Monday, Daniel moved across the government classroom to sit behind Misty. Mrs. MacKaye didn’t like people changing seats, but Daniel was the shooting star, so she let it go. In the cafeteria, Keith had taken Daniel’s chair beside Angie. She leaned close to whisper something in his ear, her hand resting on top of his. Knowing they were both watching him, Daniel sat at the wolves’ table beneath the windows.
Eric glanced up. “Where’s your jacket?”
“Not on the team anymore.”
Nodding, Eric went back to his hamburger, and Daniel was in the pack.
Saturday night, Misty had sketched out how they’d become wolves to Daniel. Now, the pack told him more stories, where they’d gone, how fast they could run, and how sharp their predator’s senses were. The whole time, Misty teased Daniel’s foot under the table, pressing her boot down on the toe of his sneaker. Daniel thought of something else.
“So do I have to get a pair of boots?”
“Stick with the Cores, man,” Marc said. “Those fuckers are high-speed, low-drag, Teflon-coated.”
“Thanks, but ….” Glancing under the table, Daniel set his foot against Misty’s. “I’ll get some boots.”
Despite grounding him until further notice, Daniel’s parents still expected him to go to his college classes. Tuesday, Daniel went with Misty to Al Army Surplus. Industrial shelving piled with survival gear and MREs rose over their heads.
Daniel bought a pair of tanker boots. He spent the evening walking around in them, feeling like a badass. Getting home, Daniel stashed them in a battered blue suitcase under his bed alongside his small stash of porn.
Thursday, the pack took Daniel on a tour of their South-side. They showed him the chain of graffiti tags steadily constricting the neighborhood. Val was proudest of the pair gazing down from the concrete apron of 1-65. She’d had to climb over the guardrail to paint them, dangling a story above the asphalt, exposed on all sides except for her pack watching over her. They’d come out perfect.
“So, there aren’t any other werewolves besides you guys, right?”
“Not that we know of.”
“So what’s the point, then? I mean, who are you marking your territory off from?”
Misty shrugged. “They’re just something to do. Running around got boring after a while. I guess they’re just for us. To know this is our territory.”
“Yeah, but nobody else knows it, so what’s the point? It’s not like they change anything. It’s not like the police are staying out of Southside because of them.”
Misty squirmed. “You’re right, but… I can’t explain it to you, exactly.”
Eric spoke up from the passenger seat, telling Daniel, “You don’t get it because when you go to school, everybody’s always happy to see you. When you get home, your mom’s probably going to have a big tray of chocolate chip cookies waiting for you.” His voice had a hard edge, like he hated Daniel for that. “You don’t get it because you’ve always belonged somewhere.”
Trying to lighten the sudden tension, Daniel forced a laugh. “Not always.”
“Well, some people never have,” Misty whispered.
Daniel watched the glimmer of the passing city play across her face. He let the questions drop and squeezed her hand. Daniel realized this was more than a game to them. Given all the freedom he craved, they’d built brute versions of the family and home he wanted to escape, a pack and territory.
Misty and the others still didn’t know about Cornell. Daniel had spent the week trying to come up with the best way to tell them. Now, after Eric’s talk about belonging, he suddenly realized there wasn’t one.
• • •
Somewhere in Misty’s subconscious, A Midsummer Night’s Dream played forever, its rhythmic verse like an underground river flowing beneath the waking world. The footlights never went dark, the magic never ended, and sometimes when she slept, Misty found herself back onstage.
“Believe me, King of shadows, I mistook. Did not you tell me I should know the man by the Athenian garment he had…”
The painted forest backdrop had become real trees. Gnarled roots broke through the stage boards and wound around the lights. Misty glimpsed Daniel perched in the branches above. Grinning down at her, he waved.
Misty half waved back and tried to regain her train of thought. “… the garment he had on? And so far blameless … proves my enterprise …”
Realizing nobody else could see him, Misty kept cracking up and forgetting her lines. Finally giving up, she fluttered offstage on glittering wings and dropped into the tree beside Daniel.
“Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.”
The play went along fine without Misty. She and Daniel hid beneath a canopy of leaves and deep green shadow. Daniel leaned against the trunk, and Misty leaned against him. His arms holding her tight, they laughed at Tyree stumbling around in donkey ears.
Daniel played with her hair, then stroked the tender spot behind her ear. He kissed her neck, let his hand travel down, and Misty’s alarm blared to life. It tossed her out of warm dreaming and onto her rumpled bed.
Misty jerked upright. “God, I hate you,” she hissed at her alarm clock, slapping the snooze button to make it shut up. Pulling the covers over her head, she slipped back to sleep for a few more precious minutes.
On the way to school, Marc asked Misty to drive him to their dad’s later. Marc’s relationship with their dad wasn’t as prickly as Misty’s. He stopped by once a week or so to eat dinner and play their dad’s Xbox. Their dad usually slipped him some money, too, which was how Marc got by without a job. He was still pestering her as they walked through the school’s front door.
“I can’t drive you to Ensley, then get to the deli by four, okay?” Misty said. “Quit asking.”
“I’m not riding the bus. That car’s as much mine as yours.”
“Grampa told you—”
“Grampa told you,” Marc mimicked.
“—when I have work—”
“Not until four!”
“That’s not enough time!”
“Yes, it is!”
They bickered around in circles all the way to Misty’s locker. Dialing the combination, she stopped answering and tried to ignore Marc. She tried to ignore the damp February morning, ignore the school’s florescent light and harsh smells, and remember her dream.
Somehow, her fairy wings had been both real and part of a costume. Misty was also pretty sure her id had shortened her skirt by several inches. But what Misty remembered vividly was how happy she’d felt watching A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Daniel. A sweet, perfect dream about a dream.
“Hoodrat.”
The word sliced through the hallway clamor. Misty looked up and met Angie Walton’s hard glare. Angie never broke her stride. She turned to whisper a joke to Daniel’s cousin Keith.
Misty slammed her locker closed. “You got anything to say?”
Angie glanced back around. “Not to you.”
“Good. Shut your mouth then.”
“Or what? You’ll burn my clothes? That’s okay; we give all our old clothes to Goodwill anyway. In fact, that shirt looks familiar.”
“Keep talking, and I’ll steal your next boyfriend too.”
Angie’s coy expression melted like wax. “Know what?” She came up a few inches from Misty face. “You can keep him. I’d never touch him again, anyway, after he touched a nasty little mutt like you,” she hissed.
Misty was half-black in a city where nobody pretended race didn’t matter. She’d been called a mutt before, and—sinking her fingernails into her palm—refused to let Angie make her flinch. But then Marc shouldered Misty aside. “Bitch, what did you call my—”
“Hey!” Keith jumped in, shoving Marc into a bank of lockers. A sharp clang and the crowd jumped back on all sides, snapping open around them like a startled eye. Misty screamed at Marc to calm down, but Marc was already hurling toward Keith. Then Daniel appeared from nowhere, stepping between the tussling puppies.
“Both of you chill out.” Holding Marc off of Keith and a head taller than either of them, Daniel spoke in a calm, almost bored voice.
“Your boy needs to watch his mouth,” Keith said.
Marc cocked his fist back. Grabbing Marc’s wrist, Daniel glanced at Keith. “Don’t I owe you a beat down?”
Keith’s bluster went cold. Still holding Marc’s wrist, Daniel yanked him around and shoved him down the hall, getting him away from the scene fast before a teacher showed up.
“Man, that—”
“Shut the hell up, Marc,” Misty snapped. “That wasn’t over anything worth a damn. Just drop it.”
“Wasn’t over anything? That little—”
“I don’t care.” She did. But if Daniel knew what Angie had said, he’d think he had to charge back and defend her, too. “Just. Drop. It. Okay?”
Marc looked at her, confused and a little hurt, then grumbled, “Whatever.” He started slinking up the stairs, then stopped. “So, seriously, can I get that ride?”
“Be in the car by three, or I’m leaving without you.”
Marc went to homeroom, leaving Misty and Daniel alone together.
“Thanks. They’ll probably expel him if he gets into another fight.”
“No problem. What was that about, anyway?”
“Keith bumped into him and wouldn’t apologize. Dumb boy stuff.” And before he could ask anything else, Misty said, “So you ready to prowl tonight?”
“Yeah. I’m still grounded, though. I won’t be able to slip out until after my dad goes to bed.”
“We’ll wait. Scared?”
“Uh …”
Misty nudged him. “You can say it. I won’t think any less of you if you say it.”
“As long as you’re there, I won’t be scared.” Daniel smiled the same gentle smile Misty remembered from her dream.
“We’ll look out for each other, okay?” she said.
“Okay.”
“So you’ll pick me up later, right?”
“Yeah. I get off at eight, so, like, eight thirty.” Misty pulled to the curb. Her dad’s car sat in the driveway. “He’s home already?”
“I told you he’s off today.” Marc grabbed his backpack and climbed out. “See you later.”
“Wait.” Beating her fist against the armrest, Misty stared at the house she’d grown up in. “Let me go say hi, at least.”
In the living room, Rebecca was tying her youngest daughter’s shoe while talking to somebody over the phone. She barely glanced up as Misty and Marc walked in. Their dad was cutting up vegetables in the kitchen. A pot of chili simmered on the stove. “That my boy?” He turned and gave Marc a hug, careful not to smear his shirt with tomato gore.
Misty stopped at the kitchen archway. “Hey, Dad.”
“Hey. Haven’t seen—what the hell is that?”
“What’s what?” Misty asked. Then she clapped a hand over her mouth. Misty hadn’t visited since Thanksgiving. She’d taken her lip ring out then to avoid a fight. “Oh, yeah.”
“Your mom actually let you do that?”
“Well, she wasn’t exactly thrilled. Just don’t worry about it, all right?”
“I’m still your father, you know.”
After an already bad day at school, Misty couldn’t keep the wolf from lunging. “You want to play daddy now? How come you didn’t want to play daddy a few months back when Mom had to go to the food bank?”
This time, instead of being ready to pound somebody for Misty, Marc grabbed a Hostess cupcake and retreated into the living room to play video games. Their dad turned around, chucked a dirty spoon into the sink, and didn’t say anything.
Staring at his back, Misty twisted the knife. It felt good. “Write Mom a check; I’ll take this stupid lip ring out, right now. No? Guess you don’t want to play daddy so bad, after all.”
Misty left the kitchen to find Rebecca and asked, “Is any of my stuff still here?”
“I think there’s a couple boxes in Leigh Ann’s closet,” Rebecca said. “Honey, I wish you wouldn’t hurt Aaron like—”
Ignoring her, Misty walked down the hall and into the room that had been hers before it had been Leigh Ann’s. She rifled through boxes of old clothes and other junk, pulling out a pair of fairy wings.
They were relics from the one moment her life had seemed truly magical. The rest of her Puck costume had belonged to the school, but Misty had made the wings herself out of coat hangers, blue pantyhose, and lots of glitter. She put them on and checked herself out in Leigh Ann’s vanity. The wings fluttered when she hopped up and down, making Misty laugh until she snorted.
“I mean, she’s biracial,” Keith said. He and Angie sat on his couch. They had books, notes, and sheets of scratch paper spread out on the coffee table.
“Aw, ’she’s biracial.’ We all have to handle her like glass because she’s biracial. Everybody has to watch what they say because she’s biracial. Make sure we don’t oppress her. Damn, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know. I’m just saying that’s how she took it.”
“I don’t care how she took it. You think I’m a racist?”
Flipping her notebook closed, Angie stood up. “If you do, tell me. I’ll leave right now.”
“No, wait. Of course I don’t think you’re a racist,” Keith said, trying not to make it sound too forced.
“Good.” Sitting back down, she jabbed an equation into her calculator. “Besides, how can anything anybody says to her be racist? Misty doesn’t even have a damn race.”
Keith plastered on a grin, and they moved on. It wasn’t like Angie actually believed in white supremacy or anything. She’d just called Misty that to make her mad.
The story had changed by lunch, though. Rolling her eyes, Angie told their table how Misty had gotten into her face, warning her to stay away from Daniel. When Lexi asked what she’d done to set Misty off, Angie turned to Keith. “Did I say one word to her?”
Keith hadn’t wanted any part of it, but he knew enough to mumble, “Uh-uh.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Lexi said. “She’s just scared because she knows Daniel will get bored with her soon and come crawling back.”
Angie made sure to tell everybody how Keith had stood up for her.
“Shit, yeah,” Scotty laughed. “A man needs to take care of business sometimes.”
Keith still didn’t say answer, but he liked the sound of that. Over the past week, the school had watched him walking through the halls, holding Angie’s hand and making her laugh. The same envy he used to feel himself shadowed faces all around him. Since the awards ceremony, Keith had become limitless.
Inside, there was a pinprick of shame. Angie had acted like trash. He’d watched and done nothing. But people had finally stopped thinking of Keith as Daniel Morning’s cousin. They knew he was a man in his own right, now. It wasn’t worth throwing that away for a little hoodrat.
Besides, it was Misty’s own fault, really. People wouldn’t be so quick to believe Angie’s story if Misty wasn’t always walking around with a chip on her shoulder.