“For as long as I’m interesting.” He turned his face into my shoulder for a moment in a wordless gesture of affection. I tried not to smile like an idiot.
“Oh, it’s that way, is it? Well, then, I’m Rachel, and I’m hyper, and I’m Grace’s best friend,” she said, and stuck her hand out to him. She was wearing rainbow-colored fingerless gloves that stretched up to her elbows. Sam shook her hand.
“Sam.”
“Nice to meet you, Sam. Do you go here?” When he shook his head, Rachel took my hand and said, “Yeah, I didn’t think so. Well, then, I’m going to steal this nice person from you and take her to class because we’re going to be late and I have lots of stuff to talk to her about and she’s missed out on so much freaky wolf stuff because she’s not talking to her other best friend. So you can see we have to go. I would say I’m not normally this hyper, but I kinda am. Let’s go, Grace!”
Sam and I exchanged looks, his eyes fleetingly worried, and then Rachel opened the door and pulled me out. Sam slid behind the wheel. For a second I thought he might kiss me good-bye, but instead he glanced at Rachel before resting his fingers on my hand for a moment. His cheeks were pink.
Rachel didn’t say anything, but she smiled crookedly before pulling me toward the school. She wiggled my arm. “So that’s why you haven’t been calling, huh? The Boy is supercute. What’s he, homeschooled?”
As we pushed through the school doors, I looked over my shoulder at the Bronco. I saw Sam lift a hand in a wave before he started to back out of the parking space.
“Yeah, he is, on both counts,” I said. “More on that later. What is going on with the wolves?”
Rachel dramatically clutched her arms around my shoulders.
“Olivia saw one. It was up on their front porch and there were claw marks, Grace. On the door. Creep. Factor.”
I halted in the middle of the hallway; students behind us made irritated noises and pushed around us. I said, “Wait. At Olivia’s house?”
“No, at your mom’s.” Rachel shook her head and peeled off her rainbow gloves. “Yes, at Olivia’s house. If you guys would stop fighting, she could tell you herself. What are you fighting about, anyway? It pains me to see my peeps not playing nice with each other.”
“I told you, it’s just stupid stuff,” I said. I kind of wanted her to stop talking so I could try and think about the wolf at Olivia’s house. Was it Jack again? Why at Olivia’s?
“Well, you guys need to start getting along because I want you both to go with me over Christmas break. And that’s not that far off, you know. I mean, not really, once you start planning stuff. Come on, Grace, just say yes!” Rachel wailed.
“Maybe.” It wasn’t really the wolf at Olivia’s that bothered me. It was the claw marks bit. I needed to talk to Olivia and find out how much of this was real and how much of it was Rachel’s love of a good story.
“Is this about The Boy? He can come! I don’t care!” Rachel said.
The hall was slowly emptying; the bell rang overhead. “We’ll talk about it later!” I said, and hurried with Rachel into first period. I found my usual seat and began sorting through my homework.
“We need to talk.”
I jerked to attention at the sound of an entirely different voice: Isabel Culpeper’s. She slid her giant cork heels the rest of the way under the other desk and leaned toward me, highlighted hair framing her face in perfect, shiny ringlets.
“We’re sort of in class right now, Isabel,” I said, gesturing toward the taped morning announcements playing on the TV at the front of the classroom. The teacher was already at the front of the class, bent over her desk. She wasn’t paying attention, but I still wasn’t thrilled with the idea of a conversation with Isabel. Best-case scenario was that she needed help with her homework or something; I had a reputation for being good at math, so it was sort of possible.
Worst case was that she wanted to talk about Jack.
Sam had said that the only rule the pack had was that they didn’t talk about werewolves to outsiders. I wasn’t about to break that rule.
Isabel’s face was still wearing a pretty pout, but I saw storms destroying small villages in her eyes. She glanced toward the front of the room and leaned closer to me. I smelled perfume—roses and summer in this Minnesota cold. “It will only take a second.”
I looked over at Rachel, who was frowning at Isabel. I really didn’t want to talk to Isabel. I didn’t really know much about her, but I knew she was a dangerous gossip who could quickly reduce my standing in the school to cafeteria target practice. I wasn’t really one who tried to be popular, but I remembered what had happened to the last girl who had gotten on Isabel’s bad side. She was still trying to get out from under a convoluted rumor that involved lap dancing and the football team. “Why?”
“Privately,” hissed Isabel. “Across the hall.”
I rolled my eyes as I pushed out of my desk and tiptoed out the back of the room. Rachel gave me a brief, pained look. I was sure I wore a matching one. “Two seconds. That’s it,” I told Isabel as she shuffled me across the hall into an empty classroom. The corkboard on the opposite wall was covered with anatomical drawings; someone had pinned a thong over one of the figures.
“Yeah. Whatever.” She shut the door behind us and eyed me as if I would spontaneously break into song or something. I didn’t know what she was waiting for.
I crossed my arms. “Okay. What do you want?”
I’d thought I was prepared for it, but when she said, “My brother. Jack,” my heart still raced.
I didn’t say anything.
“I saw him while I was running this morning.”
I swallowed. “Your brother.”
Isabel pointed at me with a perfect nail, glossier than the hood of the Bronco. Her ringlets bounced. “Oh, don’t give me that. I talked to him. He’s not dead.”
I briefly wrestled with the image of Isabel jogging. I couldn’t see it. Maybe she meant running from her Chihuahua. “Um.”
Isabel pressed on. “There was something screwed up with him. And don’t say ‘That’s because he’s dead.’ He’s not.”
Something about Isabel’s charming personality—and maybe the fact that I knew Jack was actually alive—made it very difficult to empathize with her. I said, “Isabel, it seems to me like you don’t need me to have this conversation. You’re doing a great job all by yourself.”