“Don’t let go!” It was Beck’s voice, and now I heard the dull crash of footsteps in the woods. “Don’t let go—he’s not dead yet!”
I couldn’t feel my hands anymore—couldn’t feel anything anymore—but I thought I was still clutching the dog’s neck, the one that had been biting Paul. And then I felt the teeth in my shoulder jerk as the dog gripping my neck lurched. A wolf, Ulrik, was snarling, going for its neck, dragging it off me. There was a pop, and I realized it was a gun. Another pop again, much closer, and a jerk beneath my fingers. Ulrik backed away from us, breathing hard, and then there was so much silence that my ears rang.
Beck gently peeled my hands off the dead dog’s throat and pressed them against my shoulder instead. The blood flow slowed; immediately I started to feel better as my incredible, messed-up body started to heal itself.
Beck knelt in front of me. He was shaking with the cold, his skin gray, the bend of his shoulders wrong. “You had it right, didn’t you? You saved him. Those poor damn chickens didn’t go to waste.”
Behind him, Shelby stood silently, arms crossed, watching Paul gasping in the dry, dead leaves. Watching me and Beck with our heads together. Her hands were fists, and one of them had a black, powdery smear on it.
Now, in the soft darkness of Grace’s room, I rolled over and pressed my face into her shoulder. Strange that my most violent moments had been as a human, not as a wolf.
Outside, I heard the distinct scratching of toenails on the deck. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on the sound of Grace’s beating heart.
The taste of blood in my mouth reminded me of winter.
I knew Shelby had let those dogs out.
She wanted me at the top, with her beside me, and Paul was in my way. And now Grace was in hers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR • GRACE
49°F
Days blurred into a collage of common images: cool walks across the school parking lot, Olivia’s empty seat in class, Sam’s breath in my ear, pawprints in our yard’s frosted blades of grass.
By the time the weekend arrived, I felt breathless with waiting, although I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for. Sam had tossed and turned the night before, plagued by a nightmare, and he looked so terrible on Saturday morning that instead of making any plans to go out, I just parked him on the couch after my parents had gone to brunch at a friend’s house.
I lay in the curve of Sam’s arm as he flipped between various bad made-for-TV movies. We settled on a sci-fi thriller that had probably cost less to produce than the Bronco. Rubbery tentacles were everywhere when Sam finally said something.
“Does it bother you? That your parents are the way they are?”
I nuzzled my face into his armpit. It smelled very Sam in there. “Let’s not talk about them.”
“Let’s do talk about them.”
“Oh, why? What’s there to tell? It’s fine. They’re fine. They’re the way they are.”
Sam’s fingers gently found my chin and lifted my face up. “Grace, it’s not fine. I’ve been here for—how many weeks now? I don’t even know. But I know how it is, and it’s not fine.”
“They are who they are. I never knew anybody’s parents were any different until I started school. Until I started reading. But seriously, Sam, it’s okay.”
My skin felt hot. I pulled my chin away from his hand and looked at the screen, where a compact car was drowning in slime.
“Grace,” Sam said softly. He was sitting so still, as if, for once, I was the wild animal that might vanish if he moved a muscle. “You don’t have to pretend around me.”
I watched the car crumble into pieces, along with the driver and the passenger. It was hard to tell what was going on with the sound turned down, but it looked like the pieces were reforming into tentacles. There was a guy walking a dog in the background, and he didn’t even seem to notice. How could he not notice?
I didn’t look at Sam, but I knew he was watching me, not the television.
I didn’t know what he thought I was going to say. I had nothing to say. This was not a problem. It was a way of life.
The tentacles on the screen began to drag along the ground, looking for the original tentacled monster so that they could reattach themselves. There was no way they would be able to; the original alien was on fire in Washington, DC, melting around a model of the WashingtonMonument. The new tentacles were just going to have to torment the world on their own.
“Why can’t I make them love me any more than they do?”
Did I say that? It didn’t sound like my voice. Sam’s fingers brushed my cheek, but there weren’t any tears. I was nowhere close to tears.
“Grace, they love you. It’s not about you. It’s their problem.”
“I’ve tried so hard. I never get into trouble. I always do my homework. I cook their damn meals, when they’re home, which is never—” Definitely not my voice. I didn’t swear. “And I nearly got killed, twice, but that didn’t change anything. It’s not like I want them to jump all over me. I just want, one day, just want—” I couldn’t finish the sentence, because I didn’t know how it ended.
Sam dragged me into his arms. “Oh, Grace, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“I’m not crying.”
He wiped my cheeks with his thumb, carefully, and showed me the tear trapped on his fingertip. Feeling foolish, I let him ball me up in his lap and tuck me under his chin. I had my own voice back again, here in the muffled shelter of his arms. “Maybe I’m too good. If I got into trouble at school or burned down people’s garages, they’d have to notice me.”
“You’re not like that. You know you’re not,” he said. “They’re just silly, selfish people, that’s all. I’m sorry I asked, okay? Let’s just watch this dumb movie.”
I laid my cheek against his chest and listened to the thump- thump of his heart. It sounded so normal, just a regular human heart. He’d been human long enough now that I almost couldn’t detect the faint odor of the woods on him or remember what it felt like to bury my fingers in his ruff. Sam turned up the volume on the aliens and we sat like that, one creature in two bodies, for a long time, until I forgot what I’d been upset about and I was myself again.
“I wish I had what you have,” I said.
“What do I have?”
“Your pack. Beck. Ulrik. When you talk about them, I can see how important they are to you,” I said. “They made you this person.” I pushed a finger into his chest. “They’re wonderful, so you’re wonderful.”