“I’m sorry!” I said. I couldn’t tell if he’d heard me. Stepping over him, I hurried into the kitchen, hitting light switches as I did. I grabbed a wad of dishcloths from a drawer; as I did, I noticed my dad’s car keys on the counter, hastily thrown next to a pile of papers from work. So I could use Dad’s car, if I had to.
I ran back to the door. I was afraid the boy might’ve disappeared while my back was turned, a figment of my imagination, but he hadn’t moved. He lay half in and half out, shaking violently.
Without thinking, I grabbed him under his armpits and dragged him far enough inside that I could shut the door. In the light of the breakfast area, blood smearing a path across the floor, he seemed tremendously real.
I crouched swiftly. My voice was barely a whisper. “What happened?” I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear file:///C|/Users/layj/Desktop/Mistys%20to%20Convert/Maggie%20Stiefvater%20-%20Shiver%20(html).html[6/2/2010 10:42:14 AM]
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him speak.
His knuckles were white where his hand was pressed against his neck, brilliant red leaking around his fingers.
“Shot.”
My stomach squeezed with nerves, not from what he said, but the voice that said it. It was him. Human words, not a howl, but the timbre was the same. It was him. “Let me see.”
I had to pry his hands away from his neck. There was too much blood to see the wound, so I just pressed one of the dishcloths over the mess of red that stretched from his chin to his collarbone. It was well beyond my first-aid abilities. “Hold this.” His eyes flicked to me, familiar but subtly different. The wildness was tempered with a comprehension that had been absent before.
“I don’t want to go back.” The agony in his words immediately transported me to a memory: a wolf standing in silent grief before me. The boy’s body jerked, a weird, unnatural movement that hurt to think about. “Don’t—don’t let me change.”
I laid a second, bigger dishcloth over his body, covering the goose bumps as best I could. In any other context, I would’ve been embarrassed by his nakedness, but here, his skin smeared with blood and dirt, it just made his condition seem more pitiful. My words were gentle, as though he might still leap up and run. “What’s your name?”
He groaned softly, one hand shaking just a bit as he held the cloth against his neck. It was already soaked through with his blood, and a thin red trail ran along his jaw and dripped to the floor. Lowering himself slowly to the floor, he laid his cheek against the wood, his breath clouding the shiny finish. “Sam.”
He closed his eyes.
“Sam,” I repeated. “I’m Grace. I’m going to go start my dad’s car. I have to take you to the hospital.”
He shuddered. I had to lean very close to hear his voice. “Grace—Grace, I—”
I only waited a second for him to finish. When he didn’t, I jumped up and grabbed the keys from the counter. I still couldn’t quite believe that he wasn’t my own invention—years of wishing made real. But whatever he was, he was here now, and I wasn’t about to lose him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN • SAM
45°F
I was not a wolf, but I wasn’t Sam yet, either.
I was a leaking womb bulging with the promise of conscious thoughts: the frozen woods far behind me, the girl on the tire swing, the sound of fingers on metal strings. The future and the past, both the same, snow and then summer and then snow again.
A shattered spider’s web of many colors, cracked in ice, immeasurably sad.
“Sam,” the girl said. “Sam.”
She was past present future. I wanted to answer, but I was broken.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN • GRACE
45°F
It’s rude to stare, but the great thing about staring at a sedated person is that they don’t know you’re doing it. And file:///C|/Users/layj/Desktop/Mistys%20to%20Convert/Maggie%20Stiefvater%20-%20Shiver%20(html).html[6/2/2010 10:42:14 AM]
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the truth was, I couldn’t stop staring at Sam. If he’d gone to my school, he probably would’ve been dismissed as an emo kid or maybe a long-lost member of the Beatles. He had that sort of moptop black hair and interestingly shaped nose that a girl could never get away with. He looked nothing like a wolf, but everything like my wolf. Even now, without his familiar eyes open, a little part of me kept jumping with irrational glee, reminding myself—it’s him.
“Oh, honey, are you still here? I thought you’d left.”
I turned as the green curtains parted to admit a broad-shouldered nurse. Her name tag read SUNNY.
“I’m staying until he wakes up.” I held on to the side of the hospital bed as if to prove how difficult it would be to remove me.
Sunny smiled pityingly at me. “He’s been heavily sedated, hon. He won’t wake up until the morning.”
I smiled back at her, my voice firm. “Then that’s how long I’m staying.” I’d already waited hours while they removed the bullet and stitched the wound; it had to be after midnight by now. I kept waiting to feel sleepy, but I was wired. Every time I saw him it was like another jolt. It occurred to me, belatedly, that my parents hadn’t bothered to call my cell phone when they got back from Mom’s gallery opening. They probably hadn’t even noticed the bloody towel I’d used to hurriedly wipe up the floor, or the fact that Dad’s car was missing. Or maybe they just hadn’t gotten home yet. Midnight was early for them.
Sunny’s smile stayed in place. “Okay, then,” she said. “You know, he’s awfully lucky. For the bullet to just graze him?” Her eyes glittered. “Do you know why he did it?”
I frowned at her, nerves prickling. “I don’t follow. Why he was in the woods?”
“Hon, you and I both know he wasn’t in the woods.”
I raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to say something else, but she didn’t. I said, “Uh, yeah. He was. A hunter accidentally shot him.” It wasn’t a lie. Well, all but the “accidentally” part. I was pretty confident it was no accident.
Sunny clucked. “Look—Grace, isn’t it? Grace, are you his girlfriend?”
I grunted in a way that could be interpreted as either yes or no, depending on how the listener was leaning.
Sunny took it as a yes. “I know you’re really close to the situation, but he does need help.”
Realization dawned on me. I almost laughed. “You think he shot himself. Look—Sunny, isn’t it? Sunny, you’re wrong.”