Waiting with me for something none of us had words for.
Far away, a loon called, eerie and slow. They always sounded plaintive to me. Like they were calling for someone they didn’t expect to answer.
The black wolf—Paul—stretched his nose to me, nostrils moving slightly, and he whined. The sound was a soft, breathy echo of the loon, anxious and uncertain.
Just under my skin, something stretched and strained. My body felt like a battleground for an invisible war.
Surrounded by wolves, I sat on the forest floor as the sun sank in the sky and the shadows of the pines grew, and I wondered how much time I had.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
• GRACE • Eventually, the wolves left me.
I sat there, alone, trying to feel every cell of my body, trying to understand what was happening inside.
The phone rang—Isabel.
I answered. I had to return to the real world, even if it wasn’t as real as I wanted it to be.
“Rachel was very happy to point out that you’d asked her, not me, to pick up your homework and copy notes for you,” Isabel said after I said hello.
“She’s in more of my cla—”
“Save it. I don’t care; I didn’t want the extra work of picking stuff up, anyway. I was more amused by the idea that she’d think that it was a status symbol.” Isabel did sound amused; I felt a little bad for Rachel.
“Anyway, I was calling to find out how infectious you are.”
How could I explain how I felt? And to Isabel?
I couldn’t.
I answered her truthfully by making it a narrow truth.
“I don’t think I am infectious,” I said. “Why?”
“I want to go someplace with you, but I don’t want to get the bubonic plague if I do.”
“Come to the backyard,” I told her. “I’m in the woods.”
Isabel’s voice managed to convey equal parts disgust and disbelief. “The. Woods. Of course, I should’ve known; that’s where sick people always go.
Personally, I would rather go someplace and let off some steam with some good nonproductive retail therapy, but I guess the woods would be a rewarding and socially acceptable alternative. All the kids are doing it now. Should I bring skis? A tent?”
“Just you,” I said.
“Do I want to know what you were doing in the woods?” she asked.
“I was walking,” I told her. The truth, but not all of it.
I didn’t know how to tell her the rest.
Later, Isabel had to shout for me beside the trees a few times and wait a few minutes for me to come out of the darkening forest, but I didn’t feel guilty about it—I was still too lost in the revelation I’d had while surrounded by the wolves.
“Aren’t you supposed to be dying or something?”
Isabel demanded as soon as she saw me picking my way back in the direction of my house. I’d made my point with my mother; now it was time to go back, and I figured she wouldn’t try to initiate a serious conversation if I had someone else in tow.
Isabel stood by the bird feeder, hands shoved in her pockets, the fur-lined hood on her shoulders hunched up around her ears. As I approached, her eyes flicked between me and a faded white stain of bird poop on the edge of the feeder. It was clearly bothering her. She was done up in full Isabel style —slashed haircut brutally and beautifully styled around her face and her eyes ink stained and dramatic. She really had been planning on going someplace with me; I did feel a little guilty, then, as if I’d refused her for frivolous reasons. Her voice was a few degrees colder than the air. “What part of your treatment involves trooping out through the woods when it’s thirty-seven degrees outside?”
It was getting pretty cold; the ends of my fingers were bright pink. “Is it thirty-seven? It wasn’t when I went out.”
“Well, it is now,” Isabel said. “I saw your mom when I was walking back here, and tried to convince her to let you go for a panini in Duluth tonight, but she said no. I’m trying not to take it personally.” She wrinkled her nose when I came up alongside her, and together we headed back toward the house.
“Yeah, I’m trying to ignore how mad I am at her right now,” I confessed. Isabel waited for me to slide the back door open for her. She didn’t comment on my anger, and I didn’t expect her to; Isabel was always angry at her parents, so I doubted it even registered on her radar as unusual. “I can fake paninis here, sort of. I don’t really have good bread for it.” I didn’t really want to, though.
“I’d rather wait for the real thing,” Isabel said.
“Let’s order pizza.”
“Ordering pizza” in Mercy Falls meant calling up the local pizza joint, Mario’s, and paying a six-dollar delivery charge. A price too dear after Sam’s studio visit.
“I’m broke,” I said regretfully.
“I’m not,” Isabel replied.
She said this just as we came inside, and Mom, who was still parked on the couch with Sam’s book, looked up sharply. Good. I hoped she thought we were talking about her.
I looked at Isabel. “Why don’t we go to my room?
Are we getting—?”
Isabel waved a hand at me to be quiet; she was already on the phone with Mario’s, ordering a large cheese and mushroom pizza. She kicked off her fatheeled boots on the back-door mat and followed me into my room, flirting effortlessly with whoever was on the other end of the phone as she did.
In my room, it seemed hideously warm in comparison to outside. I started to peel off my sweater as Isabel clicked her phone off and crashed sideways on the bed. She said, “We’re getting free toppings. Bet me we’re getting free toppings.”
“I don’t have to bet,” I said. “That was practically phone sex on an extra-thin crust.”
“It’s what I do,” Isabel said. “So look. I didn’t bring my homework. I basically did it in my free period in school.”
I gave her a look. “If you crap out of school now, you won’t get into a good college, and then you’ll be stuck here in Mercy Falls forever.” Unlike Rachel and Isabel, I wasn’t filled with horror at that idea. But I knew that neither of them could imagine worse fates.
Isabel made a face. “Thanks, Mom. I’ll keep that in mind.”
I shrugged and tugged out the book that Rachel had brought over earlier. “Well, I do have homework, and I want to get into college. At the very least, I have to do my reading for history tonight. Is that okay?”
Isabel laid her cheek on my comforter and closed her eyes. “You don’t have to entertain me. It’s enough to get out of the house.”