Wolverine Claws

Date: 7/18/2026

I don’t really have enemies. At least, I like to think I don’t. But if you held me at knifepoint and screamed, “Name your enemy!” I’d probably yell… “Amy!” …before immediately apologising for raising my voice. Calling her an enemy feels ridiculously dramatic. Arch-nemesis sounds like she should be hidden away in a gothic mansion, draped in a velvet cloak, stroking a white Persian cat beside a roaring fire. She isn’t. She’s just… Amy. Kylie’s other best friend. Or, as I have affectionately christened her in my own head… Wolverine Claws. A nickname inspired by the weapon-like nails that have always made me feel one wrong comment away from being shredded. The woman I’ve spent years competing against, completely unaware it was a competition. The most one-sided rivalry since a pigeon declared war on a statue. The truth is, Amy has always felt like the person Kylie looked towards, while I became the person she looked straight through. Still there. Still waiting. But somehow invisible. When we were little, Kylie and I were inseparable. Then secondary school arrived and did what secondary schools do best: take perfectly good friendships and throw them into the brutal experiment of adolescence. Overnight, I disappeared. Not literally, of course. I still turned up every morning in the same oversized jumper, clutching the same rucksack that probably weighed more than I did. But socially? I may as well have been wearing an invisible cloak. Kylie and Amy seemed to fit effortlessly into the mould secondary school rewarded. Confident. Comfortable in their own skin. The sort of girls who walked through the world as though they already knew exactly where they belonged. I, on the other hand, was what you’d call a late bloomer. Barely four feet tall. Painfully shy. I wouldn’t have recognised style if Vogue magazine had marched up and slapped me around the face. I was far too aware of my own existence, never mind my own skin. Looking back, I suppose it was only natural that Kylie gravitated towards people who moved through the world with that kind of effortless confidence. I found my own tribe. Wonderfully weird. Slightly awkward. The kind of people who didn’t quite fit into the carefully constructed boxes secondary school seemed so determined to create. While everyone else seemed preoccupied with boys, push-up bras and losing their virginity, we were tackling far more important questions… Like whether strawberry-flavoured water was simply collected from streams running through strawberry fields. And honestly? I still think we may have been onto something. I only really knew Amy through dance classes. And even there… She was magnificent. Always showing off those gloriously long legs of hers, completely unfazed by the attention they attracted. She seemed born for wall-to-wall mirrors, while I spent most of the lesson trying not to catch my own reflection in them. Box splits. Perfect posture. She danced like someone who expected to be watched. I danced like someone hoping nobody was. Was I jealous? Probably. She hadn’t just mastered dance. In my teenage brain… she had mastered being everything I wasn’t. And, worst still… she seemed to have stolen my best friend along the way. Life, thankfully, has a habit of refusing to stay still. People drift. People return. Sometimes friendships get lost in the noise of growing up only to find their way back when nobody is looking. After school, Kylie and I somehow found our way back to one another, as though we’d simply paused a conversation years earlier and quietly picked up where we’d left it. The awkwardness melted surprisingly quickly. We just clicked back into place. Beneath everything that had happened, we were still us. She was there when Phoebe was born. I was seventeen and absolutely terrified. Barely old enough to understand mortgages, insurance, or why fitted sheets behaved like some sort of hostile fabric puzzle, let alone motherhood. She held my hand, told me to breathe, and stayed wonderfully calm while I quietly convinced myself I was moments from exploding. Meanwhile, Phoebe’s father was asleep in the waiting room. Because of course he was. Somehow, he managed to sleep through the exact moment his entire life was about to change. Bloody typical. Then suddenly there she was. This tiny, squashed little human placed into my arms… completely unaware that she had turned my entire world upside down. Kylie’s life looked different too. She took what most people would probably call the sensible path. College. Part-time work. Stability. The kind of life that came with sensible shoes and pensions. But somehow we never drifted completely out of each other's orbit. She wasn’t there every day. She didn’t need to be. She was there enough. Enough that I believed we’d survived those awkward years intact. So when she got married to Nick.. Quite possibly the most spectacularly boring man ever assembled from entirely beige ingredients. A man I only ever refer to as Trumpet Nose. (That’s another story.) I naturally assumed I’d be maid of honour. Not a bridesmaid. The maid of honour. Her oldest friend. The person who remembered her before popularity, before adulthood, before the world started reshaping us into people we never expected to become. Instead… Amy. Of course it was Amy. There she was. Standing proudly beside Kylie. Centre stage in every photograph. While I hoovered somewhere near the flower arrangements. Bitch. I hated that it hurt. Mostly because I’d convinced myself it wouldn’t. After all, I was an adult now. I wasn’t that girl in secondary school anymore. I shouldn’t have cared. But I did. More than I ever admitted. Amy always intimidated me. Those Wolverine claws. Those skyscraper stilettos. Lycra stretched so tightly it looked vacuum-sealed. We’d barely exchanged more than awkward pleasantries over the years. She didn’t know me. I certainly didn’t know her. Yet somehow, she had become the person I measured myself against. Which brings me to my dream. There’s a knock at the front door. Not Richard’s discreet little tap-tap — our trusted delivery guy and long-standing accomplice in my husband’s trainer habit. No. This knock doesn’t ask permission. Ratta-tat-tat. Firm. Confident. The sort of knock that already assumes it’s been invited in. I already know I’m not going to like who’s standing on the other side. I open it. Amy. Oh, for fuck’s sake. Of all the people my subconscious could drag back onto the stage… “Oh…” I say. “Hi.” She raises one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “You gonna invite me in?” I wasn’t planning on it. But apparently we’re skipping the social convention where people pretend they’re thrilled to see each other. I step aside. She struts past me. Her stilettos fire across the wooden floor like distant gunshots. Clack. Clack. Clack. It’s ridiculous, really. She isn’t doing anything threatening. She’s simply existing in my hallway. Yet somehow, her presence makes the entire house feel smaller. We stand there wrapped in a silence thick enough to butter toast. My brain races ahead, trying to predict which humiliation she’s chosen today. Maybe she’ll spit in my face. Maybe she’ll pull my hair. Maybe she’ll claw my eyes out with those infamous wolverine nails. Instead… She smiles. A real one. “I owe you an apology.” I blink. “You… do?” “Yeah,” she says. “I’ve been a bitch to you.” Well. That wasn’t the plot twist I’d been expecting. “I never really gave you a chance.” She says it matter-of-factly. So simply that, for a moment, I wonder whether all those years meant far more to me than they ever did to her. I don’t really know what to do with that. “I suppose…” I manage. “I want to make things right.” Before I can question what she means, she reaches for my hand. Those immaculate wolverine claws. Warm fingers. Firm grip. She leads me upstairs. And because dream logic apparently operates without rules, consequences, or even the most basic safeguarding, I follow. She rattles the bedroom door. “Does this lock?” “No.” “Oh well.” Then — Without warning — Her lips crash into mine. Good Lord. Well… That escalated with astonishing speed. “Amy—” Honestly, the woman kisses like she’s trying to Hoover my soul out through my face. “Bed,” she orders, pointing one lethal fingernail towards the mattress. “Now.” “I really think we should—” Apparently, my opinion isn’t required. She pushes me backwards. I land on the mattress with all the elegance of a dropped sack of potatoes. She clambers on top of me. “Amy—” Nope. Face. Being. Eaten. Again. Just as her hands reach for the hem of her top… The bedroom door flies open. Maxi. Holding a family-sized bag of M&Ms. He freezes. One lonely chocolate slips from the packet, bounces off the carpet, and slowly rolls beneath the bed. Nobody acknowledges it. “Mum?” I leap upright so quickly I nearly concuss myself. “Nothing to see here!” Brilliant. Excellent start. “We’re just…” Think. Think, Amanda. “Testing the mattress springs.” For God’s sake. Testing the mattress springs? That was the emergency excuse my brain had bravely dragged out of storage? Maxi stares. At Amy. At me. Back to Amy. The poor lad looks like someone’s just cancelled his Minecraft subscription. “Yeah…” He says slowly. “I can see that.” The door closes. Not a slam. Just one slow, defeated click. Which is somehow so much worse. Silence. The kind that settles over a room after everyone’s dignity has quietly packed a bag and left through the nearest exit. How… How, in the space of roughly three minutes, have I gone from answering the front door to being caught in bed with the woman I’ve spent twenty years silently resenting? Dreams are exhausting. “You’d better go.” I don’t shout it. I don’t need to. “I think you’ve done enough damage.” Something changes in her face. The confidence slips. Just for a heartbeat. For the first time since she arrived, she isn’t the woman with the Wolverine Claws. She’s simply Amy. She looks… Smaller. Human. “If you tell Kylie…” She points one immaculate nail towards me. “…I’ll fucking end you.” There we are. The Wolverine Claws are back. Nice to see the old Amy again. She turns and walks away. Clack. Clack. Clack. The stilettos echo down the hallway. The front door closes. I sit on the edge of the bed, staring at the closed bedroom door, wondering whether my subconscious has finally run out of sensible plotlines. Later that evening, I’m sitting opposite Mat in a restaurant. Oddly… They don’t serve food. Only jasmine Thai tea. Our favourite. The drink we’ve shared almost every evening for years while slumped on the sofa watching whatever happened to be on television. Comfort, poured into delicate china cups. It smells exactly like home. “You haven’t touched yours,” Mat says. “What’s wrong?” “I’m… not very thirsty.” He looks genuinely crestfallen. “But…” He looks down at the china cup. “…this is the best jasmine tea in town.” He nudges it gently towards me. “They even serve it in proper china. These people know what they’re doing.” I smile. A small one. The kind people produce when they’re trying very hard to look normal. How painfully middle-aged we’ve become. The height of romance is finding somewhere that sells decent premium loose-leaf tea in proper cups. Twenty-year-old us would be horrified. Fifty-year-old us would probably ask if they validate parking. I think of the Wolverine Claws. The stilettos. Maxi’s face. Twenty-six years of quietly believing I was standing just outside somebody else’s spotlight. “I need to tell you something.” He immediately stops stirring his tea. “Oh no.” A pause. “You shrank my favourite jumper again, haven’t you?” “Worse.” He audibly gasps. “Worse than knitwear?” “I think…” I lower my voice, despite the fact nobody in the restaurant has the faintest interest in our conversation. “…I almost had an intimate moment with my arch-nemesis.” “Nobby Neil?” “No.” “Ball Bag Chin?” “Absolutely not.” He frowns. “Then who?” I hesitate. “Amy.” Her name tastes strange leaving my mouth. “Wolverine Claws?” “Yes.” “Cruella de Vil?” “That’s the one.” He leans back in his chair. Then comes the longest sigh I’ve heard outside an IKEA on a Bank Holiday weekend. “I don’t know what to say.” “I know.” I stare into my untouched tea. “She just… appeared.” “And then?” “And then she dry-humped me onto a mattress.” He nods. Not shocked. Not horrified. Just… processing. “Did you see boobs?” Typical. “No. She didn’t get that far.” He closes his eyes. “Thank God.” Just enough disappointment creeps into his voice to make me wonder whether he means thank God for me… or thank God for the missed opportunity. Around us, the restaurant grows louder. Cups clink. People laugh. Conversations overlap until every voice dissolves into the same comforting blur. I watch the steam curl lazily from my jasmine tea before disappearing into the air. For years, I’d convinced myself Amy was everything I wasn’t. Confident. Chosen. The woman standing comfortably in the spotlight while I quietly occupied the edges of the photograph. Funny, really. Dreams have an irritating habit of rewriting old stories. Instead of arriving at my door to finish the rivalry I’d spent half my life inventing, she arrived with an apology. Then, naturally, tried to snog my face off. Because apparently even my subconscious can’t deliver emotional growth without making it deeply uncomfortable first. Kylie isn’t in my life anymore. Not because Amy won. Not because I lost. Just because some friendships quietly reach their final chapter without either person realising they’re writing the last page. Mat reaches across the table and gently nudges my untouched tea towards me. “Drink it,” he says. “It wasn’t cheap.” I smile. Take a sip. Still the best jasmine tea in town. Maybe dreams don’t deal in facts. Maybe they just borrow familiar faces to tell us truths we’ve been avoiding. Or maybe Amy was never the thing I was afraid of. Maybe it was always the Wolverine Claws I’d imagined she had. Because the sharpest ones were never on the ends of her fingers. They were the ones I’d spent years quietly turning on myself.