So here I was at Beck’s house, in Sam’s bedroom. It wasn’t properly home — home still conjured up the memory of pillows that smelled like my shampoo, and my beat-up old copies of John Buchan novels that I’d gotten from a library sale so they were doubly dear, and the running-water-shaving-sound of my father getting ready for work, and the radio speaking to itself in low, earnest tones in the study, and the endlessly comfortable logic of my own routine. Did that home even exist for me anymore?
Sitting up in Sam’s bed, I was sleep-stupid and surprised to find him lying beside me, rolled up to the wall with his fingers splayed against it. I couldn’t remember a morning I’d ever woken up before him, and feeling a bit neurotic, I watched him until I saw his chest rise and fall under his ratty T-shirt.
I climbed out of the bed, expecting him to wake up at any moment, half hoping he would, half hoping he wouldn’t, but he remained in his crooked little sleeping pose, looking like he’d been tossed onto the bed.
I had that toxic combination of not enough sleep and too much wakefulness pumping through me, so it took me longer than I would’ve thought to make it out to the hallway and then another moment to remember where the bathroom was, and when I got there, I had no hairbrush and no toothbrush and the only thing I could find to wear was one of Sam’s T-shirts with a logo on it from a band I didn’t recognize. So I used his toothbrush, telling myself with every stroke across my teeth that this was no grosser than kissing him, and almost believing it. I found his hairbrush next to a disreputable-looking razor and used one but not the other.
I looked in the mirror. It felt like I was living life on the wrong side of it. Time passing didn’t mean anything here. I said, “I want to tell Rachel I’m alive.”
It didn’t sound unreasonable, until I started thinking about how it could go wrong.
I checked back in the bedroom — Sam was still sleeping — and headed downstairs. Part of me wanted him to be awake, but the other part of me liked this quiet feeling of being both alone and not lonely. It reminded me of all the times I’d sat reading or doing homework with Sam in the same room. Together but silent, two moons in companionable orbit.
Downstairs, I found Cole sprawled on the couch, sleeping with one arm stretched above his head. Remembering that there was a coffeepot in the basement, I tiptoed down the hall and crept down the stairs.
The basement was a cozy but somewhat disorienting place — draftless and windowless, all the light coming from lamps, making it impossible to tell the time. It was strange to be back in the basement, and I felt a weird, misplaced sense of sadness. The last time I’d been down here had been after the car crash, talking with Beck after Sam had shifted into a wolf. I’d thought he was gone forever. Now it was Beck who was lost.
I started the coffeepot and sat in the chair I’d sat in when I spoke to Beck. Behind his empty chair stretched the bookshelves with the hundreds of books he’d never read again. Every wall was covered with them; the coffeepot was nestled on the few inches of shelf not occupied by books. I wondered how many there were. Were there ten in a foot of shelf space? Maybe one thousand books. Maybe more than that. Even from here, I could see that they were tidily organized, non-fiction by subject, battered novels by author.
I wanted a library like this by the time I was Beck’s age. Not this library. A cave of words that I’d made myself. I didn’t know if that would be possible now.
Sighing, I stood and browsed the shelves until I found that Beck had a few education books, and then I sat on the floor with them, carefully setting my coffee mug beside me. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been reading when I heard the stairs creak softly. Glancing up, I saw a set of bare feet descending: Cole, looking musty and sleep-tussled, a line in the side of his face where the couch pillow had pressed into it.
“Hi, Brisbane,” he said.
“Hi,” I said. “St. Clair.”
Cole unplugged the coffeepot and brought the entire thing over to the floor where I was. He topped my coffee up and poured a cup for himself, silent and solemn during the entire process. Then he turned his head to read the titles of the books I’d pulled out.
“Distance learning, eh? Heady stuff first thing in the morning.”
I ducked my head. “This is all Beck had.”
Cole read further. “Acing the CLEP test. Legitimate online degrees. How to be an educated werewolf without leaving the comfort of your own basement. Bothers you, doesn’t it? School, I mean.”
I glanced up at him. I hadn’t thought I sounded upset. I hadn’t thought I was that upset. “No. Okay, yeah. It does. I wanted to go to college. I wanted to finish high school. I like studying.” I realized after I’d said it that Cole had chosen NARKOTIKA over college. I wasn’t sure how to explain the thrill I used to get when I considered college. I wasn’t sure how to describe the anticipation when I looked at course catalogs — all those possibilities — or just the sheer pleasure of opening up a new notebook and a new textbook next to it. The appeal of being someplace with a bunch of other people who also liked studying. Of having a tiny apartment that I could rule like a queen, my way, all the time. Feeling a little silly, I added, “I guess that sounds corny, doesn’t it.”
But Cole looked thoughtfully into his coffee cup and said, “Mmm, studying. I’m a fan, myself.” He pulled one of the books to him and opened it to a random page. The chapter heading read Studying the World From Your Armchair and there was a graphic of a stick figure doing just that. “Do you remember everything that happened in the hospital?”
He was asking in that ask me more way, so I did. He detailed the events of the night, from when I’d started throwing up blood, to Sam and him taking me to the hospital, to Cole puzzling out science to save me. And then he told me about my father punching Sam.
I thought I must’ve misunderstood him. “He didn’t really hit him, though, right? I mean, you just mean that he …”
“No, he whaled him,” Cole remarked.
I took a sip of my coffee. I wasn’t sure what was weirder, to consider my dad punching Sam, or to realize how much I had missed while lying in a hospital bed or shifting. Suddenly the time I spent as a wolf felt even more like lost time, hours I’d never get back. Like my effective lifespan had been abruptly halved.
I stopped thinking about that, and started thinking about my father hitting Sam instead.
“I think,” I said, “that makes me angry. Sam didn’t hit him back, did he?”
Cole laughed and poured himself some more coffee.
“And so I was never really cured,” I said.
“No. You just didn’t shift, which isn’t the same thing. The St. Clairs — I hope you don’t mind, I’m naming the werewolf toxins after myself, for purposes of the Nobel Peace Prize or Pulitzer or whatever — were all built up inside you.”
“So Sam’s not cured, either,” I said. I put my coffee cup down and shoved the books away from me. For it all to have been a waste — everything we’d done — it was just too much. The idea of a big library and a red coffeepot of my own seemed completely unreachable.
“Well,” Cole replied, “I don’t know about that. After all, he made himse — Oh, look, here’s miracle boy now. Good morning, Ringo.”