Part 35 (1/2)

AFTER.

Yayeko believes me now.

She wants to talk to people at the Center for Genomics and Systems Biology at NYU. She studied there and a friend of hers works there. She has another friend in the sports science lab at Fordham. They could chart just how far outside the limits of human I am.

I'm not sure.

Wolfishness isn't my secret. It's the whole family's. Grandmother and Great-Aunt would eat anyone who tried to take their blood. They don't believe in science.

Or civilization.

They don't hold with outsiders. They don't want anyone to know what they are. h.e.l.l, they don't want to know what they are, or how werewolfism works.

But I want to know.

If I do more tests and they prove what we know they will, Yayeko thinks they'll get funding to study me. It could pay my college fees. I'd be someone's research project, a paid lab rat.

If I let them test me.

If I show them what I am.

But what kind of life will that be? I'll be a bigger freak than ever.

There are scholars.h.i.+ps for running. Zach once asked me about it. The only thing stopping me was Dad telling me to hide my wolfishness. But I can tone it down: I can run fast enough for a scholars.h.i.+p, but not so fast I scare them.

I have choices.

This one is easy: I can't betray my family, my real family-the Greats, everyone up on the farm. I don't want Pete to lose his new home.

I'll go to school. A good school with a strong track program and a good biology department. I'll find out what I am.

LIE NUMBER TEN.

This one's more of an omission than a lie. I don't know how to count it: is it just one omission or many? How many omissions add up to a lie?

I didn't mention all the reporters. I didn't mention what it was like going to school past a throng of press, questions screamed, cameras in my face. My photo in the paper. Tayshawn's. Sarah's.

And Zach's, of course. Almost every day. His parents started getting love letters from strangers. Truckloads of them. Love letters to a dead boy from people who never knew him. That's much sicker than anything I did, isn't it?

Reporters followed me to and from school.

People I didn't know pointed at me and whispered.

My parents had to get rid of their landline. It's another reason they were so determined to send me upstate. The reporters never found the farm. No one ever found it.

And the trial.

The trial was worst of all.

You're wondering why I didn't tell you about that?

It was a distraction. Doesn't add to the real story. Which is me and Zach and my wolfishness.

Yayeko Shoji understood-understands, I mean.

That's why she visits me so often.

THE TRUTH OF ME.

The apartment is small. One tiny room. The kitchen is along one wall, the bed along another, and a desk and a bookshelf along the third. There's a view of a park, and no cage disguised as a desk.

I'm not in the city anymore, but it's a good school in a good town, and I have a full ride.

Running, just like Zach said. I never run top speed. Not when anyone's looking. I don't have to.

The hormones I use are more precise than my pills ever were. I inject them once every three months. No more fear of forgetting to take my pill. I visit the Greats, even when everyone is changed, without the faintest itching of my palms. I told Grandmother and Great-Aunt Dorothy about my research. They say they're proud of me, especially Grandmother, but they wish I would stay on the farm.

The white boy, Pete, is always pleased to see me. He's learned how to smile.

He's changed. Taller, healthier, there's flesh over his bones, not just skin.

I haven't talked to my parents since the day they abandoned me. My mom writes me letters via the Greats. I don't write back.

I refuse their visits. That's a power left to me.

I saw Dad once, watching me run. I didn't show that I saw. He looked older, more gray, and his face more gaunt. I wonder if I did that to him.

I'm not ready for my parents. I don't know when I will be. Maybe never.