by C. D. Bell
Cassian suddenly slid his hand into hers as they walked.
Nessa wasn’t sure how to interpret what he was saying. “You’ve dated a lot of people,” was all she could come up with. “I’ve never really dated anyone at all.”
“I know,” Cassian said. Then, his face turning red, he corrected himself. “I mean, I know I’ve dated a lot. I didn’t mean to say I knew that you hadn’t. I don’t know what your dating life has been.” He held up a hand. “I don’t even really want to know. The only part of your dating life I’m really interested in is who you are dating now. And I want that to be me.”
He looked worried. Nessa knew she should answer him and say that she felt the same way. But all the air had been sucked out of her throat and she couldn’t form words beyond, “All right,” and then, “Okay.”
“Okay?” Cassian said. “What I said just now is okay?”
Nessa nodded. “Yeah.”
“Then I can do this…?” He was smiling as he leaned forward and kissed her. She felt herself smiling back
“Yeah,” she said, when he pulled away. “You can do that.”
“Oh, really?” Cassian said, looking sheepish and also a little cocky and maybe proud of himself.
“Come here,” Nessa said, pulling him back toward her. This time he kissed her for real and she kissed him back. They stumbled toward the wall of the store behind them, and then Cassian moved her into a shadow so they wouldn’t be seen—not that anyone was out on the deserted main street of Tether, Michigan, on a Saturday night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Passing the music room on her way to the bathroom during English class on Monday, Nessa stopped just to listen to the song the chorus was learning, some old-fashioned, classical piece with the sopranos singing up in their heads.
A freshman with a bathroom pass gave her a strange look.
“What are you looking at?” Nessa said, because she was tired of everyone talking about her all the time.
“I’m not looking,” the freshman said. “I’m listening.”
That’s sweet, Nessa thought. The kid liked the song just as much as she did. Until he added, “I’m listening to you,” and Nessa realized that she herself was singing.
And she wasn’t singing, exactly. She was making a high-pitched humming noise that wasn’t in tune with the piece so much as it felt like it was an echo of the piece inside Nessa’s mind. Nessa clamped a hand over her mouth.
Oh, my god. She was howling. In school.
The freshman turned the corner and Nessa felt her face go red, as she rushed back to class herself.
The whispers had returned. Nessa’s name was linked to Cassian’s. Everyone was talking about how they had been seen out on a date and the whispers intensified every time Cassian made a point of stopping by Nessa’s table at lunch, or offering her rides home, or the one time he led her behind the field house after practice, when it was already dark out, and kissed her where no one could see.
The days turned into a week, and now Nessa was starting to think about the next moon phase: she could see it growing fat in the night sky—and the chart Selena gave her said it would rise sometime during the day on Thursday.
Nessa had been super focused waiting for the new moon—her GPA had never looked this good, and she was hoping her streak would continue as she approached this moon. But instead of becoming super focused, Nessa found it hard to focus at all.
Nessa lost track of the days of the week. She left the books she needed for homework at school. One crazy morning, she simply could not remember her locker combination. And another time, she found herself staring at a pencil in math class, so lost in thought she’d forgotten to fill in the answers on a test.
“Nessa? Nessa!” Delphine said, banging on the bathroom door when Nessa was touching the bones of her face, thinking about what must happen when she shifted into a wolf—were those her bones still, or did they belong to another creature? Delphine’s anger brought her back to reality, in which she was supposed to be brushing and washing and otherwise getting ready for bed.
It wasn’t that she’d fallen in love with Cassian, though that’s what Bree kept assuming when Nessa spaced out. Nessa was pretty sure the brain-takeover was part of wolf transformation. It was getting worse as the moon grew larger.
“What are you doing now?” Bree said when Nessa got up from the lunch table and started walking along the edge of the cafeteria walls. Bree followed her when it became obvious that a lot of kids were staring at Nessa. “Nessa, you look like you think the wall is talking to you or something,” Bree said, laughing nervously.
“It is,” Nessa said. “Or at least it’s squeaking. You can’t hear that?”
Bree shook her head, raised her eyebrows, shook her head again. “Should I be able to?”
“There are mice back there,” Nessa explained. “I can hear them. There are probably about a couple dozen right now, waiting for all of us to go home so they can get at the crumbs. Our school is completely infested.”
“Ew,” said Bree, covering her mouth with her hand. “That’s disgusting.”
Nessa shrugged. “They’re just animals.”
“That carry disease and are probably running all over the cafeteria kitchen at night. I’m putting this on the student council agenda,” said Bree.
Nessa’s hair was lightening again, and she heard two girls sitting nearby at lunch talking about the exact process they were sure she’d used to color it. Nessa found this so hilarious she sent some chocolate milk out of her nose. “Ew, gross, Nessa, come on!” Bree protested. “It’s bad enough you’re eating nasty school hamburgers at the same table as me. Do you know how that meat was harvested?”
Nessa didn’t care how the meat was harvested. It was Tuesday. The full moon was two days away. If she didn’t eat three of these burgers at lunch, she knew her stomach would be rumbling again before practice.
Coach Hoffman found her in the lunchroom on Thursday and asked her to drop into his office before practice. He told her he had good news, but still, she was nervous.
She found Principal Sarakoski, Mr. Porter, and Mr. Cooper all waiting for her in Coach’s office. “Nessa,” Coach said. “Thanks for coming. Have a seat.”
Ceremoniously, he passed Nessa a printed sheet of codes, numbers, percentages, and dates. She looked at it blankly.
“Is this my blood test result?” Nessa said.
Coach Hoffman was smiling. “It is.”
“What does it mean?” She handed him back the paper, as though he should read it out loud.
“It means you’re racing this Saturday. As I’m sure you know, it’s the qualifying tournament for States, so I’m personally very pleased to welcome you back on the team.”
“I am?” said Nessa. The cloud she’d been in cleared immediately.
“And I believe Principal Sarakoski has something to say to you also.”
“You’re back on the team, Nessa,” Principal Sarakoski said, “and I hope you realize that the accusations were never personal. It was never about you, you understand. In the face of the evidence that seemed to be pointing in your direction, I just had to be sure our school’s name did not get dragged through the mud.”
“I understand,” Nessa said, wishing Principal Sarakoski would just stop talking and release her.
“I’ve asked Mr. Porter to reach out to any recruiters he knows and offer to fax them a copy of your clean test, assuming your mother gives her permission. Would that be all right with you?”
“That would be great,” Nessa said. Mr. Porter caught her eye, nodded, and gave her a thumb’s up, like he’d been on her side all along.
“So we’re good here?” Coach asked, looking around the office. Principal Sarakoski nodded, Mr. Porter smiled, and Coach made a sound like an explosion and punched the air with both fists.
“Okay, Nessa, it’s time to run!”
Coach’s directive gave Nessa an ache, a desire to run. She felt it straight to the bone. She had to take
a deep breath and get herself through the next steps: locker room, stretch, warm up.
She was finally back on track, ready to get back on the path she’d laid out for herself. She knew she was going to transform, but she had plenty of time to get back to normal. Friday night she’d carbo-load for the race. Saturday she’d get on the bus with the rest of the team, sleep as much as she could, run as hard as she was able, and hopefully be on her way to qualifying for States.
With the doping issue behind her, Nessa thought she had the next few days all figured out. The Universe had other plans.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
This transformation started out just like the one before. By the time Bree dropped her at the woods, Nessa was riding white-knuckled in the passenger seat, her hand on the door like she was about to be carsick.
Before Bree could pull into the trailhead parking area, Nessa said, “Stop. Stop!” and Bree, looking alarmed, pulled over to the side of the road.
“Nessa, wait,” Bree said, but Nessa couldn’t wait. Mumbling a rushed, “Gotta go,” she had the passenger door open and she was off, running into the woods, finding her way without a trail, her last thought a hope that Bree would remember to leave the phone again.
And then Nessa had to strain to remember what a phone was. She called to mind the image of her phone, but it felt like déjà vu—she could remember remembering it, but that was it. She certainly couldn’t imagine picking one up to call or text someone. She couldn’t imagine picking one up, period. Her hands were paws already. White fur tufted up from them, glowing in the moonlight. She had a sense of herself as a bright flash of white, a satellite of the moon above.
Nessa had forgotten about how crisply focused everything became when she could smell as a wolf. Smelling was like tasting. It was like feeling. Smells were attached to emotions, even for humans—a smell was one of the few memories of Nessa’s dad that lingered: sage, smoke, and soil.
Running, Nessa sensed mice, deer, cats—processing each being’s existence. Could they hurt her? Could she eat them? A dog had been through earlier. She could smell the sheep enclosed in their barn at Joe Bent’s farm. The wood smoke and charred meat from his dinner table made her hungry and afraid, all at the same time. There were a hundred different acrid burning smells coming from the cars and tractors and ATVs and generators he kept on the property, and another kind of burning smell—leaves?
In the woods, the smells were softer, colder: a decomposing log carried down the current in a stream, sap sprayed from a recently snapped pine bough, an ant hill about a half a mile away, an owl’s nest up in a tree a mile beyond that. And, of course, the other wolves.
She caught the trail of the pack led by the white wolf. She recognized each of their scents. She wondered whether she would be welcomed again, and then she plunged forward, remembering how they had run with her and played with her, and wrestled and raced. She heard howling in the distance and picked up speed, knowing that they must have smelled her, too. She sat back on her haunches and called out to them, hoping they could hear her and would know that she meant no harm. For a non-pack member to enter a pack’s territory would likely mean death, but somehow she was different. She wasn’t one of them, but neither was she a threat.
And then they were running alongside her, surrounding her. She recognized Big One, the white wolf, out in front, the ones who she thought of as the brothers and the sister on either side, flanking her, first one then the other trying to get her attention through an erratic movement, a ducking of the head, a raising of the tail. Nessa wondered if any of these movements might mean something akin to “Psst,” or “Hey you.”
Mama—Nessa didn’t know how she knew this was the wolf’s name but she did—was hanging back behind with a lesser adult male as company.
The wolves were running like they had somewhere to be, and Nessa had the feeling they were leading her in a specific direction. Leaving the trail, they headed into some light brush, climbing—Nessa could feel the incline in the way her back legs stretched out so much farther than her front.
One of the brothers made three short yips. Nessa didn’t know what they meant, but, given that the big wolf came back to him and gave him a dirty look before returning to the front of the pack, Nessa assumed the wolf had asked an annoying question, “Are we there yet?” in wolf.
Nessa had noticed that within the pack, Big One was constantly establishing dominance over the others. He’d cuff the other wolves or hold his chin and tail high in the air while Mama or the younger wolves, the brothers and the sister, lowered their shoulders in deference and tucked in their tails. The young wolves acted like children most of the time, and the submissive one was worse than that. He acted like he didn’t even deserve to be alive except to serve Big One’s needs.
They reached an outcropping of rocks, standing above flat farmland, with a single house and barn visible below. Nessa could see the details: the neat, gray, tin-gabled roof, the small barn, the light from the kitchen windows spilling out into the gravel yard.
The white wolf lifted his head. This was definitely a way of “talking” to the others. This one was saying something, and Nessa could understand the gist of it, even if she didn’t know exactly which parts meant what.
He was saying, “Look.”
Nessa’s human self made a tiny stir inside of her, reminding her wolf self who lived in this house.
Billy Lark.
And then the wolves were running again, and Nessa was drawn up into the movement, spooked like she was a deer. Down a slope this time, in the opposite direction, through the underbrush of trees, until at last they emerged from the growth and were passing between the fields, coming up on the farmhouse they’d seen from above.
At the corner where the field met the barn, the wolves came to a stop. There were six of them who had been running, including the two brothers, sister, Mama, Big One, and the last one, who Nessa figured was the omega wolf, the one the pack tolerated only because he was completely submissive to everyone in it. He had partially torn ears, a white front leg, and black spots on his gray snout that looked like freckles.
Omega came to Nessa now, nudging her, pulling up a paw and batting at her neck. The movement might have disfigured a human, but in wolf state, his nails did not cut through Nessa’s thick fur. Omega never tried to hurt anyone in the pack. His mission in life seemed to be to serve others, to make himself as unobtrusive as possible. His tail was tucked between his legs, his head held low in contrast to Big One, the alpha, who was erect with his tail lifted high.
“Come,” Omega seemed to be entreating Nessa. “Please?” He took a step and looked back at her. She moved to follow and he led on.
They were headed to the house, but not toward the light coming from the kitchen windows. Trotting in a wide circle around the light, the submissive wolf led Nessa to a dark window on the house’s other side. The sky behind the house was starting to show signs of light, but this side was still in shadow. Except for his one white stocking, Omega had a dark coat and moved without making any noise at all.
Then Omega went up on his hind legs in front of a window and laid his paws on the sill. He alternated looking through it and looking back at Nessa, as if showing her what he meant for her to do, inviting her to partake of a bone he’d been worrying.
Feeling uncomfortable, and definitely worried about the human odors coming at her—they smelled so strong, it was as if they were being blown in her direction by an industrial fan—Nessa sidled up to the wall of the house beneath the window, rose up on her hind legs, and rested her paws against the sill.
She saw a nightlight plugged into one wall, casting a stencil of a moon and stars on to the room’s ceiling. Nessa could make out a bed with an indistinct lump in it—it had to be Billy.
Nessa shuddered. Why were they here? She looked at her guide wolf, who was staring fixedly into the room, and she again followed his gaze, even as her front legs were feeling strained.
She knew wolves had an uncanny kn
ack, when hunting, of being able to tell which animals were compromised—old, young, weak, lame, sick—and easiest to bring down in a hunt. Scientists were not aware of how wolves made this calculation, only that they were choosey about what they would expend the energy to hunt, and they were almost never wrong about which animals were the most vulnerable within a herd.
Suddenly, the crack of light along the floor that indicated a door to the hallway grew into a rectangle. The door was opening, and Nessa saw Mrs. Lark’s form outlined in the bright light. Billy moved in bed, one bare foot sticking out from under the covers.
Billy pushed off the covers and half sat. Mrs. Lark was holding a glass of water, pills cupped in her other hand. She placed both on the nightstand and leaned over to put a palm on Billy’s forehead. Nessa registered the worried expression on her face as she pulled her hand away and turned in the direction of the window. Nessa’s wolf guide quickly dropped down, but Nessa didn’t think to do the same until she saw the look of first shock and then abject terror on Mrs. Lark’s face when her eyes met Nessa’s through the glass.
All she could think was that Mrs. Lark knew her. So why was she screaming? There must be something else really scary going on, and Nessa wondered, lost in panic, if she herself were safe.
And then submissive Omega did something that could not be characterized as submissive at all. He plowed into Nessa, the force of the contact indicating he’d taken a running start. Nessa landed on her back, four paws in the air, and then the suddenly not-so-submissive wolf nipped at her haunches to get her back up on her feet and they were both running, quickly joined by the rest of the pack, who had remained hidden behind the barn.
It was a good thing they had moved off when they did, too, because she could still hear Mrs. Lark screaming, and then the sound of the front door opening, and Mr. Lark’s voice saying, “Dear sweet lord, get the rifle.”