Pru and I’ve been training for the last week. She has been teaching me how to block and throw punches. I’ve been debating telling Pru about the wolf in my yard but she seems really stressed out lately. The neighborhood dogs always alert me when he is around. Every night he just sits, staring up at my window. I know Pru will flip out when she finds out I haven’t told her, but I’ll take the risk.
My mom keeps hounding me that it isn’t healthy to hang out with only one girl, I should date around. I assure her for the zillionth time that we are just friends. I tell her about Oakley teaching us martial arts, so I have him come over and meet my family. He is pretty cool to hang out with, but I see how Pru looks at him. Her eyes follow him when he enters and exits a room; he is oblivious to her attention the attention I’d love to get from her.
Pru keeps telling me that as soon as the snow melts we are going to do a special assignment. It doesn’t snow in Oklahoma that often, it can snow one day a few inches and the second day it will be a balmy seventy five degrees. This winter it is different, it snowed and melted and froze and snowed again. For a couple of weeks we have dealt with the worst weather Oklahoma has seen in years. The ice storms have devastated the small towns, causing power outages and lost wages. Pru’s family shovels driveways and take fresh baked bread and canned vegetables to the families that don’t have generators.
I learn that her family has the place set up so that if they are under attack or situations like bad weather, they will be able to survive for a long time. There is a tech room set up with monitors and several of the Pack members have gone to college to obtain computer-engineering degrees just to help the family. There are storm shelters, and bunkers full of canned foods and water. It would make Gary England (the weatherman) envious. His weather forecasts are the gospel around my house. You’d think my mom and him were best friends the way she will say “Abel, Gary said it is going to storm tomorrow. Gary did this, Gary did that.” I think she secretly harbors a childhood crush on him.