Mistakes

It all starts with a mistake. Whether it be miniscule, fatal, or just something that plain ruined your life. The worst part is, you never know what mistake you are going to make, when you will do so, and what effect it will have on your life. Makes you wish you were psychic doesn’t it?

“I know…its not that big of a deal, Quinn,” I stressed, as my best friend tried convincing me into going shopping for back to school, even though school was starting today, and it would be pointless to go now. She rolled her eyes, knowing how I felt about shopping, trying stuff on, it was all just pointless—at least that’s what I thought. She on the other hand, always was having new clothes on hand, always pressuring me into trying on some of her older clothes that she didn’t like the styles, in hopes that I would fall under her spell of shopping, not happening.

“You need new clothes,” she stressed, picking up the sleeve of my hoodie sweatshirt in her hand in a mock disgust, “This…this is a disgrace,” she shook my arm, and I jerked it back. Feigning like I was hurt, “What is wrong with my clothing?”

“Everything,” she laughed out, and I rolled my eyes, looking very similar to what her face had looked like only seconds ago. I really didn’t think anything was wrong with how I dressed, it was just simple jeans, and normally t-shirts, and when it got colder, of course sweatshirts. I wasn’t all that clever in the fashion field and stayed clear of it as much as I could.

We continued walking down the sidewalk, towards our high school, deciding we wanted to enjoy some of the warm air, while it was still here, both of us were positive that soon enough the presence of school would suck up the nice weather. I kicked a stone in our way, watching it slowly hop and tumble off the side walk to settle somewhere in the underbrush where I couldn’t see. The underbrush was shadows by the tall boughs of the trees in the forest flanking us on our side, so dense that when you tried to look into the thick wall of trunks it was dark, grainy and eerie. I didn’t dare sweep my foot in that unknown underbrush to get the stone to kick again.

“I’m comfortable, and don’t look terrible, that’s all that matters,” I said with a shrug, “I have no sense in fashion, might as well be shopping for parts to a fridgerator for how much statistics I would know…wait, never mind, I would actually know what to look for in a fridge,” I said with a grin, and she let out a defeated sigh, maybe this time for good. Most likely not.

“Can you believe that this is going to be the last first day of school…” she sighed wistfully, clasping her hands together overdramatically. I chuckled, “Not really, well at least for me…I actually plan on going to college,”

“I plan on going to college,” she bristled defending herself, “Just don’t know what for yet…or why, really,” I couldn’t comprehend how she couldn’t know what she would be going to college for, I had had my whole career planned out since ninth grade, knowing exactly what college I was going to, the statistics of the programs I wanted in on, and even the grade point average and test scores I would need for the best of scholarships. It was incomprehendable that she had not a clue, but then again, neither did I about fashion, so I guess it was even, sort of.

“Anyway I have a year to decide, I’m fine,” she waved my worries of her future off, but that’s what she said at the beginning of the summer, I quote, “I have the summer to decide, I’m fine,”.

It was no use to try and get her to change, she was who she was, and I loved her for it.

We passed the clearing of the forest, that was a gentle park, its swings still without the early morning breeze, and the slide, its metal surface shining in the sunlight that was creeping up on us, as the day approached. I had the sudden urge to run up to the swings and swing until I could taste the sunlight, but I glanced at my watch.

“We have to hurry, or we are going to be late to chat with Kyle and Rebecca,” I sighed, the swings can wait.

She walked a little faster, but I had a longer stride and managed to keep up with her at a lower pace, she glowered at me. “When did you get so tall?” she grumbled, looking up at me, and I smiled down at her. I had grown over the summer, not by much, but enough to secure my spot at five inches taller than her. “When did you get so tan?” I remarked, she had spent the summer in Texas, and the sun must be beating down on her the whole time, because her normally pale skin was the color browned cookies.

We had an easy friendship, it was pretty effortless, we got into fights, but always we got back to our equilibrium point of gentle teasing and laughs.

All of a sudden, she wasn’t walking beside me anymore, and I saw her form shoot forward in a run. “Bet you I can beat you there?” I was caught in surprise, my mouth an open ‘o’. Blinking rapidly, I caught on with a grin, and tightened my backpack closer to myself before running after her.

The slap of my feet against the sidewalk was paced and my breathing even. Spending your summer doing yard work had its advantages, as I laughed as I saw the fleeing form of Quinn; grow into more focus with each step. She glanced back her eyes widening as she saw me running after her, a predator aimed after her prize of pride.

I could see the school growing larger as each footfall brought us both closer to its doors. It looked different, bigger somehow, but I couldn’t make out the details as I took my strides longer, practically jumping like an antelope across the sidewalk. Pushing through a group of juniors, they glared hatefully at me and I through an apologetic glance back, Quinn had managed to slip through the space in between them. Sometimes I wish I was taller…sometimes, definitely not all the time.

I was close enough I was positive she would be able to hear my breathing in her ear, and a dastardly plan formed in my mind. I reached forward and tugged harshly on the handle of her backpack, making her stumble to a stop and backwards while I propelled forward. I reached the flagpole just in time, resting my hand on its smooth spherical surface, my breath was uneven now, and I was trying to catch up on it when she finally came to a stuttering stop by me, in the same condition.

“You have an evil mind,” she frowned as she eyed daggers at me. I grinned, “The evilest,”

“Hey, what are you two doing all the way over here?” a new voice perked in, and we both turned to Rebecca, Kyle trailing behind her as they approached. Her hair was waved down her back, a sea of light blonde curls that highlighted her bright eyes. She had changed over the summer, I guess I was in for a ton of changes, everything was shifting. But one thing that hadn’t was Kyle, whose hands were in his pockets as he grinned and walked towards us all. His dirty blonde hair still fell slightly in front of his left eye, the curl just making it bouncy enough to jiggle as he walked, but when you ran your hands through it, you wouldn’t get your fingers caught. I blushed a deep red at the thought, trying to put the past behind us, that was years ago, we had both moved on.

“Hey,” Quinn said smoothly, obviously none of them noticing my newly rouge cheeks. I smiled a little, pretending to still be trying to catch up on my oxygen debt. I leaned into the flag pole as I watched as Quinn and Rebecca got into an animated discussion over their summers, I had already heard both ends of the story.

“So I guess we should get to class?” Kyle suggested, I turned and somehow he had managed to be standing right beside me without my knowing. I nodded, “Yeah, I want to know if I got into the lower classes,” I said pushing myself away from the pole. They were all giving me pointed looks, “What?” I asked.

“We all know—especially you, that you are going to get into the highest classes,” Kyle said with an eye roll.

“Well you didn’t have to say it, you ruined all my fun,” I said, with a grin falling back easily into the foursome that had been so since the middle of eighth grade.

We started walking, and I noticed that me and Quinn were falling behind, Rebecca and Kyle taking a slight lead. Then something totally unexpected happened, I saw Rebecca reach out and grasp his hand in a way more than just friends. My eyebrows could’ve hit the ceiling, and I gave Quinn a questioning look.

“I don’t know—it just happened,” she said, and we all headed to scheduling.

My first mistake was to start paying attention to the people around me in class. If I hadn’t I wouldn’t have re-noticed Tristan Everdeen.

I had run myself out of the regular mathematics classes two years ago, and walking back into the woods room after a year was like coming home. Instead of taking a math class, last year I had been forced into a program that involved numbers, and since I hadn’t expected to be free from math classes, I was too flustered to choose. But being forced into Woods was probably the best choice I hadn’t made.

Just the thought of being able to make the coffee table that currently stood in the middle of my living room, or the clock that hung over the mantel, with my bare hands no less, that just filled me with a sense of accomplishment that doing math problems hadn’t done so far.

The smell of sawdust was pungent in the air, practically visible in the dimly lighted room. The hum of the electricity running through the machines before they turned on was a friendly reminder that I would be working with them soon enough.

I went over to the worn down, sanded bar stool that practically had my name on it, resting my hand back on the same indentation that was there from when I accidently missed the wood piece and smacked the hammer straight into the wooden tabletop. Other students started filing in, I was surprised that Kyle hadn’t joined woodshop again, but apparently he had wanted to be in the cooking class with Rebecca. How had I missed the fact they had been a couple since the beginning of the summer? My ignorance escapes even me sometimes.

Another thing about this class; I’m the only girl. You would think that would be hard, but I found myself blending more into the crowd here, they didn’t really judge me on how my hair was today, or what make-up I wore. In some aspects, guys were a lot easier to get along with.

Class started like normal; the teacher, Mr. Dubose, droning on and on about safety precautions. Tomorrow he would apologize about having to go through this but it was “school regulations”, we knew it all like the back of our hand, because if we disobeyed any of the rules, the backs of our hands might end up not being there anymore.

That feeling, when you know that someone is staring at you. The back of your head numbs except for the two heated spaces like eyes, lazered in on your hair. I shifted in the stool, careful not to make it scrape against the cement ground, giving a nonchalant glance behind me. My eyes met steady silver ones, that bore into me like beams of fire. I stood frozen for a moment, becoming entranced in the reflection that they were giving off in the lighting.

“Is everything alright, Miss. Williams?” Mr. Dubose broke my concentration on the guy’s eyes, and I reacted quickly, reaching to the ground, “Yeah, just dropped my pencil,” I said picking up an imaginary pencil off the ground, giving another brief glance at the guy. He was staring at the teacher with a blank expression again. I did the same, trying to puzzle over the fact; did I know him?

“You know that guy that sits behind you in College Writing?” I asked Quinn at lunch as we shuffled through the slowly moving line to get food at the snack bar. I had been finding him in almost every of my classes, and it was starting to bug me; an itch that I had no possibility to scratch it. She thought for a moment, “Yeah,” she said, snatching up a soft pretzel, and pouring hot cheese into a Styrofoam cup.

“What’s his name?” I asked casually, not bothering to touch anything in the line. It all looked awful, grease filled and butter saturated a weight that I didn’t need resting on my stomach.

She laughed, “You don’t know his name?” I gave her a confused look, arching an eyebrow, was I supposed to?

“That’s Tristan Everdeen; he has been in our classes for the past eight years, Sam. You know sometimes I wonder if you are losing it,” she said punching in her code into the check out.

That was my second mistake, trying to investigate something that had I had no business bothering with. It was my nature though, when something bothered me, I fixed it.

“Hmm…” was all I responded, and we sat down besides the group. Rebecca, Kyle, Quinn, and me. Kyle and Rebecca were both snacking off of the same basket of fries that they had gotten from the snack bar, their hands laced together under the table.

My head was resting on my arm propped up, as I listened vaguely towards their conversation. Staring out the window, I saw flecks in the leaves as they blew in the now steady wind, flecks of silver shone in the silver maples. All the flecks turned into eyes that continued to stare at my every movement, and I shivered at the connection between the innocent thing as the trees and the guy, Tristan, who seemed to be everywhere. Well except here, I didn’t see him at lunch, I probably would’ve noticed. I guess you could say I was paranoid, like a person is when they have a stalker. Did I have a stalker?

No. Why would a stalker go through all the trouble to make sure they had almost every single class with you? Well, that is a very stalker-ish thing to do.

Something was ****** in front of my face, and I blinked back into reality, looking blankly at the bit of cheese coated pretzel that was practically touching my nose. “You must eat, Sam,” Quinn stressed, “you are picking back up on your old habits again,”

I sighed, “I’m not hungry…” I said pushing her hand away from dangling in front of my face, “and anyway you know I hate pretzels.”

My stomach grumbled in complaint to the objection of the food, but I ignored it, I could eat better at home. I had a big enough stomach as it is.

“So…what classes do you have next?” Rebecca asked, tearing her gaze away from Kyle long enough to acknowledge the two of us, but the question was directed towards me.

“Nothing much, I have Chemistry II and then Art, but I get sixth hour off,” I grinned as their mouths fell open.

“How did you manage to get your class cut out?” Kyle exclaimed, almost about ready to through the box of French fries at my face in jealousy.

I shrugged, “I guess that’s what you get when you happen to be a super nerd like me,”

The bell rung again for the end of lunch and the three of them groaned as they walked towards the doors with me. Off to Chemistry II, and hopefully not the silver eyed Tristan who seemed to shadow my every move.

It felt extremely weird to be walking straight out of school at the start of supposed sixth hour, almost as if my instincts were screaming at me that I was breaking the rules. Except I wasn’t. My backpack was slung over my shoulder, light in the grace of the first day of school, by tomorrow it would be full of pointless books of homework that would sap my life away.

I passed the window of the Anatomy room, and saw Quinn trying to listen attentively to the teacher, and for some reason I snickered. I felt bad. The sidewalk was silent, not even the cars in the parking lot were making much noise, this side of town was relatively quiet this time of day, everyone away at work, or in school, so I felt as if I were the last person on earth.

Tomorrow I would definitely take my car, I needed to break it out of its cocoon in the garage and get it used to being run again so it wouldn’t die unexpectedly. Plus I could feel the way the wind and sweeping trees promised the fact that fall was coming, fast.

Then a snarl broke the silence.

I froze mid-step, glancing around frantically in the general direction I had heard it from. Silence echoed eerily as I gazed into the darkened woods, the same ones I had kicked a stone in earlier. But the moment I took another step to leave another snarl shattered my silence.

Not thinking in the slightest I stepped into the underbrush, trying to squeeze myself through the poking and prodding twigs that jabbed out in odd angles from its source.

This was my third mistake of the day, and I was positive from that point on not the worst of the mistakes I would be making in my near future. Struggling, trying to get there faster as I heard the snarls and growls grow more and more animate. I burst into a small clearing to see two men neck and neck with each other, both looking like their veins would burst out of their necks in anger.

Neither noticed me in the slightest, both caught up in an intense fight by the looks of it. I looked more into the two people, and immediately recognized familiar silver eyes, even if they weren’t scrutinizing me as per usual.

“Tristan?” I asked, my voice echoing in the clearing. But I had spoken one second too late, because in an explosion, both men burst into balls of snarling muscle and fur.

They both turned into giant wolves, aiming at the others necks with their sharp canines.

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