“Are you still talking about Officer No-Smile? What is wrong with you?” I shook my head and shuffled to the next photo. “I’ve never seen you obsess over a real person.”
Olivia grinned and leaned at me over a steaming mug. Taking a bite of scone, she spoke around a mouthful, covering her mouth to keep from spraying me with crumbs. “I think I’m turning into one of those girls who likes uniformed types. Oh, c’mon, you didn’t think he was cute? I’m feeling…I’m feeling the boyfriend urge. We should order pizza sometime. Rachel told me there’s a really cute pizza boy.”
I rolled my eyes again. “All of a sudden you want a boyfriend?”
Olivia didn’t look up from the photos, but I got the idea she was paying a lot of attention to my response. “You don’t?”
I mumbled, “When the right guy comes along, I guess.”
“How will you know if you don’t look?”
“As if you have ever had the guts to talk to a guy. Other than your James Dean poster.” My voice had gotten more combative than I’d intended; I added a laugh at the end to soften the effect. Olivia’s eyebrows drew closer to each other, but she didn’t say anything. For a long time we sat in silence, paging through her photos.
I lingered on a close-up shot of me, Olivia, and Rachel together; her mother had come outside to take it right before school started. Rachel, her freckled face contorted into a wild smile, had one arm firmly wrapped around Olivia’s shoulders and the other around mine; it looked like she was squeezing us into the frame. Like always, she was the glue that held our threesome together: the outgoing one who made sure us quiet ones stuck together through the years.
In the photo, Olivia seemed to belong in the summer, with her olive skin bronzed and green eyes saturated with color. Her teeth made a perfect crescent moon smile for the photo, dimples and all. Next to the two of them, I was the embodiment of winter—dark blonde hair and serious brown eyes, a summer girl faded by cold. I used to think Olivia and I were so similar, both introverts permanently buried in books. But now I realized my seclusion was self-inflicted and Olivia was just painfully shy. This year, it felt like the more time we spent together, the harder it was to stay friends.
“I look stupid in that one,” Olivia said. “Rachel looks insane. And you look angry.”
I looked like someone who wouldn’t take no for an answer—petulant, almost. I liked it. “You don’t look stupid. You look like a princess and I look like an ogre.”
“You don’t look like an ogre.”
“I was bragging,” I told her.
“And Rachel?”
“No, you called it. She does look insane. Or at least highly caffeinated, as per usual.” I looked at the photo again. Really, Rachel looked like a sun, bright and exuding energy, holding us two moons in parallel orbit by the sheer force of her will.
“Did you see that one?” Olivia interrupted my thoughts to point at another one of the photos. It was my wolf, deep in the woods, halfway hidden behind a tree. But she’d managed to get a little sliver of his face perfectly in focus, and his eyes stared right into mine. “You can keep that one. In fact, keep the whole stack. We can put the good ones in a book next time.”
“Thanks,” I replied, and meant it more than I could say. I pointed at the picture. “This is from last week?”
She nodded. I stared at the photo of him—breathtaking, but flat and inadequate in comparison to the real thing. I lightly ran my thumb over it, as if I’d feel his fur. Something knotted in my chest, bitter and sad. I felt Olivia’s eyes on me, and they only made me feel worse, more alone. Once upon a time I would’ve talked to her about it, but now it felt too personal. Something had changed—and I thought it was me.
Olivia handed me a slender stack of prints that she’d separated from the rest. “This is my brag pile.”
Distracted, I paged through them slowly. They were impressive: a fall leaf floating on a puddle, students reflected in the windows of a school bus, an artfully smudgy black-and-white self-portrait of Olivia. I oohed and aahed and then slid the photo of my wolf back on top of them to look at it again.
Olivia made a sort of irritated sound in the back of her throat.
I hurriedly shuffled back to the one of the leaf floating on the puddle. I frowned at it for a moment, trying to imagine the sort of thing Mom would say about a piece of art. I managed, “I like this one. It’s got great…colors.”
She snatched them out of my hands and flicked the wolf photo back at me with such force that it bounced off my chest and onto the floor. “Yeah. Sometimes, Grace, I don’t know why I even…”
Olivia didn’t end the sentence, just shook her head. I didn’t get it. Did she want me to pretend to like the other photos better than the one of my wolf?
“Hello! Anyone home?” It was John, Olivia’s older brother, sparing me from the consequences of whatever I’d done to irritate Olivia. He grinned at me from the front hall, shutting the door behind him. “Hey, good-looking.”
Olivia looked up from her seat at the kitchen table with a frosty expression. “I hope you’re talking about me.”
“Of course,” John said, looking at me. He was handsome in a very conventional way: tall, dark-haired like his sister, but with a face quick to smile and befriend. “It would be in very bad taste to hit on your sister’s best friend. So. It’s four o’clock. How time flies when you’re”—he paused, looking at Olivia leaning over the table with a pile of photographs and me across from her with another stack—“doing nothing. Can’t you do nothing by yourselves?”
Olivia silently straightened up her pile of photos while I explained, “We’re introverts. We like doing nothing together. All talk, no action.”
“Sounds fascinating. Olive, we’ve got to leave now if you want to make it to your lesson.” He punched my arm lightly. “Hey, why don’t you come with us, Grace? Are your parents home?”
I snorted. “Are you kidding? I’m raising myself. I should get a head of household bonus on my taxes.” John laughed, probably more than my comment warranted, and Olivia shot me a look imbued with enough venom to kill small animals. I shut up.
“Come on, Olive,” said John, seemingly oblivious to the daggers flying from his sister’s eyes. “You pay for the lesson whether you get there or not. You coming, Grace?”
I looked out the window, and for the first time in months, I imagined disappearing into the trees and running until I found my wolf in a summer wood. I shook my head. “Not this time. Rain check?”
John flashed a lopsided smile at me. “Yep. Come on, Olive. Bye, good-looking. You know who to call if you’re looking for some action with your talk.”
Olivia swung her backpack at him; it made a solid thuk as it hit his body. But it was me who got the dark look again, like I’d done anything to encourage John’s flirting. “Go. Just go. Bye, Grace.”
I showed them to the door and then returned aimlessly to the kitchen. A pleasantly neutral voice followed me, an announcer on NPR describing the classical piece I’d just heard and introducing another one; Dad had left the radio on in his study next to the kitchen. Somehow, the sounds of my parents’ presence only highlighted their absence. Knowing that dinner would be canned beans unless I made it, I rummaged in the fridge and put a pot of leftover soup on the stove to simmer until my parents got home.
I stood in the kitchen, illuminated by the slanting cool afternoon light through the deck door, feeling sorry for myself, more because of Olivia’s photo than because of the empty house. I hadn’t seen my wolf in person since that day I’d touched him, nearly a week ago, and even though I knew it shouldn’t, his absence still stabbed. It was stupid, the way I needed his phantom at the edge of the yard to feel complete. Stupid but completely incurable.
I went to the back door and opened it, wanting to smell the woods. I padded out onto the deck in my sock feet and leaned against the railing.
If I hadn’t gone outside, I don’t know if I would have heard the scream.
CHAPTER NINE • GRACE
58°F
From the distance beyond the trees, the scream came again. For a second I thought it was a howl, and then the cry resolved itself into words: “Help! Help!”
I swore the voice sounded like Jack Culpeper’s.
But that was impossible. I was just imagining it, remembering it from the cafeteria, where it had always seemed to carry over the others around him as he catcalled girls in the hallway.
Still, I followed the sound of the voice, moving impulsively across the yard and through the trees. The ground was damp and prickly through my sock feet; I was clumsier without my shoes. The crashing of my own steps through fallen leaves and tangled brush drowned out any other sounds. I hesitated, listening. The voice was gone, replaced by just a whimper, distinctly animal-sounding, and then by silence.
The relative safety of the backyard was far behind me now. I stood for a long moment, listening for any indication of where the first scream had come from. I knew I hadn’t imagined it.
But there was nothing but silence. And in that silence, the smell of the woods seeped under my skin and reminded me of him. Crushed pine needles and wet earth and wood smoke.
I didn’t care how idiotic it was. I’d come into the woods this far. Going a little farther to try to see my wolf again wouldn’t hurt anybody. I retreated to the house, just long enough to get my shoes, and headed back out into the cool autumn day. There was a bite behind the breeze that promised winter, but the sun shone bright, and under the shelter of the trees, the air was warm with the memory of hot days not so long ago.
All around me, leaves were dying gorgeously in red and orange; crows cawed to each other overhead in a vibrant, ugly soundtrack. I hadn’t been this far into these woods since I was eleven, when I’d awoken surrounded by wolves, but strangely, I didn’t feel afraid.
I stepped carefully, avoiding the little streams that snaked through the underbrush. This should have been unfamiliar territory, but I felt confident, assured. Silently guided, as though by a weird sixth sense, I followed the same worn paths that the wolves used over and over again.