The Altering (Coywolf Series Book 1)

by Abby Tyson

  Now that she had access to her own clothes, she left the outfit she'd bought earlier and went to her own car. When she grabbed her backpack, the coconut rum was peeking out at her from under the seat. She could almost hear the smiling parrot on the white bottle speaking to her: This is all too much for you to handle on your own. Let me take the edge off like I always do.

  Savi picked up the bottle. Her car had been parked beneath the trees, and the shade had kept the bottle from getting hot.

  Do I need this? she asked herself. Am I one of those people who needs this?

  She knew the answer, and she hated herself for it.

  The first time she drank alone was just after New Year's. She'd had no idea what to get, so Baxter had bought her a bottle of vodka and told her to try it with orange or cranberry juice. She hid it in her trunk, and over the weekend bought a jug of cranberry juice to hide beside it. The following Monday morning, her first day of school after Christmas break, she stopped on her way to school at a movie theater parking lot and poured herself a sip. It hadn't tasted great, but every day she had a little more, and soon she was drinking half a cup every morning before school -- just enough to make everything a little fuzzy, but not enough to make her act differently. It helped her face the jeers and taunts of her classmates, but it didn't help her grades.

  By spring she was failing every class except English, and her mom had been brought in to discuss "Savi's future." Savi realized she was attracting too much attention and decided to give the drinking a rest. After all, drinking had just been one of the many tools she used to deal with Tara and Eric and everyone else. So what if people left cruel notes on her locker? So what if people left globs of red and brown paint on her chair and threw spitballs in her hair? She was stronger than them, and she could get through school without drinking.

  Only she couldn't. For two days she'd been so sick she stayed home from school. Her mom stayed home with her too, which was sweet, but the urge to drink was so strong that she had begged her mom to go out and get her some vitamin water just so Savi could sneak something. Shivering, sweating, and sobbing all at once, she'd gone out to the garage, wrapped in her comforter, and gulped vodka straight from the bottle. She'd puked immediately, but felt better.

  After that, she couldn't deny that she had a problem, but she told herself that it was just because of school. Once she was done with school, she'd be able to stop. She'd definitely cut back since graduation -- one bottle usually lasted a month now rather than a week, but every time she told herself it was the last one, and every time she found herself taking another brown bag from Baxter.

  And here she was, shaking out the pine needles from her cup and pouring herself some coconut rum. Her best friend in the world was enduring who knew what torture at the hands of those lunatics, and Savi -- weak, pathetic, phony Savi -- couldn't even try to help her without some liquid courage.

  I need it.

  Savi picked up the book of poetry and plopped into her chair. Before she could think herself out of it, she poured the contents of the still nearly full bottle out onto the ground. She watched the smooth, clear waterfall pour onto the patches of crabgrass and dirt for what felt like days. She pictured herself as a fountain, and the stream pouring from the bottle as endless. Her hand faltered a few times, breaking the uniform flow, but the cup in her other hand was her safety net.

  She set the empty bottle on the ground against her chair. With the sweet smell of coconut rum surrounding her, she thumbed through her book and opened it to a random page.

  I lost a world the other day.

  Has anybody found?

  You'll know it by the row of stars

  Around its forehead bound.

  A rich man might not notice it;

  Yet to my frugal eye

  Of more esteem than ducats.

  Oh, find it, sir, for me!

  "I hear ya," Savi said to the page. Turning to the picture on the cover, she said, "You're growing on me, Emily."

  Savi reread the poem. She didn't pretend to understand exactly what it meant, but that was the beauty of poetry -- you took what spoke to you and left the rest for someone else. The first line couldn't have been more fitting for Savi's current situation. The last line, however, irked her.

  Catching herself bringing the cup of rum to her lips, Savi carefully lowered it into the chair's cupholder. She put the book in her car and carried her pack to the tent. After dumping the contents of her backpack out on her sleeping bag, she repacked a long-sleeve shirt and her bug spray. Then, with a few sideways glances at the cup, she walked to her car and opened the hatchback. She ate one sandwich as she packed another, along with a couple bottles of water. When she had everything she thought she might need for a trek through the woods, she hid her keys in her sleeping bag, put the backpack in George's car, and went back to her chair.

  I'm all Hettie has.

  Her words echoed back at her like a cruel joke. Tears prickled her eyelids. Savi knew all she had to do was take a few gulps and she wouldn't have to feel all of this. She wouldn't feel the fear of failure, the sorrow at her father's death, the anger at George's lies, the need for Marley's approval -- it would all fall away, and she could focus on what mattered. She could focus on Hettie.

  Oh, find it, sir, for me!

  The last line of the poem was a cry for help. But to Savi, it was a challenge.

  The ground in front of her chair was still dark from the rum. She reached out for the cup but recoiled, pulling her hand up to her chest when she realized that it was shaking. Her mouth dried up. She could almost taste the wet -- but never quenching -- liquid trickle down her throat.

  Once again she reached out, this time taking the blue plastic cup into her hand.

  "I need it."

  She'd never said that out loud before.

  Oh, find it, sir, for me!

  As if in slow motion, as if someone else were doing it, her hand tipped to the side. The first drops fell where the others had. Feeling a stab of pity for the grass that thought it was getting fresh, sustaining water, Savi moved her hand so the liquid fell on the bare dirt.

  "I'll find it, Emily," she said. "I'll find it, for me."

  Chapter Sixteen

  Back in George's car, she pulled out his phone, planning on using aerial imagery to find the barn. At the passcode prompt, she dropped her head on the steering wheel, staring down at the phone in her lap.

  There was no way she could find the barn again without a map. She'd been blindfolded when she arrived, and unconscious when she left. Maybe she could guess his passcode.

  "It could be anything," she groaned, already regretting dumping her rum. She didn't know his birthday, or his favorite number.

  Picking up the phone, she tried 1-2-3-4.

  The numbers jiggled, as if laughing at her. She held it to the light at different angles, looking for fingerprints. The screen was covered with them, with the most concentrated smudges over the nine and eight.

  9-8-9-8.

  The phone giggled at her again.

  "It's not funny, Apple." Stupid snobby phones.

  Was the iPhone the one that would erase everything if the wrong passcode was entered too many times? How many times did they give you? Getting his phone wiped would serve George right for being such a jerk. She couldn't believe he'd been watching them for years and never done anything to give her mom a sense of closure. Her earliest memories of her mom were her crying out Monty's name in her sleep. Yet George thought he was part of the family.

  Psycho.

  Hugging her and calling her kiddo.

  Creep.

  A crazy thought crossed Savi's mind. She lifted the phone, staring at the numbers. Nine and eight. George was her manager. He had access to her personal file. She may not know his birthday, but he knew hers. She'd probably even mentioned to him that she liked how her birthday, August 9, 1998, was a palindrome.

  8-9-9-8.

  The home screen of George's phone appeared. Disturbed though she wa
s at how intimately George had woven her life into his, Savi found a map and got to work.

  The barn was on a plot of private property near the Sandwash Reservoir, just over three miles from one of the seasonal parking lots. When George was trying to get her to leave him last night, he'd said there was a stream nearby that led to the road. She couldn't see any streams, but there was a small river, although it was well into the woods. The reservoir itself was north of the lot, so maybe if she just kept heading north, she'd find the barn. Everyone knew that moss grew on the north side of trees, but that knowledge didn't increase her confidence in her ability to stay on course.

  Savi looked down at George's phone. On a whim she scrolled through his apps.

  There was a compass app! Loathe though she may have been to admit it, Savi was glad she had George's phone with her and not her own. She drove to the lot south of the barn and locked George's car. She put the phone on silent in her backpack, and headed into the woods.

  It was early afternoon, and the overcast sky and dense canopy kept the air cooler than it had been the day before, but Savi still had to stop about an hour into her trek for some water and a rest. As she sat on a large rock, confirming her direction and shaking some prickly bits of dead leaf out of her sneaker, a crashing sound, accompanied by breaking tree branches, made Savi jump off the rock, shoe in hand. Something fell out of the sky and landed so hard that she felt the thud as much as heard it. Before investigating, Savi put her shoe back on, keeping an eye on the sky to see if anything else was falling, but there was nothing but light gray clouds.

  As she neared the object, she could see it was a bit larger than a basketball with bright rainbow stripes painted on it. It had skidded a few feet before stopping, leaving a deep trail now full of scattering bugs and exposed worms. Savi nudged it with her foot, but it was too heavy to move.

  For a second, the possibility that this was an alien spaceship seemed plausible. If werewolves, why not aliens?

  Savi kicked it a few more times, then stomped on it. Okay, not a spaceship. Just a painted rock. But where had it come from?

  A rustling ahead made Savi jump. Assuming it was Marcia's gang, she darted away from the sound. Just as she looked over her shoulder something heavy landed on her back. She fell to the ground, dry leaves scratching her face. A heavy sniffing around her neck suggested she had been tackled by a large dog.

  "Who are you?"

  Not a dog.

  "Why do you smell like werewolves when you ain't a werewolf?" the same voice asked.

  "Get off of me and I'll explain," Savi said, trying to remain calm.

  The werewolf on her back sniffed a few more times, then hopped off of her. As Savi stood and brushed herself off, she heard another set of footsteps.

  "Whatcha got, Pink?" called a girl's voice.

  Savi looked up to see the girl with amber eyes who had nearly strangled her during the robbery at the Beanie Beanie. By association, Savi now recognized the guy as her boyfriend, still shirtless.

  "You!" Savi couldn't help but shout.

  The girl closed the large gap between them in three enormous jogging strides.

  "She ain't a werewolf," the guy said. He had picked up the rock and was tossing it up and down with one hand as if it were no lighter than a baseball.

  "No kidding," the girl said, moving close enough for Savi to catch the crisp, fruity scent of her champagne perfume over the strong odor of the surrounding pine trees. The girl took Savi's hand and brought it up, lightly touching her bandaged arm. Turning her dark eyes on Savi, she said, "You didn't smell like this yesterday. You one of Marcia's new Alters?"

  "What? No way. No."

  The girl's intense, probing eyes didn't let up as she wrapped her warm hand around Savi's bandage. "You smell like her and her lot." Savi yelped with pain as the girl's hand squeezed her arm. "Why?"

  "They caught me last night. I escaped. Stop that!"

  The girl only squeezed harder. "And you just happened to stumble into our neck of the woods?"

  Savi tried pulling away, but the girl stayed with her. "I'm just trying to find my way back."

  "I thought you said you escaped," the girl said with a sneer.

  The pain made Savi's knees buckle. She fell to the ground. "Let go, please! I have to go back and rescue my friend!"

  The girl tossed her arm away but bent down to get right up in Savi's face. "Have you been watching us?"

  "Watching you?" asked Savi, cringing at her now blood-stained bandage.

  The girl stood to survey the woods around them, her gaze resting on a nearby tree and travelling all the way up to its tip. She looked back at Savi with the same mix of mischief and superiority that she had worn yesterday and said, "If Marcia thought we'd go easy on her wide-eyed spy, she's got another thing coming."

  "Spy?"

  The girl grabbed Savi's arm and threw her over her shoulder.

  "Put me down!" Savi shouted, pounding on the girl's back.

  After a few bounding steps, Savi watched the ground get farther and farther away as the girl werewolf jumped nimbly from branch to branch, climbing higher than Savi ever would -- or could -- on her own.

  "Stop! Help!" Savi screamed, clutching the girl's waist. "What are you doing?"

  The girl stopped, dropping Savi on a short, broken limb that was at least forty feet up. Savi clung to the girl, but she ripped Savi's hands off of her and put them on the tree trunk.

  As the girl werewolf leapt swiftly back down, she shouted, "This is our territory. If you get down in one piece, tell Marcia to remember that."

  "Wait! Don't leave me! I'm not a spy!" Savi screamed, her arms wrapped around the tree. "I don't even like Marcia!"

  The girl jumped from one branch to another so deftly that Savi couldn't help a brief flash of envy, even if the power came at such a high cost. When she got back to the ground the two werewolves groped each other, then ran away laughing, out of sight in seconds.

  Savi wasn't afraid as much as she was angry. Everyone seemed to be conspiring to prevent her from saving Hettie. Had she really dumped out her rum for this? She let out a loud, guttural bellow that reverberated through the forest.

  Following the sound with her eyes, Savi noticed for the first time how different everything looked from up here. The ground was obscured by a thick floor of branches, and she wasn't close enough to the top to see the horizon, but the sea of green leaves rippled dazzlingly around her. She'd always loved the sound of trees in the wind, but up here she not only heard the creaking and rustling, she felt it. Hugging the trunk, her cheek pressed against the smooth bark, she closed her eyes, a light wind blowing on her and the tree as one. As the tree rocked her, Savi knew on some level that she should be scared -- scared of falling, scared of werewolves, scared of Marcia -- but that all seemed so... terrestrial. Up here, all she felt was peace.

  She opened her eyes to see a chickadee watching her from the next tree.

  "I see why you like it up here," said Savi.

  The bird flitted among branches, then settled on one a few feet below Savi in her own tree.

  "Yeah, yeah. Heroism awaits, I know."

  Savi studied the branches around her. Several were gray and cracked -- obviously dead. Nearly all of them looked too thin to support her anyway. But the girl had climbed up, carrying Savi, so at least some of the limbs had to be stronger than they appeared.

  She considered screaming for help again. Someone might come. Maybe Marley was nearby. She also had George's phone, if she could get it out of her backpack and keep her balance at the same time. But something inside stopped Savi from calling out -- a need to prove that she could handle this, a need to show Ren and Marley and George that she wasn't a weak little thing who needed their protection.

  After assessing the branches some more, Savi had a prospective route mapped out, including those she was pretty sure the girl werewolf had used. As long as she stepped lightly, and kept her feet close to the trunk, she was less likely to snap the dead branche
s off.

  She enjoyed the rare perspective for the final time, listening to the symphony of trees, then grabbed onto the base of a broken branch. Very slowly she slid herself off of the branch she had been sitting on and set one foot on the closest one below her. Gingerly she pressed down, testing its strength. It held. Gripping the handhold and her perch, she twisted her body around and put both feet on the branch.

  A rush of pride filled her for having accomplished the tricky business of turning around and getting into a climbing position. The chickadee, once again next door, sung her praises.

  "Thanks," Savi said. "You wouldn't happen to be a were-chickadee, would you?" She held out her hand. "Help me out here. Just a little nip?"

  The chickadee took off, flying down to a branch in Savi's tree that was well below where she was.

  "Rejected again," she muttered.

  She eyed her next foothold: a branch that, although skinny, at least appeared healthy. She would grab a thick but dead branch above it and step on the skinny branch just long enough to get to a sturdy-looking limb below. Savi took a deep breath and let go of the broken branch.

  At the same moment, the branch she'd been standing on gave way with an ear-splitting crack. Savi's body jerked downward, and suddenly her feet were swinging in the air, all of her weight dangling from one hand. More cracking and crashes resounded from below as the branch fell. Savi reached back for her handhold, but the hand that was still on it was already slipping.

  Forgetting her need to do this by herself, she screamed, "Help!" But before she'd even finished the word, her hand lost its meager hold, and she was falling.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Savi didn't fall far before her feet landed on another branch. The force of the fall made that branch break too, but she had just enough time to grab wildly around her and hastily step onto a different limb.

  The chickadee landed nearby, hopping among the branches with ease.

  "A little less from the peanut gallery, please," said Savi, finding her companion much less charming now.