Page 2 of Raw

“Let’s go! We should watch a movie. Remember the one I told you about? Where they’re in this spaceship?”

“Passengers?” he asked with a smile as we started to walk toward the parking lot.

“Yes, that! We should watch it,” I told him.

“Hey, Fen!” a familiar voice called out, and we all turned around to see Kody and Duke walk our way.

“You’re leaving already? We’re gonna party at Duke’s. You should come,” Kody said, giving me a look but looking away quickly.

That’s all I ever got from boys at this school.

Or in the streets.

Or anywhere.

I squeezed Fen’s hand tightly, silently telling him that I didn’t want him to go party with them.

Would he even have fun? He never attended parties.

We usually watched movies at night or went to the diner across the street to eat our favorite burgers and fries.

“Sorry, man. I promised my family to stay home tonight. I’ll be leaving soon, and I want to stay with them before I have to say goodbye,” he explained.

Leaving.

He’d go live with Papa in Wiseman.

In the wilderness.

“Ah, right. I forgot about that. You sure you wanna live in the forest? It gets crazy cold out there at night,” Kody reminded him.

As if we didn’t know.

We spent every summer with Papa, sleeping in the treehouse, and hunting for our own food.

It’s where I wanted to live too.

I couldn’t find a connection with society, just like Papa, and being close to him, learning new things and how to survive in the wild was what I wanted to do when I graduated as well.

“Yeah, heard about that,” Fen said sarcastically, then he held out his fist to say his last goodbye.

Kody and Duke fist-bumped him, but before we turned around to walk away, Kody looked at me again. “You gonna go live in the wild as well?”

The sudden judgmental look he gave me was proof that Fennec’s choice to live with Papa was okay, but me wanting to leave society and make my own damn rules was frowned upon.

Sexist fuck.

“She will, as soon as she graduates,” Fennec replied for me.

Duke let out a laugh while Kody grinned. “Gotta make sure she won’t get eaten by a bear.”

I ignored his comment, seeing as I’ve helped Papa hunt down a bear before.

I was little, but it was my greatest achievement.

That bear’s fur was now on my bed, keeping me warm at night.

When we turned and walked back to the car, Mama caressed the back of my head without saying a word but showing compassion.

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