The first thing Sam said to me the next day was, “It’s time to take you on a proper date.” Actually, the very first thing he said was, “Your hair is all funky in the morning.” But the very first lucid thing he said (I refused to believe my hair looked funky in the morning) was the date statement. It was a “work day” for the teachers at school, so we had the entire day to ourselves — which felt indulgent. He said this while stirring some oatmeal and looking over his shoulder toward the front door. Even though my parents had disappeared early for some sort of business outing of my dad’s, Sam still seemed worried that they would reappear and hunt him down with pitchforks.
I joined him at the counter and leaned against it, peering down into the pan. I wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of oatmeal. I had tried to make it before, and it had tasted very … healthy. “So about this date. Where are you taking me? Someplace exciting, like the middle of the woods?”
He pressed his finger against my lips, right where they parted. He didn’t smile. “On a normal date. Food and fun fun fun.”
I turned my face so his hand was against my hair instead. “Yeah, sounds like it,” I said, sarcastically, because he still wasn’t smiling. “I didn’t think you did normal.”
“Get me two bowls, would you?” Sam said. I set them on the counter and Sam divided the oatmeal between them, releasing a sweet scent. “I just really want to do a proper date, so you’ll have something real to rem —”
He stopped and looked down into the bowls, arms braced against the counter, shoulders shrugged up by his ears. Finally, he turned and said, “I want to do things right. Can we try to do normal?”
With a nod, I accepted one of the bowls and tried a spoonful — it was all brown sugar and maple and something sort of spicy. I pointed an oatmeal- covered spoon at Sam. “I have no problem doing normal. This stuff is sticky.”
“Ingrate,” Sam said. He looked dolefully at his bowl. “You don’t like it.”
“It’s actually okay.”
Sam said, “Beck used to make it for me, after I got over my egg fixation.”
“You had an egg fixation?”
“I was a peculiar child,” Sam said. He gestured to my bowl. “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t like it. When you’re done, we’ll go.”
“Go where?”
“Surprise.”
That was all I needed to hear. That oatmeal was gone instantly and I had my hat, coat, and backpack in hand.
For the first time that morning, Sam laughed, and I was ridiculously glad to hear it. “You look like a puppy. Like I’m jingling my keys and you’re jumping by the door waiting for your walk.”
“Woof.”
Sam patted my head on the way out and together we ventured into the cold pastel morning. Once we were in the Bronco and on the road, I pressed again, “So you won’t tell me where we’re going?”
“Nope. The only thing I’ll tell you is to pretend that this is what I did with you the first day I met you, instead of being shot.”
“I don’t have that much imagination.”
“I do. I’ll imagine it for you, so strongly that you’ll have to believe it.”
He smiled to demonstrate his imagining, a smile so sad that my breath caught in my throat. “I’ll court you properly and then it won’t make my obsession with you so creepy.”
“Seems to me that mine’s the creepy one.” I looked out the window as we pulled out of the driveway. The sky was relinquishing one slow snowflake after another. “I have that, you know, what’s it called? That syndrome where you identify with the people who save you?”
Sam shook his head and turned the opposite way from school. “You’re thinking of that Munchausen syndrome, where the person identifies with their kidnapper.”
I shook my head. “That’s not the same. Isn’t Munchausen when you invent sicknesses to get attention?”
“Is it? I just like saying ‘Munchausen.’ I feel like I can actually speak
German when I say it.”
I laughed.
“Ulrik was born in Germany,” Sam said. “He has all kinds of interesting children’s stories about werewolves.” He turned onto the main road through downtown and started looking for a parking space. “He said people would get
bitten willingly, back in the old days.”
I looked out the window at Mercy Falls. The shops, all shades of brown and gray, seemed even more brown and gray under the leaden sky, and for October, it felt ominously close to winter. There were no green leaves left on the trees that grew by the side of the street, and some were missing their leaves entirely, adding to the bleak appearance of the town. It was concrete as far as the eye could see. “Why would they want to do that?”
“In the folktales, they’d turn into wolves and steal sheep and other animals when food was scarce. And some of them changed just for the fun of it.”
I studied his face, trying to read his voice. “Is there fun in it?”
He looked away — ashamed of his answer, I thought, until I realized he was just looking over his shoulder to parallel park in front of a row of shops.
“Some of us seem to like it, maybe better than being human. Shelby loves it — but like I said, I think her human life was pretty awful. I don’t know. The wolf half of my life is such a part of me now, it’s hard to imagine living
without it.”
“In a good way or a bad way?”
Sam looked at me, yellow eyes catching and holding me. “I miss being me. I miss you. All the time.”
I dropped my eyes to my hands. “Not now you don’t.”
Sam reached across the bench seat and touched my hair, running a hand down it until he caught just the ends of it between his fingers. He studied the hairs like they might contain the secrets of Grace in their dull blonde strands.
His cheeks flushed slightly; he still blushed when he complimented me.
“No,” he admitted, “right in this moment, I can’t even remember what unhappy feels like.”
Somehow that made tears prick at the corners of my eyes. I blinked, glad he was still looking at my hair. There was a long pause.
He said, “You don’t remember being attacked.”
“What?”
“You don’t remember being attacked at all, do you?”
I frowned and pulled my backpack onto my lap, startled by the seemingly random change of topic. “I don’t know. Maybe. It seems like there were a lot of wolves, way more than I think there actually could’ve been. And I remember you — I remember you standing back, and then just touching my hand” — Sam touched my hand — “and my cheek” — he touched my cheek
— “when the others were rough with me. I guess they wanted to eat me, right?”
His voice was soft. “You don’t remember what happened after that? How you survived?”
I tried to remember. It was all a flash of snow, and red, and breath on my face. Then Mom screaming. But there must’ve been something between all that. I must’ve gotten from the woods to the house somehow. I tried to imagine walking, stumbling through the snow. “Did I walk?”
He looked at me, waiting for me to answer my own question.
“I know I didn’t. I can’t remember. Why can’t I remember?” I was frustrated now, with my own brain’s inability to comply. It seemed like such a simple request. But I only remembered the scent of Sam, Sam every where, and then the unfamiliar sound of Mom’s panic as she scrambled for the phone.
“Don’t worry about it,” Sam said. “It doesn’t matter.” But I thought it probably did.
I closed my eyes, recalling the scent of the woods that day and the jolting feeling of moving back toward the house, arms tight around me. I opened my
eyes again. “You carried me.”
Sam looked at me abruptly.
It was coming back, in the way you remember fever dreams. “But you were human,” I said. “I remember seeing you as a wolf. But you must’ve been human to carry me. How did you do that?”
He shrugged, helplessly. “I don’t know how I shifted. It’s the same as when I was shot, and I was human when you found me.”
I felt something fluttering in my chest, like hope. “You can make yourself change?”
“It’s not like that. It was only two times. And I haven’t been able to do it again, ever, no matter how badly I’ve wanted to. And believe me, I’ve wanted it pretty badly.” Sam turned off the Bronco with an air of ending the conversation, and I reached into my backpack to pull out a hat. As he locked the car, I stood on the sidewalk and waited.
Sam came around the back of the car and stopped dead when he saw me.
“Oh my God, what is that?”
I used my thumb and middle finger to flick the multicolored pom-pom on top of my head. “In my language, we call it a hat. It keeps my ears warm.”
“Oh my God,” Sam said again, and closed the distance between us. He
cupped my face in his hands and studied me. “It’s horribly cute.” He kissed me, looked at the hat, and then he kissed me again.
I vowed never to lose the pom-pom hat. Sam was still holding my face; I was sure everyone in town was looking now. But I didn’t want to pull away, and I let him kiss me one more time, this time soft as the snow, barely a touch, and then he released me and took my hand instead.
It took me a moment to find my voice, and when I did, I couldn’t stop grinning. “Okay. Where are we going?” It was cold enough that I knew it had to be close; we couldn’t stay out here much longer.
Sam’s fingers were laced tightly with mine. “To a Grace-shop first.
That’s what a proper gentleman would do.”
I giggled, completely unlike me, and Sam laughed because he knew it. I was drunk with Sam. I let him walk me down the stark concrete block to The Crooked Shelf, a little independent bookstore; I hadn’t been there for a year.
It seemed stupid that I hadn’t, given how many books I read, but I was just a poor high schooler with a very limited allowance. I got my books from the library.
“This is a Grace-shop, right?” Sam pushed open the door without waiting for my answer. A wonderful wave of new-book smell came rushing out, reminding me immediately of Christmas. My parents always got me books for Christmas. With a melodic ding, the shop door swung shut behind us, and Sam released my hand. “Where to? I’ll buy you a book. I know you want one.”
I smiled at the stacks, inhaling again. Hundreds of thousands of pages that had never been turned, waiting for me. The shelves were a warm, blond wood, piled with spines of every color. Staff picks were arranged on tables, glossy covers reflecting the light back at me. Behind the little cubby where the cashier sat, ignoring us, stairs covered with rich burgundy carpet led up to worlds unknown. “I could just live here,” I said.
Sam watched my face with obvious pleasure. “I remember watching you reading books on the tire swing. Even in the most stupid weather. Why didn’t you read inside when it was so cold?”
My eyes followed the rows and rows of books. “Books are more real when you read them outside.” I bit my lip, eyes flitting from shelf to shelf. “I don’t know where to go first.”
“I’ll show you something,” Sam said. The way he said it made me believe that it was not only something but a very amazing something that he had
waited all day to show me. He took my hand again and led me through the store, past the uninterested cashier, and up the silent stairs that swallowed the sounds of our footsteps and kept them.
Upstairs was a little loft, less than half the size of the store below, with a railing to keep us from tumbling back down to the ground floor.
“One summer, I worked here. Sit. Wait.” Sam guided me to a battered burgundy love seat that took up a large part of the floor space. I took off my hat and sat, charmed by his orders, and checked out his butt while he searched on the shelves for whatever he was looking for. Unaware of my stare, he crouched, running his fingers along spines like they were old friends. I watched the slope of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, the way one hand braced, fingers spread crablike on the floor, as he knelt by the shelves.
Finally he found what he was looking for and he came over to the love seat.
“Close your eyes,” he said. Without waiting for me, he pressed his hand over my eyelids, shutting them for me. I felt the love seat shift as he slid in beside me, heard the inexplicably loud sound of the cover opening, the pages inside scraping against each other as he turned them.
Then I felt his breath on my ear as he said, voice barely audible, “‘I am alone in the world, and yet not alone enough to make each hour holy. I am lowly in this world, and yet not lowly enough for me to be just a thing to you, dark and shrewd. I want my will and I want to go with my will as it moves towards action.’” He paused, long, the only sound his breath, a little ragged, before he went on, “‘And I want, in those silent, somehow faltering times, to be with someone who knows, or else alone. I want to reflect everything about you, and I never want to be too blind or too ancient to keep your profound wavering image with me. I want to unfold. I don’t want to be folded anywhere, because there, where I’m folded, I am a lie.’”
I turned my face toward his voice, eyes still fast shut, and he put his mouth on mine. I felt his lips pull from mine slightly, just for a moment, and heard the rustle of the book laid gently on the floor, and then he wrapped his arms around me.
His lips tasted cool and sharp, peppermint, winter, but his hands, soft on the back of my neck, promised long days and summer and forever. I felt light-headed, like I wasn’t getting enough air, as if my breath was stolen as soon as I took it. Sam lay back on the couch, just a little, and pulled me into the circle his body made, and kissed me and kissed me, so careful, like my lips were a flower and if he touched them too roughly, they might bruise.
I don’t know how long we were curled against each other on the couch, silently kissing, before Sam noticed that I was crying. I felt him hesitate, salt water on his tongue, before he realized what the taste meant.
“Grace. Are you — crying?”
I didn’t say anything, because that would only make the reason for my tears more real. Sam rubbed them away with his thumb, then pulled his sleeve over his fist to wipe the tracks away with the fabric.
“Grace, what’s wrong? Did I do something wrong?” Sam’s yellow eyes were flickering over my face, looking for clues as I shook my head.
Downstairs, I heard the cashier ringing up another customer. It seemed very far away.
“No,” I said finally. I rubbed another tear out of my eye before it could fall. “No, you did everything right. It’s just that —” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t.
Sam didn’t flinch. “— that this is my last year.”
I bit my lip, hard, and rubbed away another tear. “I’m not ready. I’ll never be ready.”
He didn’t say anything. Maybe there wasn’t anything to say. Instead, he wrapped his arms around me again, only this time he guided my cheek onto his chest and ran his hand over the back of my head, clumsy but comforting. I closed my eyes and listened to the thud of his heart until mine matched pace with his. Finally, he rested his cheek on the top of my head and whispered, “We don’t have time to be sad.”
The sun had become brilliant by the time we walked out of the bookstore, and with a shock I realized how much time had passed. On cue, my stomach pinched with hunger.
“Lunch,” I said. “Immediately. I’m going to wither away to absolutely nothing. Then you’ll be racked with guilt.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Sam took my little bag of new books and turned to put them in the Bronco, but he froze partway toward the car, his eyes fixed somewhere behind me. “Crap. Incoming.”
He turned his back to me and unlocked the car, shoving the books onto the passenger seat, trying to look inconspicuous. I turned around and found Olivia, looking disheveled and tired. Then John appeared behind her and gave me a big grin. I hadn’t seen him since before I met Sam, and in
comparison, I couldn’t fathom how I’d ever imagined he was good-looking.
He looked dusty and ordinary in comparison beside Sam’s black flop of hair
and golden eyes.
“Hey, gorgeous,” John said.
That turned Sam around in a hurry. He didn’t move toward me, but he didn’t have to — his yellow eyes stopped John in his tracks. Or maybe it was just Sam’s stance beside me, shoulders stiff. In the space of a second, I had a flashing thought that Sam might be dangerous — that maybe he normally quieted the wolf inside him far more than he let on.
John had a weird, unreadable expression that made me wonder if all those months of pretend flirting had been more real than I’d thought.
“Hi,” Olivia said. She glanced at Sam, whose gaze had been fixed on the camera slung over her shoulder. He looked down and rubbed his eyes as though he’d gotten something in one of them.
Sam’s discomfort was catching, and my smile felt insincere. “Hi. Funny bumping into you guys here.”
“We’re just running some errands for Mom.” John’s eyes flicked toward Sam and he smiled a little too pleasantly. My cheeks warmed at the silent testosterone battle waging; it was kind of flattering, if a little weird. “And Olivia wanted to hit up the bookstore while we were out. It’s friggin’ cold out here. I’m going to go on in.”
“They let illiterate people in there?” I teased, like old times.
John grinned then, all tension gone, and grinned at Sam, too, like, Yeah, good luck with that, before heading into the store. Sam sort of smiled back, eyes squinted shut, still acting like he had something in them. Olivia remained on the sidewalk just outside the door, arms hugged around herself.
“I never thought I’d see you out of the house this early on a non- schoolday,” she told me. Talking to me, but looking at Sam. “I thought you hibernated on days off.”
“Nope, not today,” I said. After this much time not talking to her, it felt like I didn’t know how to do it anymore. “Up early to see what it feels like.”
“Amazing,” Olivia said. She was still looking at Sam, an unasked question hanging in the air. I didn’t want to introduce them, since Sam seemed so uncomfortable around Olivia and her camera, but I was hyperaware of the way she was looking at us: the space between the two of us, how it shifted as either of us moved, connected by invisible strings. And the casual contact. Her eyes followed his hand to my arm as he touched my
sleeve lightly, and then moved to his other hand, still rested on the handle of the car door — comfortable, like he’d opened it many times before. Like he belonged with the Bronco and with me. Finally, Olivia said, “Who’s this?”
I glanced at Sam, for approval. His eyelids were still lowered, shadowing
his eyes.
“Sam,” he said softly.
There was something wrong with the tenor of his voice. He wasn’t looking at the camera, but it seemed like I could feel his attention on it. My voice inadvertently echoed his anxiety when I said, “This is Olivia. Olive, Sam and I are going out. I mean, dating.”
I expected her to comment, but instead she said, “I recognize you.”
Beside me, Sam stiffened until she added, “From the bookstore, right?”
Sam flicked his eyes up to her, and she nodded, almost imperceptibly.
“Yes. From the bookstore.”
Olivia, arms still crossed, fingered the edge of her sweater but didn’t take her eyes from Sam’s. She seemed to be struggling to find words. “I — do you wear contacts? Sorry to be so blunt. You must get asked a lot.”
“I do,” Sam said. “Get asked a lot. And I do wear them.”
Something like disappointment flashed across Olivia’s face. “Well, they’re really cool. Um. It was nice to meet you.” Turning to me, she said, “I’m sorry. It was a really stupid thing to fight over.”
Whatever I had been planning to say disappeared when she said I’m sorry.
“I’m sorry, too,” I replied, a little feebly, because I wasn’t really sure what I was apologizing for.
Olivia looked at Sam and then back at me. “Yeah. I just … Could you call me? Later on?”
I blinked with surprise. “Yeah, of course! When?”
“I — actually, can I call you? I don’t know when will be a good time. Is that okay? Can I just call your cell?”
“Anytime. You sure you don’t want to go somewhere and talk now?”
“Um, no, not now. I can’t, because of John.” She shook her head and looked at Sam again. “He wants to hang out. Later will be good, though, definitely. Thanks, Grace. I mean it. I’m so sorry about our stupid argument.”
I pressed my lips together. Why was she thanking me?
John stuck his head out of the bookstore’s door. “Olive? Are you coming, or what?”
Olivia waved at us and disappeared into the bookstore with a little ding from the bookstore’s doorbell.
Sam cupped his hands around the back of his head and heaved a huge, shaky sigh. He paced a small circle on the sidewalk without lowering his hands.
I stepped past him and pulled open the passenger-side door. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Are you just camera shy, or is it something more?”
Sam came around the other side of the Bronco and got in, slamming the door shut, as if shutting Olivia and all the weirdness of the conversation out.
“I’m sorry. I just — I saw one of the wolves the other day and this Jack thing just has me on edge. And Olivia — she took pictures of all of us. As wolves.
And my eyes … I was afraid that Olivia knew more about me than she was saying and I just — freaked out. I know. I acted totally whacked, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did. You’re lucky that she was acting more whacked than you. I hope she calls later.” Unease crept through me.
Sam touched my arm. “Do you want to go someplace to eat or just head home?”
I groaned and put my forehead into my hand. “Let’s just go home. Man. I feel so weird, not finding out what she was talking about.”
Sam didn’t say anything, but it was all right. I was going over and over what Olivia had said, trying to figure out why the conversation seemed so awkward. Trying to figure out what wasn’t being said. I should’ve said more to her after she told me that she was sorry. But what else was there to say?
We traveled along in silence back toward the house, until I realized how intensely selfish I was being.
“I’m sorry, I’m ruining our date.” I reached over and took Sam’s free hand; he squeezed his fingers around mine. “First I bawled — which I never do, for the record — and now I’m totally distracted by Olivia.”
“Shut up,” Sam said pleasantly. “We’ve got plenty of day left. And it’s nice to see you … emote … for once. Instead of being so damn stoic.”
I smiled at the thought. “Stoic? I like it.”
“Figured you would. But it was nice to not be the wishy-washy one for once.”
I burst out laughing. “Those aren’t the words I’d use to describe you.”
“You don’t think of me as a delicate flower in comparison to you?” When I laughed again, he pressed, “Okay, what words would you use, then?”
I leaned back in the seat, thinking, as Sam looked at me doubtfully. He was right to look doubtful. My head didn’t work with words very well — at least not in this abstract, descriptive sort of way. “Sensitive,” I tried.
Sam translated: “Squishy.”
“Creative.”
“Dangerously emo.”
“Thoughtful.”
“Feng shui.”
I laughed so hard I snorted. “How do you get feng shui out of ‘thoughtful’?”
“You know, because in feng shui, you arrange furniture and plants and stuff in thoughtful ways.” Sam shrugged. “To make you calm. Zenlike. Or something. I’m not one hundred percent sure how it all works, besides the thoughtful part.”
I playfully punched his arm and looked out the window as we got closer to home. We were driving through a stand of oak trees on the way to my parents’ house. Dull orange-brown leaves, dry and dead, clung to the branches and fluttered in the wind, waiting for the gust of wind that would knock them to the ground. That was what Sam was: transient. A summer leaf clinging to a frozen branch for as long as possible.
“You’re beautiful and sad,” I said finally, not looking at him when I did.
“Just like your eyes. You’re like a song that I heard when I was a little kid but forgot I knew until I heard it again.”
For a long moment there was only the whirring sound of the tires on the road, and then Sam said softly, “Thank you.”
We went home and slept on my bed all afternoon, our jean-covered legs tangled together and my face buried in his neck, the radio murmuring in the background. Around dinnertime, we wandered out to the kitchen to find food.
As Sam carefully assembled sandwiches, I tried calling Olivia.
John answered. “Sorry, Grace. She’s out. Do you want me to tell her anything, or just to call you?”
“Just have her call me,” I said, somehow feeling like I’d let Olivia down.
I hung up the phone and ran a finger along the counter absently. I kept thinking about what she had said: Stupid thing to argue about. “Did you notice,” I asked Sam, “when we came in, that it smelled out front? By the
front step?”
Sam handed me a sandwich. “Yeah.”
“Like pee,” I said. “Like wolf pee.”
Sam’s voice sounded unhappy. “Yeah.”
“Who do you think it was?”
“I don’t think,” Sam said. “I know. It’s Shelby. I can smell her. She peed on the deck again, too. I smelled it when I was out there yesterday.”
I remembered her eyes, looking at mine through my bedroom window, and made a face. “Why is she doing this?”
Sam shook his head, and he sounded uncertain when he said, “I just hope it’s about me and not about you. I hope she’s just following me.” His eyes slid toward the front hallway; distantly, I heard a car coming down the road.
“I think that’s your mom. I’m going to vanish.” I frowned after him as he retreated into my room with his sandwich, the door closing softly behind him, leaving all the questions and doubts about Shelby out here with me.
Out front, the car’s tires rolled into the driveway. I got my backpack and settled down so that by the time Mom came in, I was sitting at the kitchen table staring at a problem set.
Mom whirled in and tossed a pile of papers on the kitchen counter, dragging a rush of cold air in with her. I winced, hoping Sam was impervious behind my bedroom door. Her keys jangled as they slid onto the floor. She picked them up, swearing lightly, and threw them back onto the papers.
“Have you eaten yet? I’m feeling snacky. We did paintball on the outing! I mean, his work paid for it.”
I frowned at her. Half of my brain was still thinking about Shelby, lurking around the house, watching Sam, or watching me. Or watching us together.
“What, for group bonding, I guess?”
Mom didn’t answer. She opened the fridge and asked, “Do we have anything I can eat while I watch TV? God! What is this?”
“It’s a pork loin, Mom. It’s for the slow cooker tomorrow.”
She shuddered and closed the fridge. “It looks like a giant, chilled slug.
Do you want to watch a movie with me?”
I looked past her toward the hall, looking for Dad, but the hall was empty.
“Where’s Dad?”
“He went out for wings with the new guys from work. You act like I’d only ask you because he’s not here.” Mom banged around the kitchen, pouring herself granola and leaving the box open on the counter before
retreating toward the sofa.
Once upon a time, I would’ve leaped at the rare opportunity of curling up with Mom on the couch. But now, it sort of felt like too little, too late. I had someone else waiting for me.
“I’m feeling a little off,” I told Mom. “I think I’d rather just go to sleep early.”
I hadn’t realized that I’d wanted her face to fall until it didn’t. She just jumped onto the couch and grabbed the remote control. As I turned to go, she said, “By the way, don’t leave trash bags on the back deck, okay? Animals are getting into it.”
“Yeah,” I said. I had a feeling I knew which animal in particular. I left her watching the movie on the couch, swept up my homework, and carried it all to my room. Opening my bedroom door, I found Sam curled on my bed, reading a novel by the light of my bedside lamp, looking like he belonged there. I knew he must’ve heard me enter, but he didn’t glance up from his book for a moment, finishing his chapter. I loved looking at the shape his body made while he read, from the curved slope of his neck bent over the pages to the long forms of his sock feet.
Finally, he stuck his finger in the book and closed it, smiling up at me, his eyebrows tipped together in their permanently mournful way. He reached out an arm as an invitation, and I dumped my textbooks at the end of the bed and joined him. He held his novel with one hand and stroked my hair with the other, and together we read the last three chapters. It was a strange book where everyone had been taken from Earth except for the main character and his lover, and they had to choose whether to make their ultimate mission finding the ones who had been taken or having Earth all to themselves and repopulating at their leisure. When we were done, Sam rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. I drew slow circles on his flat stomach with my
fingers.
“Which would you choose?” he asked.
In the book, the characters had searched for the others, only to get separated and end up alone. For some reason, Sam’s question made my heart beat a little faster, and I gripped a handful of his T-shirt in my fist.
“Duh,” I said.
Sam’s lips curled up.
It wasn’t until later that I realized that Olivia hadn’t returned my call.
When I called her house, her mother told me she was still out.
A little voice inside me said Out where? Where is there to be out in Mercy Falls?
That night when I fell asleep, I dreamed of Shelby’s face in my window and Jack’s eyes in the woods.
