Forever

“It’s better to have a plan,” she said.

I didn’t know if that was true. But it felt true.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

ISABEL

I hadn’t forgotten about Grace’s request for me to find out about summer school, but it took me quite awhile to figure out how to go about tracking down the answer. It wasn’t as if I could pretend it was for me, and the more precise my questions got, the more I’d draw suspicion. In the end, I figured out a solution by accident. Emptying out my backpack, I found an old note from Ms. McKay, my favorite teacher from last year. Which wasn’t saying much, but still. This particular note dated from my “problematic period” — my mother’s words — and in it, Ms. McKay let me know that she would be happy to help me if I would let her. It reminded me that Ms. McKay was good at answering questions without asking any of her own.

Unfortunately, everyone else also knew this about Ms. McKay, so there was always a line to see her after last period. She didn’t have an office, just the English classroom, so to an outsider, it looked like five students were waiting desperately to get in there and learn some Chaucer.

The door opened and closed as Hayley Olsen left the classroom and the girl in front of me went in. I moved forward one step and leaned against the wall. I hoped Grace knew how much I did for her. I could have been at home doing nothing by now. Daydreaming. The quality of my daydreams had improved exponentially as of late.

Footsteps slapped up behind me, followed by a sound that was unmistakably a backpack hitting the ground. I glanced back.

Rachel.

Rachel was like a caricature of a teen. There was something incredibly self-aware with the way she presented herself: the stripes, the quirky smocks, the braids and the twisted knobs she put her hair into. Everything about her said quirky, fun, silly, naive. But, this: There was innocence and there was projected innocence. I had nothing against either, but I liked to know what I was dealing with. Rachel knew darn well how she wanted people to see her, and that was what she gave them. She wasn’t an idiot.

Rachel saw me looking but pretended not to. My suspicion had already settled, however.

“Fancy seeing you here,” I said.

Rachel flashed me a grimace that lasted about as long as a movie frame; too fast for the human eye to properly perceive. “Fancy.”

I leaned toward her, my voice lowered. “You wouldn’t be here to talk about Grace, would you?”

Her eyes widened. “I’m already seeing a counselor, but that’s none of your business.”

She was good.

“Right. I’m sure you are. So you aren’t going in to confess anything to Ms. McKay about her or the wolves,” I said. “Because that would be so incredibly dumb, I can’t begin to tell you.”

Rachel’s face cleared suddenly. “You know.”

I just gave her a look.

“So it really is true.” Rachel rubbed her upper arm and studied the floor.

“I’ve seen it.”

Rachel sighed. “Who else knows?”

“Nobody. It’s staying that way, right?”

The door opened and closed. The student in front of me went in; I was next. Rachel made an annoyed noise. “Look, I didn’t do my English reading! That’s why I’m here. Not for anything about Grace. Wait. That means that you are here for her.”

I wasn’t sure how she’d managed to come to that conclusion, but it didn’t change the fact that she was right. For half a second, I considered telling Rachel that Grace had asked me to find out about summer school for her, mostly because I wanted to rub in that Grace had trusted me first and I was shallow that way, but it wouldn’t really be useful.

“Just finding out about some graduating credits,” I said.

We stood in the awkward silence of people who had a friend in common and not much else. Students passed down the other side of the hall, laughing and making weird noises because they were guys and that was mostly what high school boys did. The school continued to smell like burritos. I continued to devise my method of questioning Ms. McKay.

Rachel, leaning against the wall and looking at the lockers on the other side of the hall, said, “Makes the world seem bigger, doesn’t it?”

The naïveté of the question irritated me, somehow. “It’s just another way to die.”

Rachel looked at the side of my head. “You really do default to bitch, don’t you? That’ll only work as long as you’re young and hot. After that, you’ll only be able to teach AP History.”

I looked at her and narrowed my eyes. I said, “I could say the same for quirky.”

Rachel smiled a wide, wide smile, her most innocent one yet. “So what you’re saying is you think I’m hot.”

Okay, Rachel was all right. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of a smile back, but I felt my eyes giving me away. The door opened. We regarded each other. As far as allies went, I guessed Grace could do worse.

As I went in to see Ms. McKay, I thought that Rachel actually was right. The world seemed bigger every day.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

COLE

Another day, another night. We — Sam and I — were in the QuikMart a few miles away from the house, the sky black as hell above us. Mercy Falls proper was still another mile away; this convenience store was mostly for the oh-shit-I-forgot-to-get-milk moments. Which was exactly why we were at the QuikMart. Well, it’s why Sam was there. Partially because we had no milk and partially because I was beginning to learn that Sam didn’t sleep without someone there to tell him to, and I wasn’t about to tell him. Normally this would fall to Grace, but Isabel had just called with the exact model of the helicopter that would be carrying the sharpshooters and we were all a little on edge. Grace and Sam had engaged in a wordless argument that somehow managed to involve only their eyes and then she had won, because she started making scones, and Sam had sulked on the couch with his guitar. If she and Sam ever had kids, they’d be gluten-intolerant out of self-defense.

Scones required milk.

So Sam was here for milk because the grocery store closed at nine. I, on the other hand, was at the QuikMart because if I spent another second in Beck’s house, I was going to break something. I was figuring out more about the wolf science every day, but the hunt was almost here. In a few days, my experiments would be about as useful as medical research on the dodo bird.

Which brought us to QuikMart at eleven P.M. Inside the store, I pointed to a rack of condoms and Sam gave me a look completely devoid of humor. He’d worn too few or too many to see the amusement in it.