Wolf E. - Prologue and Chapter 1
#3 of Wolf E.
There are five of us that live in Granny's foster home. Five. I've heard rumors said that my brothers and I are what drove poor old Granny crazy like she is today. After all, even one teenager can be a handful, but there are exactly five of us, making it five times the trouble. or maybe ten times, because we're all males...?
Oh, and did I mention that we're wolves? Yah, that's right. wolves. Five teenage wolves. That's a hell of a load to take care of, making us twenty times the trouble. Naturally, Wolf A. came first- Albert (we like to call him Al). He's 19 years old and the oldest, and by far the best looking of us all with his white fur and blue eyes. Then came Wolf B., Benjamin, a.k.a. Benji. Benji's 18 and has brown fur and green eyes, and he plays basketball, making him very popular at school. Wolves C. and D. are 17 year old twins named Collin and Dakota. Al jokingly calls them Chip and Dale because they're always together and because the initals fit. They both have grey fur, but you can tell them apart by their eyes. Collin's eyes are grey and Dakota's are brown.
Me, I'm the youngest (not quite 16 yet), Wolf E. My name is Edward, and I have black fur and yellow eyes. I'm a lot smaller than my brothers (in more ways than one, if you catch my drift) and not as fit. But what separates me from them more than my age and size is my creative spirit. I love to rap, and my brothers hate it.
Them, they're all the body-builder types that play athletic sports and practically worship cars. In my whole life I have never liked sports. I got hit in the face by a dodge-ball in gym class once, and it broke my nose. Since then, I've never played willingly again. (That doesn't mean the coaches didn't force me. *sulks*) As for the cars, I'm the only one out of us five that doesn't have a driver's license. They say I was "daydreaming" in class and didn't pass my driver's test. Truth is, I wasn't daydreaming, I was rapping in my head. There's a difference.
Daydreaming is when you sit around thinking about something that's never going to benefit you in your whole life. It has no purpose. What I do is art. An art that I hope to make a career of some day. But, back on subject, who needs a car anyway? I actually prefer to ride my bike to school and around town. Of course, if we ever go somewhere out of town, Al can always drive us in that fancy car of his. It's actually Granny's car, but since she's too old to drive anymore, Al just kinda took it over and fixed it up all pretty and such. Sometimes, I'd kinda like to take a bat to that car, but then I feel guilty for thinking that. Granny raised us boys to be good Christian kids (Yeah, I know, Christian wolves? right?) and so I usually try to be as good as possible. It's not always easy, but somehow I make it... most of the time.
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7:00 a.m. the alarm rings. Wolf E. rises and rubs the sleep from his tired eyes. He glances at the calendar on his right. Still another week 'til my birthday, he thinks to himself. He quickly showers and dresses in a pair of faded jeans and a baggy red t-shirt.
When he got downstairs to the kitchen, his four older brothers were already there eating their breakfasts. E. cheerily plopped his bottom down in his favourite chair and made his request to Granny.
"Bacon, please," he said with a smile.
"Good morning, Edward," Granny crooned at him as if he were a child. "How many slices, dear?" E. thought for only a moment before replying,
"Seven, please."
Al looked up from his newspaper reading and glared at E.
"You wanna get fat, little bro?" demanded Al, accusingly. Dakota tried and failed to surpress an amused chuckle. "Look at you. You're hardly ever physically active, and you're eating all that fatty bacon for breakfast! Look at your tummy, you flabby little brat!"
Thankfully, Granny interrupted him there. "That's quite enough of that, Albert. Leave your brother alone. He's just fine the way he is." And she scooped him out the seven bacon slices and placed the maple syrup bottle in front of his plate. "Don't forget to say grace, dear."
E. bowed his head and closed his eyes to pray before his meal, then said "Amen" and dug into the bacon. His brothers started to discuss boring junk like cars and sports that E. was totally and completely uninterested in so he just ignored them and focused on the taste of his bacon. First, he poured maple syrup all over the pile of meat and then shoved it in his mouth, savouring the sugar, and then finishing with a delightfully salty flavour. sugar and salt... That had a nice ring to it. He thought about it a bit. Sugar and Salt! His eyes suddenly opened wide and his ears pricked up. Wolf E. rushed to grab his spiral notebook out of his backpack and scribbled down the first things that came to his mind.
it all starts with sugar it all ends in salt
and all that seems to matter is its not your fault...
He stopped there. stuck. again. He let out a sigh of disappointment. He'd really thought he had something there for a second, but it was gone now. He could feel someone looking over his shoulder.
"Whatcha got there, E.?" asked Collin, by far the nicest of his four brothers.
"Umm... nothing," he lied. "Just something I remembered I had to write down for English class." Collin snorted. He didn't buy into that lie for one second.
"C'mon, bro. It's another one of your silly rap songs isn't it?" Edward sighed and lowered his face.
"Yah, Collin. It is... it's a rap." He tried to ignore Albert's sneer. Collin may have been nicer than the others, but he didn't like rap any more than they did, and he really didn't have that much common sense. He didn't mean to call Albert's attention to it; he just wasn't thinking about what he said.
"Whatever," said Benji. "Let's leave the rap star to his fatty bacon and smudgy notebook. Anybody wanna shoot some hoops before school?" His suggestion was greeted with cheerful agreements from the twins. Albert ignored them and went back to reading the news. E. said nothing. He knew the invitation wasn't meant for him. And anyway, he hated basketball. So while three out of four of his brothers piled into the car, poor, pathetic loser, Wolf E. was left to his fatty, salty, sugary bacon and a notebook, smudged from being erased so many times, head filled with unfinished rap lyrics that he felt would never get any better... because Wolf E. felt that he wasn't good enough.
He finished breakfast at 7:45 and didn't have a ride to school. That was fine with him. E. loved riding his bike. He thought it was somewhat ironic that his brothers scorned him for not playing sports, and yet they drove that dang car everywhere, whereas E. always preferred to ride his bike.
Pedaling down the highway, he could relax and let his mind wander. There were no critical brothers here to tell him what to do or say or think. E. could just be himself. He began to rap in his head again.
it all starts with sugar it all ends in salt
and all that seems to matter is its not your fault
and nobody really blames you but they just cant blame themselves
and thats why...
He tried to think of some phrase ending with the word "Hell," but nothing seemed to come at that time. He pulled up into the schoolyard just as the bell rang and had to hurry to class, but not before stopping a moment to write down in his notebook what he had come up with on the way there...