Part 19 (1/2)

I would not listen. There had to be another way.

Dad found it.

He learned that the pill can be used to suppress menstruation. He figured it would stop me turning into a wolf, too.

It did. It does.

But the first time we tried it was on the farm where it wouldn't matter if it went wrong. I refused to go up unless they promised I'd get to go home. No matter what happened.

They promised, but I'm not sure what would have happened if it hadn't worked. It wasn't as if Dad had never broken a promise to me before. My hopes were pinned on Mom. If she let me down, then I was going to run all the way back to the city. I would not stay on the farm.

Didn't come to that because it worked. I didn't bleed, I didn't turn into a wolf. I can keep the wolf inside. One pill a day.

My life wasn't over. Though Grandmother kept telling me that it should be, about the terrible mistake I was making, Dad was making. That this would rebound on me a hundredfold.

She calmed down a bit when we agreed to my returning each summer. Not taking the pill, being a wolf, running wild. It makes her and Hilliard happy. I can give away three months of my life each year. For their sake.

HISTORY OF ME.

Grandmother is right. When I am a wolf I cannot be in the city. When I changed that first time the pain of the change was worse than anything I'd ever experienced. The Greats had talked about the pain but they hadn't explained that changing back would be as bad.

Wolf to human. Curled wolf nails retracting into flesh. Everything in reverse, but every bit as searing, bone-breaking, cell-crus.h.i.+ng. There is nothing of a human that is the same size as that of a wolf. Not our lungs, our toes, our livers, our teeth, not even the shafts of our hair. Nothing is the same. All of it has to change.

Going from one to the other and back is the worst pain I have ever experienced and yet being trapped in that tiny cage . . . I thought I would lose my mind.

I could not run.

I could not even pace.

There was no hunt, no play, no running. The smells were metallic and dusty and human but what I heard was worse: machine hums and rattles and beeps, electricity in everything, loud thuds and thrums, squeaks and squeals from the street below. The noise was unendurable. The wolf-me wanted to run. Had to run. Couldn't run. Couldn't close my ears either.

I was unjointed, jangled, dis...o...b..bulated. Many more times in that cage and the wolf would go insane.

I was more than glancing at the forest. I longed for it with every cell.

I could not be a wolf in the city. But I could not be a human on the farm.

HISTORY OF ME.

That's not entirely true. (You're shocked, I can tell.) I don't spend summers upstate solely to make my grandmother happy. I hate being on the farm when I'm human, but I love it when I'm a wolf.

There is nothing better. Happiness is flat-out full-bore wolf speed. The taste of raw deer that I killed myself. The ease of sleeping, of waking, of being. Hanging out with Great-Uncle Hilliard.

The first summer I was there after the change was the first time I was a wolf without a cage. My second time as a wolf.

I loved it.

No, that's too weak a word. I adored it. Wors.h.i.+pped it.

After I changed, after the blood and hair and teeth of me s.h.i.+fted, after the pain, my universe expanded.

My hearing surged. Wolfish me can hear everything: the faintest movement of rabbit, fox, deer, even rays of sun hitting the ground. Good sounds. Because there's no electricity on the farm there are no buzzes and clicks to make my fur stand on end.

I ran.

When I run as a human I'm fast, but it's the faintest echo of how it is when I'm a wolf.

Hilliard knocked me over. Nipped me. b.u.t.ted me with his head. Showed me how to run like a wolf. Taught me how to hunt.

Wolf life is cleaner, safer, happier.

When I want to play, I play. Sleep, I sleep.

There's no angst or hesitation or doubt or anxiety or madness.

Turning human, the world closes in. My perceptions dull. For a human my senses are sharp, but I don't smell or hear anywhere close to how I do in my wolfishness. When I'm human my head is hammered with dark thoughts and feelings and confusion.

When I'm the wolf I don't remember much of the human, but sometimes when I'm human all I can remember is the wolf.

I want it.

I want to throw the pills in the trash, flush them down the toilet. Never take one of those tiny pills again.

I want to run wild. I want falcons above, rocks, dirt, plants, and mulch beneath my paws. Trees all around. Drink from a stream, eat what I kill.

Wolf kin makes sense. Human? Not so much.

FAMILY HISTORY.

There's one other thing that can (rarely) bring on the change: going into heat, rutting.

That's why I'm not allowed to have a boyfriend. Why my parents grounded me when they found out about Zach.

They don't want me to run any risk of changing in the city. Even so unlikely a risk has to be avoided, even if the precedent is rare and disputed.

Great-Aunt Dorothy remembers it happening; Grandmother says it's horses.h.i.+t.

Great-Aunt also says that the same werewolf who changed when he went into heat also changed at the smell of blood-not menstrual blood, any blood-as well as at the scent of prey. In fact, the reek of fear-even anxiety-set him off, whether it came from prey or not. So many things triggered change in him that by the time he was twenty-five he had become a wolf permanently.

I am not like that.

My dad listened to all their tales but the only thing he took away was that I must not ever have s.e.x.

My parents did not notice that blood does not set me off, prey neither, and the scent of fear? Of anxiety? The rooms and halls of my school exude it. So does every street of the city.