• Prologue

    When confronted with the choice of living for revenge or to protect... which do you chose? At first, I would always choose what I thought to be right, that we should live to protect. But now, I wasn’t so sure. What if part of the protecting included the act of revenge or vice versa? Could you say that you could choose both? Right now, nothing seemed to make much sense. My head knew the difference between protection and revenge, but my heart wanted to fuse them together. As my mind swam with strings of thoughts, I heard a howl in the distance. It quieted the chatter in my brain, though it didn’t silence it, but it did bring me back to my surroundings and actions.
    I had been walking aimlessly through the snow in the woods. My feet were still moving, I noticed and I was looking up into the black night, watching the stars. The dark greenery moved past me, swishing silently. The sound of the snow crunching beneath my feet drifted to my cold ears. White swirled around my face as the snowflakes fell. The wind whistled as it began to pick up. I heard another howl, but it seemed closer this time. Finally freed from the trance of my wandering thoughts, my eyes focused down onto my feet. Suddenly a scream caught in my throat. That howling that I had heard saved my life. I was inches away from walking off the side of a cliff...
    Thankfully, the howling I had heard pulled me away from my aimless wandering. It had made me stop, and now I was forever grateful that I could hear, especially that the whistling wind hadn’t drowned out the howling.
    I stared in horror at the abyss bellow me. I stared at what would have been my death. The cliff side seemed to go down forever. It was hard to tell what was at the bottom, especially because it was night. I couldn’t tell what was ground and what wasn’t. Minutes passed as a gaped at the cliff side. A third howl ripped through the night and I spun around. The wolf belonging to the howl was standing only a few yards away from me. The wolf didn’t look threatening, but who was I to judge that. I knew nothing of wolves to begin with, so why was I telling myself that by making assumptions now, they would be true? My once cluttered mind cleared. It was blank. I tried to scramble through it to think of what to do, but I could find nothing. My body remained frozen as the wolf began to paw through the snow towards me.
    I had the wolf in front of me, the cliff behind me. What had gotten myself into? Was I fated to die this way? If I backed up, I would fall of the cliff, if I stayed where I was, there was a good chance that the wolf would kill me off. There was little hope of running. Little hope of surviving. Maybe there was no hope at all. Now, all I could do was stand there in the freezing snow and wind, wondering what the outcome would be, begging for, if death should come upon me, it to be quick and painless. All I could do now, was wait.


















    Chapter 1
    “Toni, time to get up and—OUCH!”
    I woke to the sound of my younger brother. Apparently he had tripped over my binder or some other school object that was lying on the floor. It was Monday. It was the first day of the last week of school before winter vacation. I groaned.
    “Jody, what are you doing?” I asked groggily as I lifted my head from the pillow and pushed my dirty blonde hair out of my eyes. Jody stood up and brushed off, as if that would do him any good. He was never the cleanest to begin with anyway. Jodi sighed.
    “Mom was right, I really do need to clean up in here...”
    “It’s my room why should you care?” I asked in agitation, I didn’t realize then, but now I know that I had heard him wrong. He ignored me. I wanted to go back to sleep, but knew I couldn’t, “Anyway,” I continued, “You were going to say something else before you fell and rudely woke me up.”
    “...Right...” he hesitated, “Mom wanted to know if you were packed yet or not.”
    “Packed? For what?”
    “Winter vacation. We’re going to visit some old relatives of mom’s, cousins and aunties and uncles I think. We’re going on Friday.” He said.
    “This Friday?” I asked in alarm.
    “Yeah...you didn’t pack, did you?” he asked, knowing the answer already. It was true; I hadn’t packed. The whole vacation thing slipped my mind to be honest. I pulled off my sheets and got out of bed. I stretched then looked at Jody with a curious look on my face. He was still in my room. Why?
    “Jody, why are you still here? Don’t you have to be somewhere, like, I don’t know, your own room?”
    “...Toni, I am in my room...”
    “...What?”
    “I’m already in my room... you—“
    “I was sleep walking again, wasn’t I?” I asked, interrupting him. He nodded. Sighing heavily I made my way across the room, stepping cautiously so I wouldn’t trip like Jody. His room floor was strewn with old school supplies, movie cases, a broken game controller, dirty clothes and socks, and last night’s box of pizza. Now I could see why he had tripped.
    “Don’t you ever clean?”
    “Of course I do! I cleaned up two nights ago.” Jody answered.
    “I’d have hated to see what it looked like before then...” I replied, shivering slightly at the thought, “I’ll see you downstairs...” I left his room then went to my own across the hall and grabbed my favorite pair of jeans and the first shirt from the top of my drawers and headed off to the bathroom.