I imagined Olivia darting through the woods in her new wolf body, before pulling my mind back to what Sam was saying. “Really? Already? So someone might have seen her?”
Sam shook his head. “She’ll only have a few minutes as a human in this weather; I really doubt anyone could’ve seen her. It’s just…it’s just a practice run for later.” He was lost to me then, his eyes someplace far away. Maybe remembering what it was like for him back when he was a new wolf. I inadvertently shuddered; thinking about Sam and his parents always got to me. A nasty chill clenched in my stomach until Sam went back to playing his guitar. For several long minutes, he walked his fingers up and down chords, and when it became obvious that he was done speaking for the moment, I dropped my gaze back to my resolutions. My mind wasn’t really on them, though; it was circling the idea of young Sam shifting back and forth while his parents looked on in horror. I doodled a 3-D rectangle on the corner of the page.
Finally, Sam said, “What are you doing? It looks suspiciously creative.”
“Slightly creative,” I said. I looked at him, eyebrow raised, until he smiled. Strumming a chord, he sang, “Has Grace quitted herself of numbers / and given herself to words?”
“That doesn’t even rhyme.”
“Abandoned all her algebra / and taken to penning verbs?” Sam finished.
I made a face at him. “Words and verbs don’t really rhyme. I’m writing my New Year’s resolutions.”
“They do rhyme,” he insisted. Bringing his guitar over to the table and sitting across from me—the guitar made a low, musical thump as it lightly struck the edge of the table—he added, “I’m going to watch. I’ve never written any resolutions before. I’d like to see what organization in progress looks like.”
He drew the open journal across the table toward him, his eyebrows tipping low over his eyes. “What’s this?” he asked. “Resolution number three: Choose a college. You’ve already picked a college?”
I slid the journal back to my side of the table and turned quickly to a blank page. “I did not. I got distracted by this cute boy who turned into a wolf. This is the first year I haven’t made all of my resolutions, and it’s all your fault. I need to get back on track.”
Smile slightly faded, Sam scraped his chair back and rested his guitar against the wall. From the countertop next to the phone he got a pen and an index card. “Okay, then. Let’s make new ones.”
I wrote Get a job. He wrote Keep loving my job. I wrote Stay madly in love. He wrote Stay human.
“Because I’ll always be madly in love,” he said, looking at his index card instead of my face.
I kept looking at him, his eyes hidden behind his lashes, until he lifted them back up to me.
“So are you going to put Pick a college on there again?” he asked.
“Are you?” I asked back, keeping my voice light. The question felt loaded—we were edging into the first conversation that really addressed what life would look like this side of winter, now that Sam could live a real life. The closest college to Mercy Falls was in Duluth, an hour away, and all of my other, pre-Sam choices were even farther.
“I asked first.”
“Sure,” I said, sounding glib rather than carefree. I scribbled down Pick a college in a hand that looked completely different from the rest of my list. “Now, are you?” My heart was unexpectedly thrumming with something like panic.
But instead of answering, Sam stood and went to the kitchen. I swiveled to watch him put on the teakettle. He brought down two mugs from the cabinet over the stove; for some reason, the familiarity of this easy movement filled me with affection. I fought the urge to go stand behind him and wrap my arms around his chest.
“Beck wanted me to go to law school,” Sam said, fingering the edge of my favorite robin’s-egg-blue mug. “He never told me, but I heard him tell Ulrik.”
“It’s hard to imagine you as a lawyer,” I said.
Sam smiled a self-deprecating smile and shook his head. “I can’t imagine myself as a lawyer, either. I can’t imagine myself as anything yet, to tell you the truth. I know that sounds…terrible. Like I have no ambition.” Again, his eyebrows drew together, pensive. “But this idea of a future is really new to me. Until this month, I never thought I could go to college. I don’t want to rush into it.”
I must have been just staring at him, because he added, hurriedly, “But I don’t want you to have to wait, Grace. I don’t want to keep you from going ahead because I can’t make up my mind.”
Feeling childish, I said, “We could go someplace together.”
The kettle whistled. Sam pulled it from the heat as he said, “I somehow doubt that the same college will be ideal for a budding math genius and a boy in love with moody poetry. I suppose it’s possible.” He stared out the kitchen window at the frozen gray woods. “I don’t know if I can really leave, though. At all. Who will take care of the pack?”
“I thought that was why the new wolves were made,” I said. The words sounded strange in my mouth. Callous. As if the pack dynamic were an artificial, engineered thing, which of course it wasn’t. Nobody knew what the newcomers were like. Nobody but Beck, of course, but he wasn’t talking.
Sam rubbed his forehead, pressing his palm over his eyes; he did it a lot since he’d come back. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “I know that’s what they’re for.”
“He would’ve wanted you to go,” I said. “And I still think we could find a school together.”
Sam looked at me, his fingers still pressed into his temple as if he’d forgotten they were there. “I’d like that.” He paused. “I’d really like—I’d like to meet the new wolves and see what kind of people they are, though. It’ll make me feel better. Maybe I’ll go after that. After I’m sure everything’s taken care of here.”
I put a jagged line through Pick a college. “I’ll wait for you,” I said.
“Not forever,” Sam said.
“No, if you turn out to be useless, I’ll go without you.” I tapped my pencil on my teeth. “I think we should look around for the new wolves tomorrow. And Olivia. I’ll call Isabel and ask her about the wolves she saw in her woods.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Sam said. He returned to his list at the table and added something to it. Then he smiled at me and spun the index card so that I could read it right side up.
Listen to Grace.
• SAM •
Later, I thought of the things I could have added to the list of resolutions, things I’d wanted back before I realized what being a wolf meant for my future. Things like Write a novel and Find a band and Get a degree in obscure poetry in translation and Travel the world. It felt indulgent and fanciful to be considering those things now after reminding myself for so long that they were impossible.
I tried to imagine myself filling out a college application. Writing a synopsis. Tacking a sign saying drummers wanted on the corkboard opposite Beck’s post office box. The words danced in my head, dazzling in their sudden nearness. I wanted to add them to my index card of resolutions, but I just…couldn’t.