by S. L. Naeole
When I arrived back at the small house, the trailer was completely empty, and empty boxes stood outside, crumpled newspaper and Styrofoam pellets littered around them. I parked the bike in front of the truck and then ran inside the house. Anyone else would have probably tripped over their own feet when they saw the living room.
The furniture had been transformed, mom’s slipcovers changing the ugly, mismatched sofas and chairs into something more familiar and comfortable. There were photo frames on the wall, as well as on the tables. Mom’s favorite rug was on the floor, her curtains in the windows, and her knitting on the arm of a rocking chair that had been in the trailer.
I walked into the kitchen and saw that the small table had been covered in one of Mom’s favorite tablecloths. The salt and pepper shakers were still there, but the doily was gone. All of the appliances that we’d brought were on the counters, and the dishes were in the open cabinets in the same way that they’d been in our old house.
“Mom?” I called out, heading to the tiny bathroom. The door was closed, but when I opened it, I saw that the bathroom was empty. But, even there, Mom’s touch was obvious. It smelled of cleanser and potpourri, and small rugs were on the cold tile floor.
I left the bathroom and kitchen and then opened the back door. There was a clothesline outside, and I saw Mom hanging up a sheet. “I’m home,” I said to her but she didn’t respond.
Then I saw the wires dangling from her ears. “Figures,” I mumbled. She always listened to music when doing chores. I walked down the back stairs and tapped her on her shoulder. She turned around and popped out one of the earphones.
“Hey, kitten. Did you and Audrey have a good morning?” she asked, smiling.
“Yeah, up until she started having a seizure,” I said, taking a sheet from the basket on the ground and helping her.
“She what? Is she okay?”
I took a clothespin from her and pinned a corner of the sheet on the line. “I don’t know. Her brother showed up and just took her. One minute she was fine. We were talking and she made me a pie. And then…then she just, like…jumped out of her wheelchair and fell on top of me. I caught her but I fell, too. I didn’t have my phone with me so I couldn’t call 911. I started screaming for help but no one was around.”
“But you said that her brother took her.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding, pinning the last corner up, the white sheet standing between us. “He showed up, grabbed her, blamed me for everything, and then left. You know, the usual.” I sounded bitter.
“Well, I think you should be a little more understanding, Fall. The kid’s been through a lot.”
“Yeah, I know. His sister’s in a wheelchair and he lives on this rock,” I grumbled.
“So you didn’t hear anything that was said last night?”
“I heard, Mom. I heard. He’s protective and he loves his sister and blah-blah-blah, I should be more understanding. I got the same line from Audrey. He’s still a jerk. I was trying to help her-”
“So you didn’t hear anything that was said last night at dinner.” Mom looked disappointed.
“What didn’t I hear?” I asked, annoyed that I could feel guilty when I hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Fallon, Liam and Audrey’s mom died almost eight years ago when she drove her car off of the pier. She had Liam and Audrey with her. Liam was ten. He got his sister out of the car before it went under the water completely and then went back after Lyssa. He managed to get her out, but he wasn’t strong enough to pull her to the surface and had to be rescued by some of the fisherman who’d seen what happened.
“She died and he almost died, too. That scar on his face, he got that from a piece of glass from the car window. He sliced his mouth open pulling his sister out of the window.”
“She cut her leg on the glass, too,” I whispered, remembering the thick scar on Audrey’s calf.
“She almost bled to death and Liam blames himself for that. Their dad hasn’t helped. Joe’s made Audrey’s welfare Liam’s responsibility. He doesn’t see how that kind of pressure on a kid will affect them. Liam believes that everything bad that happens to Audrey is his fault, which means you have to be patient with him.”
Being patient with someone who’s accused me of hurting his sister twice, when all I was trying to do was help her? I’d rather eat sardines.
“Fine. I’ll be patient,” I muttered before grabbing the empty basket on the ground. “Hey, Mom, where’s the vet clinic?”
She was straightening the sheets, adjusting the pins so that they didn’t create any wrinkles. “At the dry end of town. Why?”
“That’s where Jameson said Liam took Audrey. I was just thinking after I was done unpacking my room that I’d go and see if she’s okay.”
“Who’s Jameson?” she asked, her amber eyes staring intently at me.
“Oh. He’s Liam’s best friend, apparently. I asked him to show me where the clinic was before I left Audrey’s house, but he said he had to go tell Mr. Mace.”
Mom’s eyes filled with panic. I could see it. I knew what it looked like because it was the same look she’d had when I’d fallen off of my bike when I was six and broke my leg. It was the kind of look that sucked all the blood away from your face and turned your lips thin and pale. Mom’s face looked almost waxy when she grabbed my shoulder and looked at me fiercely.
“Don’t ever, ever accept a ride alone, okay? Promise me, Fallon. Promise me that you won’t ever get in a car or give someone a ride unless we tell you it’s okay.”
I’d gotten this lecture before, this warning about being careful, but it had only ever applied to people I didn’t know. “So if Mr. Mace-”
“Absolutely no one, Fallon. I mean that. Don’t disobey me on this.”
“But Mom, he’s your friend.”
“Yes. He’s my friend. That doesn’t mean he’s yours.”
I thought of something. “I went to Audrey’s house. I was alone with her, until Liam showed up. Isn’t that the same thing?”
She shook her head. “No, it isn’t.”
“But I was alone-”
Her voice became loud and sharp, the slight growl that clung to the edges frightening me and sending me stumbling back, her hand keeping me from tripping over my own feet. “Don’t talk back to me!”
She looked so angry, and at the same time, so afraid, that I couldn’t do anything but nod in compliance. The minute she let go, I took off, running to my room and slamming the door, the whole house seeming to shake from the force of it.
The boxes with my things inside of them were stacked next to the bare bed. The posters that had been up on the wall were now gone; Mom had managed to do more in a couple of hours than I probably could in a day. Everything that had made this room hers was gone…even the map.
I opened the top box labeled “bedding” and pulled out the comforter that had covered my bed back at our old house in California. I unpacked the sheets and quickly made the bed, staring back at the small piece of familiarity and comfort in this strange place that had turned both me and Mom into some monsters.
The sheets were white, like the ones that I’d helped hang up on the line. But the comforter, that was something special. Mom and Dad had gotten it for me from some catalog I’d seen it in for my tenth birthday. It was white on the inside, soft, like an old t-shirt. But the outside, it was jet black, plain except for a pair of golden-green eyes that stared out of the face of a black panther.
I’d seen one at a zoo once when I was too young to remember how old I was, but ever since, I’d dreamt about them every night. I used to imagine that they followed me, and when Mom and Dad bought the comforter, I imagined that they slept with me, too. It was the only thing I kept when I moved from dolls to engines.
I sat down on the comforter and stroked the head of the big cat, and then frowned when I noticed that the eyes that stared back at me looked familiar. And, irritatingly, I realized that the eyes were incredibly similar to Liam’s.
&
nbsp; “Oh, hell no,” I grumbled before pulling the comforter down and hurrying to finish unpacking the rest of the boxes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LIAM
Audrey woke up just as the sun was setting. She had begun to change back an hour before, leaving the bed beneath her completely covered in dark red fur. Dad showed up as her teeth settled back into her human jaw, the sharp points of her fangs growing duller with each passing minute. By the time I was able to carry her back to the truck, all that was left of her incomplete transformation was a long, deformed claw on her left thumb.
I put her to bed after she’d eaten one of the pies she’d made for Dad, and then sat down and listened to Dad chew me out for the next hour, his constant reminders of how I’m responsible for Audrey, how she depends on me burning my ears and making me feel like I was ten-years-old again.
“No matter what you’re doing, no matter who you’re with, Audrey always comes first, do you hear me? I can’t always be here – I won’t always be here – and Audrey’s always going to need someone around to take care of her. You’re her brother, which means that someone’s gonna be you. And when you and Brenda marry, she’ll help. Your kids, too.”
This was new, a part of the ritual lecture that had only been added a few months ago. And I hated it. “Why do you always gotta talk about me getting married? What if I don’t ever wanna get married? What if I don’t wanna have kids? I’m seventeen; the last thing I want to think about is chaining myself to a wife and kids.”
Dad knew what to say then. He always did.
“If you didn’t want to keep our race alive, maybe you should have just stayed in the car.”
“Maybe I should’ve,” I said before walking away. It didn’t do any good to argue after that. Dad never once said that he wished that had happened. Instead, he’d told me more than once that it was the proudest moment in his life. That didn’t make what he’d just said any easier to deal with.
Because every single mention of that day was like hitting replay in my mind, and the last thing I wanted before trying to sleep was to hear Audrey’s screams in my head.
I went to Audrey’s room one last time and saw that she was awake, her puffy eyes filled with tears. “What’s the matter, Aud?” I asked, sitting down beside her.
“You and Dad shouldn’t fight,” she said softly.
“Who’s he gonna fight with, then?” I laughed half-heartedly.
“Grans can take him on. You do too much for him to talk like that to you.”
“I can deal with it,” I said with a shrug.
She pushed the quilt that covered her down and reached for my hand. “No, you can’t. You’ve been acting all kinds of weird lately and I know it’s because of Dad.”
“You’re one to talk,” I said, tickling the back of her hand. “Since when do you get all weepy, huh?”
“See! That’s what I’m talking about! Since when do you use words like weepy?”
“Hey! Don’t change the subject,” I laughed. “Seriously, what’s with all the waterworks all of a sudden?” I knew the answer. I knew it. I just wanted her to admit it.
“Hormones,” she said without missing a beat. She knew what I was doing and she wasn’t going to let me get my answer that easily.
“You’re lying.”
“And you’re digging.”
“I know about Jameson,” I said quietly, waiting for her reaction. Her eyes were moist, but Jameson’s name alone wasn’t gonna make her release her tears.
“And? Everyone on the island knows about Jameson now, thanks to Brenda. I knew he didn’t like me that way. Him turning me down isn’t that big of a deal.”
Audrey’s tears didn’t budge, so I moved them for her. “You know you can’t lie to me. I know that you wanted him to go out with you because you think him saying yes will mean you’ll be able to have babies-”
“Shut-up,” she whispered, cutting me off.
“Aud-”
This time her voice was louder, angrier. “No! Just shut the hell up! You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what it’s like to be so wrong in every way except one, and then find out that even that might be all wrong. You don’t have to worry about never finding someone to be with because everyone will want to be with you. You don’t know what it feels like to not be able to have dreams because there are no dreams for people like me.”
My hand felt her fingers digging into my palm, her nails sharp and thick and her grip incredibly strong despite what she’d been through. “I know what it means to not have dreams. I also know what it means to have them and give them up.”
“Well, I had my first dream last night,” she said, her mouth a thin line across her face. “And I owe that to Fallon.”
“That trog?” I snorted, wanting to kill this conversation as quickly as possible.
“She’s not a trog! She’s my friend and you should be kissing her feet after what she’s done for me,” Audrey scolded.
“I don’t kiss human feet. I eat them,” I spat, angrily. “And so do you!”
Her head rocked back and forth. “Not anymore. I can’t be friends with Fallon and do that.”
This wasn’t expected. “You wanna be her friend, fine. Be the stupid trog’s friend. But don’t give up being who you are for her. She might have helped you out a couple of times-”
“So you admit that she wasn’t trying to hurt me!”
My mouth flew open, but then shut just as quickly.
“Fallon’s human, but you shouldn’t hold that against her. She didn’t have to stop those girls yesterday, but she did. And after the way you treated her yesterday, she had no reason to even come over today, but she did and I’m glad she did-”
“Even after what happened?” I cut her off.
Her eyes flashed with anger and stubbornness. “Yes! She could’ve left me this morning but she didn’t. I don’t care what you or Jameson or Brenda, or anyone else thinks about it; she’s my friend and even humans have rules on not eating their friends.”
I growled. “Friend or not, you need to eat-”
This time her pillow hit me square in the head. “Have you taken a good look at me lately, big brother? I’m not one of you. I’m not like you. I never have been and I never will. I’ll never go on a hunt with you. I’ll never know what it feels like to kill and I don’t need to. My body doesn’t need to eat human meat in order to change because it never will. It’s not a part of who I am. Don’t you see that?”
“And all of this is because of Fallon? You’re gonna just forget who you are because she stopped a couple of bullies and held your head during one of your episodes?” I was so angry, the only thing keeping me from finding Fallon and tearing out her throat was Audrey’s grip on my hand.
“No. I’m gonna forget that I can’t have what I want because of Fallon. She made me see that I don’t have to be empty inside. She made me see that if I want, I can have kids, too.”
“Good grief, and how the hell did she do that in only twenty-four hours?”
“By existing. By coming here and being Mr. and Mrs. Timmons’ daughter,” she answered simply. “You want to know why I’m all weepy?”
“Why?”
She smiled. It was a real smile, with a kind of relaxed look taking over her face. “Because for the first time in a long time, I don’t care about turning sixteen or taking the test because it doesn’t matter what the results are. I can have as many kids as I want.”
“So what, you’re gonna just start adopting human babies now? You know, when humans do that, it’s called having a family. But when we do it, it’s called farming.”
“That’s not funny,” she said, her smile fading slightly.
“I’m sorry. It’s just…this whole thing is weird. One minute, I need to be okay with you being friends with Fallon, and the next minute, you’re adopting a whole tribe of little Fallons.”
She laughed and her grip on my hand loosened. “I’m not adopting anyone right now, you dork! I want to fi
nish school, and maybe see the world like Fallon’s parents did.”
“So what do you want from me, Aud? Tell me.”
Her eyes sparkled as her smile returned, pure and full of happiness. “Just be nice to her. Can you do that? Can you be nice to my friend?”
***
For a week, it was easy to be nice to her. I’d gone hunting with Jameson as we’d planned, spending the entire time off the island which meant seven days of never having to see her face, hear her voice, or find her doing something while my sister was crying or seizing. “It was the best week of my life,” I said when we were riding the ferry back to the rock.
The truck was waiting for me when the ferry docked, and I drove to Kimble’s Stacks to get some breakfast for Audrey before I picked her up from Grans’. The place was already crowded with trogs and Panthus. I wasn’t hungry, and probably wouldn’t be for at least another week, but the smell of apples did something to my stomach. When I tried to order a stack of apple pancakes, I was told they hadn’t made any that day.
Confused and slightly disappointed, I stood at the take-out counter, watching the way everyone moved like a machine; in and out, sitting down and standing up, eating, wiping their mouths, cutting their food; it was the dance of the hungry if this was how you fed yourself. It was how we fed ourselves when we had to. We could live pretty well on human recipes and never know the difference.
But we’d never be able to change after that. Our bodies wouldn’t let us. We hunted to change and we changed to hunt. It was our way of life.
“Did Audrey want butter on her pancakes?”
Lola Fong was looking at me from behind the counter, annoyed that she was stuck working while I was coming back from vacation. She’d already said so, but had continued to show it by getting my order wrong twice, and asking the same question over and over again because she knew it would get on my nerves.
“I told you twice already, she likes it on the side.”
