Wild Cat

A/N: This one´s about the day in which Ash and Nichole met for the first time from Ash´s perspective. "Wild Cat" has been sitting on my notebook for quite a while, I wrote it before Melted Emeralds but I guess I´m too lazy to type sometimes. I´m sure there are mistakes and all the things as always but... typing it was enough hahahaha -what a bad writer...

oh, the pictures, they took me a looooong time to find and I couldn´t decide between both of them so I¨m just using them both.

********

“Ashley, we´re taking you and mom to the city with us” my uncle told me, he´d taken me out to the porch to talk in private. As he said this I felt anger rising in my chest. He hadn´t asked, he was saying it like it was final.

“Lola doesn´t want to go to the city, she´s never wanted that” I said to him calmly but firmly. Living with Lola, my grandma, had taught me that being calmed but firm was the best way to go about things.

“Mom is getting old, Ash, she´s not strong as before to take care of you, to raise you properly and you will live better in the city, you will go to a better school there than in here”

“She´s raised me well enough and she´s taught me enough to be able to take care of myself and you don´t need to worry about my school because it´s just fine”

“Ashley, be reasonable. In a couple of years mom will be someone to take care of and in just three years you´ll be going to college… you don´t want to be held back to take care of an elderly woman” my uncle said and the rage in me seemed to boil

“She´s never thought you or me were holding her back. I´m sorry that you feel this way but Lola is no sacrifice for me, not now, not ever”

“Ash, you don´t get it. I just want to take care of you and mom”

“Well, don´t feel guilty because we are fine –I was surprised that I had managed to suppress my anger this long- no, you know what? Feel guilty because you´re thinking of taking her away from her home without even letting her decide. That´s not how she raised us” I ended up hissing and then I couldn´t take it anymore so I just walked away, going around the house to the back of the property. I passed a couple more houses separated by big yards and then a road that was bordered by the thick woods.

Lola, my grandma, used to bring me to the woods whenever I have had a tantrum when I was little and then when I started to ask about my mother and then about the jerk that is my father. She said walking inside the green would calm me and it did except that this time I was really mad. Louis, my uncle, had gone away a long time ago and had never come back to visit Lola or to help her in any way and now he just wanted to take us as if we were things. He has to be out of his mind if he thinks Lola and I will go just like that.

I had been walking fast and then I slowed down as I calmed down but by then it had been over an hour already. Lola never liked it when I got so deep in the woods, she was mostly worried that some snake or some animal attacked me but I had gone in without noticing how much I had walked. I had been following the river that way I wouldn´t get lost from my path though I knew well this part of the woods, however; it was the afternoon and the woods are tricky, one moment there´s sun light and the next it´s all dark.

My mouth was dry so I stopped and squatted to drink water. The river was crystal clear; I could see the bed of rocks under it. Lola and I used to come to the river during summer to swim but she´d gotten old and she can´t walk long distances anymore. Suddenly, I heard leaves and tweaks crumbling and I looked up thinking it was some animal, instead I saw a girl staring at me, she was wearing a blue plaid pleated skirt with a white shirt and a blazer with the badge of the fancy school on top of the hill, in the middle of the woods.

She had obviously come out without permission, those fancy kids don´t wander around in the woods; they don’t know them. Maybe she was lost. My mouth became a smirk as I thought this. She eyed me without showing any emotion on her expression and then she started to walk again. She was very graceful and didn´t seem clumsy at all, it was like she knew the forest, her feet didn´t seem to trip with the trees roots, this made me curious and since she was going down and I was ready to go back home I started to walk her direction.

The breeze of the woods touched the girl´s hair and skirt making them flow a little, she didn´t seem worried at all about her hair being messed by the wind and she didn´t seem worried about me at all even if she was alone or maybe she hadn´t heard me, so, I decided to make my presence known because I was not a crazy stalker who follows people or girls like that, yet, it had been about twenty minutes and she still didn´t seem scared or lost.

“The going back to school might be hard –I said because I knew going from here to the top of the hill took about two hours, she glanced me, still with no readable expression on her face or eyes, I smiled because this girl seemed tough, no blush, no nervous eyes, like she knew she could take me if I tried anything –yes, I know you go to that fancy school on the hill” I said mostly to get her to talk to me. I was intrigued but she didn´t answer.

“Yeah –I chuckled- all snobby and cold…” I said because I had seen groups of girls and guys from there on our small town, when they saw us it was like we weren´t good enough to be paid attention to but it made it funnier for us commoners to tease them except I had never seen any of those girls get close to the woods despite that they lived surrounded by it. I had to know this rebel girl.

“…But you, pretty girl –I was no blind man- have gone out and you don´t seem the least scared of the dirt. And though I’ve never gone all the way up I know it´s a long way. No sprained ankle yet?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Where do you come from?” she finally spoke and her voice was as pretty as her looks

“I’m a wild cat. I live here” I said with a smirk. Some of the girls that visited our town during the weekends used the word cat to talk about us in a diminishing manner but instead of affecting me I found it funny.

“Where does the kitten drink his milk?” she had a pretty voice that seemed to mingle with the forest and was she asking me for my address? And above all she was talking to me without that snobbish tone those girls who wore that same uniform had. She just got prettier. I chuckled at my hormones taking over my mind

“I hunt” I raised my eyebrow and wondered what she´d say at my attempt of being cool

“I doubt that, you look like a domestic cat” she matched my tone but she was being playful

“…And look at my luck! I´ve found myself a fine kitten” I half smiled, she didn´t seem affected by my words

“A real wild cat” the corner of her mouth went up as she closed her brown eyes with her long eyelashes bating once. I snickered at her calling herself a cat. She had to know what it meant for a Burgeoys student to say that to other people and specially to call herself that. This girl was something else.
Suddenly, I saw her change her path and I was having too much of a good time with her hidden playfulness.

“Kitten´s gotten scared?” I was smiling but then I wondered if maybe she was actually scared, I was a stranger after all

“Wild cats don´t leave the wilderness” she said looking back to me and then she sat with her back against a tree, there was no way she was going to make it on time before the sunset but maybe she was tired.

“Are you sure you´re not too tired to go back up?” I asked raising my voice a bit. I was still on the other side of the river, she didn´t answer. “I can give you a piggy ride” I offered and my offer was sincere. Lola had taught me to help those in need but then she wouldn´t say a thing and once again, Lola had taught me that if a girl says no, it´s no and even though this girl hadn´t answer I was pretty sure her silence was a no.

“Ok, ok –I said- I know when to leave a girl alone” and with that I started to walk the rest of the way out of the woods, across the street and back home to Lola. I was hoping that Louis had gone already. I was wondering if I´d ever see the girl again.