Weregirl

by C. D. Bell

  Nessa looked at the heading at the top of the most recent statement, and Mary’s employer was listed as “Rock Creek Investment Partners/Paravida.”

  Mary works for Paravida? she thought.

  It wasn’t totally strange, she supposed. Mary seemed to be Dr. Raab’s right hand. She did not work in the regular part of the clinic as far as Nessa knew. And Paravida funded the study. So it made sense. But what had happened to all the money? As far as she knew, Mary had no kids and her parents were both deceased.

  Nessa continued to page back into Mary’s contribution history. Then she came to a line that made her startle. It was Mary’s 401K contribution from 2007. It read: “Rock Creek Investment Partners/Dutch Chemical.”

  Now this is officially weird, Nessa thought. Mary worked for Dutch Chem and Paravida?

  Nessa pawed through the rest of the file. There were some pictures of Mary when she was younger, with two women who looked similar and could have been her cousins. And then there was a picture of Mary, smiling and tan, with a handsome blond man. He had his arm around her. There was a lake behind them.

  Nessa pulled out her phone and texted Bree.

  No clinic study data. ☹ But some strange financial information on Mary. Plus a few photos.

  Nessa saw that Bree was answering.

  Good. Bring it in tomorrow and we’ll discuss.

  Gn.

  Nessa replaced the folders in her backpack, returned to bed, and went to sleep.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The next morning, Bree and Nessa parked at the far end of the lot at school so Bree could take pictures of the clippings and Mary’s financial statements without being seen. She took close-ups of the photos as well.

  “I’ll send these to an anonymous email account and then delete them from my phone,” Bree said. “They’ll be there if we need them.”

  “Where should we toss the originals?” Nessa said. “We have to be careful. These link us to the break-in.”

  “We can ask Selena to shred them for us,” Bree said. “She can take us into the office on Saturday when no one is around.”

  “Sounds good,” Nessa agreed. “I’ll hide them in one of the bins in our garage in the meantime.”

  Nessa was concerned about her next transformation. As the moon got fuller and fuller, she could feel herself changing in ways she still wasn’t used to. On Wednesday, she heard a rustling as she passed the main office at school and smelled something strong and Christmas-like—a peppermint candy being unwrapped? She started craving hamburgers again. And her energy increased. Without cross-country practices after school, Nessa started running on her own. That afternoon, she ran a 10K. On Thursday, she ran a half marathon.

  Luc must have been doing the same thing because she often saw him out running when she was. She’d recognize his tall, thin form silhouetted on the opposite side of the lake she was circling, or spot him coming back down one of the lonely roads stretching out of town while she headed out on it.

  On Thursday, she met up with him on a road still inside of Tether, near her house. They fell into step with each other naturally, as if they were still at practice. But that was all that felt natural between them.

  When Luc said, casually, “Did you hear Cynthia got a free ride to run for Ann Arbor?” Nessa suddenly felt ready to bite his head off.

  “Oh, really?” she said, trying to sound indifferent. She was thinking many things—all of which made her angry and none of which made her particularly proud: (1) The very mention of Cynthia’s name reminded her that she still didn’t know if Cynthia had planted the androstenedione or if it was part of a Paravida conspiracy in which she had been the target, which terrified her. (2) A scholarship to the University of Michigan was huge. It was hard not to feel jealous. (3) Why was Luc telling her about Cynthia? Were they together now?

  She heard herself saying, “Why do you know this? Are you seeing her now?” before she realized how very much she would regret asking that question aloud. She felt her face going red. She missed a step and almost tripped.

  Please, please, she begged the gods of awkward social moments. Let that have sounded like I am an interested friend.

  “I’m telling you because Cynthia was on our team and you know her and…are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, but it came out too fast. She knew it sounded like she wasn’t fine. To change the subject, Nessa asked Luc more about Chayton. Had he seen him?

  And now Luc was the one who seemed bothered. “What makes you think I’d know where he is?” he said. “Do you think there’s some kind of Native American tracking app the tribal council gives out?”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Nessa said. “You said you knew him. I just thought—”

  “I know what you thought,” Luc said.

  Nessa felt her chest heaving with anger. Righteous anger. “I am so sick,” she spat out, “of being told I don’t understand things that no one is even bothering to explain.”

  She imagined taking off without a word of goodbye. She couldn’t wait until the next turnoff, when she could leave Luc in her dust. Luc was being so unfair! Maybe he would realize it as he gazed at her quickly disappearing form on the horizon.

  The only problem was they were running on a road that ran north out of town, straight and flat like it had been drawn with a ruler. No turnoffs unless you counted creepy dirt roads that looked passable only by off-road vehicles. Nessa was forced to stay by Luc’s side.

  Tether really was in the middle of nowhere, Nessa thought, angry now not just at Luc but at the town. At the world. Maybe Luc would have liked the town better if he’d moved to Tether when Vivian was growing up here, when the town was the center of things and people came in from farms to shop at the now-closed stores and see movies at the now-closed theater.

  “It’s too bad you had to move here,” Nessa spat out. “It must have been better in the UP, where at least it’s supposed to feel like the sticks.”

  To her surprise, Luc laughed. “That has to be the stupidest thing anyone has ever said about the UP,” he said. “Nothing in the UP feels like it’s supposed to be the way it is.”

  “Don’t laugh at me!” Nessa found herself shouting. “I am not saying things that are stupid. I am saying things that are true! You’d have to be crazy to want to move to Tether.” She had stopped running and was standing in the road. Luc stopped too, a few steps away from her, facing her. “And just to be clear, I’m not trying to get in touch with Chayton because I need my acne cleared up or something,” she went on. “I really need to talk to him. And I was just asking you. Okay?”

  “Jeez,” Luc said. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  “You should be sorry,” Nessa grumbled. She kicked at a piece of gravel on the side of the road, then looked up at Luc, half wondering if he’d just take off and leave her to run on her own. But Luc was still standing there, his hands on his bony hips. He lifted one toe after another, stretching the tops of his feet in a gesture Nessa recognized from practice.

  “You don’t even have acne,” he said.

  Nessa was too mad for this…compliment?…joke? to register. But what Luc said next did: “I know you’re worried about your brother.”

  “What?” Nessa said, defensive.

  “Your brother,” he said. “I know you’re worried. Because of Billy.”

  “I’m not worried about my brother,” she snapped. “I’m not worried about anything.”

  “Sure,” Luc said, like he didn’t believe her and didn’t care if she knew he didn’t.

  “Why would I need to? Nate’s not sick like Billy was.”

  “Yeah, okay, I get that. Sorry.” Luc was looking at her strangely. She would think later that this was the most expressive he’d ever been.

  “I guess I better head back into town,” Nessa said, suddenly feeling like it was weird that she and Luc had had a fight when they weren’t even really friends.

  “Okay,” said Luc and they started running together again, back the way t
hey’d come.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Thinking about the fight later, Nessa wondered how much of it had to do with the full moon. She was starting to notice a pattern of being highly emotional before transformation. It was like getting her period, but times 50.

  At school, Nessa packed Chayton’s rye sachet into her backpack and filled her jeans pockets with other ones she’d clumsily stapled together using fabric from an old bandana. She had to keep the transformation at bay until nighttime, but she didn’t know if she could. Vivian was working late. Nessa was supposed to take care of Nate after school.

  Bree would have taken care of Nate in Nessa’s place except she had a student council meeting.

  By lunchtime at school, Nessa was in sensory overload. Her wrists and hips and shoulders ached. Her eyes looked normal in the mirror but felt swollen to the point of closing. Her palms itched. She had a patch of fur on her right thigh, which fortunately no one could see. She kept touching her face in the cafeteria, hoping to feel if there was fur before anyone else could see. None appeared, thankfully.

  And then she had to take the school bus home instead of her usual ride in the Monster. Every bump and rev of the engine felt like it was going to shock the wolf right out of her. Breathing deeply, Nessa managed to keep it together, adding 2+2, 4+4, 8+8 all the way into the thousands, the way Nate used to do when he couldn’t sleep at night.

  Nessa burst into the empty house. Vivian was working, Delphine was babysitting, and Nate’s bus had not arrived yet. It was easier to keep the transformation at bay when there were people around. Now, the only thing that seemed to help was putting things in alphabetical order, another Nate trick for calming down.

  The only problem was that Nate had much of the house already organized alphabetically. The shelf of books in the living room, the lotions and medications in the bathroom cabinets, even the tea bags in the box of assorted tea flavors in the kitchen. Nessa decided to do what Vivian did for Nate—she opened up the newspaper and started clipping articles for Nate to organize. Only Nessa was the one doing the organizing now.

  As she placed PLANS FOR NEW KROGER IN MIDLAND on top of BAY CITY ATTORNEY BOUND FOR TRIAL, she kept cutting through the Paravida logo that appeared on the top of every page. How had it never seemed weird to her before that Paravida paid for the newspaper to be printed and delivered free to every house in Tether? Nessa had not thought much about that fact until now. Why—in addition to subsidizing most of the sports teams and the concerts on the town green in the summer, the Policeman’s Benevolent Society, the Volunteer Fire Department, the Ambulance Corps, the health clinic, a senior center/daycare annexed to the retirement home on the edge of town—was Paravida sponsoring the only local source of information in the town? Was this why there were no stories about the wolf attacks? It was something Paravida wanted to keep quiet?

  Finally, Nessa heard the roar and squeal of Nate’s bus arriving and stopping at the corner, then the front door opening to signal his arrival. With trembling hands, Nessa fixed a peanut butter sandwich for him and sat down at the kitchen table to help him with math homework, Chayton’s sachet pressed up against her face like she was icing a black eye. She knew that the second she let herself run—even if she just ran down the hall to her room—she’d be running as a wolf. Just thinking about running made her feel in danger of transforming. She dug her fingernails into her palm to keep thoughts like that at bay. And drew blood. Her fingernails had become sharp as claws.

  By the time an hour passed, the November sky was darkening and Nessa was all too aware that she wouldn’t make it through dinner and Vivian’s return home. So when Delphine biked back from her babysitting job, Nessa explained that even though Delphine wasn’t usually left in charge of Nate, she was going to have to be this time because Nessa had an emergency homework project and just had to go over to Bree’s.

  Nessa knew she sounded like she was lying. And that Delphine could tell. Nessa touched her face for the thousandth time. Was there fur?

  “I have homework,” Delphine said. “And laundry. Nate’s your job.”

  “I’ll do the laundry when I get back,” Nessa promised. “And Nate is already set up with a train movie. You don’t have to do a thing.”

  “Okay,” Delphine said, guardedly.

  “He’ll be so absorbed it’ll be like he wasn’t even here,” Nessa promised. “Maybe come out in about an hour and remind Nate to pause it to pee?”

  Delphine laughed.

  Later, Nessa would wonder which she regretted more, leaving Nate or joking about it with Delphine.

  At the moment it all felt worth it for the sense of ease that occurred as Nessa stepped into the rye circle she’d left set up in the woods. She felt the sweet rush of relief as if all the atoms and molecules in her body were finally able to relax from the strain of maintaining their human form. Even her emotions quieted in wolf form. She felt the way she did at practice after a long day—no matter what else was happening, all she had to do now was run.

  Without thinking too much about where she was going—Nessa never had to think too much about direction when she was in wolf form—she headed east, following a scent. It wasn’t food, and it wasn’t the wolf pack, but it was something she wanted.

  When she came to a ridgeline in the woods where the trees broke away and the air currents shifted because of the break in the land and the tree cover, Nessa smelled Paravida and realized she was close. She stopped suddenly, and she heard herself whine as though she’d been hit.

  Wolves do not try to overcome fear. Wolves do not have the mantra “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” stamped into their consciousness.

  Fear for a wolf is a wise emotion. Fear protects you. Fear must be respected and obeyed. And Nessa felt afraid. But she continued forward anyway.

  Crouching outside the chain-link fence, it kept her quiet while what looked like a small patrol of the Paravida wolves appeared on the ridgeline behind her. She noticed that this group had reddish fur marking their scruffs. Why were they different from the others?

  She had smelled them even before she heard the piercing whistle calling them back to their prison. She waited until the last wolf had passed by before falling into the line, keeping her eyes down and her tail tucked as the gray wolf had shown her.

  This time, Nessa followed the aggressive wolves almost all the way to their kennels. She needed to understand Paravida. Maybe there was information she could understand only in wolf form?

  She dipped out of the line and into the shadows just as the last wolf was being ushered into its chain-link box. She slipped around the side of the building, heading toward the next structure about forty feet away.

  On her way, she saw something that gave her pause. It was a field—a quarter acre, plowed, unfenced, planted with rye grass grown just under two feet tall. It was tall enough that she could see it was meant to be there. The grass was alive and green, even in the crisp November weather, and Nessa felt it tugging her. It would be so easy to disappear into it, and to rest.

  But what was it doing here? Rye was not for wolves, was it? Only werewolves were sustained by this ancient grain. Question #2,439 for Chayton.

  Not that she would ever get ahold of him again!

  Nessa forced herself to turn away from the rye and back to her search.

  She trotted up to a series of low windows along the building’s far wall. Jumping up on a windowsill to peer inside, Nessa saw that it was some kind of a laboratory. She wasn’t sure if it was the building where Billy’s autopsy took place.

  She recognized some of the equipment—large microscopes, a centrifuge, an assortment of Bunsen burners, a series of what looked like hot plates, a ductless fume hood. There were long bench-like counters running down the middle of the room and labeled shelves holding racks of test tubes, a row of refrigerators alongside one wall. What was different from other labs Nessa knew was the chain-link cage in the corner. Wait, no, actually there were two of them. One had a few blankets
in the corner.

  And then Nessa’s ears pricked at attention. The blankets stood and shook themselves as a door opened on the opposite side of the room. Those weren’t blankets. They were pups. Wolf pups.

  Nessa hopped down from the window as a man wearing a white lab coat entered the room. She did not want to be seen.

  She moved to the next set of windows around the corner of the building. This time, she hopped up on her back paws and peered into what was clearly an operating room. It was large, with a tile floor that had a drain in the center, and a stainless steel operating table was positioned under an enormous fluorescent light. It was flanked by carts holding monitors and trays of surgical instruments.

  Six men and women in green scrubs surrounded the operating table. They all wore goggles, surgical masks, and gloves. Their bodies nearly obscured the table, but it looked like they were moving in and out with tools and suction—it was surgery.

  Nessa could hear the beep of a heart monitor. It was steady but very rapid, which was odd. Who were they operating on? The doctor in charge looked up at the ceiling and said, “Mid-lateral incision complete.” He had tiny magnifying lenses attached to his glasses, and she couldn’t see much else beneath his surgical cap and face mask.

  One of the assistants stepped to the side, and Nessa saw, beneath the blue hospital sheet, that whoever this doctor was operating on had a tail.

  A wolf tail.

  The heart rate monitor seemed to speed up. The head surgeon and a nurse in charge of the station looked at the pulsing green line.

  “Okay, we’ve got to hurry,” the surgeon stated calmly, turning back toward his subject. “Number 22 scalpel.”