I made a face and took the knife from her. Mom was permanently paint-spattered and absentminded. She would never be my friends’ moms: apron-wearing, meal-cooking, vacuuming, Betty Crocker. I didn’t really want her to be like them. But seriously—I needed to get my homework done.
“Thanks, sweetie. I’ll be in the studio.” If Mom had been one of those dolls that say five or six different things when you push their tummy, that would’ve been one of her prerecorded phrases.
“Don’t pass out from the fumes,” I told her, but she was already running up the stairs.
Shoving the mutilated mushrooms into a bowl, I looked at the clock hanging on the bright yellow wall. Still an hour until Dad would be home from work. I had plenty of time to make dinner and maybe, afterward, to try to catch a glimpse of my wolf.
There was some sort of cut of beef in the fridge that was probably supposed to go with the mangled mushrooms. I pulled it out and slapped it on the cutting board. In the background, an “expert” on the news asked whether the wolf population in Minnesota should be limited or moved. The whole thing just put me in a bad mood.
The phone rang. “Hello?”
“Hiya. What’s up?”
Rachel. I was glad to hear from her; she was the exact opposite of my mother—totally organized and great on followthrough. She made me feel less like an alien. I shoved the phone between my ear and my shoulder and chopped the beef as I talked, saving a piece the size of my fist for later. “Just making dinner and watching the stupid news.”
She knew immediately what I was talking about. “I know. Talk about surreal, right? It seems like they just can’t get enough of it. It’s kind of gross, really—I mean, why can’t they just shut up and let us get over it? It’s bad enough going to school and hearing about it all the time. And you with the wolves and everything, it’s got to be really bothering you—and, seriously, Jack’s parents have got to be just wanting the reporters to shut up.”
Rachel was babbling so fast I could barely understand her. I missed a bunch of what she said in the middle, and then she asked, “Has Olivia called tonight?”
Olivia was the third side of our trio, the only one who came anywhere near understanding my fascination with the wolves. It was a rare night when I didn’t talk to either her or Rachel by phone. “She’s probably out shooting photos. Isn’t there a meteor shower tonight?” I said. Olivia saw the world through her camera; half of my school memories seemed to be in four-by-six-inch glossy black-and-white form.
Rachel said, “I think you’re right. Olivia will definitely want a piece of that hot asteroid action. Got a moment to talk?”
I glanced at the clock. “Sorta. Just while I finish up dinner, then I have homework.”
“Okay. Just a second then. Two words, baby, try them out: es. cape.”
I started the beef browning on the stove top. “That’s one word, Rach.”
She paused. “Yeah. It sounded better in my head. Anyway, so here’s the thing: My parents said if I want to go someplace over Christmas break this year, they’ll pay for it. I so want to go somewhere. Anywhere but Mercy Falls. God, anywhere but Mercy Falls! Will you and Olivia come over and help me pick something after school tomorrow?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“If it’s someplace really cool, maybe you and Olivia could come, too,” Rachel said.
I didn’t answer right away. The word Christmas immediately evoked memories of the scent of our Christmas tree, the dark infinity of the starry December sky above the backyard, and my wolf’s eyes watching me from behind the snow-covered trees. No matter how absent he was for the rest of the year, I always had my wolf for Christmas.
Rachel groaned. “Don’t do that silent staring-off-into-the- distance-thinking look, Grace! I can tell you’re doing it! You can’t tell me you don’t want to get out of this place!”
I sort of didn’t. I sort of belonged here. “I didn’t say no,” I protested.
“You also didn’t say omigod yes, either. That’s what you were supposed to say.” Rachel sighed. “But you will come over, right?”
“You know I will,” I said, craning my neck to squint out the back window. “Now, I really have to go.”
“Yeah yeah yeah,” Rachel said. “Bring cookies. Don’t forget. Love ya. Bye.” She laughed and hung up.
I hurried to get the pot of stew simmering on the stove so it could occupy itself without me. Grabbing my coat from the hooks on the wall, I pulled open the sliding door to the deck.
Cool air bit my cheeks and pinched at the tops of my ears, reminding me that summer was officially over. My stocking cap was stuffed in the pocket of my coat, but I knew my wolf didn’t always recognize me when I was wearing it, so I left it off. I squinted at the edge of the yard and stepped off the deck, trying to look nonchalant as I did. The piece of beef in my hand felt cold and slick.
I crunched out across the brittle, colorless grass into the middle of the yard and stopped, momentarily dazzled by the violent pink of the sunset through the fluttering black leaves of the trees. This stark landscape was a world away from the small, warm kitchen with its comforting smells of easy survival. Where I was supposed to belong. Where I should’ve wanted to be. But the trees called to me, urging me to abandon what I knew and vanish into the oncoming night. It was a desire that had been tugging me with disconcerting frequency these days.
The darkness at the edge of the wood shifted, and I saw my wolf standing beside a tree, nostrils sniffing toward the meat in my hand. My relief at seeing him was cut short as he shifted his head, letting the yellow square of light from the sliding door fall across his face.
I could see now that his chin was crusted with old, dried blood. Days old.
His nostrils worked; he could smell the bit of beef in my hand. Either the beef or the familiarity of my presence was enough to lure him a few steps out of the wood. Then a few steps more. Closer than he’d ever been before.
I faced him, near enough that I could have reached out and touched his dazzling fur. Or brushed the deep red stain on his muzzle.
I badly wanted that blood to be his. An old cut or scratch earned in a scuffle.
But it didn’t look like that. It looked like it belonged to someone else.
“Did you kill him?” I whispered.
He didn’t disappear at the sound of my voice, as I had expected. He was as still as a statue, his eyes watching my face instead of the meat in my hand.
“It’s all they can talk about on the news,” I said, as if he could understand. “They called it
’savage.’ They said wild animals did it. Did you do it?”
He stared at me for a minute longer, motionless, unblinking. And then, for the first time in six years, he closed his eyes. It went against every natural instinct a wolf should have possessed. A lifetime of an unblinking gaze, and now he was frozen in almost-human grief, brilliant eyes closed, head ducked and tail lowered.
It was the saddest thing I had ever seen.
Slowly, barely moving, I approached him, afraid only of scaring him away, not of his scarlet-stained lips or the teeth they hid. His ears flicked, acknowledging my presence, but he didn’t move. I crouched, dropping the meat onto the snow beside me. He flinched as it landed. I was close enough to smell the wild odor of his coat and feel the warmth of his breath.
Then I did what I had always wanted to—I put a hand to his dense ruff, and when he didn’t flinch, I buried both my hands in his fur. His outer coat was not soft as it looked, but beneath the coarse guard hairs was a layer of downy fluff. With a low groan, he pressed his head against me, eyes still closed. I held him as if he were no more than a family dog, though his wild, sharp scent wouldn’t let me forget what he really was.
For a moment, I forgot where—who—I was. For a moment, it didn’t matter.
Movement caught my eye: Far off, barely visible in the fading day, the white wolf was watching at the edge of the wood, her eyes burning.
I felt a rumble against my body and I realized my wolf was growling at her. The she-wolf stepped closer, uncommonly bold, and he twisted in my arms to face her. I flinched at the sound of his teeth snapping at her.
She never growled, and somehow that was worse. A wolf should have growled. But she just stared, eyes flicking from him to me, every aspect of her body language breathing hatred.
Still rumbling, almost inaudible, my wolf pressed harder against me, forcing me back a step, then another, guiding me up to the deck. My feet found the steps and I retreated to the sliding door. He remained at the bottom of the stairs until I pushed the door open and locked myself inside the house.
As soon as I was inside, the white wolf darted forward and snatched the piece of meat I’d dropped. Though my wolf was nearest to her and the most obvious threat for the food, it was me that her eyes found, on the other side of the glass door. She held my gaze for a long moment before she slid into the woods like a spirit.
My wolf hesitated by the edge of the woods, the dim porch light catching his eyes. He was still watching my silhouette through the door.
I pressed my palm flat against the frigid glass.