Shiver

All I could see was Beck and those kids, a thousand different permutations of the scene dancing before my eyes.

I wanted to tell Grace about it. I didn’t want to tell her about it.

I was ashamed of Beck, torn between loyalty to him and loyalty to me—and I hadn’t even realized until now they could be two different things. I didn’t want Grace to think badly of him—but I wanted a confessional, someplace to put this unbearable weight in my chest.

“Go to sleep,” she murmured, barely audible, hooking her fingers in my T-shirt in a way that didn’t make me think of sleep. I kissed her closed eyes and sighed. She made an appreciative noise and whispered, eyes still closed, “Shh, Sam. Whatever it is will keep till morning. And if it doesn’t, it isn’t worth it anyway. Sleep.”

Because she told me to, I could.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO • GRACE

45°F

The first thing Sam said to me the next day was, “It’s time to take you on a proper date.” Actually, the very first thing he said was, “Your hair is all funky in the morning.” But the very first lucid thing he said (I refused to believe my hair looked funky in the morning) was the date statement. It was a “work day” for the teachers at school, so we had the entire day to ourselves—which felt indulgent. He said this while stirring some oatmeal and looking over his shoulder toward the front door. Even though my parents had disappeared early for some sort of business outing of my dad’s, Sam still seemed worried that they would reappear and hunt him down with pitchforks.

I joined him at the counter and leaned against it, peering down into the pan. I wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of oatmeal. I had tried to make it before, and it had tasted very…healthy. “So about this date. Where are you taking me? Someplace exciting, like the middle of the woods?”

He pressed his finger against my lips, right where they parted. He didn’t smile. “On a normal date. Food and fun fun fun.”

I turned my face so his hand was against my hair instead. “Yeah, sounds like it,” I said, sarcastically, because he still wasn’t smiling. “I didn’t think you did normal.”

“Get me two bowls, would you?” Sam said. I set them on the counter and Sam divided the oatmeal between them, releasing a sweet scent. “I just really want to do a proper date, so you’ll have something real to rem—”

He stopped and looked down into the bowls, arms braced against the counter, shoulders shrugged up by his ears. Finally, he turned and said, “I want to do things right. Can we try to do normal?”

With a nod, I accepted one of the bowls and tried a spoonful—it was all brown sugar and maple and something sort of spicy. I pointed an oatmeal-covered spoon at Sam. “I have no problem doing normal. This stuff is sticky.”

“Ingrate,” Sam said. He looked dolefully at his bowl. “You don’t like it.”

“It’s actually okay.”

Sam said, “Beck used to make it for me, after I got over my egg fixation.”

“You had an egg fixation?”

“I was a peculiar child,” Sam said. He gestured to my bowl. “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t like it. When you’re done, we’ll go.”

“Go where?”

“Surprise.”

That was all I needed to hear. That oatmeal was gone instantly and I had my hat, coat, and backpack in hand.

For the first time that morning, Sam laughed, and I was ridiculously glad to hear it. “You look like a puppy. Like I’m jingling my keys and you’re jumping by the door waiting for your walk.”

“Woof.”

Sam patted my head on the way out and together we ventured into the cold pastel morning. Once we were in the Bronco and on the road, I pressed again, “So you won’t tell me where we’re going?”

“Nope. The only thing I’ll tell you is to pretend that this is what I did with you the first day I met you, instead of being shot.”

“I don’t have that much imagination.”

“I do. I’ll imagine it for you, so strongly that you’ll have to believe it.” He smiled to demonstrate his imagining, a smile so sad that my breath caught in my throat. “I’ll court you properly and then it won’t make my obsession with you so creepy.”

“Seems to me that mine’s the creepy one.” I looked out the window as we pulled out of the driveway. The sky was relinquishing one slow snowflake after another. “I have that, you know, what’s it called? That syndrome where you identify with the people who save you?”

Sam shook his head and turned the opposite way from school. “You’re thinking of that Munchausen syndrome, where the person identifies with their kidnapper.”

I shook my head. “That’s not the same. Isn’t Munchausen when you invent sicknesses to get attention?”

“Is it? I just like saying ‘Munchausen.’ I feel like I can actually speak German when I say it.”

I laughed.

“Ulrik was born in Germany,” Sam said. “He has all kinds of interesting children’s stories about werewolves.” He turned onto the main road through downtown and started looking for a parking space. “He said people would get bitten willingly, back in the old days.”

I looked out the window at MercyFalls. The shops, all shades of brown and gray, seemed even more brown and gray under the leaden sky, and for October, it felt ominously close to winter. There were no green leaves left on the trees that grew by the side of the street, and some were missing their leaves entirely, adding to the bleak appearance of the town. It was concrete as far as the eye could see. “Why would they want to do that?”

“In the folktales, they’d turn into wolves and steal sheep and other animals when food was scarce. And some of them changed just for the fun of it.”

I studied his face, trying to read his voice. “Is there fun in it?”

He looked away—ashamed of his answer, I thought, until I realized he was just looking over his shoulder to parallel park in front of a row of shops. “Some of us seem to like it, maybe better than being human. Shelby loves it—but like I said, I think her human life was pretty awful. I don’t know. The wolf half of my life is such a part of me now, it’s hard to imagine living without it.”

“In a good way or a bad way?”

Sam looked at me, yellow eyes catching and holding me. “I miss being me. I miss you. All the time.”