Page 5 of The Wolf

Poppy

Nine years earlier

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“Open your eyes, Poppy.” My mother's voice whispered soft and delicately like she was miles away. “Poppy, open your eyes,” she said again, her voice louder and more intense. It was not a dream anymore. She was waking me up.

I stirred slightly, groaning as I rolled over to look at her. “What is it? What time is it?” I asked. “It's still dark out.”

“It's three in the morning,” she said as she gently ran her fingers across my forehead and pushed the tangled mess of hair off my face.

“Three? Why are you up so early? I don't have to get up for school for another four hours.” I rubbed my eyes and blinked a few times as I tried to focus on her face.

I couldn't see her well. It was as if I was stuck between a dream and reality.

She was there; I instinctively knew that.

Yet, my mother appeared with the opaqueness of an apparition.

A layer of fogginess floated over my brain, making me question the validity of my eyes.

If I reached out, would my fingers swipe through her like she was made of clouds?

I stuck my hand out and touched the hard curve of her elbow.

Nope. She's real.

My mother smiled and said, “I know it's early, but we have to go, Honey.”

“Go? Go where?” I sat up in bed, more alert and awake. “What are you talking about?”

“Come on. Get up. I'll explain it all on the plane.

But we need to leave soon, or we'll miss our flight.” She turned around quickly and started opening my dresser drawers and pulling out clothes.

“I know you're confused right now, but I promise I'll explain all of it to you later.

Right now, I just need you to do as you're told. Come on, get up and put some clothes on.”

“Mom, what are you talking about? What's going on?” I pulled the blanket back and jumped out of bed. “Where are we going?”

“We're going away for a bit. On a. . . on a trip,” she answered.

Her voice balanced between thought and conviction.

“So, let's go. Get packed.” She went to my closet, dug out my suitcase, and then flopped it open on the bed.

“Whatever we can fit in here is what we'll take for you.” My mother started stuffing handfuls of clothes inside.

Socks, underwear, leggings, and shirts, but there was no method to her craft.

She was just tossing things in randomly.

“Mom, what are you doing?” I asked. But my mother either didn't hear me or was ignoring me on purpose because she didn't answer and just kept piling clothes in the suitcase. “Mom, stop! Please, tell me what's happening.”

“We don't have time for this, Poppy!” she yelled. Her outburst was a mix of frustration and fear all at once. My mother quickly inhaled a breath as she ran her hand across her forehead. “Poppy, I swear I'll explain it all to you later. Please, right now, just help me pack.”

Her skin was white and clammy. Sweat beaded across her forehead and trickled down in thin streams. My mother's eyes jittered back and forth in the sockets, and her pupils were as big as dark pools. She looked terrified. I just didn't know why.

My mother had always been docile, gentle, and soft-spoken until she got sick.

She moved either slowly or spastic now; there was no evenness to her flow.

Her eyes were always void as if she was looking off at something in the distance.

My mother's illness had gotten worse over the past couple of years.

She would sleep for hours and only come out on occasion for food.

She would be really happy and then turn angry out of nowhere.

You never knew what version you were going to get.

Despite her illness, she maintained her appearance.

She was always well dressed in matching outfits, with her hair fashionably braided or pulled into a French twist. But the woman in front of me was messy and distraught.

Her hair was frizzy and untamed. There was no method to her clothing choice.

She was wearing stained jogging pants and a shirt with some band on it that I didn't recognize, probably from her youth.

The fabric was thin, worn to the point it was translucent.

“I want to talk to Dad,” I said.

I started to walk towards the door, but she quickly grabbed my wrist to stop me. My mother squeezed hard, digging her nails into my skin. “No, Poppy.”

“Ow, you're hurting me. Let me go.” I tried to yank my arm free, but she held on tight. “Mom, stop. Let me go. That hurts.”

“Poppy! For fucks sake, you're nine years old; just do as your goddamn told!” Her tone hit me like a ton of bricks.

I was instantly afraid of her. There was something about her eyes—the twitchiness of them, the swelling darkness that seemed to be seeping over the banks of her pupils.

The way I could see myself inside them, like she had two mirrors where her eyes had once been, made my chest squeeze.

Thin red veins cracked across the white orbs, reminding me of spiderwebs scattered between blades of grass.

I didn't argue anymore. I was silent, doing everything my mother asked me to do.

I had never been scared of my mother before—not once.

And now it was a feeling I would never forget.

This fear was different. It came from deep inside my body, spreading out like liquid fire, and setting my skin ablaze.

The moon was still out when my mother put our suitcases in the car. The house was dark. There wasn't a single light on, not even above the front door. The wind whistled as it swirled and danced between the forest.

She kept looking around as if someone might burst out of the trees at any moment. “Get in. We have to go if we're going to make our flight.”

I climbed in the car without resistance.

My mother took one last look around, then paused a little longer on our home.

She seemed to be looking through the walls, through the furniture, through the caverns of empty space until she stopped.

Her eyes steadied in the sockets, lips thinning as if she locked eyes with someone else. And then we were gone.

“Look, Poppy, I know this is confusing for you, but I don't want you to worry. Everything is going to be fine.”

I finally mustered the strength to ask, “Where's Dad? Is he meeting us at the airport?”

She kept her eyes on the road as she tilted her head and said, “No, Honey. Dad is not meeting us at the airport.”

“Is he meeting us where we're going?

“No. He's staying home this time.” She twisted her hands around the steering wheel nervously as she frowned. “Don't worry about dad. This is for us.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

My father wasn't around all the time. He was a busy man with a lot of weight on his shoulders. He worked a lot, and his job required him to travel all over the world. My father was an important man. He was making the world better. He was making the world healthier. And he was saving people.

My mother pursed her lips briefly in thought then said, “It means you don't need to worry, alright? This is going to be fun—a fun girl's trip. How does that sound?”

I shrugged my shoulder as I turned to look out the window. “I don't know.”

“Dad goes on all kinds of trips, doesn't he?”

“So why isn't he on this one with us?”

“Does he ever take us with him?”

“No.” I sighed heavily, then turned to glare at her. “But that doesn't mean he never wanted to. He told me before that he wished he could bring me with him, but his trips are for business, not fun. But he promised me that once I was old enough, he would take me with him.”

“That's bullshit,” she scoffed, her voice almost a mocking chuckle. “God, he's so good at filling your head with lies.”

“What?”

“Forget it. Forget about your father and what he's told you. This is our trip. Our trip. And we're going to have fun.”

When we reached the airport, my mother gathered our stuff from the trunk. There was a nervous air about the way she moved. She kept looking around again, the same way she did when we were leaving our house, fumbling with our things as if they were covered in oil and too slippery to control.

“Okay, come on,” she said as she tucked her purse under her arm and pulled the bags behind her. “Our flight leaves in two hours.”

“Where are we going?”

“It's a surprise.”

She didn't look at me when she was talking.

She was staring into her purse and rummaging around.

I still felt the same fear that had come over me earlier at home.

I didn't know what was happening, where we were going, or why we were leaving.

The trip didn't feel like a trip; it felt like we were running away.

“Ah, here they are.” She held up our plane tickets and waved them in my direction as she smiled a half smile. “Okay, so we're going to play a little game, too. How does that sound?”

“What kind of game?”

“We're going to pretend that we're different people. What do you think of that?”

“Different people? But why?”

“Because it will be fun, Poppy. Don't you play pretend? You pretend you're a doctor, or a vet, or a teacher sometimes, don't you ?”

“Yeah, I used to, but I'm not a little kid anymore, Mom. I'm nine, and I like who I am.”

“Well, this is kind of the same thing as when you were little, only better. It's for older kids, just like you.” She passed me a ticket. “Today, you're going to pretend to be Anna Hilstein, and I'm going to be Donna Hilstein.”

My face scrunched up tight at the name. Anna? I didn't even look like an Anna. “But why, Mom? Why are we doing this?”

“Honey, we do the same things every single day.

You get up and go to school. I get up and I don't do anything but stay in the house. I just want to do something exciting for once. Something different. Something for us.” She stopped walking and dropped down to look me in the eyes.

“Can you do this for me? Can you play pretend for a little bit? Please? It would mean the world to me.”

I thought for a second and agreed. “Yeah, I can do that.”

My mother was right. She was always home because she was sick a lot.

And when she did feel better, it didn't last long.

Her bouts of feeling good lasted only a day or two.

Long enough to bring my dad lunch at his office or maybe go for a nice walk.

My mother was begging me with her eyes to go along with her plan.

What harm was there in playing pretend? Besides, it could be fun to be someone else for a change. And I wanted to make her happy.

“Thank you, Honey. This means so much to me.” She kissed my forehead. “Alright, Anna, let's go catch our plane for a brand new adventure.”

The woman at the desk smiled and asked if we were checking any bags. We weren't, so, she checked our tickets. My mom passed her two little blue booklets with an overly bright smile.

“Have a nice flight,” the woman said without question.

She didn't ask me my name or look at me funny. Which was good because I wasn't sure how to be Anna yet. What did Anna like? What was her favorite color, her favorite food, her best memory? There was so much I still needed to come up with to play Anna Hilstein.

“Mom,” I said.

“Yeah?” she asked as she glanced at the terminal sign to see which way we needed to go.

“I don't like the name Anna. Can I pick a different name?”

“Uh, yeah, sure, but not yet. When we get to France, you can be whoever you want to be. For now, just stick with Anna.”

“France? We're going to France?”

“Oops, looks like I let the secret slip.”

“Will I get to see the Eiffel Tower?”

“You sure will. And if you do a really good job of playing pretend, I'll even take you to the restaurant all the way at the top.”

“Really?” The first spark of excitement flowed through my body like electricity flowed through a live wire.

“Really.” She cupped my head and scrunched her fingers in my hair. “Anna,” she said with a smile and a wink.

We boarded the plane. My mother wore big, obnoxious glasses that made her head look like a half sucked lolly pop.

Her hair was stuck to her head from the sweat she couldn't stop seeping.

She kept running her hands over her face and then wiping her fingers through her hair, pushing the sweat deep into the tangled mess.

I had never been on a plane before. Even though my father traveled for business a few times a month, he never took us with him.

He always seemed to be visiting incredible places like Spain, London, Mexico, or Japan.

He'd fly around the world, hopping from one place to the next, but my mom and I always stayed home.

It was my turn to explore. My eyes were glued out the window.

When we took off, it was still dark outside, but now the sun was coming up over the horizon, making the ocean glitter like it was full of dimes.

I could see the waves of the ocean below us whenever the clouds thinned like chalk being washed away in the rain.

The fear I felt earlier was like a bug bite that stopped itching. It was there, but it was laying dormant, no longer a discomfort, just more of a memory being pushed away and replaced by something greater.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Paris,” the captain said over the intercom.

“This is it, Honey. We're here. We made it to Paris.” She exhaled a heavy breath, her muscles relaxing all at once. She looked lighter. Her smile was more delicate and pure. “Come on, let's go set this city on fire.”

“What? No, I don't want to do that,” I said.

“It's just an expression, Honey. It means to live it up, enjoy ourselves, have a blast. We deserve it, don't you think?” my mother asked as she pulled out our carry-on bags from the overhead storage.

“Yeah, I think you're right. I'm ready,” I said.

“Good. Are you hungry? Because I'm starving. Let's start this adventure with a delicious lunch. And then we can do some shopping.”

I was overcome with excitement. Nothing could wipe the smile off my face.

Nothing.