Chapter Ten

Relief, Let Down, Celebration

No, Ben wasn't quite a werewolf, but there was something wrong with him.

I wanted to watch the eclipse, but what was going on with Ben was pretty great too. He shuddered and shook and gasped for breath like he was ready to rip out of his parka and transform into a buff hairy monster, but in the end he just yawned and fell asleep. Like, actually fell asleep.

"Um, Ben?" I asked, prodding him with my boot.

He snorted in his sleep and rolled over.

Did he have some kind of full-moon-induced narcolepsy or something? Was that even a real thing? It didn't sound like a real thing.

At 9:04 I heard this shuffling and rustling behind me, back in the little foresty area nearby and totally started freaking out that it was an actual werewolf, or worse kidnappers or punks or something that'd distract me from the eclipse.

Instead, something barked at me, and a fluffy dog romped out of the woods, scuttling up to us. It was wearing a pink collar and eagerly sniffed Ben and licked his face before noticing me.

"Puppy!" I said. She came over and sniffed my boots. I glanced up at the moon. It was getting there. The dog licked my mitten and I rubbed her head. "You are so cute! And you're also a runaway from the looks of it." I couldn't hear anyone shouting for it and I didn't want the dog to run off again, so I patted my lap. "Come sit on my lap and I'll give you all the kisses you want."

Let's be honest. I freaking love dogs. We used to have a dog, Lucy, but she died three years ago, and Mom and Dad have refused to get us one since then. Lucy was a golden retriever corgi mix and she loved all of us equally, except that she loved me the most of all.

This dog was about the same size, but fluffy and black and white and brown. Her nose prodded me and I continued to give her pets, all the while staring up at the totally awesome eclipse.

I was too busy moon-watching to look at the dog's tags, so I named her DogBen as I held her with one hand on my lap. The name was in memory of Ben's failed dreams of being a werewolf. DogBen started wiggling so I let her free and she romped around in the snow, yapping and prancing while I watched the eclipse, took pictures for my sister, and generally geeked out.

After a few hours of the amazing eclipse I started getting cold and tired. It was well past midnight. I put away my telescope, wrangled DogBen and then started down at Actual Ben. I sat huddled up in blankets, wondering when he was going to wake up.

I poked him a few more times and then tried dragging him on the blanket back to my car, but he was heavy and it's not like I've ever voluntarily worked out in my life, so I gave up after a few pathetic tugs and flopped onto the blanket next to him. I yawned and laid back, admiring the night sky. DogBen snuffled at my face and then came to the rescue by enthusiastically and repeatedly licking Ben's face.

I guess pokes don't work, but dog slobber does. He groaned and opened his eyes. "Ugh… where am I?" He noticed me laying on the blanket next to him and sat up in alarm. "Kate? Are you alright? I didn't… like… ravage you or anything?"

"No," I said, sitting up. I'd debated what to tell him about what happened. It seemed sort of like a letdown, so I said, "you were quite tame, actually. You… made friends with this dog." I'm a terrible liar, but he seemed to buy it.

"Thank god," Ben muttered, rubbing his face. "But see what I mean? It's awful. Thanks for being there for me," he added, squeezing my mittened hand.

"…No problem," I said. "But we need to find out where DogBen's home is and then I'm going to bed." I pointed at the dog. I realized I probably shouldn't have told Ben her name. "The eclipse was freaking awesome though. I took like, a million pictures and watched it all from my telescope, and so that was cool."

Ben stared at me as if he didn't quite believe that his supposed-transformation hadn't terrorized me from ever speaking to him again.

Together we managed to get DogBen to sit still long enough to look at her tags to find her home. She lived a few blocks away, so Ben picked her up and held her on her lap while I drove to the house. The owners weren't too happy about being woken up at 3am by a couple teenagers ringing their doorbell, although they were surprised to see their dog, whose actual name was Princess.

I drove Ben back home and then drove myself back home, climbing into my bed, ignoring Lauren when she grumbled angrily at me for turning on the light, and fell asleep.

So there you go.

Christmas with my family is always fun, despite my parents' focus. On Christmas Eve Dad's parents always come over and we have lasagna and open up gifts from them, and then we're forced to sit in the living room and have really boring, awkward conversations about school, work, life, and inspirations. Grandpa and Grandma Johnson only had Dad, and by all accounts he had that most boring, dull, all American youth that is possibly imaginable.

Christmas day is a day of madness.

My mom comes from this big Irish family, which means that there are always cousins running around, at least four uncles and aunts getting shamelessly drunk, people getting into fights, people making up, and a general commotion when nothing ever goes the way that it's supposed to go

My Grandpa and Grandma Callahan always host the holiday festivities at their house, which is about an hour and a half drive from ours, and they tell people to bring food, but Grandma C just ends up making more food than any one (however large) family can eat. She's not that great of a cook (which all of her children have told her, on multiple occasions) but she doesn't let it stop her.

I spent Christmas with my multitude of cousins playing games, eating food, and opening up presents, and I almost forgot about how weird I'd made my school life until December 28th, when I got a call from Krista.

"Kate!" She bawled.

"Krista?!" I bawled back, confused.

"Hey, so anyway, Jeff is having this New Year's Eve Party and since I'm the party planner, I'm inviting you! We're meeting at his house around 8, and it's going to be epic!"

The only New Year's Eve parties I'd ever gone to had been hosted by my parents' friends, and usually resulted with me sitting awkwardly on a couch watching movies with a bunch of other kids who didn't have friends and whose parents' dragged them along.

"Really?" I asked, amazed. "Yes!"

"Great! You remember where Jeff lives, right?" Krista said. Before I could answer, she said, "ok, well, gotta go, see you soon!" and hung up.

A party! A party not related to school events!

"EMMA!" I yelled into the phone, having called her seconds ago. "Emma! Emma, a New Year's Eve Party!"

"What?" Emma asked, yawning loudly on the other end.

"I was invited to a non-school related party! You have to come! Emma, a real party!" I shouted, ignoring the pillow that Lauren threw at me to shut me up.

"Oh that's cool," Emma said with another yawn.

"You're coming, right?" I asked, dodging another pillow thrown my way. "I mean, because we never get to go to parties together and this would be totally awesome and if you don't come than I'm going to feel awful and—"

"Yeah sure I'll come," Emma said. "I'm going to bed. Call me tomorrow, ok?" She hung up, and I ran around the room before jumping onto Lauren's bed.

"Lauren I'm almost popular!" I shouted.

"Shut up, Kate!" Lauren groaned, pushing me off.

On New Year's Eve, Emma picked me up in her family's minivan, and eyed me when I hopped into the car.

"Aren't we supposed to you know… like dress up?" She asked. She was wearing a cute skirt and top, and a sweater that I'd never seen her wear before.

I glanced down at myself. I was wearing an old cardigan over a favorite t-shirt that I'd gotten from the Adler Planetarium and jeans. "Err," I said.

"You look fine," Emma said with a sigh, rolling her eyes and smiling anyway.

The party consisted of the History Club and many of the people who'd been in the Homecoming Group, as well as a few of their friends.

It was the largest party I'd ever been to, other than Jenny Appleton's eighth birthday party, in which she invited our entire class.

And the strange part was that people sort of recognized me.

"Oh," an anime-fiend said, "you're that girl who's dating Ben Ford, right?"

"We're just friends," I said. Not for the first time.

"He's really cute, huh?" She asked.

"Yeah he is," I said, but I have to admit my mind immediately went to DogBen and not actual Ben. Man, I wanted a dog.

The girl giggled and I realized that I wasn't making a good case for the two of us just being friends. I turned red and started babbling some of my usual nonsense.

The big drama of the night, luckily wasn't about me and Ben, but happened when Jeff walked into his room to find Erica making out with some guy from the Anime Club, and they'd had this huge public break-up (well, as huge and public as a New Years Eve party with a bunch of wonderful losers can be), and most everyone spent the rest of the night talking about it.

We gathered around Jeff's big flat-screen for the countdown and watched the ball drop in New York, shouting down with the tv. When it was midnight we all screamed "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" and grabbed pots and pans from Jeff's impressively stocked kitchen and ran around outside his house, banging them and shouting.

Even Emma was laughing when we crowded back inside. "We should put something crazy like this in our story," she said, rubbing her hands from the cold. "A noisy celebration for the alignment of constellations or something."

It was a good start to 2011.