Linger

“They’re all about you,” Sam said.

“No pressure.”

“Not for you. You get to just float along through life being Grace and I’m the one who has to run to keep up creatively and lyrically with the ways you change. You’re not a fixed target, you know.”

I frowned. I thought of myself as frustratingly unchangeable.

“I know what you’re thinking. But you’re right here, aren’t you?” Sam asked, using his free hand to point a finger into the fuzzy seat of the car. “You fought to be with me instead of letting yourself get grounded for a week. That’s the stuff entire albums are based on.”

He didn’t even know the half of it. I was awash with some multicolored emotion that was guilt and self-pity and uncertainty and nerves all rolled into one. I didn’t know what was worse: not telling him about still being grounded and the growing sickness inside me, or telling him. I did know this one thing: I wouldn’t be able to untell either thing. And I didn’t want to ruin this day for him. His one perfect birthday day. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

I was more complex than I’d thought. I still didn’t see how it would be album fodder, though I appreciated the idea that I had, in fact, done something that impressed Sam, who knew me better than I did. I changed the subject, a little. “What will you name your album?”

“Well, I’m not doing an album today. I’m doing a demo.”

I waved off the clarification. “When you do an album, what will it be called?”

“Self-titled,” Sam said.

“I hate those.”

“Broken Toys.”

I shook my head. “That sounds like a band name.”

He pinched a tiny bit of my skin, just hard enough for me to squeal and say ow. “Chasing Grace.”

“Nothing with my name in it,” I said sternly.

“Well, you’re just making this impossible. Paper Memories?”

I considered. “Why? Oh, the birds. It seems weird that I never knew about those birds in your room.”

“I haven’t made any since I met you for real,” Sam reminded me. “The newest one is from the summer before last. All of my new cranes are at the store or in your room. That room is like a museum.”

“Not anymore,” I said, glancing over at him. He looked pale and wintery in this morning light. I changed lanes just to change lanes.

“True enough,” he admitted. He sat back from me, pulling his hand from behind my head; he ran his fingers along the plastic divider in the air vent in front of him instead. I had missed his fingers. He said, not looking at me, “What sort of guy do you think your parents expect you to marry? Someone better than me?”

I scoffed. “Who cares what they think?” I realized, too late, what he had said, and by then, I didn’t know what to say about it. I didn’t know if he really meant it, or what. It wasn’t like he’d actually asked me to marry him. It wasn’t the same thing. I didn’t know how it made me feel.

Sam swallowed and flicked the air vent open and shut, open and shut. “I wonder what would’ve happened if you hadn’t met me. If you went on to finish high school and got that scholarship to be a math whiz at wherever it is that math geniuses go. And met some extremely charming, successful, and funny brain major.”

Of all the things I found puzzling about Sam, this one was always the most puzzling: his sudden, self-deprecating mood swings. I’d heard Dad talk Mom out of her funks, though, and the content of them was similar enough to Sam’s for me to recognize them as the same species. Was this what it meant to be creative?

“Don’t be stupid,” I told him. “I don’t go around wondering what would’ve happened if you’d pulled some other girl out of the snow.”

“You don’t? That’s sort of relieving.” He turned up the heat and rested his wrists on the vents. The sun was already cooking both of us through the windshield, but Sam was like a cat—he was never too hot. “It’s hard to get used to this idea of being a boy forever. I actually get to grow up. It makes me think I should get another job.”

“Another one? You mean, other than the bookstore?”

“I don’t know exactly how the finances of the house work. I know there is some money in the bank, and I see that it’s making interest, and there are occasional payments into it from some fund or something, and the deductions come out for the bills, but I don’t really know the details. I don’t want to use up that money, so…”

“Why don’t you talk to someone at the bank? I’m sure they’d be able to look at the statements and work it all out with you.”

“I don’t want to talk to anybody about it until I’m sure that B—” Sam stopped. Not just a pause. A full stop, the sort of stop that is better than a period. He looked out the window.

It took me a minute to work out what he’d been about to say. Beck. He didn’t want to talk to anybody about it until he was sure that Beck was really not shifting back. Sam’s fingertips were white on the dashboard where he had them pressed above the vents, and his shoulders were drawn up stiffly by his ears.

“Sam,” I said, glancing at him as much as I dared while still keeping my eyes on the road. “Are you okay?”

Sam drew his hands into his lap, hard fists resting on top of each other. “Why did he have to make those new wolves, Grace?” he asked, finally. “It makes it that much harder. We were doing okay.”

“He couldn’t have known about you,” I said, glancing at him. He was running a slow finger down his nose from his forehead and back again. I looked for an exit; somewhere to pull over. “He thought that”—and now I was the one who couldn’t finish my sentence the way I’d meant to: it was your last year.

“But Cole—I don’t know what to do about Cole,” Sam confessed. “I just feel like there is something about him I should be getting, and I’m not. And if you saw his eyes, Grace. Oh, God, if you saw his eyes, you’d know there was something really wrong with him. There’s something broken in there. And the other two, and Olivia, and I want you to go to college, and I need to—someone has to—I don’t know what’s expected of me, but it feels so huge. I don’t know how much of it is what Beck would’ve wanted me to do and how much of it is what I expect myself to do. I’m just…” His voice faded off, and I didn’t know how to comfort him.

We drove in silence for several long minutes, a bright guitar plucking rapid chords in the background while infinite white stripes flew by the car. Sam’s fingers were pressed against his upper lip as if he had amazed himself by admitting his uncertainty.

“Still waking up,” I said.

He looked at me.

“Your album. Still Waking Up.”

He looked at me, expression intense. Surprised, maybe, that I’d come close. “That’s exactly how it feels. That’s exactly it. One of these days, I’m going to get used to the idea that it’s morning and I’m going to be a guy for the rest of the day. For all the rest of all the days. But until then, I’m stumbling around.”

I darted a glance over at him, catching his eye. “Everybody does that, though. We all, one day, realize that we’re not going to be kids forever and we’re going to grow up. You just got to have that moment a little later than most people. You’ll figure it out.”

Sam’s slow smile was rueful but genuine. “You and Beck were totally cut from the same cloth.”

“Guess that’s why you love both of us,” I said.

Sam made the shape of a guitar chord on his seat belt and just nodded. A few moments later, he said, thoughtfully, “Still Waking Up. One day, Grace, I’m going to write a song for you and I’m going to call it that. And then I’ll name my album after it.”

“Because I am wise,” I said.

“Yes,” Sam said.

He looked out the window then, and I was glad, because it gave me time to dig in my pocket for a tissue without him seeing. My nose had started to bleed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

• ISABEL •

Every third step I ran, my breath exploded out of me all in a rush. One step to suck in another cold lungful. One step to let it escape. One step of not breathing.

I hadn’t been running in way too long, and I hadn’t been running this far in even longer. I’d always liked jogging because it was a place to think, far away from the house and my parents. But after Jack died, I hadn’t wanted to think.

Now, that was changing.

And so I was running again, though it was far too cold to be comfortable and I was out of shape. Even with my new, buoyant running shoes, my shins were killing me.

I was running to Cole.

It was too long of a run from my house to Beck’s, even when I’d been running all the time, so I parked three miles away, warmed up in the transparent mist, and started.

Three miles gave me plenty of time to change my mind. But here I was, the house in sight, and I was still running. I probably looked like hell, but what did I care? If I was just there to talk, it didn’t matter what I looked like, right?

The driveway was empty; Sam was already gone. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed. It meant, at least, that there was a good chance I’d find the house entirely empty, because Cole was probably a wolf.

Again, I couldn’t tell if I was relieved or disappointed.

A few hundred feet from the house, I slowed to a walk, holding the stitch in my side. I’d almost gotten my breath back by the time I got to the back door. I tried the knob, experimentally; it turned and the door fell open.

I stepped into the house and hesitated by the back door. I was about to shout hello, when I realized that it might not be just Cole who was human. So I stood there in the dark little corner by the back door looking into the brighter area of the kitchen, remembering sitting in this house and watching Jack die.

It was easy for Grace to say that it wasn’t my fault. Words like that didn’t mean anything at all.

A sudden thunderous noise made me jump. There was a long pause, and then another burst of crashing and slamming and commotion from somewhere in the house. It was like a voiceless argument. For a long moment, I stood there, trying to decide whether or not I should just slip back outside and run back to my car.

You already sat back and did nothing once in this house, I thought grimly.

So I stepped deeper inside, making my way through the kitchen. I hesitated at the hall, looking into the living room, not quite understanding what was in front of me. I saw…water. Ragged trails of water shimmered in thin, uneven patterns across the wood floor, almost icy-looking in their perfection.

I lifted my eyes to the rest of the living room. It was completely trashed. A lamp was knocked onto the sofa, the shade askew, and picture frames littered the floor. The rug from the kitchen was thrown up against the side of one of the end tables, slicked with water on one side, and one of the chairs keeled on its back like a bystander too shocked to stand. I stepped slowly into the living room, listening for more sounds, but the house had gone quiet.