And then she cried out, and the girl I knew was gone, and there was only a wolf with brown eyes.
I could not bring myself to stand. I knelt, bereft, and the dark gray wolf slowly cringed back from me and Cole. From our humanness. I didn’t think I could breathe.
Grace.
“Sam,” Cole said, “I can send you with her. I can start you over, too.”
For a brief moment, I saw it. I saw myself again shuddering into the wolf, I saw my springs, hiding from drafts, I heard the sound I made when I lost myself. I remembered the moment I knew it was my last year and that for the rest of my life I’d be trapped in someone else’s body.
I remembered standing in the middle of the street in front of The Crooked Bookshelf, filled with the certainty of a future. I had heard the wolves howling behind the house and remembered how glad I had been to be human.
I couldn’t. Grace had to understand. I couldn’t.
“Cole,” I said, “get out of here. Don’t give them any more reason to look at your face. Please—”
Cole finished my sentence. “I’ll get her to the woods, Sam.”
I slowly climbed back to my feet, walked back into the emergency department through the silently swishing glass doors, and, covered in my girlfriend’s blood, lied perfectly for the first time in my life.
“I tried to stop her.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
• SAM •
So it comes to this: I would have lost her either way.
If Cole hadn’t reinfected her, I would have lost her in the hospital bed. And now Cole’s wolf toxin pumps through her veins, and I lose her to the woods, like I lose everything I love.
So here is me, and I am a boy watched—by her parents’ suspicious eyes, since they cannot prove that I kidnapped Grace but believe it nonetheless—and I am a boy watchful—because Tom Culpeper’s bitterness is growing palpable in this tiny town and I will not bury Grace’s body—and I am a boy waiting—for the heat and fruitfulness of summer, waiting to see who will walk out of those woods for me. Waiting for my lovely summer girl.
Somewhere fate laughs in her far-off country, because now I am the human and it is Grace I will lose again and again, immer wieder, always the same, every winter, losing more of her each year, unless I find a cure. A real cure this time, not some parlor trick.
Of course, it’s not just her cure. In fifteen years, it’s my cure, and Cole’s cure, and Olivia’s cure. And Beck—does his mind still sleep inside his wolf’s pelt?
I still watch her now, like I always did, and she watches me, her brown eyes looking out from a wolf’s face.
This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf, and a girl who became one.
I won’t let this be my good-bye. I’ve folded one thousand paper crane memories of me and Grace, and I’ve made my wish.
I will find a cure. And then I will find Grace.