I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t what I thought she’d wanted to chat about. Beck’s chair still had some momentum, so I let it turn another time. My tired eyes felt like they were being pickled in my skull. I wondered if Cole was awake yet. I wondered if he was still breathing. I remembered a small, stocking-hatted boy being pushed into a snowbank by wolves. I thought about how far away Grace must be by now.
“Sam. Did you hear me?”
“Helicopters,” I said. “Sharpshooters. Yes.”
Her voice was cool. “Grace, shot through the head from three hundred yards.”
It stung, but in the way that distant, hypothetical horrors did, like disasters reported on the news. “Isabel,” I said, “what do you want from me?”
“What I always want,” she replied. “For you to do something.”
And in that moment, I missed Grace, more than I had during any time in the past two months. I missed her so hard that it actually did make me catch my breath, like her absence was something real stuck in the back of my throat. Not because having her here would solve these problems, or because it would make Isabel let me be. But for the sharp, selfish reason that if Grace were here, she would have answered that question differently. She would know that when I asked, I didn’t want an answer. She’d tell me to go sleep, and I would be able to. And then this long, terrible day would end, and when I woke up in the morning, everything would look more plausible. Morning lost its healing powers when it arrived and found you already wide-eyed and wary.
“Sam. God, am I talking to myself?” Over the line, I heard the chime cars made when a door was opened. And then a sharp intake of breath as the door shut.
I realized I was being an ingrate. “I’m sorry, Isabel. It’s just been — it’s been a really long day.”
“Tell me about it.” Her feet crunched across gravel. “Is he all right?”
I walked the phone down the hallway. I had to wait a moment to let my eyes adjust to the pools of lamplight — I was so tired that every light source had halos and ghostly trails — and waited for the requisite rise and fall of Cole’s chest.
“Yes,” I whispered. “He’s sleeping.”
“More than he deserves,” Isabel said.
I realized that it was time to stop pretending to be oblivious. Probably well past time. “Isabel,” I said, “what went on between you two?”
Isabel was silent.
“You aren’t my business.” I hesitated. “But Cole is.”
“Oh, Sam, it’s a little late to be pulling the authority card now.”
I didn’t think that she meant to be cruel, but it smarted. It was only by imagining what Grace had told me of Isabel — of her getting Grace through my disappearance, when Grace had thought I was dead — that kept me on the phone. “Just tell me. Is there something going on between you two?”
“No,” Isabel snapped.
I heard the real meaning, and maybe she meant for me to. It was a no that meant not at the moment. I thought of her face when she saw the needle beside Cole and wondered just how big of a lie that no was. I said, “He’s got a lot to work through. He’s not good for anyone, Isabel.”
She didn’t answer right away. I pressed my fingers against my head, feeling the ghost of the meningitis headache. Looking at the cards on the computer screen, I could see that I had no more options. The timer said it had taken me seven minutes and twenty-one seconds to realize I’d lost.
“Neither,” Isabel said, “were you.”
• COLE •
Back on the planet called New York, my father, Dr. George St. Clair, MD, PhD, Mensa, Inc., was a fan of the scientific process. He was a good mad scientist. He cared about the why. He cared about the how. Even when he didn’t care about what it was doing to the subject, he cared about how you could state the formula to replicate the experiment.
Me, I cared about results.
I also cared, very deeply, about not being like my father in any way. In fact, most of my life decisions were based around the philosophy of not being Dr. George St. Clair.
So it was painful to have to agree with him on something so important to him, even if he’d never know about it. But when I opened my eyes, feeling like my insides had been pounded flat, the first thing I did was feel for the journal on the nightstand beside me. I had woken earlier, found myself alive on the living room floor — that was a surprise — and crawled to my bedroom to sleep or finish the process of dying. Now, my limbs felt like they’d been assembled by a factory with lousy quality control. Squinting in gray light that could’ve been any time of day or night, I opened the journal up with fingers that felt like inanimate objects. I had to turn past pages of Beck’s handwriting to get to my own, and then I wrote the date and copied the format I’d used on the days before. My handwriting on the facing page was a bit sturdier than the letters I scratched down now.
EPINEPHRINE/PSEUDOEPHEDRINE MIX 4
METHOD: INTRAVENOUS INJECTION
RESULT: SUCCESSFUL
(SIDE EFFECTS: SEIZURE)
I closed the book and rested it on my chest. I’d pop the champagne over my discovery just as soon as I could stay awake. When progress stopped feeling so much like a disease.
I closed my eyes again.
• GRACE •
When I first became a wolf, I didn’t know the first thing about how to survive.
When I’d first come to the pack, the things I didn’t know wildly outnumbered the things that I did: how to hunt, how to find the other wolves when I got lost, where to sleep. I couldn’t speak to the others. I didn’t understand the riot of gestures and images that they used.
I knew this, though: If I gave into fear, I’d die.
I started by learning how to find the pack. It was by accident. Alone and hungry and feeling a hollow that food wouldn’t fill regardless, I’d tipped my head back in despair and keened into the cold darkness. It was a wail more than a howl, pure and lonely. It echoed against the rocks near me.
And then, a few moments later, I heard a reply. A yipping howl that didn’t last long. Then another. It took me a few moments to realize that it was waiting for me to respond. I howled again, and then, immediately, the other wolf replied. It had not finished howling when another wolf began, and another. If their howls echoed, I couldn’t hear it; they were far away.
But far away was nothing. This body never got tired.
So I learned how to find the other wolves. It took me days to learn the mechanics of the pack. There was the large black wolf that was clearly in charge. His greatest weapon was his gaze: A sharp look would effectively send one of the other pack members to their belly. Anyone but the large gray wolf who was nearly as respected: He would merely flatten his ears back and lower his tail, only slightly deferential.
From them, I learned the language of dominance. Teeth over muzzle. Lips pulled back. Hair raised along spine.
And from the bottommost members of the pack, I learned about submission. The belly presented to the sky, the eyes directed downward, the lowering of one’s whole body to look small.
Every day, the lowest wolf, a sickly thing with a running eye, was reminded of his place. He was snapped at, pinned to the ground, forced to eat last. I thought that being the lowest would be bad, but there was something worse: being ignored.