Liar (37 page)

“You're brain damaged.”

“When I'm a wolf they're going to teach me how to hunt. I want to be a wolf.”

“Don't talk about that. I've seen the results of your hunting.”

I sit up. It's cold. The chill runs through my whole body. I am never cold.

“They're going to teach me to ride a horse. How to make fences and fix them. No one's taught me how to do anything before. Not anything good. I like it here.”

“You said.” I bring my knees up, hug them to my chest. Every part of me is frozen but I don't care.

He leans his head against my shoulder. I almost stroke his hair. I pull my hand away just in time. He killed Zach.

“I'm glad you wolfed me,” he says, still leaning on me.

“I told you, I didn't. It's the way you are. Like having brown hair, or big feet, or being tall. It's in your genes.”

“I never thought I was people,” the boy says. “I didn't belong in the city.”

“Not you, too,” I say, but he's not listening, he's telling.

“The city's mean. It's people pushing you around. Telling you where you can't go. Fall asleep on a stoop and people yell at you to get off. They yell at you for taking the food they threw away in the trash. Yell at you for being on the same subway car as them. People are all yelling and pushing and worse. Lots worse. It's not like that here because it's not real people—it's wolf people.”

“They're not all wolves. Not even half.”

“I like it here.”

“Yay for you.”

“Why don't you like it here? You're a wolf person.” He angles his head to look up at me. Even in the murky light I can see that the black eye has gotten more lurid.

“Yeah, but I don't want to be. I belong in the city. It's my home. I want to finish high school,” I say, though I know he'll never understand. “I want to go to college. I've studied so hard. I sent off my college applications. I want to study biology. Figure out what I am, how it works. Map my DNA. These genes we have, you and me. What are they? What are we? How are we? I want to be the one to find out. I'm not going to find out anything stuck here, am I? With a bunch of morons who haven't made it past the seventh grade. None of my cousins have been to preschool, let alone college. Half of them can't even read!” I'm crying again.

“I can't read,” says the boy. “Why does a wolf need to read?”

I don't know what to say to that. I'm still crying. If I stay on the farm I will lose my mind. I will lose who I am. “I can't imagine what your life was like.”

“Doesn't matter,” the boy says. “It's good
now
. I'm not going to think about how it was.”

“Just like that?” I say. “You're going to forget the rest of your life?”

He nods. “I never remember the bad stuff. But now it's going to be all good stuff. I can remember everything from now on. Everything from when I first saw you.”

I try not to be angry with him. I substitute despair. He killed Zach after he first saw me. That's one of his treasured memories. I don't ask him about it. I don't want to punch him again.

“Why do you want to go back there?” he asks. “At your school if they knew you was a wolf would they still like you? I bet they don't like you. Not how you are. If you stay here you don't have to be a person. Everyone here knows what you are—a wolf. Like them. They like you because you're a wolf. Here's better.”

How could this moron street kid know that? I stare at him. He blinks but doesn't look away. I'm grateful it's getting too dark to see the full glory of the black eye I gave him.

What if he's right? I am a wolf. Back in the city I have to fight what I am every single day. Take pills to keep it at bay. I have to tamp down all my impulses. Not leap at enemies' throats, not jump on the people I desire, not run when I want, not eat when and how I want.

Here I don't have to lie to anyone. I can be the wolf that I am.

I stand up. The boy does, too. He puts his hand in mine. His is smaller and all bones, but his squeeze is firm.

“Promise me you'll stay,” the boy says.

I laugh. “They'll look out for you better than I will.” I'm tempted to tell him that he's breeding stock. “I hate you, remember?”

“Stay.”

“Fine,” I say, feeling something break inside me. “I'll stay.” I don't have anywhere else to go.

“You promise?”

“Sure,” I say. “Why not?”

We head back to the house. It really is dark now. But our night vision is good—we're wolves, after all. Most everyone is in bed already. Here on the farm they go to bed early and rise earlier. Not much else to do once the light's gone.

Grandmother and Great-Aunt Dorothy are still awake. Great-Aunt leads the boy away.

Grandmother stands up and stares at me for what feels like minutes and then, for the first time in my life, she pulls me into her arms, mud and all, hugging me hard before pushing me away and kissing my cheeks. “We love you, child,” she says.

She's never said that either. Maybe I do belong here.

It occurs to me that it was not the white boy who was the puppy being abandoned in the woods, it was me.

AFTER

I wash the mud off in a metal tub in the kitchen. Grandmother heats the water over the wood-and-coal-fueled stove. She doesn't say anything. Hands me soap and a washcloth. Then a towel to dry me and a coarse nightgown that's probably a hundred years old. She dumps my muddy clothes into the tub and starts washing them.

She pats my cheek with her wrinkled, scarred fingers. “We're glad to have you here at last,” she says.

“Thank you.”

I climb the stairs to the bed I share in the summer. I slide under the covers, pushing the nearest cousin farther in so there's room. She stirs but doesn't wake. I curl inward, holding my knees and resisting the impulse to suck my thumb. Instead I cry as quietly as I can.

I wake up aching and swollen-eyed. I've never cried that much before. I vow never to do it again.

When I crawled into the bed there were two girl cousins in it. Now there's light streaming in through the window and just me. They're all up and working already, but this city girl has slept past dawn. I wonder how long they'll let me get away with that.

My chest feels tight and sore. Like my heart is broken.

My heart
is
broken.

I dress in the clothes I arrived in even though they're still damp. There's a suitcase full of my things but I haven't touched it. It's proof that my parents knew from the outset they were dumping me with the Greats.

They packed that suitcase.

It's their biggest one. They probably crammed everything I own into it. I'm not opening it. I don't want to see what they thought I would want. I'm not wearing any of those clothes. I don't want to see more evidence of how much they do not love or understand me. I'll wear the clothes I came in till they disintegrate.

I don't care that the suitcase is my last link to the city, that Zach's sweater might be in it, his jersey.

My resolution holds until I realize I have to take a pill.

I open the case, relieved to find several months' worth stashed at the bottom. I take one and put the rest of the pill packets in my pockets. I don't trust Grandmother not to find them and get rid of them. It's a miracle she hasn't already. I have no idea how I'm going to get hold of more. In a few months I'll change with the rest of them.

All control of my own body gone.

HISTORY OF ME

I'm not sure where I start and where I end. Is the human the real me? Or the wolf?

Every time I change from one to the other I lose bits of myself.

Or all of myself.

I don't know if the cells I start with are the same ones I end up with when I return to being human. Does the wolf-me destroy the human-me? And then does the new human-me destroy the wolf-me? How many Micahs have there been?

How can I know if I'm the same me I was back when I first started changing?

There are very few organs of the same size and dimension in both wolf and human. As I go from one to the other and back again my liver, kidney, eyes, ears change.
Everything
changes. What happens to the human cells when I'm a wolf? Are they hidden or are they gone?

If they're gone, then every time I change I lose more.

I become less me.

I am afraid of changing.

I am afraid of changing back.

AFTER

The breakfast is made up of farm produce: eggs, butter, milk, bacon, bread. This is a working farm. Even my littlest cousins lend a hand at churning butter, pulling weevils out of flour. There's wool to be spun, animals to be fed, canning and pickling, meats to be salted. Cleaning, washing, baking. Repairs to be made. I learn over breakfast that two of the barns need their roofs fixed before the first snows hit.

I try to be interested. This is my life now.

The eggs taste like slimy dirt. The bread is heavy and scratchy. It's the worst breakfast I've ever had.

Not that it's breakfast for them. They broke their fast around dawn with bread and cheese and pickles. This is the day's second meal. The one after they've already been hard at work for several hours. About half the family's there: Grandmother, Great-Aunt, an uncle, two aunts, and most of the kids. They eat steady and fast. The rest will come in and grab what's left on their own time.

Pete sits next to me, eating even faster, demolishing three helpings, then reaching across to grab more bacon.

“No,” Grandmother says, pulling the plate of rashers away from him. “You're not the only one who needs to eat.”

Pete shrinks into the bench.

“There'll be more food,” I say. “Two more meals today.”

“Really?”

“They eat four times a day.”

“Every day?” Pete asks. He doesn't quite believe me, but he wants to. Across the table Lilly and one of her brothers giggle. Pete flushes. He'll have to get used to everyone's ears being as good as his own.

“Every day,” I tell him. “Four meals. You'll have to work for them, though.”

“I picked apples.”

“Ate most of them, too,” Grandmother says. “That'll stop.”

Lilly waves at Pete and giggles again. Pete can't decide where to look.

I push my plate at him. I've eaten an egg and half a slice of the murky bread, my hunger muted by heartache. Pete inhales what I've left. “It's good,” he tells me.

“Micah, clear the plates,” Grandmother says, which means the meal is over. Most of my cousins are gone before Grandmother says plates. Not Pete though.

Lilly waves at him again. “More apple picking?” she asks.

Pete mumbles no and starts grabbing some of the plates and cutlery ahead of me. I busy myself stacking the cups. Some of wood, some of clay. All made on the farm.

I look across to Grandmother, who nods. “Slops go in the bucket in the kitchen.”

Pete sticks to my side. I guess he wants to make sure I stay like I promised. Today the Greats let him. It's his first day. They'll get tougher on him soon.