Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever)

by Stiefvater Maggie

  Now, in these September woods, we regarded each other. Her ears tipped toward me and away, collecting dozens of sounds that escaped my human ears, and her nostrils worked, discovering where I’d been. I found myself remembering the sensation of dried leaves beneath my paws and the sharp, rich, slumber-heavy scent of these autumn woods when I was a wolf.

  Shelby stared into my eyes — a very human gesture, considering my rank in the pack was too high for wolves other than Paul or Beck to challenge me like that — and I imagined her human voice saying to me, as it had so many times before, Don’t you miss it?

  I closed my eyes, shutting out the vividness of her gaze and the memory of my wolf body, and instead thought of Grace, back at the house. There was nothing in my wolf experience that could ever compare to the feeling of Grace’s hand in mine. I immediately turned this thought over in my head, creating lyrics. You’re my change of skin / my summer-winter-fall / I spring to follow you / this loss is beautiful. In the second it took me to compose the lyric and imagine the guitar riff that would go with it, Shelby had vanished into the woods, soft as a whisper.

  That she could disappear with the same silent stealth as she had arrived reminded me of my vulnerable state, and I clumped hurriedly to the shed where my clothing was stashed. Years ago, Beck and I had dragged the old shed, piece by piece, from his backyard to a small clearing deep in the woods.

  Inside were a space heater, a boat battery, and several plastic bins with names written on the sides. I opened the bin marked with my name and pulled out the stuffed backpack inside. The other bins were loaded with food and blankets and spare batteries — equipment for holing up in this shack, waiting for other pack members to change — but mine contained supplies for escape. Everything I kept here was designed to get me back to humanity as quickly as possible, and for that, Shelby couldn’t forgive me.

  I hurriedly changed into my several layers of long-sleeved shirts and a pair of jeans and traded Grace’s father’s oversized boots for wool socks and my scuffed leather shoes, getting my wallet with my summer-job money in it and stuffing everything left over into the backpack. As I shut the shed door behind me, I caught dark movement out of the corner of my eye.

  “Paul,” I said, but the black wolf, our wolf pack leader, was gone. I doubted he even knew me now: To him, I was just another human in these woods, despite my vaguely familiar scent. The knowledge prickled a kind of regret somewhere in the back of my throat. Last year, Paul hadn’t become human until the end of August. Maybe he wouldn’t change at all this year.

  I knew my own remaining shifts were numbered, too. Last year I had changed in June, a frighteningly huge jump from the previous year’s shift in early spring, when there had still been snow on the ground. And this year? How late would I have gotten my body back if Tom Culpeper hadn’t shot me? I didn’t even really understand how being shot had given me back my human form in this cool weather. I thought of how frigid it had been when Grace knelt over me, pressing a cloth to my neck. It hadn’t been summer for a long time.

  The brilliant colors of the brittle leaves all around the shed mocked me then, evidence that a year had lived and died without my being aware of it. I knew with sudden, chilling certainty that this was my last year.

  To meet Grace only now seemed like an intensely cruel twist of fate.

  I didn’t want to think about it. Instead, I jogged back to the house, checking to make sure that Grace’s parents’ cars were still gone. Letting myself back in, I hovered outside the bedroom door for a second, then loitered for a long time in the kitchen, looking through the cabinets even though I wasn’t really hungry.

  Admit it. You’re too nervous to go back in there. I wanted so badly to see her again, this iron-willed ghost that had haunted my years in the woods. But I was afraid, too, of how seeing her face-to-face in damning daylight might change things. Or worse, wouldn’t change things. Last night, I’d been bleeding to death on her back deck. Anyone might have saved me. Today, I wanted more than saving. But what if I was just a freak to her?

  You’re an abomination to God’s creation. You’re cursed. You’re the Devil. Where is my son? What have you done with him? I closed my eyes, wondering why, considering all the things I had lost, memories of my parents couldn’t have been among them.

  “Sam?”

  I jerked, hearing my name. Grace called again in her room, barely above a whisper, wondering where I was. She didn’t sound afraid.

  I pushed open her door and looked around her room. In the strong late-morning light, I could see now that it was a grown-up’s room. No leftover pink whimsy or stuffed animals for Grace, if she’d ever had them. Framed photographs of trees on the walls, all matching black frames with no frills. Matching black furniture, all very square and useful looking. Her towel and washcloth tidily folded on top of the dresser next to another clock — black-and-white, all smooth lines — and a stack of library books, mostly narrative nonfiction and mysteries, judging by the titles. Probably alphabetized or organized according to length.

  I was suddenly struck by how dissimilar we were. It occurred to me that if Grace and I were objects, she would be an elaborate digital clock, synced up with the World Clock in London with technical perfection, and I’d be a snow globe — shaken memories in a glass ball.

  I struggled to find something to say that wouldn’t sound like the greeting of an interspecies stalker. “Good morning,” I managed.

  Grace sat up, her hair frizzy on one side and flat against her head on the other, her dark eyes filled with open delight. “You’re still here! Oh. You have clothes. I mean, instead of scrubs.”

  “I went to get them while you were sleeping.”

  “What time is it? Ohhh — I’m really late for school, aren’t I?”

  “It’s eleven.”

  Grace groaned and then shrugged. “You know what? I haven’t missed class since I started high school. I got an award for it last year. And a free pizza or something.” She climbed out of bed; in the daylight, I could see just how clingy and unbearably sexy her camisole top was. I turned away.

  “You don’t have to be so chaste, you know. It’s not like I’m naked.” Pausing in front of her closet, she looked back at me, her expression canny. “You haven’t seen me naked, have you?”

  “No!” My answer came out distinctly rushed.

  She grinned at my lie and pulled some jeans from the closet floor. “Well, unless you want to see me now, you’d better turn around.”

  I lay down on the bed, face buried in the cool pillows that smelled of her. I listened to the rustling sounds she made as she pulled on her clothing, my heart pounding a million miles an hour. I sighed, guilty, unable to contain the lie. “I didn’t mean to.”

  The mattress groaned as she crashed onto it, her face close to mine. “Are you always this apologetic?”

  My voice was muffled by her pillow. “I’m trying to make you think I’m a decent person. Telling you I saw you naked while I was another species does not help my case.”

  She laughed. “I’ll grant you leniency, since I should’ve pulled the blinds.” There was a long silence, filled with a thousand unspoken messages. I could smell her nervousness, faintly wafting from her skin, and could hear the fast beat of her heart carried through the mattress to my ear. It would have been so easy for my lips to span the inches between our mouths. I thought I could hear the hope in her heartbeat: kiss me kiss me kiss me. Normally I was good at sensing others’ feelings, but with Grace, everything I thought I knew was clouded by what I wanted.

  She giggled quietly; it was a terribly cute noise, and also completely at odds with how I normally thought of her. “I’m starving,” she said finally. “Let’s go find breakfast. Or brunch, I guess.”

  I rolled out of bed and she rolled after me. I was acutely aware of her hands on my back, pushing me through the bedroom door. Together we padded softly out into the kitchen. Sunlight, too bright, blared in the glass door to the deck, reflecting off the white counter an
d tile in the kitchen, covering us both with white light. Because of my previous exploration, I knew where things were, so I started to take out supplies.

  As I moved about the kitchen, Grace shadowed me, her fingers finding my elbow and her palm brushing along my back, finding excuses to touch me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her staring unabashedly at me when she thought I wouldn’t notice. It was as though I had never changed, as though I still gazed at her from the woods and she still sat on her tire swing and watched me with admiring eyes. Peeling off my skin / leaving just my eyes behind / You see inside my head / Still know that you are mine.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked, cracking an egg into a skillet and pouring her a glass of orange juice with human fingers that seemed suddenly precious.

  Grace laughed. “That you’re making me breakfast.”

  It was too simple an answer; I wasn’t sure if I could believe it. Not when I had a thousand thoughts competing for space in my head at the same moment. “What else are you thinking?”

  “That it’s very sweet of you. That I hope you know how to cook eggs.” But her eyes lifted from the skillet to my mouth, just for a second, and I knew she wasn’t only thinking about eggs. She whirled away and pulled the blinds, instantly changing the mood in the kitchen. “And it’s too bright in here.” The light filtered through the blinds, casting horizontal stripes across her wide brown eyes and the straight line of her lips.

  I turned back to the scrambled eggs and tipped them onto a plate just as the toast popped out of the toaster. I reached for it at the same time as Grace, and it was just one of those perfect movie moments where the hands touch and you know the characters are going to kiss. Only this time it was my arms somehow accidentally circling her, pinning her against the counter as I reached for the toast, and bracing against the edge of the fridge as I leaned forward. Lost in embarrassment over my bumbling, I didn’t even realize it was the perfect moment until I saw Grace’s eyes close, face lifted toward mine.

  I kissed her. Just the barest brush of my lips against hers, nothing animal. Even in that moment, I deconstructed the kiss: her possible reactions to, her possible interpretations of, the way it made a shudder tighten my skin, the seconds between when I touched her lips and when she opened her eyes.

  Grace smiled at me. Her words were taunting, but her voice was gentle. “Is that all you’ve got?” I touched my lips to hers again, and this time, it was a very different sort of kiss. It was six years’ worth of kissing, her lips coming to life under mine, tasting of orange and of desire. Her fingers ran through my sideburns and into my hair before linking around my neck, alive and cool on my warm skin. I was wild and tame and pulled into shreds and crushed into being all at once. For once in my human life, my mind didn’t wander to compose a song lyric or store the moment for later reflection.

  For once in my life,

  I was here

  and nowhere else.

  And then I opened my eyes and it was just Grace and me — nothing anywhere but Grace and me — she pressing her lips together as though she were keeping my kiss inside her, and me, holding this moment that was as fragile as a bird in my hands.

  Some days seem to fit together like a stained glass window. A hundred little pieces of different color and mood that, when combined, create a complete picture. The last twenty-four hours had been like that. The night at the hospital was one pane, sickly green and flickering. The dark hours of the early morning in Grace’s bed were another, cloudy and purple. Then the cold blue reminder of my other life this morning, and finally the brilliant, clear pane that was our kiss.

  In the current pane, we sat on the worn bench seat of an old Bronco at the edge of a run-down, overgrown car lot on the outskirts of town. It seemed like the complete picture was starting to come into focus, a shimmering portrait of something I thought I couldn’t have.

  Grace ran her fingers over the Bronco’s steering wheel with a thoughtful, fond touch, and then turned to me. “Let’s play twenty questions.”

  I was lying back in the passenger seat, eyes closed, and letting the afternoon sun cook me through the windshield. It felt good. “Shouldn’t you be looking at other cars? You know, car shopping usually involves … shopping.”

  “I don’t shop very well,” Grace said. “I just see what I need and I get it.”

  I laughed at that. I was beginning to see how very Grace such a statement was.

  She narrowed her eyes at me in mock irritation and crossed her arms over her chest. “So, questions. These aren’t optional.”

  I glanced out across the car lot to make sure that the owner hadn’t returned from towing her car yet — here in Mercy Falls, the towing company and the used car company were one and the same. “Okay. Better not be anything embarrassing.”

  Grace slid over a little closer to me on the bench seat and slouched down in a mirror image of my posture. I felt like this was the first question: her leg pressed against my leg, her shoulder pressed against my shoulder, her tightly laced shoe resting on top of my scuffed leather one. My pulse raced, a wordless answer.

  Grace’s voice was pragmatic, as if she didn’t know the effect she was having on me. “I want to know what makes you a wolf.”

  That one was easy. “When the temperature drops, I become a wolf. When it’s cold at night and warm during the day, I can feel it coming on, and then, finally, it’s cold enough that I shift into a wolf until spring.”

  “The others, too?”

  I nodded. “The longer you’re a wolf, the warmer it has to be for you to become human.” I paused for a moment, wondering if now was the time to tell her. “Nobody knows how many years you get of switching back and forth. It’s different for every wolf.”

  Grace just looked at me — the same long look she’d given me when she was younger, lying in the snow, looking up at me. I couldn’t read it any better now than I could then. I felt my throat tighten in anticipation of her reply, but, mercifully, she changed her line of questioning. “How many of you are there?”

  I wasn’t sure, just because so many of us didn’t become humans anymore. “About twenty.”

  “What do you eat?”

  “Baby bunnies.” She narrowed her eyes, so I grinned and said, “Adult bunnies, too. I’m an equal-opportunity bunny-eater.”

  She didn’t skip a beat. “What was on your face the night you let me touch you?” Her voice stayed the same for this question, but something around her eyes tightened, as though she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.

  I had to struggle to remember that night — her fingers in my ruff, her breath moving the fine hairs on the side of my face, the guilty pleasure of being so close to her. The boy. The one who was bitten. That was what she was really asking. “Do you mean there was blood on my face?”

  Grace nodded.

  Part of me felt a little sad that she had to ask, but of course she did. She had every reason not to trust me. “It wasn’t his — that boy’s.”

  “Jack,” she said.

  “Jack,” I repeated. “I knew the attack happened, but I wasn’t there for it.” I had to dig deeper into my memory to trace the source of the blood on my muzzle. My human brain supplied logical answers — rabbit, deer, roadkill — all of them instantly stronger than my actual wolf memories. Finally, I snatched the real answer from my thoughts, though I wasn’t proud of it. “It was a cat. The blood. I’d caught a cat.”

  Grace let out a breath.

  “You aren’t upset that it was a cat?” I asked.

  “You have to eat. If it wasn’t Jack, I don’t care if it was a wallaby,” she said. But it was obvious her mind was still on Jack. I tried to remember what little I knew of the attack, hating for her to think badly of my pack.

  “He provoked them, you know,” I said.

  “He what? You weren’t there, were you?”

  I shook my head and struggled to explain. “We can’t — the wolves — when we communicate, it’s with images. Nothing complicated. And n
ot across great distances. But if we’re right by each other, we can share an image with another wolf. And so the wolves that attacked Jack, they showed me images.”

  “You can read each other’s minds?” Grace asked, incredulous.

  I shook my head vigorously. “No. I — it’s hard to explain as a hu — as me. It’s just a way of talking, but our brains are different as wolves. There’s no abstract concepts, really. Things like time, and names, and complicated emotions are all out of the question. Really, it’s for things like hunting or warning each other of danger.”

  “And what did you see about Jack?”

  I lowered my eyes. It felt strange, recalling a wolf memory from a human mind. I flipped through the blurry images in my head, recognizing now that the red blotches on the wolves’ coats were bullet wounds, and that the stains on their lips were Jack’s blood. “Some of the wolves showed me something about being hit by him. A — gun? He must have had a BB gun. He was wearing a red shirt.” Wolves saw color poorly, but red we could see.

  “Why would he do that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. That’s not the sort of thing we told each other.”

  Grace was quiet, still thinking about Jack, I suppose. We sat in the close silence until I started to wonder whether she was upset. Then she spoke. “So you never get to open Christmas presents.”

  I looked at her, not knowing how to respond. Christmas was something that happened in another life, one before the wolves.

  Grace looked down at the steering wheel. “I was just thinking that you were never around in the summer, and I always loved Christmas, because I knew you’d always be there. In the woods. As a wolf. I guess it’s because it’s cold, right? But that must mean that you never get to open Christmas presents.”

  I shook my head. I changed too early now to even see Christmas decorations in stores.