Page 117 of Creatures Like Us

I asked him a few weeks ago if he wanted to go into the forest behind the school, where my brother and his friends subjected him to that horrible event. I thought it would feel cathartic for him, and through it all, I’d support him, of course. I’d hold his hand, be there if he wanted me to.

He hasn’t brought it up since, but maybe getting his nipples pierced triggered something buried inside him. I smile at the thought.

There’s not much to smile about where we’re going though. It’s horrible. But I want to see it with him. I want to confront it together.

“Tomorrow,” Noah says. “We’ll go tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

He tries to turn to lie on his side so I can spoon him, but doing so makes him gasp in pain.

“Oh, right,” I say. “You’ll have to sleep on your back for a few days.”

He makes a frustrated noise. “But?…?how are you going to hold me?”

“Like this.” Lying on my side, I wrap an arm around him, careful not to bump his piercings, and I fit my hand to the side of his throat. “There.”

He sighs in relief, and like this, we can both find enough peace to float off into sleep.

The next day, we cross the schoolyard, Noah with his hands in his pockets and his long, billowing coat flowing freely in the spring air. It’s been an unusually cold winter, followed by an unusually cold spring, but we’ve lived through it, even though the basement still lacks proper heating.

We reach the end of the schoolyard with its basketball hoops and brick walls, and finally, we enter the forest.

I remember playing here as a kid, between the dense trees and the damp moss. That was before I got more interested in spending the breaks smoking cigarettes with my friends.

Noah leads me further and further into the woods—so far, I start wondering if he’s lost his way. Then, by a small glade, he stops and points to the patch of soil at our feet.

“This is where it happened.”

There’s no sign of it now. Too many years have passed, and too many gusts of wind have erased any evidence of the grave a couple of kids dug to bury their outcast classmate.

Still, I can see them all: my brother, standing among his friends as they grasped Noah’s arms and pinned him to the ground. As they beat him, kicked him, and tried to bury him alive. Had they not been interrupted, would they have gone through with it?

I still wonder if it’s really true, what Noah told me about the wolf. How she saved him. How she chased the bullies away. It all seems so otherworldly—stuff that doesn’t happen in real life. What happened with the bullies shouldn’t have happened either. None of it should have.

“Are you okay?” I take Noah’s hand, squeezing it gently.

“I’m okay. It was a long time ago.”

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Yeah.” He lets out a deep sigh, shoulders slumping as his long fingers close around mine. “You’re right.”

I lift my gaze to the forest beyond the glade, where a gray mass shifts behind the trees. Paws trampling earth?…?Yellow eyes among the bark?…

My mouth falls open. “Noah,” I say urgently. “Noah, are you seeing this?”

“Seeing what?” He keeps looking at the ground, so I pat his shoulder.

“It’s her! The wolf.”

“Hm? No, it can’t be. She’s long gone.”

By the time he lifts his gaze, the wolf has disappeared, and I start doubting I even saw her in the first place. Was she a phantom? A ghost? No?…

“I promise! I saw her. She was there.”

Noah stays quiet as he keeps peering into the now empty woods, and I squeeze his hand in exasperation.