that had failed them in what they wanted most, the two had been making the best of what they had.
After Genie entered their lives, however, everything had changed. Now Callie was a total smokeshow and in strong contention for valedictorian, unbearably hot and amazingly talented and the most-popular girl in school. She had her entire life ahead of her and she was dreadfully prepared for it; between her human capability and her predatory strength, there was very little standing in the way of the wolfgirl and whatever it was she wanted to achieve ⸻ doubly-so now that a wealthy lawyer with a dozen international connections had taken over as her mum.
Jersey, by contrast, was a pretty, vapid, barely-present young girl who had stupidly gotten herself knocked-up with twins before her sixteenth birthday. Everyone assumed it was only a matter of time before she dropped out of school to raise her progeny, and hardly anyone believed the daft cow even knew who the father was. If it weren’t for her jet-setting legal guardian, she would’ve been forced to rely on her own pre-highschool education to make enough money to raise two little girls alongside taking care of herself, and absolutely everyone would’ve assumed she’d resort to turning tricks or gold-digging ⸻ hell, the juvenile work programme was already punishing her for the former while doing its best to prep her for the latter, turning her into a ‘Godly wife’ to sell off to a man at least twice her age. There was little Jersey could ever hope to be beyond either a pretty trophy or some cheap tart wagging her ass and gigantic tits at a strip club, and anyone who took even a cursory glance at her figure would assume she’d gotten cosmetic work done for that express purpose at some sugar daddy’s behest.
“... Ah.” Casting her gaze down and away, Callie’s cheeks turned a slight red as she realised her mistake. “I see.”
“It’s obvious she’s afraid of holding you back,” the older woman said softly, her chastisement melting away into motherly support. “I don’t know if she necessarily sees herself as an albatross or something daft like that, but she knows the world’s your oyster ⸻ or as much as it can be for a trans woman, I suppose, which I’m terribly sorry about.” Taking a steadying breath, she shook the unpleasant thought out of her head. “Anyway, my point being that you could walk into school tomorrow and ask out anyone you fancied, and there’s better’n a ninety-percent chance they’d say ‘yes’.”
“And she doesn’t think she can compete against the whole school,” the wolfgirl finished for her.
“It’s not exactly a question of ‘can’,” Kelly gently corrected. “It’s that she doesn’t think she ‘should’.”
A contemplative silence built as Callie mulled over her mum’s words, trying to see the world from Jersey’s perspective. As her monologue became entrenched in her own thoughts, she turned her gaze towards the much-smaller girl, studying her very pregnant sister as she waddled about the store in heels that still left her almost comically short compared to the countertop height of the glass cases. Standing to the side of the displays rather than directly towards, the little cow peered around her enormous curves as she surveyed what was on offer, smiling to herself whenever she saw something particularly appealing.
As if sensing the other girl’s eyes on her, Jersey turned towards Callie, offering her a cute little wave with one of her tiny hands.
Fixating on her slender fingers, the wolf couldn’t help but wonder whether the store even carried display models in her mate’s size.