Full Moon Fiancé

Wolf

The book was frustratingly vague. Diana learned some information. It was a young nine year old Joshua who used it. He wrote about her often, she noticed, glowing with happiness that he had noticed her and written about her even more than he had written of James. She knew the competition she had always felt with James was silly, but the childhood insecurity had long haunted her.

James had never been anything but kind to her. She’d always thought of him as a close friend, too, growing up. But she’d never felt as attached to him as she did to Joshua. Maybe because even as a child, she had sensed how Anna had pushed the two boys together, and excluded her a little bit at a time. In response, Diana had clung to Joshua even harder. James’s parents had never done such a thing, but then again she didn’t know them well. They traveled often. For work, James always said. He was mostly raised by a nanny. James’s parents were nice, but they were distant. From Diana, but also from James himself. It had been years since Diana had even thought about them.

They hadn’t attended Joshua’s funeral.

She’d thought it was weird then. Now, she wondered if they’d known too. She wondered if everyone had known. Everyone except her.

She gently caressed the worn pages of the little book as she continued to read. Much of the writing was mundane. He detailed his thoughts about his classmates, his dinner, and his schoolwork. Though the writings made her smile, they didn’t shed any light on her current situation. None of it was even particularly new, she mused, since she and Joshua had been close even back then, and she remembered his gripings about how annoying Ryan Felder was about his basketball card collection and how much he hated science class. And though she’d been surprised to learn that he cheated on a spelling quiz once, she didn’t think it was particularly relevant information. It wasn’t the kind of thing a man in his twenties faked his own death over, really.

I am learning multiplietin at school, one page said. Below that line, Joshua had tried to spell “multiplication” over and over, many attempts scribbled out before he finally found the right one. It’s hard! I don’t understand why I need it. Mother says I am going to be a great wolf– that caught Diana’s attention. She felt her nose scrunch as she wondered what it meant.

“Wolf?” she murmured. Joshua had long expected to follow in his father’s footsteps as a lawyer, and she had heard lawyers referred to as sharks, but never wolves. She kept reading, shrugging the term off, but it was repeated a few lines below, catching her attention again.

Wolves don’t need multipla– it was crossed out– multiplication. But mom says I do, anyway. She says that nowadays wolves have to know everything, and that things were easier when we didn’t have to go to school. That sounds nice. But if I didn’t go to school, I wouldn’t know Diana. She’s my best friend.

Mom says James is my best friend. But I would know him even if I didn’t go to school. I think she just wants him to be my best friend because James’s dad is my dad’s– here, he had crossed out a word, not gently, but scribbled over it, so that she couldn’t read it no matter how hard she squinted. Because she is best friends with James’s mom, Joshua had written next. And I guess he is my best friend, too. But Diana is even more my best friend because I don’t have to be friends with her!

Diana felt herself smile slightly, even as she wondered what that meant.

I don’t think my mom likes Diana that much, the passage continued. This made the smile on Diana’s face flicker. She says that we shouldn’t mix with them too much.

This hurt so much that Diana felt as if she was in physical pain. She had always suspected that Anna had looked down on her for being poor, or for being from a single family household. But seeing it written out that way made her want to cry.

I don’t think that is true though. I want to tell Diana about us, but I’m not allowed to. But she will probably figure it out. She’s so smart! She even takes a special class every Thursday for gifted students. I’m jealous. I want to take that class but I didn’t get a high enough test score on the MCAS exam… But I get to try again next year. Maybe we can be gifted together!

Diana smiled again. Joshua had joined the gifted class in sixth grade.

My mom has some silly rules, Joshua’s diary continued. My father is more relaxed. I bet he would let me tell Diana about us. But he always says we have to do what my mother says. I think it’s because mom’s dad is a super important wolf. Dad is a little afraid of him.

Diana shook her head. There it was again. Wolf. What did it mean? Joshua’s grandfather hadn’t been a lawyer. She had only met him once. He had been a… banker, maybe. Diana couldn’t remember. Everyone in Joshua’s family on both sides had money, but Anna’s parents had made their money. Thomas’s family had inherited it. If anyone should have been intimidated, it shouldn’t have been Thomas, a wealthy, handsome, successful lawyer.

I wonder if mom will let me dress up as a werewolf on Halloween! I bet if I do that, Diana will figure it out. Maybe I can drop hints. After all, if she figures it out on her own, I’m not telling her. Right? I don’t even have to tell her that she is right. I just don’t have to lie and say she’s wrong…

I can’t wait until I get to be a werewolf for real. Dad says it's the best. I saw him transform once. He was so scary!

But Diana wouldn’t be afraid of me.