I should have realized that my mom would want to remarry. I guess she had more time to think about it than I did, since she found out about Dad almost right after it happened. Four years to get used to him being gone… I’d have loved to have at least that much time before she sprung that truth on me. I mean, I like Colt. I really do. He’s like the best friend I’ve had in a really long time. But I didn’t want him to become my stepfather. Heck, I didn’t want anyone to become my stepfather. Though I guess it could have been worse. If I’d had to choose someone to take that place, it would have been Colt.
When Mom got pregnant, I worried. I mean, I was happy for her, and I was honestly excited to be an older brother, but I remembered what had happened with my little sister. I didn’t want that to happen again. I was scared. She did all right, though. She had to stay in the hospital for a while, and little Finnegan had to spend his first two weeks in intensive care, but it wasn’t too bad. Finn didn’t have anything wrong with him that was really life-threatening, he just needed some medical help to really get going. I was at a university in California at the time, and they got out of the hospital just as I got home for Spring Break, so I got a good chance to be a part of my little half-brother’s life. Turns out I didn’t get much time to relax, since Finn was a really loud little baby. Still, he was fun. Things were going pretty well.
As usual, though, the good times didn’t really last. One night, after I got back to school, I got a pretty nasty reminder that there were still some anti-halfwolf sentiments going around. I still don’t know how they managed to sneak up on me and do what they did without anyone noticing, but they did. They carved words into my skin. I got beaten and violated by a hand-made tail on a stick, then they just left me half-naked by my dorm for all the world to see. I’m just glad one of my cop friends was there first. He, along with some of the guys I’d met in the dorm, made sure I had as small an audience as possible when the paramedics brought me to the hospital.
Still, the whole campus had found out about the incident by the next morning, and everyone who’d met me knew who the victim had been. By the time I was able to start attending classes again, it was impossible for me to go anywhere without someone asking if I was okay. Which was kind of nice, really – I mean, it was better than people laughing at me or whatever – but I didn’t want that much attention. I didn’t want to be constantly reminded of the fact that I’d just been completely humiliated. It was bad enough that I couldn’t get through a day without failing at basic social interactions. So when the semester was over, I decided to take a break. I wanted to go back to traveling, maybe take some classes at a foreign university… something that wouldn’t lead to me being cornered and attacked again.
No comments:
Post a Comment