by Kelli Kimble
I took a deep breath. It was all over campus, then.
Siggie was lying on her bed, studying a textbook. She sat up and looked at me. Her eyebrows drew together, and she frowned.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ve been better.” I flopped onto my own bed facedown, not even caring that I was still wearing an old pair of farm boots that might get dried mud on my bed covers.
“I have to tell you something.” She fiddled with a pencil that she’d had tucked behind her ear.
“Go ahead. I’m sure it can’t make me feel any worse.”
“The board called a special meeting. I’m supposed to attend. They say they want to talk about you and your,” she coughed into her fisted hand. “Behavior.”
“Oh.”
“I think you should come with me. The meeting is right after dinner. You should have time to tidy up, put on something a little more —”
“Human?”
She put her hands on her hips. “I was going to say feminine. Your words, not mine. Anyway, according to you, none of Alpha Nu is human. So, you just get dressed and come with me. You explain it. I’m sure it will make sense to them, just like it made sense to me.”
“Siggie,” I rolled onto my back. I was definitely smearing my boots on the covers now. “I really appreciate that you want to help me. And I’m happy for you. Being on the board is a big deal and it couldn’t have happened to someone nicer. But I’ve had enough of explaining today. And anyway, Jacob and I went to ask Mr. Anu what to do, and he didn’t give us any direction, yet. I don’t know what he wants me to do.”
“I believe you, Iris Hond. And I’m going to tell them what you told me.”
A fat tear rolled out of the corner of my eye and down the side of my cheek into my ear before I could swipe it away.
“Iris. Did you hear me? I believe you.”
“I appreciate that, Siggie. I do.”
“Won’t you come with me?”
I shook my head. “Mr. Anu didn’t tell me that I could reveal the truth. I probably shouldn’t have even told you.”
“But you did. And I’m ready. I’m ready to embrace this Anubian thing. I think when I met Buster that was what you said, where we instinctively came together.”
I groaned and put my pillow over my face. Please, don’t let her ask what Jacob said about Buster.
She was suddenly at my side and she yanked the pillow off of my face. “So help me, Iris. You’ve given me knowledge that made me feel whole. And I’ve met someone that I think means something to me. If I have to put you in the shower myself and dress you like a baby, I will. And I’ll drag you to that meeting by your pretty, pretty hair. You got it?” She leaned over me, her nostrils flaring wide as she shook a finger in my face.
I stared up at her, shocked. Her cheek twitched, and I realized she was struggling to hold in laughter. I started to laugh, and she joined in. She threw her arms around me and squeezed. When we finally settled down, she glared at me.
“I was serious, though. Hit the shower.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I collected my things and went to the bathroom. When I entered, two girls were standing by the sink, talking. When they saw me, they slunk past me in a wide circle to the door. Siggie was right. I had to tell Alpha Nu, and I had to figure out how to contain the story for the humans.
We went to dinner at the dining hall as soon as the doors opened. On Sundays it was often lightly attended, and we were able to get a table by ourselves. I was glad for that, at least. But we were only seated for a minute before Siggie brought Buster up again.
“He’s so handsome, don’t you think?” she asked.
I decided to play dumb. “Who?”
“Buster, of course.” Her eyes got dreamy and far away. I hoped I didn’t look that way when I talked about Jacob. It made my stomach turn a little bit. “When we were dancing, whenever our hands touched, it was like lightning. Is that what it’s like for you and Jacob?”
My heart might have stopped.
“Lightning? Really?”
“Yeah, it’s this crazy zing. Straight up my arm and it spreads to my whole body. And,” she held up a hand. “I know this is stupid. But I told him how it felt. And he said he felt it, too.”
That changed things a little. Didn’t it? That meant Buster and Siggie were soulmates. At least, I think that’s what it meant. It would need some further investigation.
“Did you and Buster do anything besides dance?” I kept my eyes on my tray. If she was going to get mad, I didn’t want to provoke her with a probing stare.
“Ah, ah, aah,” she said, shaking a finger at me and drawing my eyes from my food. “A lady never tells.”
“Oh. Okay. Never mind.”
She laughed. “Good thing I’m not a lady. He’s got — and I'm serious here — the softest lips known to man.” Her eyes once again drifted off to look at something in the middle distance, and her lips made a sort of puckering motion, as if she were imagining him kissing her right then.
“Right,” I said, breaking her trance.
“I can’t wait to see him again. I hope I’ll get to.” She lowered her gaze, but I could see her peering up at me through her eyelashes.
If they were actually soulmates, I’m not sure anything could keep them apart once they’d found each other. And Mr. Anu had said kissing could initiate the bond. Though what she was getting at was whether I’d asked Jacob about a double date.
“I did ask, just so you know.”
She jumped in her seat and clenched her hands together. “You did? Oh, you’re the best. I knew you would. This is going to be just . . . just spectacular. When are we going out?”
I pushed the food around on my plate with my fork.
“Wait. Why won’t you look at me? Y-you mean Jacob said no?”
“Not exactly.”
She let out a muted shriek. I glanced around to see if anyone was paying attention. A few eyes were on us.
“Someone had better tell me exactly what he said pretty darn quick, or someone might find they’ve got hunks of hair missing.”
“Settle down,” I said. “People are looking.”
“What? You only want people looking when you’re a werewolf?”
“No. No. Siggie, it’s not that he said no. He just . . . he doesn’t know where he stands with Buster. Not after what I did last night.”
She deflated somewhat. “Oh.”
“He’s coming to see me for dinner on Wednesday. He said he’d ask Buster to come, too.”
Siggie began fluttering in her seat. How she was managing to appear to flutter was beyond me. I held up a calming hand.
“He said he’d ask Buster if he wanted to come to see you and go to dinner with us. But I don’t want you to depend on that. Okay? Jacob doesn’t know if Buster is angry. Maybe Buster won’t want anything to do with Jacob. You know?”
“All right.” Somehow during the duration of our conversation, she’d managed to clean her plate. I, on the other hand, had managed to only eat a few bites. But I couldn’t eat anymore. My stomach flip-flopped when I glanced up at the clock. It was nearing seven o’clock.
“What time is the meeting?”
“Right. It’s time to go.”
We crossed campus in record time. I could feel eyes on me the whole way, and several times people actually ran to get out of my path. Siggie must have been too wrapped up in thoughts of Buster to notice.
“What are we going to say at the meeting?” I asked.
“The truth.”
“The truth.”
“Is there an echo out here? Yeah, the truth.”
“And you think they’ll believe me?”
She grabbed me by the arm and stopped, forcing me to stop as well. “Iris. It doesn’t matter if they believe you or not. You can’t change what you are, and you can’t change what you did. You can only try to make them understand.”
That made more sense than I wanted it to. “Right. You’re right.”
&n
bsp; We continued on. When we got to the house, she squeezed my hand and gave me an encouraging nod before she lifted her hand to knock.
Patty opened the door.
“Siggie, I’m so glad to see you. And Iris.” Her voice cooled when she said my name. She kept her eyes on Siggie. “I thought you understood that this is a board-member only meeting.”
“I know,” Siggie said. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “But Iris is my best friend and I think the board needs to hear her explanation of events.”
Patty licked her lips. “One moment, please.” She shut the door. Her footsteps receded away. A minute or two later, the door opened again. “Very well. Please, won’t you both come in?”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I’m doing this for Siggie’s benefit, not yours.” She said it with a sniff. I wanted to change my form right then and knock her so hard that she was hanging from the chandelier. But I kept my temper in check. I wasn’t going to gain anybody’s trust with violence.
We followed Patty to the dining room. The other board members were already seated. Shirley and Gilda represented the seniors along with Patty. Then Mimi and Lucy covered the junior class. Francis was there for the sophomores, and now Siggie would represent the freshmen. Mimi jumped up from the table and brought over an extra chair for me, inserting it at the corner next to Siggie’s empty seat. Patty sat at the head of the table and everyone sat in unison.
Everyone except for Siggie and me. We met eyes and plopped into our chairs.
“Before we bring the meeting to order, Siggie has a guest who would like the opportunity to speak,” Patty said.
I cleared my throat and stood. “Um, yes. Hi. Obviously, you all know me. I’m here to apologize for my behavior at the ball yesterday. Apparently, I don’t take very well to alcohol, and things got a little out of control. That was not my intention at all, and I want you to know that it will never happen again. I’m very, very sorry.”
“Right. She’s sorry,” Siggie said. “And she’s going to tell you all about her, um, appearance now.” She turned and gave me a threatening look.
“Yes. My appearance.” I swallowed. My mouth felt like I’d been licking sand. “I’m not sure what you all remember —”
“I remember you getting up on the stage in some ridiculous costume,” Mimi said. “The wolf sightings on campus are not a joke, Iris. People could get hurt.”
“It wasn’t a joke.”
“Then you meant to get up there dressed like a wolf man?” Patty pressed.
“No, I —”
“How could you not intend to do it when you were wearing a costume?” Mimi asked.
“It wasn’t a costume,” Siggie said.
Everyone’s heads swiveled to stare at her, including mine. I shot her a glare.
“Just listen for a minute,” I said.
“You said you would tell them the truth,” Siggie said. There was a hitch in her voice. I could feel her friendship slipping away. I couldn’t let that happen.
“Okay. Okay. Look. There is something everyone sitting at this table, everyone in Alpha Nu even, has in common. We’re different, right? I know you can sense that you’re different.” I set my eyes on each of them. Only Shirley and Lucy held my gaze, but even they eventually averted their eyes. “Your teeth. You all have extra-pointy canine teeth. Most of you have probably endured teasing or questions about it in your past.”
“Remember how Trixie tormented me for weeks?” Siggie said. “It was because of my teeth.”
“Right. Siggie doesn’t hide her teeth as well as most of you do when you smile. And you can’t tell me that something in your past didn’t convince you to adapt a way to keep those teeth hidden.
“Also, you all can hear, see, and smell better than any human can. You never get sick, and I’d bet that your family has a history of long life. Unless they die in some kind of accident,” I said.
“You make it sound like we’re not human,” Francis said.
“We’re not,” Siggie said.
Except for breathing and heartbeats, the room was silent.
“Yeah, right,” scoffed Shirley.
“It’s true,” I said. “We’re all direct descendants of the Egyptian god Anubis.”
Gilda lit a cigarette. It was the only movement in the room.
“Is that what you came to say?” Patty asked.
“Yes.”
“But they don’t believe you,” Siggie said. She turned to me and grabbed my arm. “Change now. Show them.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “I don’t want to frighten anyone.”
“So, wait,” Shirley said. “You’re saying that we’re all Anubian. But somehow you are the only one in this room who can change into . . . what? What did you change into?”
I sighed. I didn’t want to say more, but Siggie was pleading with her eyes for me to continue. “Humans would call it a werewolf,” I said. “And I can change because I found my soulmate. We’re all half Anubian and half human. Until you join with your soulmate, you won’t have the ability to reach your full potential.”
“Full potential?” Patty asked.
“There’s more,” Siggie said. “We have to find our soulmate before we’re too old. When we reach full adulthood, it’s too late. Right, Iris?”
I nodded. “Right. For most people that’s between eighteen and twenty-four, give or take a year.”
“And Jacob’s your soulmate,” Shirley said.
“Yes.”
“He didn’t seem so mated to your soul last night. You should’ve seen how mad he was.”
“We already made up. After we cleaned up the mess at the dance studio, we went home together and ironed it out.”
Shirley crossed her arms and studied me. She wasn’t buying it.
“Tell them who you live with,” Siggie said.
I turned towards her. “I don’t think I’m going to convince them.”
“No. They believe you. Right? Shirley? Patty?” Her eyes bounced hopefully around the table, but nobody wanted to agree.
“Look,” I said, standing. “I came to apologize and try to explain. You don’t have to believe me. You don’t even have to let me join the group. I just want to make sure that you understand that Siggie had nothing to do with it. Nothing about what happened was her fault. It was entirely, one hundred percent me. So, I’m sorry. Truly. Thank you for your time. I’ll let you proceed with your meeting.” I stood to leave the table, but Siggie caught me by the wrist.
“Iris, wait,” Siggie said. “You can get them to believe.”
“We have a meeting to begin,” Patty said. “Iris, we accept your apology, and you can be assured that nobody will hold anything against Siggie for your actions yesterday.”
“Thank you.” I moved my wrist in a slow twist to loosen Siggie’s grip. I went outside to wait for her on the front porch. Across the street, the rowdy fraternity had a station wagon parked across the grass. The tailgate was open, and someone was sitting on it, his legs swinging, while he smoked. He locked eyes with me, flicked his butt onto the ground, and retreated into the house behind him.
Maybe it was the long day, or maybe it was the stress of wondering whether I’d be accepted into Alpha Nu in spite of my behavior, but my thoughts strayed to Mr. Anu and comments he’d made over the course of the last year. Since we acquired our alternate forms, he’d taken us with him several times to guide souls to the other side. With the exception of Gary, we’d only observed as he performed his duties. Something about it struck me as wrong.
How was Mr. Anu guiding souls in other places to the other side? Not everyone who died lived in or near Salvation. My head started to ache, and I pinched the bridge of my nose to mitigate the pain.
Siggie came out and called for me to come with her. I followed her to the edge of the porch when she stopped abruptly.
“You didn’t do a very convincing job,” she snarled. She didn’t even need the alternate form to look int
imidating. “They didn’t believe you.”
“Oh,” I said.
“‘Oh’? That’s all you have to say? How about, ‘Sorry you look like a basket case Siggie, for believing when they don’t’, or ‘I should’ve tried harder to convince them. Maybe I should have changed into a wolf man so they’d believe me.’ How about one of those?”
“Siggie, I—”
“And don’t even say you’re sorry. I know you’re sorry! You’ve said it over and over. You’re just not doing anything that shows me you’re sorry.”
She turned and stomped off the porch to the sidewalk at the street. The station wagon parked in the grass caught her eye. She stood at the sidewalk, hands on her hips, and stared at it. She dropped her arms and turned back to me.
“Well? Are you coming?”
I scrambled off the porch to stand beside her. “I know it seems like changing shouldn’t be a big deal, but it is,” I said. “Mr. Anu hasn’t advised us on what to do yet, and I can’t do anything that would make it worse.”
The tension wrinkling her forehead in a very unflattering way eased somewhat.
“You’ll be relieved to know that in spite of thinking you have a deeply flawed sense of humor for showing up at a party in a wolf suit, they’ve agreed that you can still join the sorority. They’re even fine with you sharing the freshman bedroom in the house.”
I heaved a sigh of relief. I wasn’t sure how to continue on at Garfield if they no longer accepted me.
Siggie read my sigh a little differently than I’d meant it. She stopped and spun me to her. “Don’t think that means I have to invite you to be my roommate!”
I felt like someone had accidentally slammed my soul in a car door. “Wh-what? You don’t want to room with me?”
She frowned. “Of course, I do. But after what you pulled you don’t get to just assume it.”
“Okay.” I looked away, hoping she wouldn’t see the sheen of tears that were welling in the corners of my eyes. “I deserved that.”
“When we get back to the room, you’re going to show me this change again. I need to see it for myself when I know I’m stone-cold sober. And you aren’t going to give me any junk about what Mr. Anu says or whether it would reflect badly on Jacob. It’ll just be me and you. You’ve already told me the truth, right?”
