“Oh God, Tal. What is happening to me?” That reaction wasn’t a Scout-like reaction. That sound wasn’t a Scout-like sound. It wasn’t a human sound. “What am I now?”
Talley was hugging me before I could stop her. “It’s okay. You’re going to be fine. You just need to calm down and take some time to adjust.” Her hand was stroking down my hair.
“You’re petting me like a dog.”
Her hand stilled, and she pulled back to look at me. “It’s the day after a full moon. Your wolf is still close to the surface. Sometimes touch can keep him… her calm and in check.”
“The wolf is close to the surface? What does that mean? Am I like Sybil now?”
Talley took a full step back, but she was now patting my arm. I would have told her to stop, but it actually was kind of soothing.
“Your wolf isn’t a different personality. It’s still you, just a bit more…”
“Animalistic?”
“Exactly.”
I put my hands on either side of my head and squeezed. It was all too much. Too much noise. Too many smells. Too many questions. Too many Scouts. I couldn’t deal with it all. I shouldn’t have to. I should be worrying about getting a summer job and whether or not I picked the right college, not about how I was supposed to keep Wolf Scout in check.
“I can’t do this,” I finally admitted, the pressure against my skull somehow making it easier to think. “I don’t know what’s going on or what to do about it. I just want to crawl back in bed and —” Be with Alex is what I was going to say, but caught myself before it came tumbling out.
“And hide? Like you have been since the accident?”
My head whipped up, the anger once again white hot and explosive. “Hide? Hide? I had been gutted like a pig, in case you forgot. I wasn’t hiding, I was recovering.”
“The injury forced you to stay in bed, not to shut out everyone who loves you. You’ve been hiding from what happened then and you want to hide from what is happening now.” There were blots of red in my vision. My hands twitched, fingers curling as if they were trying to become claws again. “Honestly, I don’t know who you’ve become either, because my best friend wasn’t a coward.”
“You don’t know what I’ve been through,” I said through clenched teeth.
“You’re not the only one who lost someone the night Alex died, you know. He was my friend. Maybe we didn’t have the same relationship you did, but I cared about him. It broke my heart to lose him.” I opened my mouth, but she plowed on. “My best friend almost died right in front of me, and most days I’m not sure she didn’t. Jase has become a tsunami of wrath, plowing over everyone misguided enough to get in his way. They’ll still be talking about how he loudly dumped Tinsley in the middle of the cafeteria at our twenty year reunion. Of course, that’s better than Charlie, the silent anger ball who is going to go nuclear any minute now. I’m their Seer, I’m suppose to keep them from imploding, but I don’t know what I’m doing since no one ever saw fit to train a latent.” And then Talley burst into tears. It was a tactic she’d been using since we were little girls trying to sneak into her mother’s workshop to play with all the shiny costumes. We would inevitably get caught, but before Mrs. Matthews could dole out our punishment, Talley would become a sobbing, blubbery mess, and we would be pardoned.
You would think that after seventeen years of friendship I would have stopped falling for it.
Nearly five minutes later, Talley pulled herself out of my embrace, wiping the remaining tears from her face. I had to swipe a hand over my cheeks, too. It seems I never quite got out of the habit of crying right along with her.
“You really do need to get something to eat,” she said. “I’ll go down in the record books as the worst Seer ever if I let a Shifter pass out from hunger.”
Talley followed me to the kitchen downstairs, keeping up an overly-enthusiastic monologue about the travesty of being able to burn through five thousand calories just by taking a nap. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to break the tension or if she was just jealous of my new eat-all-you-want-plus-more-and-never-gain-an-ounce diet plan.
No one was home, which was a relief. I wasn’t ready to face my parents again and talking to Angel would have required more enthusiasm than I was willing to muster at the moment. Jase was still with his Pack.
“How much do you remember about last night?” Talley asked as I slathered a piece of bread with a giant helping of peanut butter and honey. It was the best I could accomplish on my own. Anything else would have required cooking, which I am forbidden from attempting due to my tendency to set off smoke alarms.
“Ummm…everything?” I thought through the night in search of missing time or holes in my memory. My mental eye paused on a gray wolf with human eyes. “Yeah, I think I remember everything.” Especially the Change parts. Pain like that didn’t just erase itself from your memory, no matter how much you want it to. “Doesn’t everybody?”
Talley rummaged through the fridge, opening various Tupperware containers and examining their contents. “The first Change is pretty traumatic. Some Shifters find it hard to reconcile their beast brain with their human brain.”
“Because Wolf Scout doesn’t think like Real Scout?”
Talley popped a container full of my favorite chicken casserole in the microwave. “Right. She depends more on instinct and sensory input than logic.”
“Like how I kept getting distracted by bunny and squirrel trails?”
“Exactly. In wolf form the procurement of food is the highest of your priorities. Part of my job is to keep you from doing anything that will put yourself or your Pack at risk by doing something…”
“Stupid?”
“Ill-advised.” The microwave beeped and she pulled the container out and divided its contents onto two plates. I was impressed with her mad cooking skills. I would have somehow managed to turn it into a rice, chicken, and cheese brick. “I check in with everyone throughout the night, forcing them to think as humans.”
“What do they hear when you talk to them? Is it just like you’re standing right there beside them, or is it like a cosmic intercom? Or do they just feel like a crazy person?”
Talley blew on a forkful of food, which was a smart thing to do. I was going to miss the top layer of skin on my tongue. “Don’t you remember?”