Linger (5 page)

• SAM •

I was human.

The day after I buried the wolf was frigid, Minnesota March in all its volatile splendor: One day the temperatures would soar into the thirties, and the next it would be barely twelve or thirteen degrees. It was amazing how warm thirty-two felt after two solid months of single digits. I'd never had to endure such cold in my human skin. Today was one of the bitterly cold days, as far away from spring as you could get. Except for the brilliant red winterberries that clustered at the edges of the trees, there was no color left anywhere in the world. My breath frosted in front of me, and my eyes dried with the cold. The air smelled like being a wolf, and yet I wasn't.

The knowledge both thrilled and hurt me.

There'd only been two customers in the bookstore all day. I considered what I'd do after my shift. Most times, if my shift ended before Grace was done with school, I would linger in the loft of the store with a book rather than go home to the Brisbanes' empty house. Without Grace there, it was just a place to wait for her, a dull ache inside me.

Today, the ache had followed me to work. I had already written a song — just a piece of a song —
Is it still a secret if nobody cares / if having the knowledge in no way impairs / your living — and feeling — the way that you breathe / knowing the things that you know about me
— the hope of a song more than anything else. Now, I perched behind the counter reading a copy of Roethke, my shift about to end and Grace tutoring until late, my eyes drawn to the tiny flakes of snow drifting outside instead of Roethke's words:
“Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?”
I looked down at my fingers on the pages of my book, such wonderful, precious things, and felt guilty for the nameless wanting that plagued me.

The clock ticked to five. This was when I usually locked the front door, turned the sign to
CLOSED
—
COME BACK SOON,
and went out the back door to my Volkswagen.

But this time I didn't. This time I locked the back door, picked up my guitar case, and went out the front, sliding a little on the ice coating the threshold. I pulled on the skullcap that Grace had bought me in a failed attempt to make me look sexy while keeping my head warm. Stepping out into the middle of the sidewalk, I watched tiny flakes float down onto the abandoned street. As far as I could see, there were banks of old snow pressed into stained sculptures. Icicles made jagged smiles of the storefronts.

My eyes smarted with the cold. I held my free hand out, palm up, and watched as snow dissolved on my skin.

This was not real life. This was life as watched through a
window. Life watched on television. I couldn't remember when I hadn't hidden from this.

I was cold, I had a handful of snow, and I was human.

The future stretched before me, infinite and growing and mine, in a way that nothing had ever been before.

Sudden euphoria rushed through me, a grin stretching my face at this cosmic lottery I had won. I had risked everything and gained everything, and here I was, of the world and in it. I laughed out loud, no one to hear me but the audience of snowflakes. I leaped off the sidewalk, into the bank of graying snow. I was drunk with the reality of my human body. A lifetime of winters, of skullcaps, of collars turned against cold, of noses turning red, of staying up late on New Year's Eve. Skidding in the slick tire tracks in the road, I waltzed across the street, swinging my guitar case in a circle, snow falling all around me, until a car honked at me.

I waved at the driver and jumped up onto the opposite sidewalk, knocking the crisp snow off each parking meter as I came to it. My pants were frozen with snow stuffed into my shoes, my fingers numb and red, and still I was me. Always me.

I circled the block until the cold had lost its novelty, and then I doubled back to my car and checked my watch. Grace would still be tutoring, and I didn't feel like running the risk of getting to her house and finding one of her parents instead. Awkward didn't begin to describe those conversations. The more obvious Grace and I became with our relationship, the less her parents found to say to me. And vice versa. So instead I headed toward Beck's house. Even though I couldn't hope for any of the
other wolves to have shifted, I could pick up some of my books. I wasn't a fan of the mysteries that filled Grace's bookshelves.

So I followed the highway in the dying gray light of day, Boundary Wood pressing up against the shoulder of the road, until I was on the deserted street that led to Beck's.

Pulling into the empty driveway, I climbed out of the car and took a deep breath. The woods here smelled different than the woods behind Grace's did — here, the air was filled with the sharp, wintergreen scent of the birches and the complex smell of wet earth near the lake. I could pick out the scent of the pack, too, musky and pungent.

Habit led me to the back door, the fresh snow squeaking beneath my boots, clumping at the cuff of my jeans. I dragged my fingertips through the snow on top of the bushes that grew against the house, as I walked around back and waited again for the surge of nausea that meant I was about to change. But it didn't come.

Beside the back door, I hesitated, looking out over the snowy backyard and into the woods. I had a thousand memories that lived in the span of ground stretching from the door to the woods.

Turning back to the door, I realized that it was not quite ajar, but not quite shut, either, pressed in just far enough to keep it from coming open with the intermittent wind. I looked down to the doorknob and saw a smear of red on it. One of the other wolves, shifting very, very early — it had to be. Only one of the new wolves could possibly become human this early, and even they couldn't realistically hope to keep that form while ice-slicked snow crusted the ground.

Pushing open the door, I called, “Hello?” There was rustling from the kitchen. Something about the way it sounded, scraping and scuffling across the tile, made me uneasy. I tried to think of something to say that would sound reassuring to a wolf but not sound insane to a human. “Whoever it is, I belong here.”

I rounded the corner into the dim kitchen, then stopped short by the edge of the center island when I smelled the earthy reek of lake water. Reaching across the counter to flick on the light, I asked, “Who's there?”

I saw a foot — human, bare, dirty — jutting from behind the island, and when it jerked, I did, too, startled. Coming around the island, I saw a guy curled on his side, shaking hard. His dark brown hair was spiked with dried mud, and on his outstretched arms, I saw a dozen little wounds, evidence of an unprotected trip through the woods. He stank of wolf.

Logically, I knew he had to be one of Beck's new wolves from the year before. But I felt a weird prickle go through me when I thought about Beck handpicking him, when I realized that this was a brand-new member of the pack, the first one in a long time.

He turned his face to me, and though he had to have been in pain — I remembered that pain — his expression was quite composed. And familiar. Something about the brutal line of his cheekbones down to his jaw and the narrow shape of his brilliant green eyes was irritatingly familiar, attached to a name just on the edge of my consciousness. In more ordinary circumstances, I would've known it, I thought, but right then, it just tickled somewhere in the back of my head.

“I'm going to change back now, aren't I?” he said, and I was a bit taken aback by his voice — not just by the timbre, which was rather gravelly, and older than I had expected — but also by the tone. Completely level, despite the shudder of his shoulders and the darkening of his nails.

I knelt beside his head, trying out the words in my mouth, feeling like a kid wearing his father's clothing. Any other year, and it would've been Beck explaining this to a new wolf, not me. “Yeah, you are. It's too cold still. Look — next time you shift, find the shed in the woods —”

“I saw it,” he said, his voice slipping more to a growl.

“It's got a space heater in there and some food and clothing. Try the box that says
SAM
or the one that says
ULRIK
— something in there ought to fit.” In truth, though, I didn't know if they would or not. The guy had broad shoulders and muscles like a gladiator. “It's not as good as being in here, but it'll spare you the brambles.”

He cast his brilliant eyes up at me and the sardonic look in them made me realize he'd never given me any reason to believe the wounds bothered him. “Thanks for the tip,” he said, and my remaining words felt sour in my mouth.

Beck had told me that the three new wolves he'd created had been recruited — that they knew what they were getting into. I hadn't considered, before now, what sort of person would choose this life. Someone who would willingly lose themselves for more and more of the year until eventually it was good-bye to all of it. It was a sort of suicide, really, and as soon as I thought the word, it made me look at the guy in an entirely different way. As the newcomer's body twisted on the floor, his expression
still controlled — expectant, if anything — I just had time to see the old track marks on his arms before his skin twisted into a wolf's.

I hurried to get the back door open so that the wolf, brownish and dark in the dim light, could escape into the snow and away from the too-human environment of the kitchen. This wolf didn't dart for the door, however, like other wolves would have. Like
I
would have, as a wolf. Instead, he stalked slowly by me, head low, pausing to look directly into my eyes with his green ones. I didn't look away, and finally he slid out the door, stopping once again in the backyard to look at me appraisingly.

Long after the new wolf had gone, the image of him haunted me: the puncture wounds in the bends of his elbows, the arrogance in his eyes, the familiarity of his face.

Retreating back to the kitchen to clean up the blood and dirt from the tile, I saw the spare key lying on the floor. I returned it to its hiding place, by the back door.

As I did, I felt watched, and I turned, expecting to see the new wolf at the edge of the forest. But instead it was a big, gray wolf, eyes steady on me, familiar in an entirely different way.

“Beck,” I whispered. He didn't move, but his nostrils worked, smelling the same thing I did: the new wolf. “Beck, what did you bring us?”

• ISABEL •

I stayed after class for a student government meeting. The meeting was boring as hell and I didn't give a crap about how Mercy Falls High chose to organize itself, but it served the dual purpose of keeping me away from home and letting me sit in the back of the assembly with my silent smirk on, my eyes painted dark, being unattainable. I had my usual group of girls who sat around me, eyes painted like mine, looking unattainable — which was not the same as
being
unattainable.

Being popular in a town the size of Mercy Falls was ridiculously easy. You only had to believe you were a hot commodity, and you were. It wasn't like San Diego, where being popular was like a full-time career. The effects of attending the assembly — an hour-long ad for the Isabel Culpeper brand — would last for a week.

But finally I had to make my way home. Delightfully, both of my parents' cars were in the driveway. I was beside myself with joy. I sat in my SUV in the driveway, opened the Shakespeare I was supposed to be reading, and turned up my music loud enough that I could see the bass vibrating the rearview mirror.
After about ten minutes, my mother's silhouette appeared in one of the windows, with an exaggerated motion for me to come in.

And so the evening was under way.

Inside our vast stainless-steel kitchen, it was the Culpeper Show at its finest.

Mom: “I'm sure the neighbors love your white trash music. Thanks for playing it loud enough for them to hear it.”

Dad: “Where were you, anyway?”

Mom: “Student assembly.”

Dad: “I didn't ask you. I asked our daughter.”

Mom: “Honestly, Thomas, does it matter who answered?”

Dad: “I feel like I have to hold a gun to her head to get her to speak to me.”

Me: “Is that an option?”

Now they were both glaring at me. I didn't really need to add lines to the Culpeper Show; it was self-sustaining without me and played reruns all night.

“I told you she shouldn't go to public school,” my father told my mother. I knew where this was going. Mom's next line was “I told you we shouldn't come to Mercy Falls,” and then Dad would start throwing stuff, and eventually they would end up in separate rooms, enjoying different brands of alcoholic beverages.

“I have homework,” I interrupted. “I'm going upstairs. See you next week.”

As I turned to go, Dad said, “Isabel, wait.”

I waited.

“Jerry told me you were hanging out with Lewis Brisbane's daughter. Is that true?”

Now I turned, to see what his expression was. His arms crossed, he leaned against the colorless counter, his shirt and tie still perfectly unwrinkled, one eyebrow raised in his narrow face. I raised mine to match. “What about it?”

“Don't take that tone with me,” Dad said. “I just asked a question.”

“Then fine. Yes. I hang out with Grace.”

I could see a vein stand out on one of his arms as he closed his hands into fists and opened them again, over and over. “I hear that she has a lot to do with the wolves.”

I made a little gesture in the air like,
What are you talking about?

“Rumor is she feeds them. I've been seeing them around here a lot,” he said. “Looking suspiciously well cared for. I'm thinking it's time to do some more thinning.”

For a moment we just looked at each other. Me trying to decide if he knew I'd been feeding them and was doing his passive-aggressive thing to get me to say something, and him trying to stare me down.

“Yeah, Dad,” I said, finally. “You should go shoot some animals. That'll bring Jack back. Good idea. Should I tell Grace to lure them closer to the house?”

My mother stared at me, a frozen piece of art:
Portrait of a Woman With Chardonnay
. My father looked like he wanted to hit me.

“Are we done?” I asked.

“Oh, I'm getting very close to done,” my father said. He turned and gave my mother a meaningful look, which she didn't
see because she was too busy filling her eyes with tears that had yet to fall.

I thought my part in this particular episode was definitely over, so I left them behind in the kitchen. I heard my dad say, “I'm going to kill all of them.” And my mother said, voice full of tears, “Whatever, Tom.”

The end. I probably needed to stop feeding the wolves.

The closer they got, the more dangerous it was for all of us.