Part 18 (2/2)

I reached for my bag while crawling to the door, groped inside for the cell phone. The pain was spreading all over my body.

I was sure I would die.

Somehow I got out of the cla.s.sroom. Somehow I got the phone into my hands. Pressed for Dad. Screamed for him to come get me. Told him I would be getting home as fast as I could. The school was only five blocks from home: one avenue, four streets. Running was fastest. Ordinarily I would be home in minutes.

But liquid muscles, moving bones, pain in every fiber, every cell.

I kept moving: toward the exit, down the few steps, out onto the street.

I didn't know if I was going to make it, if I was going to turn into a wolf on First Avenue in the daylight of a busy Thursday afternoon.

The teacher was still hovering, I think. Had she followed me? Maybe it was someone else. More than one. My eyes weren't processing right. There were less colors. I saw red. I saw yellow. But mostly red. But I knew which way to go. Down. South. West.

I kept moving.

They were calling my name. I concentrated on breathing, willing the change to slow, for the one foot after the other to turn into a run. I think I progressed to a shuffle. I don't know how many blocks I got before Dad grabbed me, pulling me along.

I heard shouting and questions. I squeezed my eyes shut.

By the time Dad pushed me into the elevator there was fur all over my arms and I was bent double. I could smell the fear and sweat of my father. Or was that me?

I'd never been in so much pain. I was going back into the cage. I wasn't sure which was worse.

As Dad dragged me into the apartment, into my room, into the cage, the bones were trying to push their way out of my face. I could no longer see. Or hear. My eyeb.a.l.l.s and eardrums had exploded.

Then I was a wolf.

In a three-by-six cage and hungrier than I have ever been in my life.

Dad told me afterward that I howled for twenty minutes straight. He'd lied to the neighbors to keep them from calling the police. I don't know what lies he told, but after that they all looked at me funny.

FAMILY HISTORY.

My biology obsession ignited after my first change. I'd always been interested but now it was a pa.s.sion, no, it was a necessity. I had to know what I was, how I was. I had to learn more.

How was it possible? How did ma.s.s reshape itself like that? I was a 105-pound twelve-year-old. I became a 105-pound wolf. It made sense when I thought of the conservation of matter. Equal weight. Both mammals. Both warm-blooded. It would be much weirder if I were to turn into a snake, go from warm-blooded to cold. From human to python. Or what if I changed into a slug? No blood, no bones. No slug has ever weighed even close to 100 pounds.

Human to wolf: matter is conserved. But how do I change?

How does the hair come and go, bones s.h.i.+ft and grow and shrink? How can I be a wolf and a human?

When I change back, am I the same human I was? Is it the same skin, the same cells? Or am I re-created each time? A new wolf, a new human. If so, why do my memories not change? Or do they and I just don't know it?

Who am I? What am I?

To understand, I was sure-I am sure-I had to learn how humans function. How we absorb and expend energy. What happens when we breathe. What we are made of. Genes, DNA. I had to learn the same about wolves.

I have to understand how I am in order to understand what I am.

I know so little. I don't know if I'll ever know enough.

I can say ”werewolf.” But I don't know what that means. Not below the surface of my skin, of my hide.

I've asked Grandmother, Great-Aunt Dorothy. They have a few answers, but not enough. Most of the time they don't even understand my questions.

I asked Grandmother why she'd tried to breed the werewolf out of her children.

She denied it.

”But your story?” I asked. ”About finding someone who wasn't a werewolf to have a baby with . . . about marrying out so you could weaken the family illness?”

Grandmother clucked. ”That was a story for your father. I'm proud of the wolf in me. In you. I would never try to kill it. Why do you think I work so hard to keep this place the way it is? To make it bigger? Why do you think I want you here?”

”Then why?” I began. ”Who, I mean. Who was my grandfather?”

”You won't tell your father?”

I thought of all the lies he'd told me, everything he'd kept hidden. ”No. I promise I won't tell him.” I thought of the lies Grandmother had told me. I could break my promise.

”Your father's not a wolf. He doesn't understand.” For a second her eyes seemed yellow. ”Your grandfather was a local boy. Never saw him more than once or twice. He wrote me letters. I never answered. That was that.”

”Is he still alive? My grandfather?”

Grandmother didn't answer at first, looking at her bony hands, her scarred knuckles. ”He's long gone.”

HISTORY OF ME.

Grandmother said that taking the pill to stop the change was an abomination. That we were killing an essential part of me. That if we kept the wolf in me down it would eat away at the human. It was too dangerous. I could explode. I would explode. Her arguments were not rational.

Grandmother says it gets easier. That putting it off only makes the next change worse.

I didn't care. I would not live on the farm. Not for more than the summer. I could not be a wolf in a cage. Even if it was possible, which it wasn't. The neighbors might not have called the police that first time, but it was unlikely they'd refrain twice. What would happen when the cops found a wolf in a cage? It's not legal to keep a wolf as a pet in New York City. What if they came and it was human me in the cage waiting to change? What if they saw me change?

Never again, Dad decided. Never again would he deal with me changing in the city.

They decided to send me to the farm.

Forever.

Living without electricity, without hot water, without my parents, without anything I cared about. With my grandmother, my great-aunt Dorothy, my aunts and uncles and cousins who could barely read and write, let alone do calculus or trigonometry. Who know as little about fast-twitch muscles or mitochondrial DNA as they know about how to catch a cab or how to order a pizza.

No college. No future. No life. I would never unlock werewolf DNA. I would never understand what I am.

I would rather die.

I cried for two days straight. While Mom and Dad told me in turns why my living in the city was impossible.

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