“Isabel, I would’ve helped you, anyway.” I sighed. “I’m going to give you an address. Meet me there in an hour.”
Being in Beck’s basement made me both the happiest and the saddest I’d felt since Sam had changed into a wolf, because seeing Beck there, in his own world, was like seeing Sam again. It started when we left Olivia puking in the bathroom and met Beck at the top of the basement stairs — it was too cold for him to meet us at the front door — and I realized that Sam had inherited so many of his mannerisms and movements from Beck. Even the simplest gestures: reaching over to brush up a light switch, inclining his head for us to follow him, awkwardly ducking to avoid a low beam at the bottom of the stairs. So much like Sam that it hurt.
Then we reached the bottom of the stairs and I caught my breath. The large, main room of the basement was filled with books. Not just a few. It was a library. The walls were lined with recessed shelves that climbed to the top of the low ceiling, and they were stuffed full. Even without getting close to the shelves, I could see that they were categorized: tall, fat atlases and encyclopedias on one shelf; short, colorful paperbacks with rumpled edges on several others; big photo books with block letters on their spines; hardcover novels with glistening dust jackets. I stepped slowly into the middle of the room and stood on the dusky orange carpet, turning slowly to see them all.
And the smell — the smell of Sam was every where in this room, like he was here with me, holding my hand, looking at all these books with me, waiting for me to say “I love it.”
I was about to break the silence by saying something like “I can see where Sam got his reading habit” when Beck said, almost apologetically, “When you spend a lot of time inside, you do a lot of reading.”
I remembered, then, abruptly, what Sam had told me about Beck: This was his last year as a human. He would never read these books again. My words were stolen from me, and then I just looked at Beck and managed, stupidly, “I love books.”
He smiled, like he knew. Then he looked at Isabel, who was craning her neck as if Jack must be stuffed on one of the shelves. “Jack’s probably in the other room, playing video games,” Beck said.
Isabel followed Beck’s gaze to the doorway. “Will he tear out my throat if I go in there?”
Beck shrugged. “No more than usual, I’d think. That’s the warmest room in the house, and I think he feels more comfortable in there. Though he still changes every so often. Just pay attention.”
It was interesting how he talked about Jack — more animal than human. As if he were advising Isabel on how to approach the gorillas at the zoo. After Isabel had vanished into the other room, Beck gestured toward one of the two squashy red chairs in the room. “Have a seat.”
I was glad to settle down into one of the chairs. It smelled of Beck and a few other wolves, but mostly of Sam. It was so easy to imagine him down here, curled in this spot, reading and developing an obnoxiously large vocabulary. I rested my head against the side of the chair to pretend I was curled in Sam’s arms and turned to look at Beck, who sat down in the chair opposite. Not properly, but crashed back into it with his legs kicked out. He looked tired. “I’m sort of surprised Sam kept you a secret all this time.”
“Are you?”
He shrugged. “I guess I shouldn’t be. I didn’t tell him about my wife.”
“He knew. He told me about her.”
Beck laughed, short and fond. “I shouldn’t be surprised about that, either. Keeping a secret from Sam was impossible. Not to be cliché, but he could read people like a book.”
We were both referring to him in past tense, like he was dead. “Do you think I’ll ever see him again?”
His face was faraway, unreadable. “I think this year was his last. I really do. I know it’s mine. I don’t know why he got so few years. That’s just not normal. I mean, it varies, but I was bitten a little over twenty years ago.”
“Twenty?”
Beck nodded. “In Canada. I was twenty-eight, a rising star at my firm, and I was hiking on vacation.”
“What about the rest of them? Where are they from?”
“From all over. When I heard that there were wolves in Minnesota, I thought there was a good chance they could be like me. So I went looking, found out I was right, and Paul took me under his wing. Paul’s —”
“The black wolf.”
He nodded. “Do you want coffee? I could murder for coffee, if you don’t mind the expression.”
I was intensely grateful. “That would be wonderful. If you point me in the direction of the pot, I’ll make it.” He pointed it out, hidden in a cranny between the shelves, next to a tiny refrigerator. “And you can keep talking.”
He sounded humored. “What about?”
“The pack. What it’s like, being a wolf. Sam. Why you changed Sam.” I paused, coffee filter in hand. “Yes. That one. I want to know that one in particular.”
Beck crumpled his face in his hand. “God, the worst one. I changed Sam because I was a selfish bastard without a soul.”
I measured coffee grounds. I heard the regret in his voice, but I wasn’t letting him off the hook. “That’s not a reason.”
Deep sigh. “I know. Jen — my wife — had just died. She was a terminal cancer patient when we met, so I knew it was going to happen, but I was young and stupid and thought maybe a miracle would happen and we’d live happily ever after. Anyway. No miracle. I was depressed. I thought about killing myself, but the funny thing about having wolf in you is that suicide doesn’t seem like a very good idea. Did you ever notice that animals don’t kill themselves on purpose?”
I hadn’t. I made a note of it.
“Anyway, I was in Duluth in the summer, and I saw Sam with his parents. God, this sounds awful, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t like that. Jen and I talked all the time about having kids, even though we both knew it would never happen. Hell, she was only supposed to live for another eight months. How could she have had a baby? Anyway, I saw Sam. There he was, with his yellow eyes, just like a real wolf, and I was totally obsessed with the idea. And — you don’t have to tell me, Grace, I know this was wrong — but I saw him with his silly, vapid parents, them just as clueless as a pair of pigeons, and I thought, I could be better for him. I could teach him more.”
I didn’t say anything, and Beck leaned his forehead into his hand again. His voice was centuries old. I didn’t say anything, but he groaned. “God, I know, Grace. I know. But you know the stupid thing? I actually like who I am. I mean, not at first. It was a curse. But it came to be like someone who loves summer and winter. Does that make sense? I knew that eventually I’d lose myself, but I came to terms with that a long time ago. I thought Sam would get over it, too.”
I found the mugs in a little cubby above the coffeemaker and pulled two of them out. “But he didn’t. Milk?”
“A little. Not too much.” He sighed. “It’s hell for him. I made a personal hell for him. He needs that sort of self-awareness to feel alive, and when he loses that and becomes a wolf … it’s hell. He is absolutely the best person I’ve ever met in the world, and I absolutely ruined him. I have regretted it every day for years.”
He might’ve deserved it, but I couldn’t let him get any lower. I brought him a mug and sat back down. “He loves you, Beck. He may hate being a wolf, but he loves you. And I have to tell you, it’s killing me to sit here with you, because everything about you reminds me of him. If you admire him, it’s because you made him who he is.”
Beck looked strangely vulnerable then, his hands wrapped around the coffee mug, looking at me through the steam above it. He was silent for a long moment, and then he said, “The regret will be one of the things I’ll be glad to lose.”
I frowned at him. Sipped the coffee. “Will you forget everything?”
“You don’t forget anything. You just see it differently. Through a wolf’s brain. Some things become completely unimportant when you’re a wolf. Other things are emotions wolves just don’t feel. We los
e those. But the most important things — we can hold on to those. Most of us.”
Like love. I thought of Sam watching me, before we had met as humans, and me watching back. Falling in love, as impossible as it should’ve been. My gut squeezed, horribly, and for a moment, I couldn’t speak.
“You were bitten,” Beck said. I’d heard this before, this question without a question mark.
I nodded. “A little more than six years ago.”
“But you never changed.”
I related the story of getting locked in the car, and then explained the theory of a possible cure Isabel and I had developed. Beck sat quietly for a long moment, rubbing a small circle in the side of his mug with one of his fingers, staring blankly at the books on the wall.
Finally, he nodded. “It might work. I can see how it might work. But I think you’d have to be human when you got infected for it to work.”
“That’s what Sam said. He said he thought if you were killing the wolf, you shouldn’t be a wolf when you were infected.”
Beck’s eyes were still unfocused as he thought. “God, but it’s risky. You couldn’t treat the meningitis until after you were sure the fever had killed the wolf. Bacterial meningitis has an incredible fatality rate, even if you catch it early and treat it from the beginning.”
“Sam told me he’d risk dying for the cure. Do you think he meant it?”
“Absolutely,” Beck said, without hesitation. “But he’s a wolf. And likely to stay that way for the rest of his life.”
I dropped my eyes to my half-empty mug, noticing the way the liquid changed color just at the very edges of the rim. “I was thinking we could bring him to the clinic, just to see if he’d change in the heat of the building.”
There was a pause, but I didn’t look up to see what expression Beck wore during it. He said gently, “Grace.”
I swallowed, still looking at the coffee. “I know.”
“I’ve watched wolves for twenty-odd years. It’s predictable. We get to the end … and it’s the end.”
I felt like a stubborn child. “But he changed this year when he shouldn’t have, right? When he was shot, he made himself human.”
Beck took a long drink of coffee. I heard his fingers tapping the side of the mug. “And to save you. He made himself human to save you. I don’t know how he did it. Or why. But he did. I always thought it must have had something to do with adrenaline, tricking the body into thinking it was warm. I know he’s tried to do it other times, too, but he never managed it.”
I closed my eyes and let myself imagine Sam carrying me. I could almost see it, smell it, feel it.
“Hell.” Beck didn’t say anything else for a long time. Then, again: “Hell. It’s what he would want. He’d want to try.” He drained his coffee. “I’ll help you. What were you thinking? Drugging him for the trip?”
I had been thinking about it, in fact, ever since Isabel had called. “I think we’ll have to, right? He won’t stand it otherwise.”
“Benadryl,” Beck said, matter-of-fact. “I’ve got some upstairs. It’ll make him groggy and put him enough out of it that he won’t go crazy in the car.”
“The only thing I couldn’t work out was how to get him here. I haven’t seen him since the accident.” I was cautious with my words. I couldn’t let myself get hopeful. I just couldn’t.
Beck’s voice was certain. “I can do it. I’ll get him. I’ll make him come. We’ll put the Benadryl in some hamburger or something.” He stood up and took my coffee mug from me. “I like you, Grace. I wish Sam could’ve had —”
He stopped, put his hand on my shoulder. His voice was so kind I thought I would cry. “It might work, Grace. It might work.”
I could see that he didn’t believe, but I saw, too, that he wanted to. For right now, that was enough.
A thin layer of snow dusted the ground as Beck walked into the backyard, his shoulders dark and square underneath his sweater. Inside, Isabel and Olivia stood with me by the glass door, ready to help, but I felt like I was alone, watching Beck slowly walk out into his last day as a human. One of his hands held a gob of red, raw meat laced with Benadryl, and the other shook uncontrollably.
A dozen yards from the house, Beck halted, dropped the meat to the ground, and then walked several paces toward the woods. For a moment he stood there, his head cocked in a way that I recognized. Listening.
“What is he doing?” Isabel demanded, but I didn’t answer.
Beck cupped his hands around his mouth, and even inside, I could hear him clearly.
“Sam!” He shouted it again, “Sam! I know you’re out there! Sam! Sam! Remember who you are? Sam!”
Shaking, Beck kept shouting Sam’s name to the empty, frigid woods, until he stumbled and caught himself just before falling.
I pressed my fingers to my lips as tears ran down my cheeks.
Beck shouted Sam’s name one more time, and then his shoulders hunched up, buckling and twisting, his scrambling hands and feet scarring the layer of snow around him. His clothing hung on him, vast and tangled, and then he backed out of it, shaking his head.
The gray wolf stood in the middle of the yard, looking toward the glass doors, his eyes watching us watching him. He stepped away from the clothing he would never wear again, and then he froze, turning his head toward the woods.
From between the stark black pines, another wolf emerged, head low and cautious, snow dusted over his ruff. His eyes found me, behind the glass.
Sam.
The evening was steel gray, the sky an endless expanse of frozen clouds waiting for snow and for night. Outside the SUV, the tires crunched along salted roads, and sleet tapped on the windshield. Inside, behind the wheel, Isabel kept complaining about the “wet mutt smell,” but to me it was pine and earth, rain and musk. And behind it, the sharp, contagious edge of anxiety. In the passenger seat, Jack kept whining softly, halfway between animal and human. Olivia sat beside me in the backseat, her fingers knotted so tightly in mine that it hurt.
Sam was behind us. When we had lifted him into the SUV, his body was heavy with drug-induced sleep. Now, his breaths were deep and uneven, and I strained to listen to them over the sound of slush spraying from the tires, to maintain some kind of connection with him when I couldn’t touch him. With him drugged, I could’ve sat with him and run my fingers through his fur, but it would’ve been torment for him.
He was an animal now. Back in his world, far away from me.
Isabel pulled up in front of the little clinic. At this hour, the parking lot was dark and unlit; the clinic itself was a little gray square. It didn’t look like a place to work miracles. It looked like a place you came when you were sick and had no money. I pushed the thought out of my head.
“I stole the keys from Mom,” Isabel said. To her credit, she didn’t sound nervous. “Come on. Jack, can you try the hell not to savage someone before we get inside?”
Jack muttered something unrepeatable. I looked in the back; Sam was on his feet, swaying. “Isabel, hurry up. The Benadryl’s wearing off.”
Isabel wrenched up the parking brake. “If we get arrested, I’m telling them you all abducted me.”
“Come on!” I snapped. I opened my door; Olivia and Jack both winced at the cold. “Hurry up — you two need to run.”
“I’ll come back to help you with him,” Isabel told me, and leaped out of the SUV. I turned back around to Sam, who rolled his eyes up toward me. He seemed disoriented, groggy.
I was momentarily frozen by his gaze, remembering Sam lying in bed, nose to nose with me, eyes looking into mine.
He made a soft noise of anxiety.
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
Isabel returned, and I came around back to help her. She pulled off her belt and expertly twisted it around Sam’s muzzle. I winced, but I couldn’t tell her not to. She hadn’t been bitten and there was no guarantee of how Sam would react to this process.
Between the two of us, we lifted him and crab-walked to the
clinic. Isabel kicked open the door, which was already slightly ajar. “The exam rooms are that way. Lock him in one of those and we’ll do Olivia and Jack first. Maybe he’ll turn back again, if he’s in the heat long enough.”
Isabel’s lie was extraordinarily kind; we both knew he wasn’t changing without some kind of miracle. The best I could hope for was that Sam had been wrong — that this cure wouldn’t kill him when he was a wolf. I followed Isabel to a little supply room, cluttered and stinking with a sort of medicinal, rubber scent. Olivia and Jack were already waiting there, heads ducked together as if they were talking, which surprised me. Jack lifted his head when we came in.
“I can’t stand this waiting,” he said. “Can we just get this the hell over with?”
I looked at a bin of alcohol wipes. “Do I need to prep his arm?”
Isabel gave me a look. “We’re intentionally infecting him with meningitis. It seems pointless to be worried about infection at the injection site.”
I swabbed his arm, anyway, while Isabel retrieved a blood-filled syringe from the fridge.
“Oh, God,” Olivia whispered, her eyes frozen on the syringe.
We didn’t have time to comfort her. I took Jack’s cold hand and turned it so that it was palm up, like I remembered seeing the nurse do before our rabies shots.
Isabel looked at Jack. “You’re sure you want this.”
He lifted his teeth in a snarl. He stank of fear. “Just do it.”
Isabel hesitated; it took me a moment to realize why. “Let me do it,” I told her. “He can’t hurt me.”
Isabel handed me the syringe and ducked aside. I took her place. “Look the other way,” I ordered Jack. He turned his head away. I stuck the needle in, then smacked his face with my free hand as he jerked back around toward me. “Control yourself!” I snapped. “You’re not an animal.”
He whispered, “Sorry.”
I depressed the syringe fully, trying not to think too hard about the bloody contents of it, and pulled out the needle. There was a dot of red at the injection site; I didn’t know if it was Jack’s blood or infected blood from the syringe. Isabel was just staring at it, so I turned around, grabbed a Band-Aid, and stuck it over the site. Olivia let out a low moan.
Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever) Page 27