“I help you, you help me. Just think of how much better you’l feel when you’ve faced your demons,” I said. I wasn’t sure if this was true, but it sounded good. I had to admit, too, that a big part of me was curious as hel to see what Sam would do when faced with the mighty bathtub.
I jostled us both into the doorway and used my elbow to hit the light switch.
“Cole,” Sam said, his voice suddenly quieter.
It was just a bathtub. Just an empty tub of the most ordinary variety: ivory-colored tile surrounding it, white shower curtain pul ed aside. A dead spider next to the drain. At the sight of it, Sam suddenly struggled in my arms, hard enough that it took al my strength to hold him. I felt his muscles knotted beneath my fingers, straining against me.
“Please,” he said.
“It’s just a bathtub,” I said, bracing my arms around him. But I didn’t need to. He’d gone completely limp in my arms.
• SAM •
For one spare moment, I saw it for what it was, the way I must have seen it for the first seven years of my life: just an ordinary bathroom, faded and utilitarian. But then my eyes found the tub and I couldn’t stand. I was sitting at my dining room table. My father sat next to me; my mother hadn’t sat next to me in weeks. My mother said
I don’t think I can love him anymore. That’s not Sam. That’s a thing that looks like him, sometimes. There were peas on my plate. I didn’t eat peas. I was surprised to see them there because my mother knew this. I couldn’t stop looking at them.
My father said
I know.
Now I was being shaken by Cole. “You aren’t dying,” he said. “It just feels like it.”
And then my parents were holding my thin arms. I was being presented to a bathtub, though it wasn’t evening and I hadn’t been undressed. My parents were asking me to get in, and I wouldn’t, and I think they were glad, because my refusal made it easier for them than trusting compliance. My father lifted me into the water.
“Sam,” Cole said.
I was sitting in the bathtub in my clothing, the water turning my dark jeans black, feeling the water wick up through my favorite blue T-shirt with the white stripe, feeling the fabric stick to my ribs, and I thought, for a minute, for one, merciful moment, that it was a game.
“Sam,” Cole repeated.
I didn’t understand, and then, I did.
It wasn’t when my mother wouldn’t look at me, just gazing at the edge of the bathtub and swal owing, over and over. Or when my father reached behind him and said my mother’s name to get her to look at him. Or even when she took one of the razor blades from his proffered hand, her fingers careful, as if she were selecting a fragile cracker from a plate of delicacies. It was when she final y looked at me.
At my eyes. My wolf’s eyes.
I saw the decision in her face. The letting go. And that was when they had to hold me down.
• COLE •
Sam was somewhere else. That was the only way to put it. His eyes were just—empty. I hauled him out to the living room and shook him. “Snap out of it. We’re out! Look around, Sam. We’re out.”
When I let go of his arms, Sam slumped to the floor, back against the wal , putting his head in his hands. He was suddenly al elbows and knees and joints folded up against one another, making him faceless.
I didn’t know how I felt, seeing him there. Knowing I’d done it, whatever it was. It was making me hate him.
“Sam?” I said.
After a long moment, he said, not lifting his head, his voice strange and low and thin, “Just leave me alone. Leave me alone. What did I ever do to you?” His breaths were uneven; I heard them catching in his chest. Not like sobs. More like suffocation.
I looked down at him, and suddenly anger bubbled up through me. It shouldn’t have affected him this badly. It was just a damned bathroom. It was he who was making me this cruel—I hadn’t done anything to him except shown him a damned tub. I wasn’t that person he thought I was.
“Beck chose this, too,” I told him, because he wouldn’t say anything now to contradict me. “That’s what he told me. He said that he got everything he wanted in life after law school, and he was miserable. He told me he was going to kil himself, but a guy named Paul convinced him there was another way out.
”
Sam was silent except for his ragged inhalations.
“That’s the same thing he offered me,” I said. “Only I can’t stay a wolf. Don’t tel me that you don’t want to hear it. You’re just as bad as I am. Look at you. Don’t talk to me about damage.”
He didn’t move, so I did. I went to the back door and threw it open. The night had become savage and cold while I was drinking, and I was rewarded with a wrenching twist in my gut.
I escaped.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
• SAM •
I went through the actions of punching down the dough and shaping the loaf and getting the bread in the oven. My head was humming with words that were too clipped and unrelated for me to form into lyrics. I was halfway here, halfway somewhere else, standing in Beck’s same old kitchen on a night that could’ve been now or ten years ago.
The faces on the cabinet photos smiled back at me, dozens of different permutations of me and Beck, Beck and Ulrik, Paul and Derek, Ulrik and me. Faces waiting to be reinhabited. The photos looked faded and old in the dul nighttime of the kitchen. I remembered Beck taping them up, when they were brand-new, concrete proof of our ties.
I thought about how my parents so easily decided not to love me, just because I couldn’t hold on to my skin. And about how I’d been so quick to shun Beck when I’d thought that he’d infected the three new wolves against their wil . It was like I could feel my parents’ imperfect love running through my veins. So quick to judge.
When I final y noticed that Cole was gone, I opened the back door and retrieved his clothing from the yard. I stood there, holding the cold bundle in my hands, and let the night air cut down inside me, past the layers of everything that made me Sam and human, to the creeping wolf that I imagined stil lurking inside me. I played back Cole’s dialogue in my head.
Was he real y asking for my help?
I jumped when the phone rang. The phone was missing from the base in the kitchen, so I went into the living room and sat on the arm of the sofa while I picked up the receiver in there. Grace, I hoped fiercely. Grace.
“Hi?” It occurred to me, too late, that if Grace was cal ing this late, there was something wrong.
But it wasn’t Grace’s voice that answered, though it was female. “Who is this?”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Someone cal ed my cel from this number. Twice.”
“Who is this?” I asked.
“Angie Baranova.”
“When did they cal ?”
“Yesterday. Earlyish. No message.”
Cole. Had to be. Sloppy bastard. “Must’ve been a wrong number,” I said.
“Must’ve been,” she echoed. “Because only, like, four people have this number.”
I amended my opinion of Cole. Stupid bastard.
“Like I said,” I insisted, “a wrong number.”
“Or Cole,” Angie said.
“Excuse me?”
She gave an unfunny, ugly little laugh. “Whoever you are, I know you wouldn’t say anything even if he was standing right beside you. Because Cole’s real y good at that, isn’t he? Getting you to do what he wants? Wel , if he is there and it was him cal ing my number, tel him I’ve got a new cel . It’s one 917-getout-of-my-life. Thanks.”
And she hung up.
I clicked TALK again to hang up the phone and leaned to return it to the cradle. I looked at Beck’s stack of books on the end table. Beside them was a picture frame with a photo Ulrik had taken of Beck right after Paul had sprayed mustard on him while we barbecued burgers. Beck squinted at me, smears of unreal yel ow caught in his eyebrows and globbed in his eyelashes.
“Sounds like you pic
ked a real winner,” I told
“Sounds like you picked a real winner,” I told Beck’s photo.
• GRACE •
That night, I lay in my bed, trying to forget the way the wolves had looked at me and trying to pretend that Sam was with me. Blinking in the blackness, I tugged Sam’s pil ow closer to me, but I’d used up al of his scent, and it was just a pil ow again. I pushed it back to his side of the bed and lifted my hand to my nostrils instead, trying to tel if I stil smel ed like the wolves in the woods. I pictured Isabel’s face when she said, You know this has to do with the wolves, and tried to interpret what her expression had meant. Disgust?
Like I was contagious? Or was it pity?
If Sam were here, I would’ve whispered, Do you think dying people know they’re dying?
I made a face at myself in the darkness. I knew I was being melodramatic.
I wanted to believe I was just being melodramatic. Laying a hand flat on my bel y, I thought about the gnawing ache that lived a few inches below my fingers. Right now, the pain seemed dul , slumbering.
I pressed my fingers into my skin.
I know you’re there.
It seemed pitiful to be sitting awake in bed, contemplating my mortality alone, while Sam was within easy driving distance. I shot a futile glance up toward my parents’ room, irritated that they’d deprived me of his company when I most needed it.
If I died now, I’d never go to col ege. I’d never live on my own. I’d never buy my own coffeepot (I wanted a red one). I’d never marry Sam. I’d never get to be Grace the way Grace was meant to be.
I had been so careful, my entire life.
I considered my own funeral. No way would Mom
have enough common sense to plan it. Dad would do it between cal s to investors and HOA board members. Or Grandma. She might step up to the plate once she knew what a crappy job her son was doing of raising her granddaughter. Rachel would come, and probably a few of my teachers. Definitely Mrs. Erskine, who wanted me to be an architect. Isabel, too, though she probably wouldn’t cry. I remembered Isabel’s brother’s funeral—the whole town had turned out, because of his age. So maybe I would get a good crowd, even if I hadn’t been a legend in Mercy Fal s, just by virtue of having died too young to have actual y lived. Did people bring gifts to funerals like they did to weddings and baby showers?
I heard a creak outside my door. A sudden pop, a foot on a floorboard, and then the door creeping softly open.
For a single, tiny moment, I thought it might be Sam, somehow, miraculously sneaking in. But then from my nest in my blankets, I saw the shape of my father’s shoulders and head as he leaned into my room. I did my best to look asleep while stil keeping my eyes slitted open. My father came in a few, hesitant steps, and I thought, with surprise, He’s checking to see if I’m all right.
But then he lifted his chin just a little bit, to look at a place just beyond me, and I realized that he wasn’t here to make sure I was al right. He was just here to make sure Sam wasn’t with me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
• COLE •
Crouched on the cold forest floor, pine needles pressing into my palms, blood smeared over my bare knees, I couldn’t remember how long I’d been human. I was suspended in a pale blue morning, fog tinting everything pastel as it moved slowly around me. The air reeked of blood, feces, and brackish water. It only took a glance at my hands to see where the smel s came from. The lake was a few yards away from me, and between me and the water lay a dead deer, flat on her side. A flap of skin folded back from her ribs, presenting her innards like a gruesome gift. It was her blood that was smeared across my knees and, I saw now, my hands as wel . In the overhead branches, invisible in the mist, crows cal ed back and forth to one another, eager for me to lose interest in my kil . I cast a glance around me, looking for the other wolves that must’ve helped me to take down the doe, but they had left me alone. Or, more truthful y, I’d left them, by shifting into a reluctant human.
Slight movement caught my eye; I darted a glance toward it. It took me a moment to realize what had moved—the doe. Her eye. She blinked, and as she did, I saw that she was looking right at me. Not dead
—dying. Funny how two things could be so similar and yet so far apart. Something about the expression in her liquid black eye made my chest hurt. It was like
—patience. Or forgiveness. She had resigned herself to the fate of being eaten alive.
“Jesus,” I whispered, getting slowly to my feet, trying not to alarm her further. She didn’t even flinch. Just this: blink. I wanted to back away, give her space, let her escape, but the exposed bones and spil ed guts told me flight was impossible for her. I’d already ruined her body.
I felt a bitter smile twist my lips. Here it was, my bril iant plan to stop being Cole and slip into oblivion. Here it was. Standing naked and painted with death, my empty stomach twisting with hunger while I faced a meal for something I wasn’t anymore.
The doe blinked again, face extraordinarily gentle, and my stomach lurched.
I couldn’t leave her like this. That was the thing. I knew I couldn’t. I confirmed my location with a quick glance around—a twenty-minute walk to the shed, maybe. Another ten to the house, if there was nothing to kil her with in the shed. Forty minutes to an hour of lying here with her guts exposed.
I could just walk away. She was dying, after al . It was inevitable, and how much did the suffering of a deer count for?
Her eye blinked again, silent and tolerant. A lot
—that was how much it counted for.
I cast around for anything that might serve as a weapon. None of the stones by the lake were large enough to be useful, and I couldn’t imagine myself bludgeoning her to death, anyway. I ran through everything I knew of anatomy and instantly deadly car crashes and catastrophes. And then I looked back to her exposed ribs.
I swal owed.
It only took me a moment to find a branch with a sharp enough end.
Her eye rol ed up toward me, black and
bottomless, and one of her front legs twitched, a memory of running. There was something awful about terror trapped behind silence. About latent emotions that couldn’t be acted out.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I don’t mean to be cruel.”
I stabbed the stick through her ribs.
Once.
Twice.
She screamed, this high scream that was neither human nor animal but something terrible in between, the sort of sound that you never forget no matter how many beautiful things you hear afterward. Then she was silent, because her punctured lungs were empty. She was dead, and I wanted to be. I was going to find out how to keep myself a wolf. Or I just couldn’t do this anymore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
• GRACE •
I didn’t think I’d slept, but a knock on my bedroom door woke me, so I must’ve. I opened my eyes; it was stil dark in my room. The clock said it was morning, but only barely. The numbers glowed 5:30.
“Grace,” my mother’s voice said, too loud for 5:30.
“We need to talk to you before we go.”
“Go where?” My voice was a croak, stil half asleep.
“St. Paul,” Mom said, and now she sounded impatient, like I should know. “Are you decent?”
“How can I be decent at five?” I muttered, but I waved a hand at her, since I was sleeping in a camisole and pj bottoms. Mom turned on the light switch, and I winced at the sudden brightness. I barely had time to see that Mom was in her bil owy fair shirt before Dad appeared behind her. Both of them shuffled into my room. Mom’s lips were pressed into a tight, businesslike smile, and Dad’s face looked as if he had been sculpted from wax. I couldn’t remember a time I’d seen them both looking so uncomfortable. They both glanced at each other; I could practical y see the invisible talk bubbles over their head. You start. No, you start.
So I started. I said, “How are you feeling today, Grace?”
Mom waved a hand at m
e as if it was obvious I was al right, especial y if I was wel enough to be sarcastic. “Today’s the Artists Limited Series.”
She paused to see if she had to clarify further. She didn’t. Mom went every year—leaving before dawn with a vehicle packed ful of art and not coming home until after midnight, exhausted and with a far emptier vehicle. Dad always went with her if he was off from work. I’d gone one year. It was a huge building ful of moms and people buying paintings like Mom’s. I didn’t go again.
“Okay,” I said. “So?”
Mom looked at Dad.
“So, you’re stil grounded,” Dad said. “Even though we’re not here.”
I sat up a little tal er, my head tingling in protest as I did.
“So we can trust you, right?” Mom added. “To not do anything stupid?”
My words came out slow and distinct with the effort of not shouting them. “Are you guys just…trying to be vindictive? Because I—” I was going to say saved up forever to get this for Sam, but for some reason, the idea of finishing the sentence closed my throat up. I shut my eyes and opened them again.
“No,” Dad said. “You’re being punished. We said you were grounded until Monday, and that’s what’s happening. It’s unfortunate that Samuel’s appointment happened to be during that time frame. Maybe another day.” He didn’t look like he found it unfortunate.
“They’re booked for months in advance, Dad,” I said.
I didn’t think I’d ever seen the line of Dad’s mouth look so ugly. He replied, “Wel , maybe you should’ve considered your actions a little more, then.”
I could feel a little pulsing headache just between my eyebrows. I pushed a fist into my skin and then looked up. “Dad, it was for his birthday. This was the only thing he got for his birthday. From anybody. It’s a real y big deal for him.” My voice just—stopped. I had to swal ow before I went on. “Please just let me go. Ground me Monday. Tel me to do community service. Make me scrub your toilets with my toothbrush. Just let me go.”
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