Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever) (48 page)

I looked down at him, and suddenly anger bubbled up through me. It shouldn’t have affected him this badly. It was just a damned bathroom. It was he who was making me this cruel — I hadn’t done anything to him except shown him a damned tub. I wasn’t that person he thought I was.

“Beck chose this, too,” I told him, because he wouldn’t say anything now to contradict me. “That’s what he told me. He said that he got everything he wanted in life after law school, and he was miserable. He told me he was going to kill himself, but a guy named Paul convinced him there was another way out.”

Sam was silent except for his ragged inhalations.

“That’s the same thing he offered me,” I said. “Only I can’t stay a wolf. Don’t tell me that you don’t want to hear it. You’re just as bad as I am. Look at you. Don’t talk to me about damage.”

He didn’t move, so I did. I went to the back door and threw it open. The night had become savage and cold while I was drinking, and I was rewarded with a wrenching twist in my gut.

I escaped.

• SAM •

I went through the actions of punching down the dough and shaping the loaf and getting the bread in the oven. My head was humming with words that were too clipped and unrelated for me to form into lyrics. I was halfway here, halfway somewhere else, standing in Beck’s same old kitchen on a night that could’ve been now or ten years ago.

The faces on the cabinet photos smiled back at me, dozens of different permutations of me and Beck, Beck and Ulrik, Paul and Derek, Ulrik and me. Faces waiting to be reinhabited. The photos looked faded and old in the dull nighttime of the kitchen. I remembered Beck taping them up, when they were brand-new, concrete proof of our ties.

I thought about how my parents so easily decided not to love me, just because I couldn’t hold on to my skin. And about how I’d been so quick to shun Beck when I’d thought that he’d infected the three new wolves against their will. It was like I could feel my parents’ imperfect love running through my veins. So quick to judge.

When I finally noticed that Cole was gone, I opened the back door and retrieved his clothing from the yard. I stood there, holding the cold bundle in my hands, and let the night air cut down inside me, past the layers of everything that made me Sam and human, to the creeping wolf that I imagined still lurking inside me. I played back Cole’s dialogue in my head.

Was he really asking for my help?

I jumped when the phone rang. The phone was missing from the base in the kitchen, so I went into the living room and sat on the arm of the sofa while I picked up the receiver in there.
Grace
, I hoped fiercely.
Grace.

“Hi?” It occurred to me, too late, that if Grace was calling this late, there was something wrong.

But it wasn’t Grace’s voice that answered, though it was female. “Who is this?”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Someone called my cell from this number. Twice.”

“Who is
this
?” I asked.

“Angie Baranova.”

“When did they call?”

“Yesterday. Earlyish. No message.”

Cole. Had to be.
Sloppy bastard.
“Must’ve been a wrong number,” I said.

“Must’ve been,” she echoed. “Because only, like,
four
people have this number.”

I amended my opinion of Cole.
Stupid bastard.

“Like I said,” I insisted, “a wrong number.”

“Or Cole,” Angie said.

“Excuse me?”

She gave an unfunny, ugly little laugh. “Whoever you are, I know you wouldn’t say anything even if he was standing right beside you. Because Cole’s really good at that, isn’t he? Getting you to do what he wants? Well, if he is there and it was him calling my number, tell him I’ve got a new cell. It’s one 917-get-out-of-my-life. Thanks.”

And she hung up.

I clicked
TALK
again to hang up the phone and leaned to return it to the cradle. I looked at Beck’s stack of books on the end table. Beside them was a picture frame with a photo Ulrik had taken of Beck right after Paul had sprayed mustard on him while we barbecued burgers. Beck squinted at me, smears of unreal yellow caught in his eyebrows and globbed in his eyelashes.

“Sounds like you picked a real winner,” I told Beck’s photo.

• GRACE •

That night, I lay in my bed, trying to forget the way the wolves had looked at me and trying to pretend that Sam was with me. Blinking in the blackness, I tugged Sam’s pillow closer to me, but I’d used up all of his scent, and it was just a pillow again. I pushed it back to his side of the bed and lifted my hand to my nostrils instead, trying to tell if I still smelled like the wolves in the woods. I pictured Isabel’s face when she said,
You know this has to do with the wolves
, and tried to interpret what her expression had meant. Disgust? Like I was contagious? Or was it pity?

If Sam were here, I would’ve whispered,
Do you think dying people know they’re dying?

I made a face at myself in the darkness. I knew I was being melodramatic.

I wanted to believe I was just being melodramatic.

Laying a hand flat on my belly, I thought about the gnawing ache that lived a few inches below my fingers. Right now, the pain seemed dull, slumbering.

I pressed my fingers into my skin.

I know you’re there.

It seemed pitiful to be sitting awake in bed, contemplating my mortality alone, while Sam was within easy driving distance. I shot a futile glance up toward my parents’ room, irritated that they’d deprived me of his company when I most needed it.

If I died now, I’d never go to college. I’d never live on my own. I’d never buy my own coffeepot (I wanted a red one). I’d never marry Sam. I’d never get to be Grace the way Grace was meant to be.

I had been so careful, my entire life.

I considered my own funeral. No way would Mom have enough common sense to plan it. Dad would do it between calls to investors and HOA board members. Or Grandma. She might step up to the plate once she knew what a crappy job her son was doing of raising her granddaughter. Rachel would come, and probably a few of my teachers. Definitely Mrs. Erskine, who wanted me to be an architect. Isabel, too, though she probably wouldn’t cry. I remembered Isabel’s brother’s funeral — the whole town had turned out, because of his age. So maybe I would get a good crowd, even if I hadn’t been a legend in Mercy
Falls, just by virtue of having died too young to have actually lived. Did people bring gifts to funerals like they did to weddings and baby showers?

I heard a creak outside my door. A sudden pop, a foot on a floorboard, and then the door creeping softly open.

For a single, tiny moment, I thought it might be Sam, somehow, miraculously sneaking in. But then from my nest in my blankets, I saw the shape of my father’s shoulders and head as he leaned into my room. I did my best to look asleep while still keeping my eyes slitted open. My father came in a few, hesitant steps, and I thought, with surprise,
He’s checking to see if I’m all right.

But then he lifted his chin just a little bit, to look at a place just beyond me, and I realized that he wasn’t here to make sure I was all right. He was just here to make sure Sam wasn’t with me.

• COLE •

Crouched on the cold forest floor, pine needles pressing into my palms, blood smeared over my bare knees, I couldn’t remember how long I’d been human.

I was suspended in a pale blue morning, fog tinting everything pastel as it moved slowly around me. The air reeked of blood, feces, and brackish water. It only took a glance at my hands to see where the smells came from. The lake was a few yards away from me, and between me and the water lay a dead deer, flat on her side. A flap of skin folded back from her ribs, presenting her innards like a gruesome gift. It was her blood that was smeared across my knees and, I saw now, my hands as well. In the overhead branches, invisible in the mist, crows called back and forth to one another, eager for me to lose interest in my kill.

I cast a glance around me, looking for the other wolves that must’ve helped me to take down the doe, but they had left me alone. Or, more truthfully, I’d left them, by shifting into a reluctant human.

Slight movement caught my eye; I darted a glance toward it. It took me a moment to realize what had moved — the doe.
Her eye. She blinked, and as she did, I saw that she was looking right at me. Not dead — dying. Funny how two things could be so similar and yet so far apart. Something about the expression in her liquid black eye made my chest hurt. It was like — patience. Or forgiveness. She had resigned herself to the fate of being eaten alive.

“Jesus,” I whispered, getting slowly to my feet, trying not to alarm her further. She didn’t even flinch. Just this:
blink
. I wanted to back away, give her space, let her escape, but the exposed bones and spilled guts told me flight was impossible for her. I’d already ruined her body.

I felt a bitter smile twist my lips. Here it was, my brilliant plan to stop being Cole and slip into oblivion. Here it was. Standing naked and painted with death, my empty stomach twisting with hunger while I faced a meal for something I wasn’t anymore.

The doe blinked again, face extraordinarily gentle, and my stomach lurched.

I couldn’t leave her like this. That was the thing. I knew I couldn’t. I confirmed my location with a quick glance around — a twenty-minute walk to the shed, maybe. Another ten to the house, if there was nothing to kill her with in the shed. Forty minutes to an hour of lying here with her guts exposed.

I could just walk away. She was dying, after all. It was inevitable, and how much did the suffering of a deer count for?

Her eye blinked again, silent and tolerant. A lot — that was how much it counted for.

I cast around for anything that might serve as a weapon. None of the stones by the lake were large enough to be useful,
and I couldn’t imagine myself bludgeoning her to death, anyway. I ran through everything I knew of anatomy and instantly deadly car crashes and catastrophes. And then I looked back to her exposed ribs.

I swallowed.

It only took me a moment to find a branch with a sharp enough end.

Her eye rolled up toward me, black and bottomless, and one of her front legs twitched, a memory of running. There was something awful about terror trapped behind silence. About latent emotions that couldn’t be acted out.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I don’t mean to be cruel.”

I stabbed the stick through her ribs.

Once.

Twice.

She screamed, this high scream that was neither human nor animal but something terrible in between, the sort of sound that you never forget no matter how many beautiful things you hear afterward. Then she was silent, because her punctured lungs were empty.

She was dead, and I wanted to be. I was going to find out how to keep myself a wolf. Or I just couldn’t do this anymore.

• GRACE •

I didn’t think I’d slept, but a knock on my bedroom door woke me, so I must’ve. I opened my eyes; it was still dark in my room. The clock said it was morning, but only barely. The numbers glowed
5:30
.

“Grace,” my mother’s voice said, too loud for 5:30. “We need to talk to you before we go.”

“Go where?” My voice was a croak, still half asleep.

“St. Paul,” Mom said, and now she sounded impatient, like I should know. “Are you decent?”

“How can I be decent at five?” I muttered, but I waved a hand at her, since I was sleeping in a camisole and pj bottoms. Mom turned on the light switch, and I winced at the sudden brightness. I barely had time to see that Mom was in her billowy fair shirt before Dad appeared behind her. Both of them shuffled into my room. Mom’s lips were pressed into a tight, businesslike smile, and Dad’s face looked as if he had been sculpted from wax. I couldn’t remember a time I’d seen them both looking so uncomfortable.

They both glanced at each other; I could practically see the invisible talk bubbles over their head.
You start. No, you start.

So I started. I said, “How are you feeling today, Grace?”

Mom waved a hand at me as if it was obvious I was all right, especially if I was well enough to be sarcastic. “Today’s the Artists Limited Series.”

She paused to see if she had to clarify further. She didn’t. Mom went every year — leaving before dawn with a vehicle packed full of art and not coming home until after midnight, exhausted and with a far emptier vehicle. Dad always went with her if he was off from work. I’d gone one year. It was a huge building full of moms and people buying paintings like Mom’s. I didn’t go again.

“Okay,” I said. “So?”

Mom looked at Dad.

“So, you’re still grounded,” Dad said. “Even though we’re not here.”

I sat up a little taller, my head tingling in protest as I did.

“So we can trust you, right?” Mom added. “To not do anything stupid?”

My words came out slow and distinct with the effort of not shouting them. “Are you guys just … trying to be vindictive? Because I —” I was going to say
saved up forever to get this for Sam
, but for some reason, the idea of finishing the sentence closed my throat up. I shut my eyes and opened them again.

“No,” Dad said. “You’re being punished. We said you were grounded until Monday, and that’s what’s happening. It’s unfortunate that Samuel’s appointment happened to be during that
time frame. Maybe another day.” He didn’t look like he found it unfortunate.

“They’re booked for months in advance, Dad,” I said.

I didn’t think I’d ever seen the line of Dad’s mouth look so ugly. He replied, “Well, maybe you should’ve considered your actions a little more, then.”

I could feel a little pulsing headache just between my eyebrows. I pushed a fist into my skin and then looked up. “Dad, it was for his birthday. This was the only thing he got for his birthday. From anybody. It’s a really big deal for him.” My voice just — stopped. I had to swallow before I went on. “Please just let me go. Ground me Monday. Tell me to do community service. Make me scrub your toilets with my toothbrush. Just let me go.”

Mom and Dad looked at each other, and for a single, stupid moment, I thought they were considering it.

Then Mom said, “We don’t want you to be alone with him for that long. We don’t trust him anymore.”

Or me. Just say it.

But they didn’t.

“The answer’s no, Grace,” Dad said. “You can see him tomorrow, and be glad that we’re allowing even that.”

“
Allowing
that?” I demanded. My hands fisted the covers on either side of me. Anger was rising up in me — I felt my cheeks, hot as summer, and suddenly, I just couldn’t take it. “You’ve been ruling this particular part of the world via absentee ballot for most of my teenage years, and now you just ride in here and say,
Sorry, Grace, no, this little bit of life that you have
managed to make for yourself, this person you’ve chosen, you should be happy we’re not taking that, too.
”

Mom threw up her hands. “Oh, Grace, really. Stop overreacting. As if we needed any more proof that you were not mature enough to be with him that much. You’re seventeen. You’ve got the rest of your life ahead of you. This is
not
the end of the world. In five years —”

“Don’t —” I said.

To my surprise, she didn’t.

“Don’t tell me I’ll have forgotten his name in five years or whatever you were about to say. Stop talking down to me.” I stood up, throwing my covers to the end of the bed as I did. “You two have been gone too long to pretend that you know what’s in my head. Why don’t you go to some dinner party or a gallery opening or a late-night house showing or an all-day art show and hope that I’ll be all right when you get back? Oh, that’s
right
. You already are. Pick one, guys. Parents or roommates. You can’t be one and then suddenly be the other.”

There was a long pause. Mom was looking off into the corner of the room like there was a fantastic song playing in her head. Dad was frowning at me. Finally, he shook his head. “We’re having a serious talk when we get home, Grace. I don’t think it was fair of you to start this when you knew that we wouldn’t be able to stay here to finish it.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, my hands fisted. He wouldn’t make me feel ashamed of what I’d said. He wouldn’t. I’d waited too long to say it.

Mom looked at her watch, and the spell was broken.

Dad was already heading out the door as he said, “We’ll talk about this later. We have to go.”

Mom added, sounding like she was mimicking something Dad had told her, “We’re trusting you to respect our authority.”

But they weren’t really trusting me with anything, because after they left, I walked into the kitchen and found that they’d taken my car keys.

I didn’t care. I had another set they didn’t know about in my backpack. There was something invisible and dangerous lurking inside me, and I was done being good.

I got to Beck’s house just after daybreak.

“Sam?” I called, but got no answer. The downstairs was clearly unoccupied, so I headed to the second floor. In no time at all I had found Sam’s bedroom. The sun was still below the trees and only anemic gray light came through the window in the room, but it was enough for me to see evidence of life: the sheets tossed aside on the bed and a pair of jeans crumpled on the floor next to a pair of inside-out dark socks and a discarded T-shirt.

For a long moment, I just stood by the bed, staring at the snarled sheets, and then I climbed in. The pillow smelled like Sam’s hair, and after nights of bad sleep without him, the bed felt like heaven. I didn’t know where he was, but I knew he’d be back. Already, it felt like I was with him again. My eyelids ached with sudden heaviness.

Behind my closed eyes I felt a tangled grip of emotions and feelings and sensations. The ever-present ache in my stomach.
The pang of envy when I thought of Olivia as a wolf. The rawness of anger at my parents. The crippling ferocity of missing Sam. The touch of lips to my forehead.

Before I knew it, I had fallen asleep — or rather, I had woken up. It didn’t seem like any time at all had passed, but when I opened my eyes, I was facing the wall and the comforter was pulled up around my shoulders.

Usually when I woke up someplace other than my bed — at my grandmother’s, or the few times I’d been in a hotel when I was younger — there was a moment of confusion as my body figured out why the light was different and the pillow wasn’t mine. But opening my eyes in Sam’s room, it was just … opening my eyes. It was like my body had been unable to forget where I was even while I was sleeping.

So when I rolled back over to look into the rest of the room and saw birds dancing between me and the ceiling, there was no surprise. Just wonder. Dozens of origami birds of every shape, size, and color danced slowly in the air from the heating vents, life in slow motion. The now-brilliant light through the tall window cast moving bird-shaped shadows all around the room: on the ceiling, on the walls, over the top of the stacks and shelves of books, across the comforter, across my face. It was beautiful.

I wondered how long I’d slept. Also, I wondered where Sam was. Stretching my arms above my head, I realized I could hear the dull roar of the shower through the open door. Dimly, I heard Sam’s voice rise above the sound of the shower:

He sang the line over again, twice, changing
stretch and grow
to
shift and glow
and then
shift and grow
. His voice sounded wet and echoey.

I smiled, though there was no one to see it. The fight with my parents seemed like something that had happened to a long-ago Grace. Kicking back the blankets, I stood up, my head sending one of the birds into crazy orbit. I reached up to still it and then moved among the birds, looking at what they were made of. The one that had knocked against my head was folded out of newsprint. Here was one folded out of a glossy magazine cover. Another from a paper beautifully and intricately printed with flowers and leaves. One that looked like it had once been a tax worksheet. Another, misshapen and tiny, made out of two dollar bills taped together. A school report card from a correspondence school out of Maryland. So many stories and memories folded up for safekeeping; how like Sam to hang them all above him while he slept.

I fingered the one that hung directly over his pillow. A rumpled piece of notepaper covered with Sam’s handwriting, echoing the voice I now heard in the background. One of the scribbled lines was
girl lying in the snow
.

I sighed. I had a weird, empty feeling inside me. Not a bad sort of empty. It was a sort of lack of sensation, like being in pain for a long time and then suddenly realizing that you’re not anymore. It was the feeling of having risked everything to be here with a boy and then realizing that he was exactly what
I wanted. Being a picture and then finding I was really a puzzle piece, once I found the piece that was supposed to fit beside me.

I smiled again, and the delicate birds danced around me.

“Hi,” Sam said from the doorway. His voice was cautious, unsure of where we stood this morning, after our days apart. His hair was all stuck out and crazy from his shower, and he was wearing a collared shirt that made him look weirdly formal, despite its rumpled, untucked appearance and his blue jeans. My mind was screaming:
Sam, Sam, finally Sam
.

“Hi,” I said, and I couldn’t keep from grinning. I bit my lip, but my smile was still there, and it only got bigger when Sam’s face reflected it back at me. I stood there among his birds, with the shape of my body still impressed on the bed sheets beside me, the sun splashing over me and him, and my worries of last night seeming impossibly small in comparison to the vast glow of this morning.

I was suddenly overwhelmed by what an incredible person this boy was, standing in front of me, and by the fact that he was mine and I was his.

“Right now,” Sam said — and I saw that he held the invoice for today’s studio time in his hand, folded into a bird with sun-washed wings — “it’s hard to imagine that it is raining anywhere in the world.”