Authors: S.M. Reine
“Thanks for everything,” Rylie told him before opening the door. “You can go. You don’t want to face my aunt’s wrath.”
“All right.”
He was practically gone before she could shut the door.
Gwyn took off her hat and studied Rylie’s unfamiliar dress with a twisted mouth. “I found a bloody towel in your room and half-cooked food in the kitchen. Looked like you left in a hurry. Want to tell me what that’s about?”
“No,” Rylie said.
“Let’s get inside where it’s warm,” Gwyn said. She didn’t look angry. She looked as tired as Rylie felt.
“No. I can’t stay for long. I have to leave.”
Her aunt dusted her hat off on her knee. “And where do you think you’re going?” she asked, concentrating very hard on a smudge of dirt near the brim.
“I don’t know, but it’s not safe here.”
“Why?”
“That’s the problem. I can’t tell you.”
Gwyn put the hat on again, studying her niece with a grave expression. “It seems we have a trust problem, babe. I know something is happening with you, but you won’t tell me what. I know you’ve never gotten along with your mom, but I thought it’d be different with me. Guess you’ve never had an adult you could trust.”
“I did once,” Rylie admitted. “Her name was Louise, and she was a counselor at Camp Silver Brook. She wanted to help me.”
“This is about camp?”
“Yeah… and no. Everything in my life is kind of about camp now.”
“Is Louise one of the counselors who got killed?”
She nodded. “She kept giving me chances, and I kept screwing them up. I let her down. I wish I could fix it, but I didn’t even get to apologize to her before she…” Rylie swallowed. “Camp was awful. This whole summer was awful.”
“I know,” Gwyn said. “Those bear attacks did a lot of harm.”
“There weren’t any bears. Not a single one.”
“That’s what the news said.”
“The news lied,” Rylie said. Her aunt watched her, waiting for her to go on. “It was… something else. Something even worse.”
The wind blew around them. Gwyn folded her arms. Rylie couldn’t tell if she believed her or not, because her expression had gone stony.
“What was it?” she asked.
“It was a werewolf.”
The silence got much, much heavier.
“A… werewolf,” Gwyn said.
Rylie went on in a rush. “It bit me, so I’m a werewolf now too.” She couldn’t stand to see the disbelief on her aunt’s face. “I’ve been turning into a wolf every new and full moon for weeks. There’s these people, these hunters. They’re out to get me. One of them came to kill me and I had to run. That’s why I have to leave.”
“Rylie…”
“I’m serious, Gwyn. I’m not making it up.”
Her aunt rubbed her face. “I know you’re not trying to lie to me. This is… well, not what I expected. I thought you were going to tell me you got into drugs or pregnant or something. That’s something I could handle. But… werewolves?”
She looked down at her hands. “Yeah.”
“And… do you have any proof?”
“Sure. On the next full moon.”
Gwyn fanned herself with her hat. She was taking a lot of deep breaths. “Jesus, Rylie. Are you trying to tell me you killed those people at camp?”
“No! That was the guy who bit me. It was this counselor named Jericho. I was out wandering one night, and he attacked me, and after that…” It sounded so stupid that she couldn’t finish the sentence. “He killed everyone.”
“And now you want to run away.”
“I don’t
want
to,” she said. “But the hunters will get me if I don’t.”
“Okay,” Gwyn said. She took out her keys. “Let’s get in the truck and get going.”
“Okay? You believe me?”
“Sure,” she said very, very gently. “I believe you.”
“We have to hurry.”
“I know.”
They got into the truck. Rylie couldn’t believe it. There was no way Gwyn could accept that she had become a werewolf so easily. She had been bitten months ago and she still didn’t believe it sometimes. But she didn’t care as long as they got on the move and stayed away from Eleanor. She could help convince Gwyn later.
“Where are we going to go?” Rylie asked as they left the ranch.
“Somewhere safe. It sounds like there’s a lot you need to talk about, babe.”
They didn’t go toward town. They turned the other way instead. Rylie felt better as they got further away from the ranch, and being with Gwyn again helped too. There wasn’t much more comforting than having her tough aunt and a shotgun on a rack in the truck.
Staying up with Tate all night left her drowsy, so Rylie dozed in the front seat as they drove for an hour.
The farms and countryside began to turn into suburbs. It was after noon when they reached another town. It was bigger than the one where Rylie attended school. There was a real mall, a ten-screen movie theater, and a lot of restaurants.
“I’m hungry,” Rylie said.
“We’ll get lunch soon.”
Gwyneth pulled up to a white building with a big sign in the front. It said “St. Philomene’s Regional Hospital” in tall letters. She was so confused when her aunt stopped in the parking lot that she didn’t move at first.
“What are we doing at a hospital?” she asked.
Her aunt took her hand. “Listen to yourself, Rylie. You’re talking werewolves and assault and conspiracies. I think… I think what hit you this summer hit you hard. You’re having a tough time with reality. Jessica should have put you straight into counseling.”
The meaning of what she said struck Rylie. “You think I’m crazy?”
“No,” Gwyn said forcefully. “No. You’re not. But you said it yourself. You saw something awful this summer, and I think it confused you. You need to talk to some kind of professional and get yourself sorted.”
“So you’re going to put me in the psychiatric ward?” Rylie’s voice rose in pitch until she was almost shrieking. “I’m not crazy, Gwyn! I can’t get locked up! What if I—I mean—” A tear rolled down her cheek, and she swiped it away with a hand. “I trusted you!”
Rylie threw open the door, but Gwyn’s voice stopped her. “Where are going to go?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere else! You can’t lock me up!”
Her aunt hopped out of the truck and followed her as she ran across the parking lot. Rylie stopped when she reached the street. Tears rolled freely down her cheeks.
“Babe,” Gwyn said gently. “Think about it. If what you said is true, you can’t go home anyway. There’s people to watch you in the hospital. Nobody can hurt you there. I’ll stay with you, okay? I won’t leave you alone.”
“This is stupid. I won’t do it.”
“Just talk to someone. Please.”
Her aunt was right. She couldn’t go back to the ranch, and unless Rylie wanted to stay with Tate forever, she had nowhere to go.
But the thought of institutionalization terrified her. What if they kept her longer than two weeks and she became a werewolf in the psychiatric ward? There was a lot of vulnerable prey in the hospital. It would be like setting off a bomb.
“I’m not crazy,” she whispered.
Rylie was surprised to see Gwyn crying, too. She didn’t think her aunt could cry. “I know, sweetheart,” she said, hugging Rylie tight. “I know.”
Fifteen
Truth
They admitted Rylie for the day. There wasn’t anybody available to evaluate her until Monday, and after Gwyn’s conversation with a doctor—during which she avoided using the word “werewolf”—they decided to keep her for observation.
“Observation” was a funny word, because it seemed to mean giving Rylie a room in the hospital and then ignoring her. They stuck her with a girl whose arms were bandaged from elbow to wrist. She refused to talk. That was fine with Rylie.
She was checked into the hospital in time for dinner, but their idea of food was a roll and reheated pasta with Jell-O. There was one little meatball on the plate that didn’t taste like real meat. Gwyn went out to get a half dozen cheeseburgers and helped her by eating the buns and French fries while Rylie ate the patties.
“Thanks,” she said. It was the only time she spoke to her aunt the entire time.
The nurses didn’t make Gwyn leave after visiting hours ended, but there wasn’t space in the room for her, so she slept between two chairs in the waiting room.
Rylie sat in bed with her knees to her chest, watching the seconds tick by on the clock and wondering what would happen in the morning. The girl with the bandaged arms was clicking through channels on the TV aimlessly for hours.
What if Rylie was crazy? It was likelier than being a werewolf. She never remembered being an animal anymore, so maybe she was losing her mind on the moons rather than transforming.
She might have preferred being crazy to being a monster, but that would have meant everything over the summer was a hallucination, too. Including Seth.
All she had to do to remind herself of the horrible truth was glance in the bathroom mirror. Her eyes used to be blue, and that shade of gold wasn’t natural. The scars on her chest hadn’t come from nowhere, either.
What would she tell the psychologist? They would think the werewolf thing was a nervous breakdown, too. She couldn’t tell them the truth if she didn’t want to be put in a straight jacket.
Of course, Eleanor couldn’t get her in a psychiatric ward.
She managed to sleep fitfully for a couple hours in the early morning, but a nurse woke her up for breakfast. Rylie threw everything in the trash except the turkey bacon. The girl with the bandaged arms had vanished.
A few minutes later, they took her to be evaluated.
“I’ll wait right out here,” Gwyn said, squeezing Rylie’s hand.
She made herself smile.
The therapist was a smiling middle-aged woman with a pen over one ear and perfect fingernails. The name plate on her desk said Rita Patterson. “Good morning,” she greeted. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“I don’t like hospitals,” Rylie said.
“Why is that?”
“You don’t go to a hospital for anything fun.”
Rita had a rich, pleasant laugh. “Unfortunately, that’s true. Now, I’ve been told your aunt brought you in because she’s worried about you, so I have a little worksheet for you to fill out. It’s how we assess your risk level.”
She pushed a paper across the desk, and Rylie looked at the first question:
Do you have thoughts of self-harm
? It had boxes to check for “yes” or “no.” All of the questions were similar.
“I’m not suicidal,” Rylie said without touching a pen.
“No? Do you want to tell me why you came in yesterday?”
“I told Aunt Gwyneth that I’m a werewolf. She thought I went crazy.”
“Are you a werewolf?” Rita asked.
It was kind of a weird question. She wasn’t asking what Rylie thought. She asked if she really was a werewolf.
“Yes. I am.”
The room was very quiet. Rylie thought her heart might be pounding loud enough for the therapist to hear it.
She had decided overnight that the best way to protect herself from Eleanor would be to get locked up. If she could get them to put her in a padded cell, she would be guarded all the time. They probably wouldn’t keep her for very long, but it would be a few days of safety.
So Rylie would be honest. The truth was crazy enough without embellishment.
Rita took the pen from its position over her ear and tapped it against her lips. “How did you become a werewolf, Rylie?”
“I was bitten by another werewolf.”
“And all of a sudden, you changed?”
“No,” Rylie said. “I changed slowly. It took three months for me to become a werewolf.” Her voice shook when she said it.
Slowly, very slowly, Rita set down her pen. She leaned forward to take the risk assessment paper from the desk, and Rylie noticed a glimmer of silver around her neck. The therapist was wearing a necklace with a five pointed star medallion.
Rita peered closely into Rylie’s eyes.
“When did it happen?” she asked.
“Over the summer. I was bitten at Camp Silver Brook.”
A strange expression flashed over the therapist’s face, and then she sat back. She cleared her throat and typed a quick note on her computer.
“Well, Rylie,” Rita said. She started writing on the risk assessment worksheet, and Rylie tilted her head to read it. She was filling it out for her. “Well, well.
Do
you have thoughts of self-harm?”
“Never.”
“Do you ever think you would be better off dead?”
“No. I want to live. But I am a werewolf,” she added, since the therapist didn’t seem to be nearly as worried about that statement as Rylie expected. “I eat cows and stuff. Alive.” Rita still didn’t look surprised. “With my teeth.” A little louder, she said, “When I’m an animal.”
“I would be very careful who you say that to,” Rita said in a low voice.