Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever)

by Stiefvater Maggie

  Sam surprised me by saying, “I’d like to see the studio, while I’m here, if you don’t mind. Grace told me a little bit about your art and I’d love to see it.” This was partially true. I’d told him about a particularly nauseating show of hers I’d gone to where all of the paintings were named after types of clouds but were portraits of women in bathing suits. “Meaningful” art sailed over my head. I didn’t get it. I didn’t want to get it.

  Mom smiled in a plastic sort of way. She probably thought Sam’s understanding of meaningful art was similar to mine.

  I looked at Sam dubiously. This sort of sucking up seemed unlike him. After Mom had vanished upstairs and Dad had vanished into his study, I demanded, “Are you a sucker for punishment?”

  Sam unmuted the television in time for a woman to be eaten by something with tentacles. All that was left after the attack was a fake-looking severed arm lying on the sidewalk. “I just think I need to make her like me.”

  “The only person in this house who has to like you is me. Don’t worry about them.”

  Sam picked up a sofa cushion and hugged it to himself, pressing his face into it. His voice was muffled. “She might have to put up with me for a long time, you know?”

  “How long?”

  His smile was amazingly sweet. “The longest.”

  “Forever?”

  Sam’s lips smiled, but above his grin, his yellow eyes turned sad, as if he knew it was a lie. “Longer.”

  I closed the distance between us and settled into the crook of his arm, and we went back to watching the tentacled alien slowly creep through the sewer system of an unsuspecting town. Sam’s eyes flickered around the screen, as if he was actually watching the futile intergalactic battle, but I sat there and tried to figure out why Sam had to change and I didn’t.

  After the sci-fi flick ended (the world was saved, but civilian casualties were high), I sat with Grace at the little breakfast table near the door to the deck and watched her do her homework for a while. I was unimaginably tired — the colder weather gnawed at me like an ache, even when it couldn’t get a tight enough grip to change me — and I would’ve liked to crawl into Grace’s bed or onto the couch for a nap. But the wolf side of me felt restless and unable to sleep with unfamiliar people around. So to keep myself awake, I left Grace downstairs doing her homework in the dying light from the windows and went upstairs to see the studio.

  It was easy to find; there were only two doors in the hallway upstairs and an orange, chemical smell wafted out from one of them. The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open and blinked. The entire room was brilliantly lit by lamps fitted with bulbs meant to mimic natural light, and the effect was a cross between a desert at noon and a Wal-Mart.

  The walls were hidden behind towering canvases that leaned against every available surface. Gorgeous riots of color, realistic figures in unrealistic poses, normal shapes in abnormal colors, the unexpected in ordinary places. The paintings were like falling into a dream, where everything you know is presented in an unfamiliar way. Anything’s possible in this lush rabbit hole / Is it mirror or portrait you’ve given to me? / All of these permutations of dreams will patrol / this lovely wasteland of color I see.

  I stood before two larger-than-life paintings leaning against one of the walls. Both were of a man kissing a woman’s neck, poses identical but colors radically different. One was shot through with reds and purples. It was bright, ugly, commercial. The other was dark, blue, lavender, hard to read. Understated and lovely. It reminded me of kissing Grace in the bookstore, how she felt in my arms, warm and real.

  “Which one do you like?”

  Her mom’s voice sounded bright and approachable. I imagined it as her gallery voice. The one she used to lure viewers’ wallets into sight so that she could shoot them.

  I tilted my head toward the blue one. “No contest.”

  “Really?” She sounded genuinely surprised. “No one has ever said that before. That one’s much more popular.” She stepped into my view so that I could see that she was pointing at the red one. “I’ve sold hundreds of prints of it.”

  “It’s very pretty,” I said kindly, and she laughed.

  “It’s hideous. Do you know what they’re called?” She pointed to the blue one, then the red one. “Love and Lust.”

  I smiled at her. “Guess I failed my testosterone test, didn’t I?”

  “Because you chose Love? I don’t think so, but that’s just me. Grace told me it was stupid of me to paint the same thing twice. She said his eyes are too close together in both of them, anyway.”

  I grinned. “Sounds like something she would say. But she’s not an artist.”

  Her mouth twisted into a rueful shape. “No. She’s very practical. I don’t know where she got that from.”

  I walked slowly to the next set of paintings — wildlife walking through clothing racks, deer perched on high-rise windows, fish peering up through storm drains. “That disappoints you.”

  “Oh, no. No. Grace is just Grace, and you just have to take her the way she is.” She hung back, letting me look, years of good sales training in subconscious practice. “And I suppose she’ll have an easier time in life because she’ll get a nice normal job and be good and stable.”

  I didn’t look at her when I answered. “Methinks the mom doth protest too much.”

  I heard her sigh. “I guess everyone wants their kid to turn out like them. All Grace cares about is numbers and books and the way things work. It’s hard for me to understand her.”

  “And vice versa.”

  “Yes. But you’re an artist, aren’t you? You must be.”

  I shrugged. I had noticed a guitar case sitting close to the door of her studio, and I was itching to find chords for some of the tunes in my head. “Not with paint. I play a little guitar.”

  There was a long pause as she watched me looking at a painting of a fox peering out from beneath a parked car, and then she said, “Do you wear contacts?”

  I’d been asked the question so many times that I didn’t even wonder anymore at how much nerve it had taken to ask it. “Nope.”

  “I’m having a terrible painter’s block right now. I would love to do a quick study of you.” She laughed. It was a very self-conscious sound. “That’s why I was ogling you downstairs. I just thought it would make an amazing color study, your black hair and your eyes. You remind me of the wolves in our woods. Did Grace tell you about them?”

  My body stiffened. It felt too close, like she was prying, especially after the run-in with Olivia. My immediate wolfish instinct was to bolt. Tear down the stairs, rip open the door, and melt into the safety of the trees. It took me several long moments to battle the desire to run and convince myself that she couldn’t possibly know, and that I was reading too much into her words. Another long moment to realize that I had been standing for too long not saying anything.

  “Oh — I don’t mean to make it awkward for you.” Her words tumbled over each other. “You don’t have to sit for me. I know some people feel really self-conscious. And you probably want to be getting back downstairs to Grace.”

  I felt obliged to make up for my rudeness. “No — no, that’s okay. I mean, I do feel sort of self-conscious about it. Can I do something while you paint me? I mean, so I don’t have to just sit and stare off into space?”

  She literally ran over to her easel. “No! Of course not. Why don’t you play the guitar? Oh, this is going to be great. Thank you. You can just sit over there, under those lights.” While I retrieved the guitar case, she ran across her studio several more times, getting a chair for me, adjusting the spotlights, and draping a yellow sheet to reflect golden light on one side of my face.

  “Do I have to try to stay still?”

  She waved a paintbrush at me, as if that would answer my question, then propped a new canvas against her easel and squeezed gobs of black paint onto a palette. “No, no, just play away.”

  So I tuned the guitar, and I sat there in the gold
en light and played and hummed the songs under my breath, thinking of all the times I’d sat on Beck’s couch and played songs for the pack, of Paul playing his guitar with me and us singing harmonies. In the background, I heard the scrape, scrape of the palette knife and the whuff of the brush on the canvas and wondered what she was doing with my face while I wasn’t paying attention.

  “I can hear you humming,” she said. “Do you sing?”

  I grunted, still fingerpicking idly.

  Her brush never ceased moving. “Are those your songs?”

  “Yup.”

  “Have you written one for Grace?”

  I had written a thousand songs for Grace. “Yes.”

  “I’d like to hear it.”

  I didn’t stop playing, just modulated carefully into a major key. For the first time this year, I sang out loud. It was the happiest tune I’d ever written, and the simplest.

  I fell for her in summer, my lovely summer girl

  From summer she is made, my lovely summer girl

  I’d love to spend a winter with my lovely summer girl

  But I’m never warm enough for my lovely summer girl

  It’s summer when she smiles, I’m laughing like a child

  It’s the summer of our lives; we’ll contain it for a while

  She holds the heat, the breeze of summer in the circle of her hand

  I’d be happy with this summer if it’s all we ever had.

  She looked at me. “I don’t know what to say.” She showed me her arm. “I have goose bumps.”

  I set the guitar down, very carefully, so the strings wouldn’t make any sound. Suddenly it seemed very pressing to spend my moments, so precious and numbered, with Grace.

  And in the moment I made that decision, there was a terrific crash from downstairs. It was so loud and so wrong that for a moment her mother and I just frowned at each other as if we couldn’t believe that the sound had happened.

  Then there was the scream.

  Right after, I heard a snarl, and was out of the room before I could hear any more.

  I remembered Shelby’s face when she asked, “Would you like to see my scars?”

  “From what?” I replied.

  “From when I was attacked. From the wolves.”

  “No.”

  She showed me anyway. Her belly was lumpy with scar tissue that disappeared under her bra. “It looked like hamburger after they bit me.”

  I didn’t want to know.

  Shelby didn’t pull her shirt back down. “It must be hell when we kill something. We must be the worst way to die.”

  A riot of sensations assaulted me as soon as I got into the living room. Viciously cold air stung my eyes and twisted my stomach. My eyes quickly found the ragged hole in the door to the back deck; partially cracked glass hung precariously in the frame and thin, pink-stained shards lay all over the floor, winking light back up at me.

  The chair at the breakfast nook was knocked over. It looked like someone had splattered red paint on the floor, endless erratic shapes dropped and smeared from the door to the kitchen. Then I smelled Shelby. For a moment I stood there, frozen by the absence of Grace and the frigid air and the stench of blood and wet fur.

  “Sam!”

  It had to be Grace, though her voice sounded strange and unrecognizable — someone pretending to be Grace. I scrambled, slipping in the spots of blood, gripping the doorjamb to pull myself into the kitchen.

  The scene was surreal in the pleasant light of the kitchen. Bloody pawprints pointed the direction to where Shelby shook and twisted, Grace pinned to the cupboards. Grace was struggling, kicking, but Shelby was massive and reeked of adrenaline. I saw a flash of pain in Grace’s eyes, honest and wide, before Shelby jerked her body away. I’d seen this image before.

  I didn’t feel the cold anymore. I saw an iron skillet sitting on the stove and grabbed it; my arm ached with the weight of it. I didn’t want to hit Grace — I smashed it on Shelby’s hip.

  Shelby snarled back at me, teeth snapping together. We didn’t have to speak the same language to know what she was telling me. Stay back. An image filled my field of vision, clear, perfect, riveting: Grace lying on the kitchen floor, flopping, dying, while Shelby watched. I was paralyzed by this clarion picture dropped into my thoughts — this is how it must’ve felt when I showed Grace the image of the golden wood. It felt like a razor-sharp memory, a memory of Grace gasping for breath.

  I dropped the skillet and threw myself at Shelby.

  I found her muzzle where she was clamped onto Grace’s arm, and I felt back to her jaw. Pressing my fingers into the tender skin, I jammed upward, into her windpipe, until Shelby yelped. Her grip loosened enough for me to push off the cabinets with my feet and roll her off Grace. We scrabbled across the floor, her nails clicking and scraping on the tile and my shoes squeaking and slipping in the blood she dripped.

  She snarled beneath me, furious, snapping at my face but stopping short of biting me. The image of Grace lifeless on the floor just kept going through my head.

  I remembered snapping chicken bones.

  In my mind, I could see perfectly what it would look like to kill Shelby.

  She jerked away from me, out of my hands, as if she’d read my thoughts.

  “Dad, no, watch out!” Grace shouted.

  A gun exploded, close by.

  For a brief moment, time stood still. Not really still. It sort of danced and shimmered in place, the lights flickering and dimming before reappearing. If that moment had been a real thing, it would’ve been a butterfly, flapping and fluttering toward the sun.

  Shelby fell out of my grip, deadweight, and I fell back into the cabinets behind me.

  She was dead. Or at least close, because she was jerking. But all I could seem to think about was how I’d made a mess of the kitchen floor. I just stared at the white squares of linoleum, my eyes following the streaky lines my shoes had made through the blood and finding the one red pawprint in the center of the kitchen that had somehow been perfectly preserved.

  I couldn’t figure how I could smell the blood so strongly, and then I looked down at my shaking arms and saw the red smeared on my hands and over my wrists. I had to struggle to remember that it was Shelby’s blood. She was dead. This was her blood. Not mine. Hers.

  My parents counted backward, slowly, and blood welled up from my veins.

  I was going to throw up.

  I was ice.

  I

  “We have to move him!” The girl’s voice was piercingly loud in the silence. “Get him someplace warm. I’m all right. I’m all right. I just — help me move him!”

  Their voices tore into my head, too loud and too many. I sensed movement all around me, their bodies and my skin whirling and spinning, but deep inside me, there was a part that held completely still.

  Grace. I held on to that one name. If I kept that in my head, I would be okay.

  Grace.

  I was shaking, shaking; my skin was peeling away.

  Grace.

  My bones squeezed, pinched, pressed against my muscles.

  Grace.

  Her eyes held me even after I stopped feeling her fingers gripping my arms.

  “Sam,” she said. “Don’t go.”

  “Who could do that to a child?” Mom made a face. I wasn’t sure if the face was because of what I’d just told her or because of the pee and antiseptic smell of the hospital.

  I shrugged and wriggled uncomfortably on the hospital bed. I didn’t really need to be here. The gash on my arm hadn’t even needed stitches. I just wanted to see Sam.

  “So he’s really messed up then.” Mom frowned at the television above the hospital bed, though it was turned off. She didn’t wait for me to respond. “Well, of course. Of course he is. He would have to be. You don’t live through that without being messed up. Poor kid. He looked like he was really in pain.”

  I hoped Mom would quit babbling about this by the time Sam was done talking to the nurse. I didn’t wa
nt to think about the curve of his shoulders, the unnatural shape that his body had formed in response to the cold. And I hoped Sam would understand why I’d told Mom about his parents — her knowing about them had to be better than her knowing about the wolves. “I told you, Mom. It really bothers him to remember. Of course he freaked out when he saw the blood on his arms. It’s classical conditioning, or whatever they call it. Google it.”

  Mom squeezed her arms around herself. “If he hadn’t been there, though …”

  “Yes, I would’ve died, blah blah blah. But he was there. Why is everyone more worked up about this than I am?” Many of Shelby’s teeth marks had already become ugly bruises instead — though I didn’t heal nearly as quickly as Sam had when he was shot.

  “Because you have no survival instinct, Grace. You’re like a tank, you just chug along, thinking nothing can stop you, until you meet up with a bigger tank. Are you sure you want to go out with someone with that kind of history?” Mom seemed to warm to her theory. “He could have a psychotic break. I read that people get those when they’re twenty-eight. He could be almost normal and then suddenly go slasher. I mean, you know I’ve never told you what to do with your life before now. But what if — what if I asked you to not see him?”

  I hadn’t expected that. My voice was brittle. “I would say that by virtue of your not acting parental up to this point, you’ve relinquished your ability to wield any power now. Sam and I are together. It’s not an option.”

  Mom threw her hands up as if trying to stop the Grace-tank from running over her. “Okay. Fine. Just be careful, okay? Whatever. I’m going to go get a drink.”

  And just like that, her parental energies were expended. She had played Mom by driving us to the hospital, watching the nurse tend to my wounds, and warning me off my psychotic boyfriend, and now she was done. It was obvious I was going to live, so she was off duty.

  A few minutes after she’d left, the door clicked open, and Sam came to the side of my bed, looking pale and tired under the greenish lights. Tired, but human.