“Rachel,” I said. “Rach. Rachel.”
She was still talking. “— like everything we used to talk about and still, no, did she use her brain? No. She —”
“Rachel,” I said. “She’s not pregnant.”
She eyed me. I thought both of us were growing a bit fatigued with the conversation. “Okay. So then, what?”
“Well, it’s going to be a bit difficult to believe. I don’t really know how to tell you. Maybe it would be better from Grace.”
“Sam,” Rachel said, “we all had to take sex ed.”
“Rachel, no. She told me I should say ‘Peter of the Plentiful Pecs’ to you. I have no idea what that means, but she said you’d know it was her then.”
I could see the words working through her as she processed the meaning and considered whether I could have gotten them through nefarious means. She asked, wary, “Why isn’t she telling me this herself, then?”
“Because you wouldn’t come over to the car!” I said. “She can’t get out of the car, and I can. She’s supposed to be missing, remember? If you’d actually come over to the car when I called to you, she was going to wave at you from the backseat.”
When she still hesitated, I rubbed my hands over my face. “Look, Rachel, just go over there and look yourself. I’ll stand here. No chance that I’m going to brain you with a beer bottle and put you in my trunk. Will that make you feel any better?”
“If you stand farther away, maybe,” Rachel said. “I’m sorry, Sam, but I watch TV. I know how these things go.”
I pressed my fingers into the bridge of my nose. “Look. Call my cell phone. It’s in the car. She’s in the car. She’ll pick it up and you can talk to her yourself. You don’t have to get anywhere near it.”
Rachel pulled her cell phone out of the side pocket of her backpack. “Tell me your number.”
I recited it and she punched it, her fingers pecking the buttons. “It’s ringing,” she said.
I pointed at the Volkswagen. Through the closed door, my cell phone was vaguely audible.
“No one is picking up,” Rachel said accusingly. Just as she said it, the driver’s side window rolled down and Grace looked over from the passenger seat.
“For crying out loud,” she said in a loud whisper, “you’re going to make everybody suspicious just standing around there. Are you guys going to get in, or what?”
Rachel’s eyes were perfectly round.
I held my hands up on either side of my head. “Now do you believe me?”
“Are you going to tell me why she’s undercover?” Rachel replied.
I gestured toward Grace. “I think that will sound better coming from her.”
• GRACE •
I had thought that the sheer fact of me would be enough for Rachel. The fact that I was living and breathing seemed like a pretty powerful recommendation for Sam’s innocence, but when it came down to it, Rachel was still uncertain. It took several minutes to coax her into the car, even after she had seen me in it.
“Just because you have Grace doesn’t mean that I’m sure about this,” Rachel said, peering at the open back door with a dubious expression. “For all I know, you’ve been giving her psychedelic mushrooms in your basement and you’d like to do the same thing to me.”
Sam glanced back at the school, his light eyes narrowed against the warm sun. He was probably thinking the same thing as me: Namely, that most everyone in Mercy Falls mistrusted him, and if someone noticed him standing at the back of a parking lot with an uncertain-looking girl, things could get unpleasant. He said, “I’m not exactly sure how to counteract that allegation.”
“Rachel, I am not drugged,” I said. “Just get in the car.”
Rachel frowned at me and then looked back to Sam. “Not until you tell me why you want to stay hidden.”
“It’s sort of a long story.”
Rachel crossed her arms. “Summarize.”
“It really, really ought to be explained.”
Rachel didn’t move. “Summarize.”
I sighed. “Rachel, I keep turning into a wolf. Don’t freak out.”
She waited for me to say something else, for it to make sense. But there wasn’t any way to make it easy for her, not when I had to summarize.
“Why would I freak out?” Rachel asked. “Just because you’re a crazy person saying crazy things? Of course you turn into a wolf. And I also turn into a zebra. Check out the stripes, they’re a leftover.”
“Rachel,” Sam said gently, “I promise it makes a lot more sense when it’s explained. If you give Grace a chance to — someplace private — it will still be weird, but not impossible.”
Rachel looked at him, aghast, and then back at me. “Sorry, Grace. But I just don’t think it sounds like the greatest idea to let him drive me back to his lair.” She held out her hand to Sam, who looked at it as if it might be a weapon. Wiggling her fingers, she added, “Let me drive.”
“Drive … to my house?” Sam asked.
Rachel nodded.
Sam looked a little flustered, but to his credit, his voice didn’t change. “How is that any different than if I drive us there?”
“I don’t know! It will make me feel better.” Her hand was still out for the key. “In the movies, no one drives themselves to their own deaths.”
Sam looked at me. His face said, Grace, help!
“Rachel,” I said firmly. “Do you even know how to drive a stick shift?”
“No,” Rachel said. “But I’m a fast learner.”
I gave her a look. “Rachel.”
“Grace, you have to admit this is pretty weird. Say it. You disappearing from the hospital and Olivia is — and Sam suddenly shows up with you and, well, the freaky hallucinogenic mushrooms are looking more and more realistic, especially when you start talking about wolves. Because next step is for Isabel Culpeper to show up saying that everybody’s going to be abducted by aliens and I have to tell you, I can’t take that in my fragile emotional state. I think that —”
I sighed. “Rachel.”
“Fine,” she said. She threw her bag in the backseat and climbed in after.
As we headed toward Beck’s house, Sam in the driver’s seat, me beside him, Rachel in the backseat, I felt suddenly and inexplicably homesick, somehow frantic with the thought of my lost life. I couldn’t think what I was so desperately missing — surely not my parents, who hadn’t been around enough to be missed — until I realized that the emotion was being triggered by the wildly sweet strawberry scent of Rachel’s shampoo. And that I missed. Afternoons and evenings with Rachel, holed up in her room or taking over my parents’ kitchen or following Olivia on one of her photography treks. I wasn’t homesick, not really, because that required a home. I was personsick. Lifesick.
I turned to the backseat and stretched out my hand to Rachel, my fingers not quite long enough to reach her. She didn’t say anything, just took my hand and clutched it tightly. We rode like that for the rest of the trip, me half-twisted and her leaning forward a little, our hands resting on the back of my seat. Sam didn’t say anything, either, except for Oh, sorry when he shifted gears too soon and the car shuddered a bit.