Liar (20 page)

“Lean,” Grandmother said, stretching out a stringy well-muscled arm. “Strong.”

“We're a werewolf family?” I asked. The hair on my arms and face was silvery and coarse. Like animal hair. Like Hilliard's coat. I felt the skin on my entire body tighten.

“I told you there's no point pussyfooting about,” Grandmother admonished Dad. “Micah already understands. Should have told her years ago. It's not right growing up not knowing what you are.”

Dad shot his mother a poisonous look. I didn't know why then but now I'm sure he was thinking of his unknown father, of battling through all his mother's lies to find him, and failing.

Even at ten I'd known my family was a mess, but I hadn't realized how messy. If they were all lying . . . I looked at their faces. They weren't lying.

“I'm a werewolf?” It made more sense than the doctors' explanations for my hairiness. Hormone imbalances and all that. Great-Aunt said the hair was going away. She had, hadn't she?

Grandmother leaned forward and patted my knee.

“It's not so bad as all that,” she said. “You can live up here with us. Plenty of space for wolfishness here.”

Hilliard was still looking at me. I thought of all the times I'd petted him and played with him. I hadn't even known he was a wolf. I thought he was a regular dog. Named after my dead great-uncle. Except that Great-Aunt Dorothy and Grandmother and the others always talked to him as if he was a person. But then I'd seen people in the city carrying dogs in their purses and talking to them as if they were babies. People with animals are weird. Except Dad and the Greats were saying Uncle Hilliard wasn't even a regular wolf.

He was a werewolf. Like me.

“Can he understand what we're saying?” I asked.

“Mostly,” Grandmother said. “Though it's hard to tell. Hilliard doesn't change anymore. He's a wolf all the time.”

Would that happen to me? Did I
have
to live up here? Did Mom know? Would it hurt?

“When will I become a wolf,” I asked. “How long for?”

They told me. They told me everything they knew about the signs that would tell me the change was coming, about cycles, what the wolf me would know and what the human. How to control it. How to live with it.

They told me how long the Wilkins had been wolves. (Always.) What the family legends were. (Many and varied.) Why they'd come to America. (Space. Freedom.)

When they were finally done my butt was numb, my head was spinning, and I was so hungry my stomach growled. Yes, like a wolf.

FAMILY HISTORY

When The Change—menopause—comes most of us stop the other kind of change. One way or the other. Grandmother stayed human, greeting each new month with a tightening of the skin, with headaches and hot flashes, sometimes an itchy layer of fur that's shed within hours. Human still.

Hilliard went the other way. He's wolf all the time. Prowling, howling, stuck on a farm that isn't even a tenth of the size of a normal range.

He strays of course. How could he not?

He takes deer and raccoon and rabbit. Sheep sometimes. But not often.

Humans? you ask.

Never humans. Wolves don't eat people. Neither do werewolves. Not unless there's a reason. We never kill a person for food. Too dangerous. Too suspicious. Besides—rabbit, deer—they taste better.

Upstate, when those sheep disappear, everyone blames it on coyote. Coyote bigger than anyone's ever seen before. Coyote
are
bigger in the Northeast. But
that
big?

There aren't any wolves in upstate New York. So it can't be wolves taking them.

There're hardly any wolves in North America anymore. A few in the far north: Alaska, parts of Canada, tiny bits of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Those they reintroduced into Yellowstone Park—they're the only wolves that aren't in danger of being shot at or trapped.

North America used to be all wolves. All wolves and many werewolves, too. Now it's humans and highways and hubris. At least that's what the Greats say. But sitting on their porch in the middle of summer all I can see is honeysuckle and hummingbirds. And Hilliard.

He's lonely. The lone wolf—except for when my cousins change. Then they run like a pack, playing, hunting, howling. In summers I'm there, too. But my cousins and me change for only a few days each month. The rest of the time it's just Hilliard.

Wolves are social. They need their pack.

I wonder if Hilliard misses changing. Living life as both.

I know Grandmother does.

THE MOON

The moon has nothing to do with it. Not unless you cycle with the moon.

You must be wondering about the males. They don't menstruate. They don't go through menopause. How do they turn into wolves? How do they stop?

There are always more female werewolves than male. Because it's the females who cause the change. A male werewolf who grows up alone, far from his own kind, never becomes a wolf.

He has to be around females. We start to change, they start to change. We hit menopause, they hit menopause.

This is why so many of us live in packs. Those of us who aren't extinct.

Those of us who aren't hiding in the cities dutifully taking our pills. Or, if they're boys, avoiding their own kind. A boy wolf can stay human forever—all he has to do is never go near a girl wolf.

THE ANIMALS

You're wondering about the other animals on the farm: the chickens, geese, pigs, goats, cows, and horses. How do they cope with wolves around? Not just Hilliard, but when the other Wilkins wolves change together?

First of all, geese aren't afraid of anything, not even human wolves. They're not like regular animals, so they don't shy from us when we're human. (There's a good side to most animals fearing us: there's never been a rat or a mouse in our apartment in the city—or on the farm—you'd think my parents would be grateful.)

But the animals freak when we change. The minute one of us feels it coming we get away from the house and stables and pens and into the woods. Of course, the freaking at the change is nothing compared to how the animals feel about having a wolf anywhere near them. When the pack is out in force, to be on the safe side, the Greats make sure none of the animals are loose.

Though we wolves know to leave them alone.

Rabbits and deer, yes. Anything domesticated, no. Too much trouble, whether they're our own or our neighbors' animals.

BEFORE

My pill?

Sometimes, not often, I forget.

My desk?

The one that clangs? That's made of metal?

It's a cage: three feet by six feet.

When I forget my pill that's where I am imprisoned.

It's where they put me the first time.

It was like this:

I was twelve. My skin started to itch. The way it used to when the extra hair was growing in. I was in middle school. The hair had disappeared. I'd been in the same middle school ever since.

My skin started to itch on the walk home from school. I had the cell phone my parents gave me to call them in an emergency—the emergency being any of the signs that I was about to change—but my school was only five blocks from home: one avenue, four streets. I was sure I'd make it. I quickened my pace. Bolted up the stairs, through the apartment door, hung my backpack from the coat rack by the door.

“Hi, Dad,” I said. He was at the kitchen table, surrounded by a pile of glossy magazines and pamphlets, laptop open, typing furiously. He looked up, nodded, turned back to the screen.

I opened my mouth to tell him about my skin itching, but that was the do-not-disturb look. Instead I went into the bathroom. There was blood. Not a lot. Tiny spots of it on my pants.

Two of the signs the Greats had told me to watch for.

Hot flashes was another. Also aching teeth.

I washed my hands and felt my forehead. I didn't feel particularly warm. My teeth felt fine. How many signs before I tell Mom and Dad?

I went back into the kitchen, leaned against the fridge. “Dad?” I said tentatively. The whole thing seemed unreal.
Hey, Dad, I think maybe it's about to happen. It might be time to lock me in the cage.

He didn't look up.

Maybe I should wait for another sign? But the Greats had said that even one sign was enough. Sometimes the first change comes on scary fast.

“Dad,” I repeated.

“What, Micah? I'm kind of busy.” Dad looked up.

I felt idiotic. What if it was nothing? The blood spots were really tiny.

“What, Micah?”

“Um,” I said, “I think it might be about to, or, you know, going to happen.”

“What's going to happen? This is due in”—he glanced at the screen—“two hours.”

“The change. I think—”

Dad jumped up, narrowly missing whacking his head on the bicycle above. He put his hand to my cheek. “You feel hot?”

“Not yet. Just my skin.” I held out my arms. Red bumps were starting appear. “And there was blood. Not much but—”

“Damn,” Dad said. He almost never swears. “This is it then. You ready to go in?”

I wasn't, but I nodded. The Greats had said it could happen quickly. I felt strange, like my heart was beating too fast, but I couldn't tell if that was the change starting to happen or me being afraid it was about to happen. Then I remembered: rapid heartbeat was another sign.

I crawled into the cage. Dad locked it behind me. I sat on the thin mattress we'd put in to make it more comfortable. At three feet high there was no standing up. There was a bucket in the corner for my toilet and a roll of toilet paper. In the opposite corner sat a jug of water and a plastic cup.

“You okay?” Dad said.

I nodded. I wasn't.

“I'll be back in a minute,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, wishing he would stay. I'd never minded being alone. I liked it. Not that time.

He closed the door behind him. I wished he hadn't. I instantly started worrying that he wouldn't come back, that the door wouldn't open again until I was a wolf. Or not even then.