Liar (19 page)

“Not girls,” Tayshawn says. “Just Micah.”

“How do you know?” she demands. “You didn't know about Micah! There could've been tons of other girls.”

“Well, let's figure it out then,” Tayshawn says. “How often did you see him, Sarah?”

Sarah gulps. “Pretty much every Saturday and Sunday night. Most Fridays, too. After school when he didn't have practice.”

“And at school?” Tayshawn asks.

Sarah nods.

“What about you, Micah?”

“On the days we skipped. Sometimes after school, but not often.”

“So how many times a week then, Micah?”

“Two or three times. Sometimes only once.”

“And, me,” Tayshawn says. “I saw him at practice and most Saturday or Friday nights if there was a party. How many days you think that leaves?”

He was staring at Sarah. She was still crying, but slower, not sobbing.

“I think we got him covered,” Tayshawn says. “No way could he've had another girl.”

I know he didn't have another girl. I would have smelled her on him, but I only ever smelled Sarah. I don't tell them that. I'm smelling them both strongly right now. The cave is getting warmer, more closed in.

“Makes sense, right?” Tayshawn asks Sarah. He touches her cheek briefly.

She nods. “It still doesn't feel good, though. I'm sorry, Micah, but, well, how
could
you?”

She's staring at me. Angry like she might hit me. I know I'm stronger than her but I wouldn't stop her. She'd be right to hit me.

“Why, Micah?”

I don't know how to answer. I can't tell her that I didn't really think about her. Because I did, but not like that. I shrug. Sarah's face gets tighter. “It just happened,” I tell her. “I wasn't thinking. I don't think Zach was either. If it wasn't for the running it wouldn't have happened more than once. Honest, Sarah. He didn't think about me the way he thought about you. He thought I was a freak.”

“Well,” Tayshawn says, “you kind of are. You don't hardly talk at school and when you do it's a whole bunch of bullshit. I know your daddy isn't any kind of arms dealer.”

“He isn't?” Sarah asks, letting go of her purse to wipe her face some more.

Tayshawn laughs. “Doesn't even sell switchblades. He's a magazine writer.”

“How'd you know that?” I ask.

“I got my ways.”

“You saw one of his articles?” Sarah asks.

“My mom subscribes to a million travel magazines,” Tayshawn says. He grins.

“Don't you think being a travel writer would be the perfect cover for an arms dealer?” I ask.

Tayshawn laughs even harder.

“Why do you lie so much, Micah?” Sarah asks. She's still staring at me. I remember when she was afraid to. I'm not sure I like her lack of fear.

“I always have. I don't know. It's a habit.” I'm not about to tell them about the family illness.

“A stupid habit,” Tayshawn says.

It's gotten a little darker outside. I wonder what time it is. It doesn't feel that late. Might be dark clouds.

Sarah is still staring at me. Tayshawn, too. The air has gotten even warmer. The air smells like musk.

I hug my knees tighter. If Zach hadn't been killed we wouldn't be here. Sarah never would've talked to me so much. Tayshawn neither. Though we'd shot some hoops a few times. Almost four years I'd known them. Without knowing them at all.

“I miss him,” I say. Even though I know Sarah might slap me for saying it. Who was I to miss her boyfriend?

Instead, she leans toward me. I think there's something on my face and she's going to wipe it off. She doesn't. She kisses me. The shock of her lips against mine travels from the nerve endings in my scalp to my feet. Her mouth is opening. I feel her tongue lightly press into mine. She tastes clean and faintly pepperminty. Her mouth is warm and her lips smooth. I feel hot and then cold. I'm kissing her in return.

Tayshawn stares.

Then, when Sarah pulls away, he leans forward and presses his lips against mine, which are still damp from Sarah's. His mouth is a little cooler. He presses harder, but his lips are as smooth. He puts his hand to my cheek, both hands, opens his mouth wider, kisses me harder.

I'm shaking. So's he. I have no idea what's happening but I wonder if Zach can feel it.

When Tayshawn lets go I fall back blinking and watch as Sarah and Tayshawn kiss. My heart is racing. I'm not sure what I think except that I want them to kiss me again.

I know that none of us killed Zach. We don't have it in us.

PART TWO

Telling the True Truth

CONFESSION

I am a werewolf.

There, I've said it.

The heart of all my lies.

Of the family's lies.

You guessed it already, didn't you? What with the fur I was born in, the wolf in my throat, my weird family. She's a werewolf, you said to yourself, from a werewolf family. That explains everything.

Now you're thinking, “Well, she killed him then, didn't she?” This proves it. And accounts for the how as well: a werewolf. Micah the werewolf.

Except that I didn't kill Zach. I have never killed a person. Not as a wolf and not as a human.

Or you're thinking, “She's crazy. She's not just a liar—she's insane.”

Werewolves don't exist. Not anywhere outside of dreams and stories, and yet she says she is a werewolf. Might as well claim that you're a doorknob or a space station. Micah the doorknob; Micah the space station.

You think my being a werewolf is the biggest lie of all 'cause it means I'm not the regular kind of liar who pretends she's a boy, a hermaphrodite, or that Daddy's an arms dealer.

No, it's worse than that: you think I believe it. That I am such a nut job I'm delusional.

You think I killed him, too. Trapped in my delusional state, believing I am a werewolf, I killed Zach. Believing I'm a werewolf is the only way I can live with what I did.

Except that I didn't.

That was a different werewolf.

Yes, there's more than one of us.

HISTORY OF ME

The change comes with my period.

It hurts. Every nerve, every cell, every bone, the shape of my eyes, nose, mouth, my arms, my legs. All of it. Shifts and grinds and groans. Bone stretches, elongates; the muscles, too. Fibers twitch and snap. It's as if every bone in my body has not only been fractured, but broken open, the marrow spilled. Muscles sheared from bone. Eyes pop. Ears explode.

I howl.

For the duration. For the twenty minutes of change I am nothing but a howl. It breaks and deepens and stretches and snaps. Starts human, ends wolf. It's just as bad when it starts wolf and ends human.

The cells in my brain. The gray matter. Squeezing and breaking my memories.

I, the girl, I, the human
is not
I, the wolf.

I could not do it every month. I would not survive.

Three or four times a year—in the summer—is the most I can manage.

That's why I am so good about taking my pill. That's why in the city I take one every morning without fail.

Because the shifting of my spine from human to wolf, that alone is enough pain for a lifetime.

I could not do it every month.

But I miss my wolf days and long for the summer, for the days between those two twenty-minute bursts of change—human to wolf, wolf to human. Days when I run free and kill and eat raw and never think once about where I fit or who loves me or what I'll be when I get out of school.

I just am. I know where I belong.

Until I'm human again.

BEFORE

My father told me about the wolf when I was ten. That's when he decided that I was old enough to understand the weight of the secret. He'd have waited longer, but he had to tell me before puberty, before my first blood brought my first change. The Greats judged that he was already leaving it too late. One of my cousins changed when she was nine.

Ten was a bad year for me. I was miserable. The hair I'd been born with returned and every day it seemed to be getting worse, not just on more parts of my body—my feet, the palms of my hands—but coarser and thicker. No doctor had any solution. No hair-removal technique worked for more than a few days. I hated school. The teasing was constant.

Dad decided to tell me the truth up on the farm. He said a week away from the city would be good for me. We could relax with the Greats and their assorted children and grandchildren.

I was grateful. I knew they wouldn't say anything about the hair. Some of my cousins were every bit as hairy: the family illness. It wasn't that they wouldn't tease me. They would: about being a city girl, about the color of my skin, about how I dressed, how I talked. Before I'd hated it. Now it seemed like nothing.

When we played they weren't as vicious or violent as they normally were. They didn't lead me out into the depths of the forest and leave me there. Didn't make me do their chores: cleaning out the stables, spreading compost, feeding the pigs.

They liked me better when I was covered in hair. They didn't laugh at me as much and I didn't rag on them for being the same age as me and not reading as well as my little brother.

When Dad called me into the house, we were playing soccer on a cleared patch of land where corn had grown, but was now left fallow.

I kept playing. My cousins stopped, looking at each other and glancing at me. As if they knew what Dad wanted. I kicked the ball at the two cans that marked the goal. Even with the goalie paying no attention I missed.

“Micah!” Dad called again. I headed toward him slowly, looking back at the cousins. They knew something I didn't. I wanted them to tell me. I wanted to keep playing. Instead I followed Dad through the trees and into the house.

Grandmother and Great-Aunt Dorothy were sitting in front of the fireplace. Their dog, Hilliard, curled up in a silvery gray ball at Great-Aunt's feet. His white snout with the brown stripe that started on the top of his head and ended at his shiny black nose rested on his paws. He raised his head and looked at me and then put it down again.

Dad sat on the chair next to the couch. I sat in the one on the other side, closest to the fire. Despite all the extra hair I was cold.

“You know we have an illness in our family,” Dad said.

I nodded even though it wasn't a question. I didn't point at my hairy arms or say anything sarcastic.

Grandmother and Great-Aunt tutted. I couldn't tell if they were disapproving of Dad or of me.

“Well,” Dad said, “it's not quite what we said it was.”

Both the Greats harrumphed.

“She's only ten,” Dad said. “She needs me to break it to her slowly.”

“Break what to me slowly?” I asked, feeling a prickle of irritation at being called “only ten.” Dad knew I wasn't dumb. It was true my grades weren't that good, but what else would you expect with all the moving from school to school? He just liked hiding things. How bad could it be anyway? I was already covered in hair. I could take whatever it was they were going to tell me. “I want to know.”

“You're a wolf,” Grandmother said, jerking her head toward their dog. “Same as your great-uncle there.”

The farm dog was my great-uncle Hilliard? Great-Uncle Hilliard who'd died? Not just named after him? Grandmother wasn't smiling. Not that it would have made a difference. She never joked.

“Werewolf,” Dad said, glaring at his mother.

I looked at Hilliard. I looked at Dad. Then at the Greats. None of them were smiling.

Great-Aunt Dorothy nodded. “Same as your grandmother, your great-uncle, your aunts Jill, Christine, Hen, and uncle Lloyd, and your cousins Sam, Jessie, Susan, Alice, and Lilly. The rest of us are carriers, passing it on, but not wolfish ourselves.” She sounded a little sad. “That's why you're hairy. Once you start turning wolf the hair will go. When you're human, that is. You'll be hairy only as a wolf. A gray wolf to be exact,
Canis lupus
. Though most werewolves are
Canis dirus
, the dire wolf what's extinct except for werewolves. That's why we Wilkins are smaller than other werewolf families. Gray wolves only get up to 175 pounds or so. Mostly not even. Same as us. Long and skinny.”