one

When Rae told me the wolf was watching us in the cornfield again, I laughed. And then I punched her in the arm for being stupid. She used to say that the wolves knew all of our secrets, that with pricked ears they listened to the rumors about Lacey Jordan and the janitor, that the whole pack knew about how Rae had lost her virginity in her mom’s spare bedroom two summers ago. Sometimes she said they inched even closer when we smuggled cherry vodka under our fur-lined jackets, the bottles clinking against the buttons on our jeans. The wolves liked cherry-flavored things.

My boots crunched through the icy film covering the cornfield. I followed Rae through the brittle stalks jutting out from the snow as the empty sky smothered us in blue. Her hair poked out from beneath her hat and her breath curdled like sour milk in the cold.

“What are we doing? Seriously,” I huffed as I dodged a broken stalk.

Rae laughed, and her pointy nose tipped toward the sky. “Can’t you ever just, like, go with the flow, Claire?” She stopped and lifted a puffy green mitten out to her side. “Look at this gorgeous day. Come on, enjoy it! Who knows when you’ll see the sun again.” She shuffled through the snow, swinging her hands through the broken corn.

“Excuse me, ‘when you’ll see the sun’? Pretty sure you’re trapped here too, Rae.” But Rae just laughed, still swinging her mittens in lazy figure eights as she kicked up the first remnants of winter behind her.

I followed. Because I always followed.

Rae plopped into a clump of snow just the right size for two skinny girls and chewed on her chapped lips. I sank down next to her, even though I didn’t have my snow pants on. Cold seeped through my underwear and made my butt ache.

For a second, I swore I almost saw the wolf, the one that Rae had said tried to pull a pack of cigarettes out of her back pocket one time. But I blinked, and the outline of fur melted into the snow.

Rae’s head snapped up and she squinted into the blurry, almost-wolf shadow hidden between the stalks. “I’m totally going to get out of this crappy town,” she whispered into my ear, like if she said it too loud, the wolf would howl out her words until they bounced between the sleepy houses. “And I’m going to have an apartment on the fiftieth floor somewhere and my own couch and a chair that’s red, just because I can.”

I sighed, poking a finger into the snow. “Yeah, me too.”

“No. I’m going to get out of here.”

I looked up and saw her watching me, eyes narrowed. “I know, Rae. Me too. We’re gonna move away together one day.”

Rae sucked on her bottom lip. Then she let out a puff of air. “One day is in three days.”

The day was still around us, so still that Rae’s words ec-hoed through the cornfield and the snow and the sky. Except for the snap of a brittle leaf just in front of us and a flash of gray as thick as a secret.

I pulled in a breath between my teeth. Rae wrapped her green mitten around my wrist and squeezed. But if the wolf really was here, listening, it was either already gone or too quiet to be caught.

I turned back to Rae and whispered: “What do you mean, three days? You’re, like, a year from graduating.”

“But Robbie already has,” she said.

I scrunched my nose as I poked another finger into the snow. “So?”

“So, Robbie’s moving to Chicago. And I’m going with him. We’re leaving a couple days before Christmas.” She squealed and clapped her mittens together.

“Are you insane?” I stood, brushing the snow from my jeans. “You’ve known him for, like, a week! And how much have you actually talked to him, since you’ve just been sucking face with him after your parents go to bed?” I paced between the stalks, my pink hands making circles in the air. “This is just … this is insane, Rae, don’t do it.”

Rae stood, and instead of looking mad, her eyes were soft and empty. She grabbed my shoulders, and my boots scuffed the snow. “I’m going, Claire. And I need you to promise me something.”

I closed my eyes and sucked in the winter air. I was almost afraid to ask. “What, Rae?”

A mitten landed in the snow with a soft thump. I opened my eyes. The blade of a paring knife lay dangerously close to her palm. “What are you—”

Rae flicked the knife and red slithered across her skin. Her eyes flashed as she grabbed my hand. “Now you.”

I pulled back but she was too quick; another flick, and then the heat of my own blood pooled in my palm. Rae dropped the knife and held her hand in front of mine.

“Promise me that you won’t tell anyone, not even Ella, that you know where I am,” she breathed. “Even when they ask.”

I stared at her hand, constellations of blood collecting at the creases. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Rae smiled and pressed her hand to mine. “Blood oath. Non-breakable.” We pulled away, and I stuck my hand into the snow to dilute the itchy feeling of dried blood. When I stood up again, Rae wrapped me in a hug. “Now I’m always with you, wherever you go,” she whispered. “I know you’ll keep your promise.”

I did keep my promise.

For as long as the wolves let me.