Linger

I was nervous about the cop being here, asking questions, but weirdly, I was more nervous because Isabel, who already knew the truth, was listening. I could imagine her crouching behind one of the shelves, arching an eyebrow scornfully when a lie fell flat on my unpracticed lips.



“You knew her, correct?” The officer had a friendly look on his face, but how friendly could someone be when he ended a question with correct?



“A little,” I said. “I met her in town a few times. But I don’t go to her school.”



“Where do you go to school?” Again, Koenig’s voice was completely pleasant and conversational. I tried to tell myself that his questions felt suspicious only because I had something to hide.



“I was homeschooled.”



“My sister was, too,” Koenig said. “Drove my mother crazy. So, you do know Grace Brisbane, though, correct?”



Again with the correct? stuff. I wondered if he was starting with the questions he already knew the answers to. I was again acutely aware of Isabel, silently listening.



“Yes,” I said. “She’s my girlfriend.”



It was a bit of information they probably didn’t have and probably didn’t need to have, but it was something that I wanted Isabel to hear for some reason.



I was surprised to see Koenig smile. “I can tell,” he said.



Though his smile seemed genuine, it made me stiffen, wondering if I was being played.



“Grace and Olivia were good friends,” Koenig continued. “Can you tell me the last time you saw Olivia? I don’t need an exact date, but as close as possible would be really helpful.”



Now he had a little blue notebook flipped open and a pen hovering over it.



“Um.” I considered. I’d seen Olivia, snow dusting her white fur, just a few weeks earlier, but I didn’t think that would be the most helpful thing to tell Koenig. “I saw her downtown. Here, actually. In front of the store. Grace and I were killing some time, and Olivia was here with her brother. But that must have been months ago. November? October? Right before she disappeared.”



“Do you think Grace has seen her more recently?”



I tried to hold his gaze. “I’m pretty sure that’s the last time she saw Olivia as well.”



“It’s really difficult for a teen to manage on his or her own,” Koenig said, and this time I felt sure that he knew all about me and that his words were loaded with meaning just for me, drifting without Beck. “Really difficult for a runaway. There are lots of reasons that kids run away, and judging from what I heard from Olivia’s teachers and family, depression might have had something to do with it. A lot of times these teens just run away because they need to get out of the house, but they don’t know how to survive out in the world. So sometimes, they only run as far away as the next house over. Sometimes—”



I interrupted him before he could get any further. “Officer…Koenig? I know what you’re trying to say, but Olivia isn’t at Grace’s house. Grace hasn’t been slipping her food or helping her out. I wish, for Olivia’s sake, that the answer was that easy. I’d love it for Grace’s sake, too. I’d love to tell you that I knew exactly where Olivia was. But we’re wondering when she’s going to come back just as much as you are.”



I wondered if this was how Grace spilled out her most useful lies—by manipulating them into something she could believe.



“You understand I had to ask,” he said.



“I know.”



“Well, thanks for your time, and please let me know if you hear anything.” Koenig started to turn, then paused. “What do you know about the woods?”



I was frozen. I was a motionless wolf hidden in the trees, praying not to be seen.



“Excuse me?” I said faintly.



“Olivia’s family said she took a lot of photos of the wolves in the woods, and that Grace is also interested in them. Do you share that interest?”



I could only nod wordlessly.



“Do you think there’s any chance she would try to make a go of it out there by herself, instead of running to another city?”



Panic clawed inside my head, as I imagined the police and Olivia’s family crawling over the acres and acres of woods, searching the trees and the pack’s shed for evidence of human life. And possibly finding it. I tried to keep my voice light. “Olivia never really struck me as the outdoorsy sort. I really doubt it.”



Koenig nodded, as if to himself. “Well, thanks again,” he said.



“No problem,” I said. “Good luck.”



The door dinged behind him; as soon as I saw his squad car pull away from the curb, I let my elbows fall onto the counter and pushed my face into my hands. God.



“Nicely done, boy wonder,” Isabel said, rising from amongst the nonfiction books with a scuffling sound on the carpet. “You hardly sounded psychotic at all.”



I didn’t reply. All of the things the cop could’ve asked about were running through my head, leaving me feeling more nervous now than when he’d been here. He could’ve asked about where Beck was. Or if I’d heard about three missing kids from Canada. Or if I knew anything about the death of Isabel Culpeper’s brother.



“What is your problem?” Isabel asked, a lot closer this time. She slid a stack of books onto the counter with her credit card on top. “You completely handled it. They’re just doing routine stuff. He’s not really suspicious. God, your hands are shaking.”



“I’d make a terrible criminal,” I replied—but that wasn’t why my hands were trembling. If Grace had been here, I would have told her the truth: that I hadn’t spoken to a cop since my parents had been sent to jail for slashing my wrists. Just seeing Officer Koenig had dredged up a thousand things I hadn’t thought about in years.



Isabel’s voice dripped scorn. “Good thing, too, because you aren’t doing anything criminal. Stop freaking out, and do your book-boy thing. I need the receipt.”



I rang up her books and bagged them, glancing at the empty street every so often. My head was a jumbled-up mess of police uniforms, wolves in the woods, and voices I hadn’t heard for a decade.



As I handed her the bag, the old scars on my wrists throbbed with buried memories.



For a moment, Isabel looked like she was going to say something more, and then she just shook her head and said, “Some people are really not cut out for deception. See you later, Sam.”



CHAPTER TWO



• COLE •



I have had no thought other than this: Stay alive.



And to have had only that thought, each day, was heaven.



We wolves ran through the sparse pine trees, our paws light on ground damp with the memory of snow. We were so close together, shoulders bumping against one another, jaws snapping playfully, bodies ducking beneath and leaping over one another like fish in a river, that it was impossible to tell where one wolf began and another ended.



Moss rubbed to bare dirt and markings on trees guided us through the woods; I could smell the rotting, growing smell of the lake before I could hear water splashing. One of the other wolves sent out a quick image: ducks gliding smoothly onto the cold blue surface of the lake. From a second wolf: a deer and her fawn walking on trembling legs to get a drink.



For me, there was nothing beyond this moment, these traded images and this silent, powerful bond.



And then, for the first time in months, I suddenly remembered that, once, I’d had fingers.



I stumbled, falling out of the pack, my shoulders bunching and twitching. The wolves wheeled, some of them doubling back to encourage me to rejoin them, but I could not follow. I twisted on the ground, slimy spring leaves pasted to my skin, the heat of the day clogged in my nostrils.



My fingers turned over the fresh black earth, jamming it beneath nails suddenly too short to defend me, smearing it in eyes that now saw in brilliant color.



I was Cole again, and spring had come too soon.



CHAPTER THREE



• ISABEL •



The day the cop came into the bookstore was the first day I had ever heard Grace complain of a headache. It probably doesn’t sound that remarkable, but since I met Grace, she had never mentioned so much as a runny nose. Also, I was something of an expert on headaches. They were a hobby of mine.



After watching Sam dance clumsily with the cop, I headed back to school, which by this stage in my life had become sort of redundant. The teachers didn’t really know what to do with me, caught as they were between my good grades and my terrible attendance record, so I got away with a lot. Our uneasy agreement basically came down to this: I’d come to class and they’d let me do what I wanted to do, as long as I didn’t corrupt the other students.



So the first thing I did when I got to Computer Arts was dutifully log in to my computer station and undutifully pull out the books I’d bought that morning. One of them was an illustrated encyclopedia of diseases—fat, dusty-smelling, and bearing a copyright of 1986. The thing was probably one of the first books The Crooked Shelf had stocked. While Mr. Grant outlined what we were supposed to be doing, I flipped through the pages, looking for the most gruesome images. There was a photograph of someone with porphyria, someone else with seborrheic dermatitis, and an image of roundworms in action that made my stomach turn over, surprising me.



Then I flipped to the M section. My fingers ran down the page to meningitis, bacterial. The back of my nose stung as I read the entire section. Causes. Symptoms. Diagnosis. Treatment. Prognosis. Mortality rate of untreated bacterial meningitis: 100 percent. Mortality rate of treated bacterial meningitis: 10 to 30 percent.



I didn’t need to look it up; I already knew the stats. I could’ve recited the whole entry. I knew more than this 1986 encyclopedia of diseases did, too, because I had read all the online journals about the newest treatments and unusual cases.



The seat next to me creaked as someone sat down; I didn’t bother to close the book as she rolled over in her chair. Grace always wore the same perfume. Or, knowing Grace, used the same shampoo.



“Isabel,” Grace said, in a relatively low voice—other students were chattering now as the project was under way. “That’s positively morbid—even for you.”



“Bite me,” I replied.



“You need therapy.” But she said it lightly.



“I’m getting it.” I looked up at her. “I’m just trying to find out how meningitis worked. I don’t think it’s morbid. Don’t you want to know how Sam’s little problem worked?”



Grace shrugged and turned back and forth in the swivelback chair, her dark blond hair falling across her flushed cheeks as she dropped her gaze to the floor. She looked uncomfortable. “It’s over now.”



“Sure,” I said.



“If you’re going to be cranky, I’m not going to sit next to you,” Grace warned. “I don’t feel good, anyway. I’d rather be home.”



“I just said ‘sure,’” I said. “That’s not cranky, Grace. Believe me, if you want me to bring out the inner—”



“Ladies?” Mr. Grant appeared at my shoulder and looked at my blank screen and Grace’s black one. “Last time I checked, this was a Computer Arts class, not a social hour.”