Shiver

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR • SAM

32°F

It sounds stupid, but one of the things that I loved about Grace was how she didn’t have to talk. Sometimes, I just wanted my silences to stay silent, full of thoughts, empty of words. Where another girl might have tried to lure me into conversation, Grace just reached for my hand, resting our knotted hands on my leg, and leaned her head against my shoulder until we were well out of Duluth. She didn’t ask how I knew my way around the city, or why my eyes lingered on the road that my parents used to turn down to get to our neighborhood, or how it was that a kid from Duluth ended up living in a wolf pack near the Canadian border.

And when she did finally speak, taking her hand off mine to retrieve a buttercream from the candy shop bag, she told me about how, as a kid, she’d once made cookies with leftover boiled Easter eggs instead of raw ones. It was exactly what I wanted—beautiful distraction.

Until I heard the musical tone of a cell phone, a descending collection of digital notes, coming from my pocket. For a second I couldn’t think why a phone would be in my coat, and then I remembered Beck stuffing it into my hand while I stared past him. Call me when you need me was what he had said.

Funny how he had said when, not if.

“Is that a phone?” Grace’s eyebrows drew down over her eyes. “You have a phone?”

Beautiful distraction crashed around me as I dug it out of my pocket. “I didn’t,” I said weakly. She kept looking at me, and the little bit of hurt in her eyes killed me. Shame colored my cheeks. “I just got one,” I said. The phone rang again, and I hit the ANSWER button. I didn’t have to look at the screen to know who was calling.

“Where are you, Sam? It’s cold.” Beck’s voice was full of the genuine concern that I’d always appreciated.

I was aware of Grace’s eyes on me.

I didn’t want his concern. “I’m fine.”

Beck paused, and I imagined him dissecting the tone of my voice. “Sam, it’s not so black-and-white. Try to understand. You won’t even give me a chance to talk to you. When have I ever been wrong?”

“Now,” I said, and hung up. I shoved the phone back in my pocket, half expecting it to ring again. I sort of hoped it would so that I could not answer.

Grace didn’t ask me who it was. She didn’t ask me to tell her what was said. I knew she was waiting for me to volunteer the information, and I knew I should, but I didn’t want to. I just—I just couldn’t bear the idea of her seeing Beck in that light. Or maybe I just couldn’t bear the idea of me seeing him in that light.

I didn’t say anything.

Grace swallowed before pulling out her own phone. “That reminds me, I should check for messages. Ha. As if my family would call.”

She studied her cell phone; its blue screen lit up the palm of her hand and cast a ghostly light on her chin.

“Did they?” I asked.

“Of course not. They’re rubbing elbows with old friends.” She punched in their number and waited. I heard a murmur on the other end of the phone, too quiet for me to make out. “Hi, it’s me. Yeah. I’m fine. Oh. Okay. I won’t wait up then. Have fun. Bye.” She slapped the phone shut, rolled her brown eyes toward me, and smiled wanly. “Let’s elope.”

“We’d have to drive to Vegas,” I said. “No one around here to marry us at this hour except deer and a few drunk guys.”

“It would have to be the deer,” Grace said firmly. “The drunk guys would slur our names and that would ruin the moment.”

“Somehow, having a deer preside over the ceremony of a werewolf and a girl seems oddly appropriate, anyway.”

Grace laughed. “And it would get my parents’ attention. ‘Mom, Dad, I’ve gotten married. Don’t look at me like that. He only sheds part of the year.’”

I shook my head. I felt like telling her thanks, but instead, I said, “It was Beck on the phone.”

“The Beck?”

“Yeah. He was in Canada with Salem—one of the wolves who’s gone completely crazy.” It was only part of the truth, but at least it was the truth.

“I want to meet him,” Grace said immediately. My face must’ve gone funny, because she said, “Beck, I mean. He’s practically your dad, isn’t he?”

I rubbed my fingers over the steering wheel, eyes glancing from the road to my knuckles pressed into a white grip. Strange how some people took their skin for granted, never thought of what it would be like to lose it. Sloughing my skin / escaping its grip / stripped of my wit / it hurts to be me. I thought of the most fatherly memory I had of Beck. “We had this big grill at his house, and I remember, one night, he was tired of doing the cooking and he said, ‘Sam, tonight you’re feeding us.’ He showed me how to push on the middle of the steaks to see how done they were, and how to sear them fast on each side to keep the juices in.”

“And they were awesome, weren’t they?”

“I burned the hell out of them,” I said, matter-of-fact. “I’d compare them to charcoal, but charcoal is still sort of edible.”

Grace started to laugh.

“Beck ate his,” I said, smiling ruefully at the memory. “He said it was the best steak he’d ever had, because he hadn’t had to make it.”

That felt like a long time ago.

Grace was smiling at me, like old stories about me and my pack leader were the greatest thing in the world. Like it was inspirational. Like we had something, Beck and me, father and son.

In my head, the kid in the back of the Tahoe looked at me and said, “Help.”

Grace asked, “How long has it been? I mean—not since the steaks. Since you were bitten.”

“I was seven. Eleven years ago.”

She asked, “Why were you in the woods? I mean, you’re from Duluth, aren’t you? Or at least that’s what it said on your driver’s license.”

“I wasn’t attacked in the woods,” I said. “It was all over the papers.”

Grace’s eyes held me; I looked away to the dim road in front of us.

“Two wolves attacked me while I was getting onto the school bus. One of them held me down, and the other one bit me.” Ripped at me, really, as if its only goal had been to draw blood. But of course, that had been the goal, hadn’t it? Looking back, it all seemed painfully clear. I’d never thought to look beyond my simple childhood memory of being attacked by wolves, and Beck stepping in as my savior after my parents had tried to kill me. I had been so close to Beck, and Beck had been so above reproach, that I hadn’t wanted to look any deeper. But now, retelling the story to Grace shoved the unavoidable truth right at me: My attack had been no accident. I’d been chosen, hunted down, and dragged into the street to be infected, just like those kids in the back of the Tahoe. Later Beck had arrived to pick up the pieces.