Charm & Strange (13 page)

As I leaned forward, my gaze lit on the sight of the full moon. It hung deep in the summer sky, more amber than white.

My pulse picked up.

I heard something.

I leaned closer.

The sky was very blue and very dark, like the paint on my father’s luxury sedan. I’d never seen a night like it. I kept staring. The stars twinkled back in a way that let me know they saw me, too.

I held my breath. So I
had
heard something—the language of the stars.

Listen to the moon,
they said.
Listen.

Yes.

I did not hesitate. I slid belly first out the window and into the night. I ran toward the New Hampshire forest with my bare feet slapping along the dirt trail, getting all sticky with sap and all stuck with pine needles. The towel slipped from my waist as I reached the tree line, but I didn’t care. I kept going. My strange body, with its jutting bones and too-long limbs and way more height than it knew what to do with, had a mind of its own.

I set my gaze on the stars again.

The moon,
they told me.
Keep going. Keep listening.

Fear snapped at my ankles because I couldn’t see the moon anymore. It sat too low, hidden by the trees. But I kept running. The stars said I had to.

I traveled deeper.

Farther.

Darker.

The trail before me rose suddenly, a steep pitch. I fell forward onto all fours and scrabbled my way up, using hands and feet like I was climbing the rock wall in the school gym. I grasped at roots and stones, and my legs struggled, working hard.

At last, I ascended.

I looked up.

A small clearing sat before me, full of swirling mist and bathed in a silver glow. I crept forward into the light and sighed, relieved.

I’d found the moon.

I sat back on my haunches. I strained to hear something, someone, anything, anyone, but my ears rang with the barren song of absolute silence.

I lifted my head, opened my throat, and howled.

And the wolves appeared.

Their eyes came first, many of them, shining in the darkness. My body thrummed with anticipation as a black wolf strode straight out of the night and came toward me. Its sable coat glimmered, warmed by the moonlight, but as the creature neared, I shrank back, seized abruptly by a choking terror. My heart pounded. This wasn’t what I expected. This wasn’t the type of creature I remembered from the animal preserve back in West Virginia. This was not an exotic dog or a ratty thing to be pitied.

This was a beast.

The black wolf kept coming. The oxlike power of its muscles was evident, a fine show of strength that rippled with each step. I struggled to get back onto my feet, to run, but my limbs refused to work. I knelt before it on the ground. I was naked. Exposed.

“Help me,” I whispered. “Please. Oh, God!”

It reached me with its frayed, batlike ears blown back tight against its head. The animal placed one giant forepaw on either side of my body and stood above me. Its draping tail whipped back and forth. I gagged at the ripe, rotting odor coming off its fur. I bit back the scream I knew would be torn from my throat as the beast reached down with its dripping snout. But the animal merely pressed its cold nose against my cheek, an almost gentle touch, like a sickening caress. I shuddered.

More wolves came forward. They streamed from every direction. All colors. All sizes. All somehow familiar. Brown, gray, tan, white. Even a reddish beast sprang from the shadows with a snap and a snarl to strut before me, its body lithe, its movements light with grace and swagger.

I reached out with both hands and the beasts crowded in, licking-nuzzling-keening, long ears cocked low, tails held down in deference. I touched and scratched them all, not caring about the smell or the threat.

The wolves closed even tighter, tight, so tight, until I could no longer see the sky.

chapter

twenty-five

matter

I unzip the opening to the tent and stick my head out. The party looks the same, but the atmosphere in Eden is calmer. Drunker. Sleepier. But something is wrong. Upon further assessment, I realize what it is.

Jordan is missing.

My gaze darts around the campfire, always returning to the rock where we sat. She’s not there. She just isn’t. I pull my phone out. It’s two thirty in the morning. I squint and try to make out the crowd that’s playing cards near the back of the hollow, up against the cliff wall. I told her to ask Teddy to walk her back if she wanted to leave. I definitely told her that. I know I did. But Teddy’s still there, slumped in his camping chair, staring at his cards with a deadly serious expression. He’s not drinking. He’s not high. He’s no longer playing poker. He’s playing Shanghai rummy. I know this because Teddy always wants to play Shanghai. It’s his thing. He calls it “the mother of all card games,” which I guess is pretty accurate since the game takes like five hours to finish. It’s kind of fun due to all the strategy required, and I enjoy most anything where I have a fair shot at winning, but at the end of the day, it’s still a card game. Nothing to lose money over. Nothing to get worked up about.

I am, however, worked up over the fact that Jordan either (a) did not listen to me and is walking through the woods alone; or (b) is in the woods, not walking and not alone. I cannot reconcile my distress with the fact that if she is alone, then she can’t be in danger from
me
because, well, I’m
here,
and if she’s with someone else, then that should be a good thing. Right? That’s what I wanted, for her to be safe. It’s what I
thought
I wanted.

Then why am I distressed?

It’s confusing.

I am confused.

Lex comes up from behind. He does it slowly. He knows better than to startle me.

I’m still struggling to breathe. To speak.

“It must fucking suck,” he says.

I have no clue what he’s talking about. I know he’s continuing our conversation, but I’ve lost his line of thinking. I peer around some more. The roaring in my ears is back. Jordan would remember the way down the mountain, wouldn’t she? The cross-country team runs through these woods almost every day, or at least we did until this past week when the headmaster said we couldn’t. No, Jordan doesn’t have a flashlight, but it’s not like the trails are all that complicated.

“What changed your mind?” Lex asks.

I shrink away. I still don’t understand what he wants to know, but I don’t think I want to tell him, either. I can’t. My voice won’t come to me, and that can mean only one thing: I’m scared.

“You saw them, didn’t you? The bodies? I don’t understand. Why didn’t your parents get—”

“Is that Penn Riggsdale?” I force the words. They’re explosive and my voice comes out scratchy and high-pitched in a way I don’t recognize.

Lex crawls closer. He sticks his head out, too, and right, I forgot, he actually has a flashlight, a red Maglite. He pulls it from his jacket and switches it on. The beam cuts across the meadow. We both see the back of a guy walking away from us. We make out Vans. A suede jacket. Skinny jeans. A head full of dark curls. The guy isn’t walking toward the trail that leads back to campus. He’s heading in the opposite direction. Out of Eden and past the caves. Toward the trail that leads to the summit.

“That’s him,” Lex confirms.

Penn doesn’t notice the flashlight. It’s not strong enough. Or he’s not sober enough. He turns and calls out something to his group of pretentious friends. There’s a row of laughter. The sound is jarring and cruel. Penn jogs a few steps, like he’s eager, too eager, and ducks out of the hollow. Out of my sight.

My body tenses like a hunting dog on point.

“Jordan,” I say.

Lex looks at me. “Who?”

I repeat her name. Same tone. Same urgency. Like a chant.

Or a prayer.

“That’s the girl you came up with? The new one?”

I snap, “Where is she?”

“I don’t know. She was over by the fire—”

“No, where is she
now
?”

His eyes widen. “What? You think Riggsdale’s going to do something to her?”

I bolt.

Lex calls after me, but his efforts are a lost cause. My legs pump hard. My feet are sure-footed. I am damn fast.

Jordan.

chapter

twenty-six

antimatter

Outside, night happened. Black sky and white stars and a giant moon.

Inside, chaos happened. The wolves were gone.

I roamed through the cabin, up and down hallways, wrapped in towels and crying. I didn’t know where I’d been or how I’d gotten here, but I was looking for someone, anyone. I craved closeness. I padded from room to room, calling out for Keith. Nobody answered. Nobody stirred. A ribbon of fear stitched through my sternum. Was anyone actually here? Had I been abandoned?

I snuck upstairs, still crying. I longed for my dog with an ache that almost broke me.

I knocked on the first door I found. No answer. I turned the knob and stepped in.

This room had shades, not curtains, and they were drawn. Fingers of weak moonlight squeezed through to touch the hardwood floor, but I couldn’t make out anything other than a figure sleeping beneath the sheets on a pullout bed. I tiptoed as close as I could. I listened to the soft, rhythmic breathing. It did not sound familiar.

I crept closer and the sleeping figure rolled over, lifting its head. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. It was Anna. She said nothing. She didn’t ask why I was there. She didn’t ask why I was crying. She pulled the sheet back and beckoned me to her. I crawled into her bed and she wrapped a blanket around me. I shivered, trying to get warm. She closed her eyes, rolled away from me, and went back to sleep. My bare feet were clean, I realized, which meant everything about the wolves had been a dream, but Anna’s hair was matted with sticks and dirt, which meant maybe it hadn’t.

I shifted and whimpered, so confused. I tried remembering everything I could about the wolves, to hold on to them. The image of the beasts and the memory of their touch, with all their power and brute strength, flooded over me. I still felt it. That power. Inside of me. Like a great wolfish flame that sparked and burned, molten hot, at the very core of my being. It’s who I was. My nature. I knew it to be true.

I remembered their roughness, too, the nipping and the fear, but Anna’s words about my grandmother came back to me.

Love doesn’t always look nice.

So I sighed deeply.

And suddenly, I understood everything.
Everything.

I knew what the moon had tried to tell me in the woods.

I was not broken.

I was savage.

*   *   *

The girls took me to Crater Lake the following afternoon. Keith wouldn’t talk to anyone when he woke up that morning, so he didn’t come with us.

I felt bold and lay on my back in our grandfather’s sailboat while it remained tied to the dock. The sun beat down crisp, bare, and the blue sky stretched forever, perfectly clear. My ears filled with the jackhammer beat of a woodpecker and the urgent buzz of racing Jet Skis.

A smattering of campsites ringed the lake, and the area swarmed with summer crowds, the inescapable scent of lighter fluid and bug spray. Beside the marina sat a public beach. It’s where Phoebe walked along the rocky shore, swinging a green plastic bucket in one hand and an ancient fishing net in the other, searching for crawdads.

A blustering wind drove tiny whitecaps into the shore with a slap. The sandwich and milk I’d eaten flipped around inside me, at odds with the motion of the boat. I’d have to get out in a few minutes, but for now I liked the wildness of the feeling. The danger.

Charlie and Anna lay sunbathing side by side near the bow. The boat’s mast towered over them. An American flag at the very top snapped and whipped in the breeze. Each girl wore dark sunglasses, and they passed a tiny cigarette back and forth between them. The smoke smelled weird, like the seasonings in my grandmother’s lentil soup.

Charlie rolled onto her stomach, kicked her heels into the air. She pulled a small camera from her purse, gestured for me to sit up, and snapped a picture. “Come on, Drew. Tell us again about your dream.”

I smiled. I crawled close to where she lay. She was being kinder toward me than she’d been all summer. Ever since I’d told her and Anna about my dream with the wolves, the two of them had fawned over me. I liked that. Keith didn’t want me to go to the lake with them, but the girls insisted. They laughed and made me lunch and put sunscreen on my back.

“I think you were there, Charlie,” I said, remembering the red wolf with the fearsome attitude. It felt like that wolf was the one staring at me right now.

The girls both giggled.

I thought of the other wolves. All of them. All those colors.

“Anna, you might have been there, too.”

“Tell me what I looked like,” Charlie said. Smoke came out of her mouth with the words.

“Very strong and fast.” I squinted up at her. “It felt so real. You know, for a dream.”

“Maybe it was real, little Drew,” she said easily.

The hairs on my neck rose. That’s exactly what I’d been thinking, that it was all real, every second. “So do you remember? Do you remember what it feels like to change? Or, you know, do you forget that?”

Charlie pressed up onto her elbows. Her sky-blue bikini looked too small for her. The soft parts of her top threatened to pop out. “Oh, I remember. It’s like, totally liberating to have your body become … what’s the word?”

Anna lay on her back. A group of young men on a passing boat whistled at her. I glared. Anna ignored them. She just put the funny cigarette up to her lips, inhaled deeply, and tossed her hair.

“Dangerous,” she said.

Charlie twisted around to look at the guys. She waved wildly. “Hey, Ricky!”

A blond one leaned out over the water. “Hey, babe. When’s your sister gonna let me hit it?”

She laughed. “What about me?”

“You? You’re still a kid, babe.”

She got to her feet. Shimmied her hips. “Do I look like a kid to you?”