Days blurred into a collage of common images: cool walks across the school parking lot, Olivia’s empty seat in class, Sam’s breath in my ear, pawprints in our yard’s frosted blades of grass.
By the time the weekend arrived, I felt breathless with waiting, although I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for. Sam had tossed and turned the night before, plagued by a nightmare, and he looked so terrible on Saturday morning that instead of making any plans to go out, I just parked him on the couch after my parents had gone to brunch at a friend’s house.
I lay in the curve of Sam’s arm as he flipped between various bad made- for-TV movies. We settled on a sci-fi thriller that had probably cost less to produce than the Bronco. Rubbery tentacles were every where when Sam finally said something.
“Does it bother you? That your parents are the way they are?”
I nuzzled my face into his armpit. It smelled very Sam in there. “Let’s not
talk about them.”
“Let’s do talk about them.”
“Oh, why? What’s there to tell? It’s fine. They’re fine. They’re the way they are.”
Sam’s fingers gently found my chin and lifted my face up. “Grace, it’s not fine. I’ve been here for — how many weeks now? I don’t even know. But I know how it is, and it’s not fine.”
“They are who they are. I never knew anybody’s parents were any different until I started school. Until I started reading. But seriously, Sam, it’s okay.”
My skin felt hot. I pulled my chin away from his hand and looked at the screen, where a compact car was drowning in slime.
“Grace,” Sam said softly. He was sitting so still, as if, for once, I was the wild animal that might vanish if he moved a muscle. “You don’t have to pretend around me.”
I watched the car crumble into pieces, along with the driver and the
passenger. It was hard to tell what was going on with the sound turned down, but it looked like the pieces were reforming into tentacles. There was a guy walking a dog in the background, and he didn’t even seem to notice. How could he not notice?
I didn’t look at Sam, but I knew he was watching me, not the television.
I didn’t know what he thought I was going to say. I had nothing to say.
This was not a problem. It was a way of life.
The tentacles on the screen began to drag along the ground, looking for the original tentacled monster so that they could reattach themselves. There was no way they would be able to; the original alien was on fire in Washington, DC, melting around a model of the Washington Monument. The new tentacles were just going to have to torment the world on their own.
“Why can’t I make them love me any more than they do?”
Did I say that? It didn’t sound like my voice. Sam’s fingers brushed my cheek, but there weren’t any tears. I was nowhere close to tears.
“Grace, they love you. It’s not about you. It’s their problem.”
“I’ve tried so hard. I never get into trouble. I always do my homework. I cook their damn meals, when they’re home, which is never —” Definitely not my voice. I didn’t swear. “And I nearly got killed, twice, but that didn’t change anything. It’s not like I want them to jump all over me. I just want, one day, just want —” I couldn’t finish the sentence, because I didn’t know how it ended.
Sam dragged me into his arms. “Oh, Grace, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to
make you cry.”
“I’m not crying.”
He wiped my cheeks with his thumb, carefully, and showed me the tear trapped on his fingertip. Feeling foolish, I let him ball me up in his lap and tuck me under his chin. I had my own voice back again, here in the muffled shelter of his arms. “Maybe I’m too good. If I got into trouble at school or burned down people’s garages, they’d have to notice me.”
“You’re not like that. You know you’re not,” he said. “They’re just silly, selfish people, that’s all. I’m sorry I asked, okay? Let’s just watch this dumb movie.”
I laid my cheek against his chest and listened to the thump-thump of his heart. It sounded so normal, just a regular human heart. He’d been human long enough now that I almost couldn’t detect the faint odor of the woods on him or remember what it felt like to bury my fingers in his ruff. Sam turned
up the volume on the aliens and we sat like that, one creature in two bodies, for a long time, until I forgot what I’d been upset about and I was myself
again.
“I wish I had what you have,” I said.
“What do I have?”
“Your pack. Beck. Ulrik. When you talk about them, I can see how important they are to you,” I said. “They made you this person.” I pushed a finger into his chest. “They’re wonderful, so you’re wonderful.”
Sam closed his eyes. “I don’t know about that.” He opened them again.
“Anyway, your parents made you who you are, too. Do you think you’d be so independent if they were around more? At least you’re someone when they’re not around. I feel like I’m not who I was before. Because so much of being me is being with Beck and Ulrik and the others.”
I heard a car pull into the driveway and straightened up. I knew Sam had heard it, too. “Time to vanish,” he said.
But I held on to his arm. “I’m tired of sneaking around. I think it’s time for you to meet them.”
He didn’t argue, but he threw a worried glance in the direction of the
front door.
“And now we come to the end,” he said.
“Don’t be melodramatic. They won’t kill you.”
He looked at me.
Heat flushed my cheeks. “Sam, I didn’t mean it like — God. I’m sorry.” I wanted to look away from his face, but I couldn’t seem to, like watching a car crash. I kept waiting for the collision, but his expression never changed. It was as if there was a little disconnect between the memories of Sam’s parents and his emotions, a slight misfire that mercifully kept him whole.
Sam rescued me by changing the subject, which was incredibly generous.
“Should I play the friendly boyfriend or are we just friends?”
“Boyfriend. I’m not pretending.”
Sam edged two inches away from me and pulled his arm from behind my head, resting it on the back of the couch behind me instead. To the wall, he said, “Hello, Grace’s parents. I’m Grace’s boyfriend. Please notice the chaste distance between us. I am very responsible and have never had my tongue in your daughter’s mouth.”
The door cracked open and both of us jumped with matching nervous laughs.
“Is that you, Grace?” Mom’s voice called lightly from the hallway. “Or
are you a burglar?”
“Burglar,” I called back.
“I’m going to wet myself,” Sam whispered in my ear.
“Are you sure that’s you, Grace?” Mom sounded suspicious; she wasn’t used to me laughing. “Is Rachel here?”
Dad came first into the living room doorway and stopped, immediately spotting Sam.
In a barely perceptible movement, Sam turned his head just enough that the light didn’t catch his yellow eyes, an automatic gesture that made me realize for the first time that Sam had been an oddity even before he’d been a wolf.
Dad’s eyes were on Sam, just looking. Sam was looking back, tense but not terrified. Would he be sitting so calmly if he knew that Dad had been one of the hunting party in the woods? I was suddenly ashamed of my father, just another human that the wolves had to fear; I was glad I hadn’t said anything to Sam.
My voice was tight. “Dad, this is Sam. Sam, this is Dad.”
Dad looked at him for a split second more, and then smiled widely.
“Please tell me you’re a boyfriend.”
Sam’s eyes became perfectly round and I let out a big breath.
“Yes, he’s a boyfriend, Dad.”
“Well, that’s nice. I was beginning to think you didn’t do that kind of
thing.”
“Dad.”
“What’s going on in there?” Mom’s voice was distant. She was already in the kitchen, rummaging in the fridge. The food at the brunch must’ve been
bad. “Who’s Sam?”
“My boyfriend.”
With Mom’s presence came an ever-present cloud of turpentine vapors; she had paint smeared on her lower arms. Knowing Mom, I guessed she’d intentionally left herself that way when she went out. She looked from me to Sam and back to me again, her expression quizzical.
“Mom, this is Sam. Sam, Mom.”
I smelled emotions rolling off both of them, though I couldn’t tell which ones, exactly. Mom was staring at Sam’s eyes, just staring and staring, and Sam seemed fixed in place. I punched his arm.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, voice automatic.
“Mom,” I hissed. “Mom. Earth to Mom.”
To her credit, she looked slightly abashed when she snapped out of it. She said to Sam, apologetic, “Your face looks very familiar.” Yeah. Right. As if even an infant couldn’t tell it was a transparent excuse for staring at his eyes.
“I used to work at the bookstore downtown?” Sam’s voice was hopeful.
Mom wagged a finger at him. “I’ll bet that’s it.” She beamed at Sam then, used her hundred-watt smile, erasing any social atrocity she may have just committed. “Well, it’s nice to meet you. I’m going to go upstairs and work for a while.” She displayed her painted arms, indicating what she meant by “work,” and I felt a brief flash of irritation toward her. I knew her serial flirtation was just habitual, a knee-jerk reaction to any unfamiliar guy who had reached puberty, but still. Grow up.
Sam surprised me by saying, “I’d like to see the studio, while I’m here, if you don’t mind. Grace told me a little bit about your art and I’d love to see it.” This was partially true. I’d told him about a particularly nauseating show of hers I’d gone to where all of the paintings were named after types of clouds but were portraits of women in bathing suits. “Meaningful” art sailed over my head. I didn’t get it. I didn’t want to get it.
Mom smiled in a plastic sort of way. She probably thought Sam’s understanding of meaningful art was similar to mine.
I looked at Sam dubiously. This sort of sucking up seemed unlike him.
After Mom had vanished upstairs and Dad had vanished into his study, I demanded, “Are you a sucker for punishment?”
Sam unmuted the television in time for a woman to be eaten by something with tentacles. All that was left after the attack was a fake-looking severed arm lying on the sidewalk. “I just think I need to make her like me.”
“The only person in this house who has to like you is me. Don’t worry about them.”
Sam picked up a sofa cushion and hugged it to himself, pressing his face into it. His voice was muffled. “She might have to put up with me for a long
time, you know?”
“How long?”
His smile was amazingly sweet. “The longest.”
“Forever?”
Sam’s lips smiled, but above his grin, his yellow eyes turned sad, as if he knew it was a lie. “Longer.”
I closed the distance between us and settled into the crook of his arm, and we went back to watching the tentacled alien slowly creep through the sewer system of an unsuspecting town. Sam’s eyes flickered around the screen, as if he was actually watching the futile intergalactic battle, but I sat there and tried to figure out why Sam had to change and I didn’t.
