The days grew hotter. At school, smooth skin—arms, calves, and bare toes—appeared along with the buttercups. Before first bell, the pack hunched around their picnic table, watching over one another’s shoulders.
One morning, Marc grumbled, “Let’s just go.”
“No,” Misty said.
“I’m not putting up with this bullshit anymore. Let’s just go.”
Marc didn’t want to skip class. He wanted to leave school for good. Misty imagined how free it would feel to just stand up and walk away, but she shook her head. “Mom wants you to graduate.”
“So?”
“So she’s put up with your whiny ass for eighteen years. So you’re gonna put up with this for a few more weeks. So be quiet already.”
Their mom had never finished high school, and she dreamed of seeing Misty and Marc in caps and gowns. Misty once overheard her praying for them to graduate. It was a stupid thing to pray for, a piece of paper saying Misty had jumped through the hoops like a good little hand-licker. But their mom had broken her body for her and Marc. Misty could bear school a while longer.
Marc turned to Eric. “Let’ s just go.”
Eric didn’t bother looking at him. “It’s less hassle just to go than it would be to drop out.”
Suddenly, Val lifted her head. Eric and Marc turned too. The three wolves followed Daniel as he trudged past them up the sidewalk. Only Misty pretended not to notice him, studying the chipped edge of the cement picnic table.
Misty knew he was watching her from the corner of his eye. With her pack bristling around her, she risked a glance. Even ragged and worn thin, Daniel was still gorgeous. He’d shed his boots for white sneakers again, but he hadn’t gone back to his letterman friends like Misty assumed he would. Instead, Daniel Morning, the prince of McCammon High, had spent the last two weeks scuttling along its walls like a rat.
He’d tried talking to her since their breakup. He kept leaving messages on her phone, but Misty erased them before giving in to the temptation of listening. She wasn’t strong enough to hear Daniel’s voice, to remember everything she couldn’t have.
Misty couldn’t stand hurting anymore. She let the pack tighten around her and keep Daniel away. She let hate cover her too-tender heart the way the wolf’s tough hide enveloped her weak human shape.
The pack relaxed as Daniel slipped out of sight again among the crowd. “Little bitch,” Eric muttered. “Little over-the-mountain-wannabe.”
Misty gave a sneering laugh and rested her chin on her arms.
Workers pieced the school back together. Glass reappeared in windows, and classrooms reopened with fresh coats of paint. The police left without making any arrests. But most of the teachers still seemed to at least suspect it had been Daniel and the pack who’d broken into the school.
The day Misty got out of ISS, Daniel had gone up to her in Mrs. MacKaye’s class and tried telling her about the things he’d been thinking about.
“Misty-”
“Leave me alone.” Misty scribbled across the cover of her notebook, creating a dense black spiral.
“I’m sorry, okay?”
“I don’t care what you are. Leave me alone.”
“Daniel,” Mrs. MacKaye snapped, pointing to a seat across the room. “Go sit behind Devynn.”
“Class hasn’t even started yet.”
Walking up to them, the teacher hissed, “Give me a reason to get you two out of my class.”
Afraid of landing Misty back in ISS and making things even worse, Daniel moved behind Devynn. Since then, he spent his days staying as unnoticeable as possible.
Sometimes Misty would glance at him across the classroom or before school. Daniel knew how deeply he’d hurt her. Every time he tried to apologize, though, she hunkered behind the pack and that damn pride he’d once loved.
He avoided the cafeteria and usually went to the library during lunch. Sneaking bites of a granola bar one day, Daniel overheard a couple girls talking about Keith throwing a party. Stealing his cousin’s girlfriend had been good for Keith’s self-esteem. Whenever Daniel saw him now, his hand rested on the small of Angie’s back. He stood taller, and his laugh even seemed louder. Daniel remembered when he used to feel like that.
At home, he spent most of his time studying. Besides ditching his extracurriculars, Daniel had let his grades fall so badly, he might fail if he crapped out on his finals. It seemed surreal that, at the beginning of the semester, he’d been within grasping distance of valedictorian.
One day he came down to forage for food just as his mom walked in from the front porch with two iced-tea glasses.
“Your aunt Leslie was just here,” she said. “You going to this party of Keith’s?”
“Huh? No.”
“Leslie and Josh were going to buy him a new car for
graduation. Now, he wants the money for some huge party instead.”
Daniel ripped open a package of string cheese. “I don’t know anything about it.”
“Well, listen. We need to get up to Boaz soon while winter clothes are still on sale.”
“I already have a coat.”
“No, you have a jacket. You’re heading up to New York, Daniel. People die from the cold up there.”
“They do not.”
“Do you know what hypothermia is? Frostbite?”
“It’s not the Arctic, Mom.”
She sighed, sick of arguing with him all the time. “Fine. When your fingers fall off and you need somebody to unzip your fly for you, you tell them I warned you.”
She turned, started walking away, and then Daniel mumbled, “Misty found out I’m going to Cornell.”
“What?”
He said it again. He felt pitiful confiding in his mom, especially after the way he’d been acting, but he didn’t have anybody else to talk to.
“You just got around to telling her you were leaving?”
“Yes.” He rolled his eyes. “Actually, no. She kind of found out by accide—”
Tea splashed his face. Jumping backward, Daniel yelped, “Mom!”
“What is wrong with you? Having fun with girls you don’t plan on marrying is one thing. Outright lying to them is another. I didn’t raise you like that.”
“I know.” Fishing an ice cube out of his shirt, he tossed it in the sink. “I didn’t exactly mean not to tell her, it just—”
“It just what? Slipped your mind for four months? Daniel, that’s enough time for a girl to get so wrapped around a boy, she doesn’t know which way’s up anymore. Then she learns you’re leaving? How do you think she feels, Daniel?”
“She pretty much wants to kick my head in.”
“I’d hold you down while she did.”
“Okay! I screwed up, I get it. But what do I do now?”
“Honey, there’s not much you can do.” She started to pat his hair, then pulled back and wiped her damp hand on her jeans. “Misty feels played and angry and … Why didn’t you just tell her when you started dating?”
“It’s complicated. I didn’t mean to get as involved as I did. I didn’t mean to end up liking her as much as I did. As I do.”
“And this is what all the sneaking around lately has been about? And why me and your dad weren’t allowed to meet her?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, high school’s over in a couple weeks. You’ll go up to Ithaca, and it’ll be a whole new beginning. Just remember how crappy you feel right now, and treat the next girl better.”
Daniel nodded. He’d hoped for some other answer but was starting to see there wasn’t one. He grabbed some more cheese and went up to his room, then stopped at the foot of the stairs. “Let’s go to Boaz sometime this weekend.”
“Sounds good,” his mom said.
She couldn’t get his smell out of her bed. Misty had snuck Daniel into the apartment enough times that the faintest essence of him lingered on her pillows and sheets. She used to love that. She drifted to sleep, feeling close to Daniel even while he was miles away. Then Misty learned that once he got home, the boy she dreamed of was just a suit Daniel pulled off and hung in the closet.
She’d washed her sheets twice, scrubbed the mattress with Formula 401, but his scent lingered. At least she imagined it did. Misty had started sleeping on the floor. Only soft humans needed soft beds, but it pissed her off, anyway. This was her room. Even after lying to her for months, even after she’d torn his grinning photo off the wall and thrown away every little gift he’d given her, Daniel didn’t have the courtesy to leave.
Lying in the hushed dark, Misty twisted and kicked to form a warm nest in the pile of dirty clothes. She stared at the fairy wings hanging above the bed. Months ago, she’d pinned them up there by their shoulder straps. It was very sixth grade, and Misty woke up most mornings speckled with glitter, but she’d liked watching them turn slowly, silently overhead.
Misty rolled over but couldn’t forget the wings were there. A tear snuck through her squeezed-shut eyelid. She didn’t understand how Daniel could have been that cruel, to make her believe she could fly.
“Quit,” Misty hissed at herself. She would not cry over some hand-licker boy. Climbing onto her bed, Misty yanked her wings down. One of the wires bent as she shoved them into the closet. Misty told herself she didn’t care. Grabbing her cell phone, she called Val.
“Hey, baby,” Val mumbled. “Can’t sleep again?”
“Let’s go shift in front of somebody. See what happens.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah.” The thought alone made impish giggles rise like bubbles, effervescing Misty’s black mood.
There were several seconds of quiet, only the gentle static of the open line. Finally, Val answered, “I’ll call Eric.”
In the darkened room, Misty found some jeans and pulled on her boots. Their leather was as battered as she felt, but a hell of a lot tougher. Buckling them, she crossed the short hall to rouse Marc.
Performing the ritual, Misty was the last to shift. While the pack raced around her legs, she beat her feet against the earth and screamed, “Want to be a wolf! A wolf!”
The bass throb, low enough to make reality shudder, filled her head. She let go of his name, his scent, and the way he laughed. Misty dropped to all fours, and nothing was left of her tangled emotions except a smoldering, voiceless anger spreading to all humans.
The hospital’s parking deck glowed, harsh light against white concrete. Warm food smells drew the pack. Three medical students, their voices shaky and too-fast from caffeine, sat in a car cramming down an after-midnight dinner of cheeseburgers.
Eric slipped into human skin and out of the shadows. The white-coated students didn’t notice him until he kicked one of their side mirrors off, sending it skidding across the deck. The woman in the passenger seat yelped. Calmly, Eric walked around to knock the driver’s side mirror off too. Before he could, the man behind the wheel jumped out. Big and quick, he grabbed Eric’s arm.
“Little shitheel, what the—”
Eric shifted, and suddenly the man was holding a wolf’s paw. When Eric snapped at the air, the man cringed against the car. Even though the door stood open, he couldn’t think enough to dash back inside.
The rest of the pack emerged. Boots thudded on the hood, then claws scratched against its metal. They growled at the two women inside, spit dripping to the windshield. The woman in the passenger seat screamed again, covering her head with her arms. The one in the back just stared.
Pushing it a little further, Misty slunk into the car. She ate the half-finished burger off one student’s lap. The human started sobbing. Ignoring her, Misty dropped to the floor and ate some fries that had spilled around her feet.
Done with her meal, Misty let out an echoing yip, bounded out of the car, and the pack vanished back into the witching hour.
They shifted in front of a man dragging trash from a bar’s alley door and some kids on a street corner, people nobody would believe, who wouldn’t believe it themselves when daylight came. None of the hand-lickers attacked, and only a couple thought to run. Watching the pack remove their human masks, the hand-lickers’ minds jammed. If the pack had actually been hunting, they would have brought down dozens.
The mushrooms began wearing off, and Misty remembered Daniel’s name. The way he laughed. She found herself trapped in human skin by human thoughts, but the memories didn’t cut as sharp as they had a few hours earlier.
They headed back to the furnace. Eric led the way with Val at his side, Misty and Marc a few steps behind. Eric glanced over his shoulder at Misty. “Those things were hunters once,” he said. “They’ve traded spears for cities, turned soft. I never knew how soft. How unfit to rule.”
Safe inside the furnace grounds again, the pack stretched across the cool grass to snatch a few hours of sleep before school. Misty had almost drifted off when Marc whispered, “Hey. Misty?”
“Hm?”
“I thought you didn’t even want to prowl anymore. Now you’re dragging us out of bed just to scare people.”
Eric and Val lay curled together a short distance away. Misty listened to their steady, sleeping breaths mingling. “Nobody made you come,” she said.
Marc shrugged. “But I don’t have anything else to do. You had a bunch of other plans, going to Paris and stuff.”
“Well, plans change.” Misty didn’t want to talk about this.
“You don’t need Daniel to go to Paris. You want to go, get on a plane and go.”
“Shut up.” Jerking off the ground, she cocked her fist back. “You don’t know a damn thing about it.”
“Fine. Sorry.”
“Only talked about that stuff because he liked talking about it. What am I going to do in Paris? Go to a bunch of museums?” Misty sat staring into the darkness around them. Then, getting to her feet, she walked away from her brother.
She walked the railroad tracks to the blast furnace. Misty always felt small and timid at the base of the brick and coiling steel tower. She could almost feel the rot-eater god gazing down at her from above.
She started to climb, rising above the canopy of pine trees to the highest catwalk. Ducking into the mouth of the exhaust vent, Misty sat down where Daniel had first kissed her.
I’ve thought about, like, backpacking through Europe or something.
It had been a sad fantasy, pretending she liked being a stray. That she didn’t even want a home; she wanted to go see the world.
Misty let out a weak snicker. It suddenly struck her that Daniel was headed to law school, not Italy. Chasing adventure through exotic lands had been just as much make-believe for him as it had been for her.
High school was almost over. Misty and Daniel had spent the twilight of childhood together, the last days they had left to play dress up and become anything they wanted. A shooting star could put on wolf skin. A stray could insist she was actually a fairy. And when that got boring, they’d act like fearless explorers instead. The only difference between her and Daniel was that Daniel never forgot it was just a game.
Her legs were asleep when Misty crawled out of the vent. She walked around to the other side of the catwalk. Under the lightening sky, she could barely see the outlines of her pack.
She depended on them, and, just as important, knew they depended on her. In the natural world, lone wolves didn’t survive very long. Her pack was a wolf’s protection and purpose. Even if it left a small hole inside her, all the silly daydreams she had to give up, Misty knew she belonged here.