Part 34 (1/2)

Telling the truth gives you strength.

Telling Yayeko gave me strength. Even though she didn't believe me it made me feel more real, more like someone.

I used to think I was nothing: not black, not white; not a girl, not a boy; not human, not a wolf. Not dangerous, but not exactly safe. Not crazy, but not entirely sane.

I felt like nothing at all.

I thought that half of everything added up to nothing. I was a nonperson who belonged nowhere. Not in the city, not with the Greats.

I have never known what I was. If I'm not completely any one thing, then what am I? Who am I? Something in between?

Or nothing?

I don't think that now: half of everything is something, not nothing.

Lots of somethings.

AFTER.

This is what I thought would happen. This is what could have happened. This is what did happen.

We go to a track at the local middle school where Yayeko's daughter is a member of the girls' basketball team. Yayeko talks to the track team's coach. He's thin and lean-muscled like a marathon runner. A silver whistle bounces at his chest when he moves. I don't know what she says but he agrees to let me race with his sprinters. A hundred-meter sprint.

They line up, putting their feet in the blocks. They are all smaller than me. Except for one boy who is muscle-heavy and tall for a fourteen-year-old.

I have never raced before. Never put my feet in blocks. I glance at them, copy what they do. Place my hands precisely on the line just as they do. The muscly boy notices and grins. He thinks he's about to blast me. I know better.

When their coach blows his whistle I stumble, but then I find my balance, lift my knees high, pump my elbows. I do everything Zach taught me. The track is springy, the give helps propel me along. I run faster than I ever have before. I pa.s.s the other sprinters. Easy. There's a hum of air past my ears. I turn with the track. The world blurs. It feels so good that I'm long past the finish line before I stop.

I jog up to Yayeko and the coach. They're staring at me.

”Holy s.h.i.+t, girl,” the muscly boy says. He's staring at me, too. So are all the runners. Their mouths are open. All set to catch flies, Grandmother would say.

The coach looks at his stopwatch, then at me, then at the stopwatch again. The whistle around his neck bounces with every twitch. ”Just over eight and a half seconds,” he says at last. ”I must have made a mistake.”

I have beaten the men's world record. Crushed it. I grin at Yayeko. She is ashen.

”We need to do it again,” the coach says.

I laugh. ”Wanna see me run a mile?”

HISTORY OF ME.

Maybe it was ten seconds?

I'm dizzy.

So many lies.

I thought I'd done better than this.

What number lie is this? Eight? Nine? Ten? I can't even figure out how to count them anymore.

The fabric of my life unravels. Is anything I've said true?

It's cold in here. Dark, too. No windows.

My grip slips. The cogs grind. Do I know anything that's true?

Actual real genuine true truth.

Is there anything at all?

I'm a wolf.

A wolf. All the way down to the marrow of my bones. Every cell. Every fiber.

Wolf = me.

That's all I've got.

AFTER.

I do know what's real and what's not.

I did run on that track. I did prove what I am. But not the way I said.

Here's how it really happened.

Yayeko does not believe me. Though she pretends she does. Or at least she lets me stay. She introduces me to her daughter, who is fourteen years old and wary. Megan holds a basketball behind her back and stays in the doorway, her hair falling over her eyes. She's short. Shorter than Yayeko. Point guard.

”Wanna shoot some outside?” I ask. I noticed a netless hoop on the side of the apartment building on our way here.

The girl's still looking down.

”Answer her, Megan.”

Megan mumbles.

Yayeko's mother arrives, pulling a briefcase on wheels through the door, dressed in a suit, tiny and elegant and frostily polite. I smile. She smiles. She makes me feel oversized and badly designed. We eat Lebanese delivery. After, I wash. Yayeko's mother dries. As soon as the dishes are done she disappears into her room, as Megan has long since disappeared into her own.

From Yayeko's room I hear phone calls. First she calls Mom and Dad. Her side of the conversation is spa.r.s.e. She must be talking to Dad. He doesn't want to hear what she has to say. I hear Yayeko straining not to raise her voice. Then the call's over. I wonder what Dad said. ”Keep that monster away from me!” Or worse.

The next call isn't short. Nor the one after. No one wants to take me in.

Yayeko comes back into the kitchen, blinks at me, sits at the table opposite.

I can't imagine this working.

She talks about making the couch into a bed, wonders about whether I should go back to school. I'm all paid up, after all. She prattles on like this and I nod and grunt and think about whether I should go back to the farm.