Linger

“Do you think Grace has seen her more recently?”

I tried to hold his gaze. “I’m pretty sure that’s the last time she saw Olivia as well.”

“It’s really difficult for a teen to manage on his or her own,” Koenig said, and this time I felt sure that he knew all about me and that his words were loaded with meaning just for me, drifting without Beck. “Really difficult for a runaway. There are lots of reasons that kids run away, and judging from what I heard from Olivia’s teachers and family, depression might have had something to do with it. A lot of times these teens just run away because they need to get out of the house, but they don’t know how to survive out in the world. So sometimes, they only run as far away as the next house over. Sometimes—”

I interrupted him before he could get any further. “Officer…Koenig? I know what you’re trying to say, but Olivia isn’t at Grace’s house. Grace hasn’t been slipping her food or helping her out. I wish, for Olivia’s sake, that the answer was that easy. I’d love it for Grace’s sake, too. I’d love to tell you that I knew exactly where Olivia was. But we’re wondering when she’s going to come back just as much as you are.”

I wondered if this was how Grace spilled out her most useful lies—by manipulating them into something she could believe.

“You understand I had to ask,” he said.

“I know.”

“Well, thanks for your time, and please let me know if you hear anything.” Koenig started to turn, then paused. “What do you know about the woods?”

I was frozen. I was a motionless wolf hidden in the trees, praying not to be seen.

“Excuse me?” I said faintly.

“Olivia’s family said she took a lot of photos of the wolves in the woods, and that Grace is also interested in them. Do you share that interest?”

I could only nod wordlessly.

“Do you think there’s any chance she would try to make a go of it out there by herself, instead of running to another city?”

Panic clawed inside my head, as I imagined the police and Olivia’s family crawling over the acres and acres of woods, searching the trees and the pack’s shed for evidence of human life. And possibly finding it. I tried to keep my voice light. “Olivia never really struck me as the outdoorsy sort. I really doubt it.”

Koenig nodded, as if to himself. “Well, thanks again,” he said.

“No problem,” I said. “Good luck.”

The door dinged behind him; as soon as I saw his squad car pull away from the curb, I let my elbows fall onto the counter and pushed my face into my hands. God.

“Nicely done, boy wonder,” Isabel said, rising from amongst the nonfiction books with a scuffling sound on the carpet. “You hardly sounded psychotic at all.”

I didn’t reply. All of the things the cop could’ve asked about were running through my head, leaving me feeling more nervous now than when he’d been here. He could’ve asked about where Beck was. Or if I’d heard about three missing kids from Canada. Or if I knew anything about the death of Isabel Culpeper’s brother.

“What is your problem?” Isabel asked, a lot closer this time. She slid a stack of books onto the counter with her credit card on top. “You completely handled it. They’re just doing routine stuff. He’s not really suspicious. God, your hands are shaking.”

“I’d make a terrible criminal,” I replied—but that wasn’t why my hands were trembling. If Grace had been here, I would have told her the truth: that I hadn’t spoken to a cop since my parents had been sent to jail for slashing my wrists. Just seeing Officer Koenig had dredged up a thousand things I hadn’t thought about in years.

Isabel’s voice dripped scorn. “Good thing, too, because you aren’t doing anything criminal. Stop freaking out, and do your book-boy thing. I need the receipt.”

I rang up her books and bagged them, glancing at the empty street every so often. My head was a jumbled-up mess of police uniforms, wolves in the woods, and voices I hadn’t heard for a decade.

As I handed her the bag, the old scars on my wrists throbbed with buried memories.

For a moment, Isabel looked like she was going to say something more, and then she just shook her head and said, “Some people are really not cut out for deception. See you later, Sam.”

CHAPTER TWO

• COLE •

I have had no thought other than this: Stay alive.

And to have had only that thought, each day, was heaven.

We wolves ran through the sparse pine trees, our paws light on ground damp with the memory of snow. We were so close together, shoulders bumping against one another, jaws snapping playfully, bodies ducking beneath and leaping over one another like fish in a river, that it was impossible to tell where one wolf began and another ended.

Moss rubbed to bare dirt and markings on trees guided us through the woods; I could smell the rotting, growing smell of the lake before I could hear water splashing. One of the other wolves sent out a quick image: ducks gliding smoothly onto the cold blue surface of the lake. From a second wolf: a deer and her fawn walking on trembling legs to get a drink.

For me, there was nothing beyond this moment, these traded images and this silent, powerful bond.

And then, for the first time in months, I suddenly remembered that, once, I’d had fingers.

I stumbled, falling out of the pack, my shoulders bunching and twitching. The wolves wheeled, some of them doubling back to encourage me to rejoin them, but I could not follow. I twisted on the ground, slimy spring leaves pasted to my skin, the heat of the day clogged in my nostrils.

My fingers turned over the fresh black earth, jamming it beneath nails suddenly too short to defend me, smearing it in eyes that now saw in brilliant color.

I was Cole again, and spring had come too soon.

CHAPTER THREE

• ISABEL •

The day the cop came into the bookstore was the first day I had ever heard Grace complain of a headache. It probably doesn’t sound that remarkable, but since I met Grace, she had never mentioned so much as a runny nose. Also, I was something of an expert on headaches. They were a hobby of mine.

After watching Sam dance clumsily with the cop, I headed back to school, which by this stage in my life had become sort of redundant. The teachers didn’t really know what to do with me, caught as they were between my good grades and my terrible attendance record, so I got away with a lot. Our uneasy agreement basically came down to this: I’d come to class and they’d let me do what I wanted to do, as long as I didn’t corrupt the other students.