Linger

The back of my mouth tasted like copper. No matter how much I swallowed, I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth.

I felt wrong.

What’s happening to me?

There was no one to ask, so I added up the clues for myself. The stomachache. The fever. Nosebleeds. Fatigue. The smell of wolf. The way the wolves had looked at me; the way Isabel had looked at me. Sam’s fingers on my arm as I left, turning to me for one last hug. They all seemed like so many good-byes.

Finally, my denial fell away.

Even though it could be just a virus. Even though it could be something serious but treatable. Even though I really had no way of knowing…

I knew.

This pain I was feeling—it was my future. A change I couldn’t control. I could dream about red coffeepots all I wanted. But my body would have the final say.

I sat up in the darkness, pushing back against the wolf inside me, tugging the blankets so they pooled in my lap. I wanted to be with Sam. The cool air bit at my cheeks and bare shoulders. I wished I were still at Beck’s house, back in Sam’s bed under his bedroom sky of birds. I swallowed down the pain, forced it deeper. If I were there now, he would wrap his arms around me and he’d tell me it would be all right, and it would be all right, at least for tonight.

I imagined myself driving back there tonight. The look on his face.

I rubbed the bare bottoms of my feet against each other. It was foolish, of course. There were a thousand reasons to stay, but…

I pushed back the barbed static in my head. Focused. Mentally made a list of what I needed. I’d get a pair of jeans from the middle drawer of my dresser and slide on a sweater and some socks. My parents wouldn’t hear. The floor didn’t creak much. It was possible. I hadn’t heard any movement upstairs for a long time now. If I didn’t turn on my car lights, they might not notice me pulling out of the driveway.

My heart was pounding now with the idea of escape.

I knew it wasn’t worth getting in more trouble with my parents, not as angry as they were. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to drive with this roar of blood in my ears, the fever trailing across my skin.

But I couldn’t really get into more trouble. They’d already forbidden me to see him. What could they do that was beyond that?

And I didn’t know how many more nights I had.

My thoughts went to Mom, scoffing over the difference between love and lust. Me walking in the woods afterward, trying to dredge up guilt for yelling at her. I thought about my dad opening my door to look for Sam. How long it had been since they had asked me where I’d been, how I was doing, if I needed anything from them.

I’d seen my parents together; they were family. They still cared about the little details in each other’s lives. I’d seen Beck, too, and the way that he knew Sam. The way he loved him. And Sam, the way he still orbited Beck’s memory like a lost satellite. That was family. My parents and me…we lived together, sometimes.

Could you outgrow your parents?

I remembered the way the wolves had watched me. Remembered wondering how much time I had. How many nights I had to spend with Sam, how many nights I was wasting here alone.

I could still taste the copper. The sickness inside me wasn’t getting any smaller. It raged, but I was still stronger than it. There were still things I had control over.

I got out of bed.

A sort of deadly calm filled me as I padded around my room, getting my jeans and underwear and shirts and two extra pairs of socks. The eye of the hurricane. I stuffed the clothes in my backpack with my homework and Sam’s beloved copy of Rilke from the bed stand. I touched the edge of my dresser, held my pillow, stood by the window where I’d once stared down a wolf. My heart hummed in my chest, expecting at any moment for my mother or my father to open the door and find me in the midst of my preparations. Surely someone would have to just feel the seriousness of what I was doing.

But nothing happened. I got my toothbrush and hairbrush from the bathroom on my way down the hall, and the house stayed silent. I hesitated by the front door, my shoes in my hand, and listened.

Nothing.

Was I really doing this?

“Good-bye,” I whispered. My hands were trembling.

The door shushed across the welcome mat as I pulled it shut behind me.

I didn’t know when I’d come back.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

• SAM •

Without Grace, I was a nocturnal animal. I stalked ants in the kitchen, waiting by the insufficient light of the recessed bulbs with a glass and a piece of paper so that I could transport them outside. I took Paul’s dusty guitar from its perch by the mantel and tuned it. First properly, then to drop D, then to DADGAD, then back to proper. In the basement, I browsed Beck’s nonfiction until I found a book on taxes and another on winning friends and influencing people and another on meditation. I stacked them into a cairn of books I never intended to read. Upstairs, in my bathroom, I sat on the tile and experimented with the right way to trim my toenails. Cupping my fingers beneath my feet only caught the flying nails half the time, and if I left them to fly where they would, I could only find half the nails on the white tile. So it was a losing battle, with fifty percent casualties either way.

Partway through the process, I heard the wolves begin to howl, loud through Beck’s bedroom window. Their songs sounded different from night to night, depending on how I felt. They could be sonorous, beautiful, a heavenly choir in heavy, wood-scented pelts. Or an eerie, lonely symphony, notes falling against one another into the night. Joyful, voices lifted, calling down the moon.

Tonight, they were a cacophonous mob, howls vying for attention, barks interspersed. Restless. A pack discordant. A pack dispersed. They usually howled like that on nights when either Beck or Paul was human, but tonight they had both their leaders. I was the only one missing.

I stood up, cold floorboards pressing up against the soles of my human feet, and went to the window. I hesitated for a moment, then flicked the lock and threw open the window. Frigid night air rushed in, but it didn’t do anything to me. I was just human. Just me.

The wolves’ howls poured in as well, surrounding me.

Do you miss me?

The disorganized cries continued, more protest than song.

I miss you guys.

And, with dull surprise, I realized that was all there was to it. I missed them. I didn’t miss it. This—this person leaning on the sash, full of human memories and fears and hopes, this person who would grow old—was who I was, and I didn’t want to lose that. I didn’t miss standing amongst them, howling. It would never compare to the feel of my fingers on the strings of my guitar. Their poignant song could never be as triumphant as the sound of me saying Grace’s name.