by C. D. Bell
“I’m so sorry,” Selena said. “I wish there was more I could do. He’ll be back, Nessa. Chayton always comes back.”
That night Nessa dreamed about the white wolf again. She hadn’t seen him since she visited Chayton, but now here he was, coming for her, his jaws dripping, his teeth merging in her mind with the teeth of the wolf in the trap, the ones that were filed to points.
Nessa woke up soaked in sweat. She didn’t know if she’d cried out in her dream, but Delphine didn’t seem to have woken up, so Nessa hoped she had not. She put a hand on her heart, feeling it pound in her chest. She could hear her blood rushing. She could hear every sound in the house as well. Her mother’s even breathing. Nate’s snore. The hum of the fridge. She could hear sounds in her neighborhood. Mr. and Mrs. Mullick arguing four houses away. A car engine starting up in the distance. A train whistle, which was strange, considering the closest active freight line was more than five miles away. A skittering of mice in a basement that could have been hers or could have been down the street.
She looked at the clock. It was just after three in the morning. Saturday. The new moon was six days away. She was going to turn into a wolf. She was turning into a wolf. She threw off the covers and sat with her legs over the side of the bed, feeling the cold air.
Her stomach grumbled. She needed to eat something.
Preferably meat.
Nessa unearthed a pound of frozen hamburger meat and stuck it in the microwave. Vivian could get meat to room temperature without cooking it, but Nessa didn’t know how to make this happen and ended up with a cooked, pale gray mess, as tough as if she’d boiled it. Turned out it wasn’t bad with enough salt and ketchup, and she switched the internet browser to Private (specifically and forcefully forbidden by her mother) and re-googled the sites she couldn’t bookmark. Moon tables. Lycanthropy. Werewolf sightings. Wolf facts.
With enough reading—with enough forkfuls of beef—Nessa developed a theory. Maybe the six-hour before-and-after window Chayton had told her she would transform during, maybe that had to do with the moon’s rising. And that was scheduled to happen at 1 a.m. on Friday night. Which meant she could transform anywhere between 7 p.m. the night before and 8 a.m. the morning of.
Or to put it simply: she could turn into a wolf when she was with her family, safely tucked in bed, watching the terror in their eyes when they realized they were (and had been all along) living with a terrifying wild animal. Or she could transform just at the beginning of the bus ride to the cross-country meet on Saturday. Nessa did not like her options.
As the sun was starting to rise, Nessa put on her running clothes and went out for her usual five-mile run. In the days since her suspension, something else had started to bother her. The accusation of doping made her angry, but her wolf transformation was clearly helping to improve her times. Nessa was running faster. Was it the same thing as doping? Giving her an unfair advantage?
It was something she longed to ask Chayton about.
But as usual, her whirling thoughts were soon slowed by the simple rhythm of her footsteps. In the silence, she began to hear a faint singing in the distance. It was enough to make her stop in her tracks. Because not only did she recognize the calling as the sound of a wolf, but she could also visualize which wolf it was.
Nessa listened for a moment, as if it were a song on the radio and this was her only chance to hear it play. Then she started running again. Soon enough, she reminded herself. She could answer their calls soon enough.
The following Wednesday, Nessa ate school breakfast with Bree. All Tether schools provided free lunch and free breakfast to students through a state-funded program, but by high school, most kids weren’t willing to eat it. Who wanted greasy sausage and eggs shaped like hockey pucks served on the kind of bargain-brand English muffins that didn’t have any nooks or crannies?
Nessa wanted it, that’s who, at least this morning. She had eaten hers in about two bites, and was now working her way through Bree’s, grateful for the calories, even if she would have traded the muffins and eggs in for four pieces of sausage in a heartbeat.
“I don’t want to go,” Nessa said to Bree. “I don’t want to give any blood.”
“Why not?” Bree peeled the foil off the top of her juice container. “You’re going to be clean, right? Teach those jerks a lesson. I’d think you would want to take the test.”
“I’m afraid they might find—” Nessa lowered her voice, “wolf stuff. You know. I think my blood might show something strange in my DNA.”
“Oh,” said Bree. “Huh. Good point. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I wanted to talk to Chayton about it. But he’s gone.”
“Yeah, what is wrong with him?” Bree said. “Don’t you think it’s weird that he just took off like that? I mean, you might really need him. You have questions. The least he could have done was call Selena and leave a number where you could reach him.”
“Yeah, it is weird.”
Bree frowned. “Let me think about the blood test. We’ll talk more at lunch.”
The minute they sat down for second period English, Bree was fast-whispering at their desks while Ms. Nightingale wrote out some poetry quotes on the board for them to “react” to.
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of this at breakfast,” Bree said. “My dad takes blood tests all the time. All truckers do. His company wouldn’t be able to afford insurance without them. So I snuck him a call and asked all about it.”
“And?” Nessa whispered back.
“The short answer is you don’t have to worry. These tests are very specific. It’s expensive to test blood, so drug tests are targeted. They don’t look for anything that isn’t drugs. This guy my dad works with actually sued the company because he had prostate cancer and the test didn’t pick it up when they could have. Now, my dad said, you check this box if you want them to screen for certain diseases but you don’t have to because that might be a violation of your privacy.”
“Okay, wow, that was a lot of information,” Nessa said.
“Yeah, I know,” said Bree. “Dad hadn’t spoken to anyone or slept in eighteen hours, so he was a little chatty. I think I managed to talk him into stopping at a motel for a little rest, too. At least I told him I’d tell Mom if he didn’t send me a picture of himself in a motel room in the next hour.”
Just then her phone buzzed in her pocket. Bree didn’t pull it out. At Tether High, every time you were spotted using your phone during school hours, you lost it for the rest of the day. “That’s him now!”
Ms. Nightingale was finishing writing the quotes and starting to speak, so Bree hurried to finish. “All you need to know is that the blood test isn’t comprehensive. It’s not like they’re putting your blood in a centrifuge and analyzing your DNA. They just want to see if there’s traces of certain drugs.”
“Okay,” Nessa said. “Thanks.”
That afternoon, Nessa went into the clinic, signed in at the desk, took a seat, read a magazine, got called into the phlebotomist’s alcove, counter-signed the form that her mom had faxed over earlier, rolled up her sleeve, felt a stick, and then watched as the technician filled four different test tubes with her blood, each tube coded with a different-colored sticker printed with her name: Kurland, V. (for Vanessa), and the date.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The rest of that week, Nessa felt like she’d had three diet colas on an empty stomach. She wasn’t sleeping and always felt tired. She was jumpy. Smells she normally didn’t register were making it impossible to be in certain places—just passing the ninth-grade frog dissection lab, the smell of formaldehyde burned the skin on the inside of her nostrils.
Her elevated hearing was driving her crazy. For once she could actually hear everyone at school talking about her behind her back, calling her a doping maniac. Whispers followed her up and down the halls. Conversations came to abrupt halts the second she approached. Kids turned away from her and talked behind their hands when she so much as got u
p to get a spoon during lunch. She could hear every word.
Her days were filled with, “So desperate!” and, “Well, if you were so poor you had to get a scholarship…” and, “I can’t believe I used to think she was cool,” and, “What if all those steroids turn her into a man?” and of course: “Where did she even get them? Do you think I…?”
Cross-country practice was especially awkward. No one knew what to say to her. She was running faster than ever, but her times now made Coach Hoffman look at her suspiciously. Nessa felt he was on the verge of asking her to slow down.
But she couldn’t. Running was the only way she got any relief from the stress of counting down the days until the new moon.
Cynthia was acting differently too. Before, she had ignored Nessa as much as possible, stuck in the Universe of Perfection that was Cynthia. Now, every time Nessa glanced at her, Cynthia turned her head abruptly, like she had been watching. Nessa couldn’t forget the humiliating moment in the locker room when Cynthia had clucked her teeth and acted like Nessa was the most desperate of cases.
More and more, Nessa began to wonder if Cynthia was the source of the anonymous tip. Nessa began to watch her every chance she got.
She saw nothing but Cynthia’s perfect form, disciplined training, her desire to win. She raced well because she didn’t get in her own head, she never looked down, she kept her legs flashing high, her chest forward but relaxed. Her high, swaying ponytail was the only part of her body besides her legs that she didn’t keep completely still.
The only thing Nessa learned by watching Cynthia was that the girl was definitely making a play for Luc. She’d plant herself in Luc’s line of sight when Coach was giving a talk, then glance his way to be sure he was watching. She’d stretch her shapely leg like she was easing out a muscle cramp, but really, Nessa could tell, she was showing off.
At the end of a set of interval work, when everyone was walking off the sprints, Cynthia casually fell into step with Luc. Her hands on her hips, her chest rising and falling, her head thrown back, she made it look like she hadn’t placed herself next to him on purpose, but Nessa had seen that she had. Cynthia caught Luc’s eye, then looked away, so he’d be the first to speak.
“Good run?” Luc said.
Cynthia nodded and smiled at him. Nessa almost never saw Cynthia smile. Cynthia was a person who smiled only when she wanted something. “You?” Cynthia said. But she walked away before he could answer. Was she nervous or playing games?
The week dragged on, but then suddenly it was Friday—new moon day—and time for Nessa and Bree to put the transformation plan into action.
Vivian was working late, so after practice, Nessa rushed home, cooked macaroni and cheese for Nate and Delphine, reminded them that she was spending the night at Bree’s, then bolted out the door when Bree arrived at 6:30.
In the car, every topic except what they were about to do seemed easier to talk about.
“This will all be behind you in twenty-four hours,” Bree said helpfully. “And you’ll be out on a first date with Cassian.”
Nessa rolled her eyes and had to smile.
“I hope so,” she reminded her friend. “We don’t know if it will work the same as last time.” She picked at the buckles of her overnight bag.
“Do you think Cynthia’s heard yet that you’re going out?” Bree had been monitoring Nessa’s mounting fears about what Cynthia was and had been up to.
“I don’t think so. She only talks to Luc. Who seems to be walking right into her trap.”
“I guarantee you he has no idea,” Bree said. “Everyone just wants to be told they’re special. If Cynthia’s capturing Luc’s eternal love by constantly blowing him off, she’s good.”
“She’s not good,” Nessa countered. “She’s a witch. You know,” Nessa shifted toward Bree, “I really think she was the one who turned me in. Which is stupid because getting rid of me doesn’t change her overall times. It doesn’t make her faster to have me not running, you know? It just makes our team slower overall.”
Nessa slumped down, staring at the road ahead. “I’m going to catch her. I’m going to make her pay for this.”
“Jeez, Nessa, I’ve never seen you like this before,” Bree said. “You’re kind of freaking me out.”
“I know!” Nessa replied. She could hear the anger in her own voice, too. She wanted to stop being angry, but she couldn’t. She had so much energy. She’d run five miles that afternoon at a sub-eight-minute pace, and still she was jiggling her leg and thinking about asking Bree to pull over so she could just run to the trailhead from there.
“You’re really going to spend the night in the woods?” Bree said. “What if you don’t transform? It’s going down into the forties tonight. Wolf Popsicle.”
“I’ll deal,” said Nessa. “Worst case, I’ll climb into my sleeping bag and cinch the top closed.”
“Thank goodness for all that Girl Scout training we had.”
“All we ever did was sell cookies.”
“Which is why,” Bree said, a flourish in her voice. “I brought you some!”
“You have Girl Scout cookies? In October?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We finish ours the week they arrive. As do you. It’s part of what it means to be an American. I made you cookies.”
And suddenly Nessa felt the anger and anxiety that had been propelling her through the last stressful week dissipate. “Bree!” Nessa said, feeling a lump in her throat. She thought about her friend, how many times in the past month she had been there for her, how cheerful Bree was, how generous and kind. She thought about how she, Nessa, would never be like that—that she would always be suspicious and prepare for the worst.
“Nessa! My gosh,” said Bree. “Are you crying?”
Nessa sniffed. “It’s just that,” Nessa said, “well, I don’t think I appreciate you enough. You’re just the greatest…friend, and—” Nessa couldn’t finish. She was too choked up.
She looked at Bree, who had stopped the car. They had reached the trailhead. She half expected Bree to be crying too. But Bree was not crying. Bree was laughing. At what? At Nessa?!
“Why is this funny?”
“It’s not,” said Bree. “I’m sorry.”
“Tell me!”
“Okay, it’s just that, well, I think it’s time for you to go out into the woods.”
“Why?”
“You’re acting a little crazy.”
“No, I’m not.”
Bree smiled. She passed Nessa a shoebox. “Here are the cookies. They’re meat flavored—people bake them for their dogs.”
Nessa stepped out of Bree’s car at the trailhead where she’d attempted to meet up with Cynthia a month and a half earlier, her overnight bag slung over her shoulder, a sleeping bag tucked under her arm, dressed in her winter parka and jeans, holding a shoebox filled with meat cookies.
She hiked about twenty feet into the woods, shoveled a few of Bree’s surprisingly tasty cookies into her mouth, dropped her stuff in a pile, stripped off her winter jacket, and began to run.
It was the only thing that felt right.
It felt so good that Nessa almost put her head back and sang. She extended her stride, not thinking so much about speed, but rather the sensation of stretching out her legs.
She was running on the pads of her feet, noticing for the first time the softness of the trail, almost dancing over the tree roots and stones in her path. In spite of how dark it was, Nessa seemed to have no problem avoiding them.
She stopped for a second.
Wait.
Pads on her feet? She lifted one leg, then the other. Then the third leg and the fourth.
She couldn’t remember what about this should feel strange.
She shook vigorously, her ears pricking at the sound of a squirrel rustling in a tree branch. It was far away. Miles maybe. Of no concern to her. Besides, Nessa wasn’t hungry now.
She ran faster and farther than she ever had before. She felt blood pum
ping into her heart. She was aware of life in the forest in ways she had never been before, though she had always loved it, always found herself happy here. She could see it living and moving all around her. She could hear the running of water, the music of wind in the trees. She could smell the heaviness of leaves turning to soil, the acidity given off by the broken branch of a pine tree.
Her own body was strong and light in a way she had never felt it to be at home or in school. She vaulted over dips in the trail. She leapt up onto fallen trees to get a view of what was ahead.
Everything was glowing and shining, and she herself was flying inside that glow. She could do anything. Be anything.
Nessa had never really felt truly beautiful before, but tonight she not only understood that she was beautiful, she understood that everyone was. That for all the competition and fear and knowing that the next runner was coming up behind you, she had been missing out on how beautiful life could be. She should have been watching and appreciating others instead of waiting inside herself for the right time to shine. The time was now.
She ran—danced?—through the loop of the trail and then up into the pastures behind Joe Bent’s farm. She didn’t like the feeling of being so close to the house—though the barn seemed like an interesting place. She ran over to a rise in the ground and into the woods. She wasn’t on a trail. Nessa knew just where she was going, simply by following scents. She spotted a doe and tracked it briefly until she lost it. It didn’t matter. She continued to feel blissed out.
She must have run three miles, to the edge of a small lake she’d never seen before. She leapt up onto a rock and she sang.
And then, sensing that she was no longer alone, Nessa looked down, into the woods that encircled her rock, and saw one wolf after another stepping out from behind the trees.
They were singing with her. They were singing the same song, and it was as if Nessa had known the song all her life. She didn’t know how long she was there, singing, but the time felt endless and also short. Nessa wasn’t thinking about scholarships and homework and helping her mom. She wasn’t thinking at all.