Authors: Stephanie Kuehn
“What happened?”
Keith trotted up, grim-faced and puffing. “He got on Grandpa’s boat is what happened.”
“Ah,” my dad said, tipping more of his drink into his mouth. His nose and cheeks were very red.
“Idiot,” Keith snarled in my direction.
“Hey, hey. Take it easy on him. He got sick to his stomach. Yelling at him isn’t going to make him feel better.”
“I’m not trying to make him feel better.”
“Oh, really?”
“Dad, he
knows
not to get onto boats!”
“Enough, Keith. Really. I don’t want to hear about it. You go hose that deck down, got it?”
My brother folded his arms tightly. Shot daggers in my direction. “Yeah, I got it.”
I sidled closer to my dad until Keith looked like he was the one who was going to throw up.
“I’d better get back down there,” he mumbled.
“Guess so,” my dad said cheerily. When Keith had gone, he wrinkled his nose and inspected me. “Go clean yourself up, Drew.”
* * *
That evening, my father stationed himself in front of the smoking grill. Another transformation: the genius professor turned typical suburban patriarch. He held a pair of metal tongs in one hand, a glass of liquor in the other, and wore a bright red apron with an illustration of a lobster on the front. Everywhere, our family teemed. Anna and Charlie flipped their hair and took pictures of each other in front of a pine tree. Phoebe drank an energy drink from a can and tried to get Keith to help her with a Sudoku puzzle. My aunt and grandmother labored in the kitchen.
But I kept my eyes on my father. I watched him from the back steps of the porch while swatting mosquitoes from my thighs. The scent of charring (free-range) chicken fat made my mouth water, and when my uncle slipped inside to get more meat, I went to stand by my father’s side in the dwindling summer light.
He tousled my hair.
I shuddered.
He stared down his nose at me. There was no expression on his smooth face. At least none that I understood.
“You’re a very intense person,” he said.
I didn’t take my eyes off him. I longed to hear admiration in his words. Pride.
But I didn’t. Under the weight of his gaze, I felt the way I always did, like the weak pup he wished he’d culled. The one he should’ve tied to a stone and tossed into the ocean.
“I know,” I whispered.
“It’s hard to watch sometimes.” He lapped at the amber drops hanging from the edge of his glass.
“I know,” I said again, and I pulled myself up as tall as I could, throwing my shoulders back in the same way he did. Maybe I could get him to look beyond the bandaged neck, the lingering smell of vomit. Maybe I could make him remember my triumphs. Maybe I could make him see me as strong, like him. Not weak, like Keith.
It worked.
He threw an arm around me and pulled me close until I smelled the booze on his breath. “I love you, Drew.”
My heart jolted, from the touch and the words. “I love you, too, Dad.”
* * *
I didn’t leave my father’s side the rest of the evening. We ate outside, on the side porch, and he let me sit right beside him, very close. The sun slipped away and the night shifted to cool. I held on to his body heat while I bolted down my food.
A screen kept the mosquitoes out, but the chirruping of crickets and call of a barn owl floated around us. We were a large group, ten people. I stayed very quiet, and I tried to take it all in. Uncle Kirby drank until his eyes turned shiny, and his laugh boomed loud and frightening. Phoebe and her mom sat on either side of him, a matched pair of wide-eyed bookends. Across the table, Anna talked to Grandpa. Dark hair fell across her face, so that I couldn’t see her lips moving. When she reached out and poured herself wine, no one said a thing. My father chatted quietly with his mother, who was seated on his left. I could hear their words, very mild ideas, thoughts about my father’s research and what he hoped to accomplish. Academic politics. That type of thing. My grandmother, who always spoke her mind, never once mentioned whatever had happened in New York. Or my mother. Or me. That left Keith and Charlie. They sat at the far end of the table. Charlie wore a dress with no sleeves. Her arms were lined with an abundance of silver bracelets. She played with them incessantly, spinning them around and around the slim bones of her wrist. Keith refused to eat. He stared at his food with his head and shoulders down. His eyes looked puffy. A portrait of sheer misery.
I finished everything on my plate. Guzzled down the glass of milk my father set in front of me.
Keith kicked his chair back and stalked from the room without a word.
“Moody one, isn’t he?” my aunt said.
“It’s the age,” her husband said knowingly.
Charlie laughed. Phoebe caught my eye, then looked away. Anna poured more wine.
“He’s become a vegetarian,” my grandfather announced as if this information might somehow be relevant.
My grandmother brought dessert in. Pound cake and blueberries. I licked whipped cream from my fingers. Belly full, I sat back in my chair. My head began to swim. My eyes began to droop.
When the moon rose halfway into the night sky and the stars twinkled, my father squeezed my shoulder.
“Let’s go,” he said.
I nodded and followed him silently up to his bedroom on the second floor, forcing my limbs to move. He closed the door and locked it. I sat on the edge of a slippery armchair. It held the greasy scent of pigskin leather. A four-poster bed sat on the other side of the room, beside a wide window of divided light that looked down onto the dark ravine. I yawned.
My father began to undress. The only light came from a bedside lamp, a cast-iron thing in the shape of a candle flame. Its glow was dim, weak.
I turned my head toward the door. The weight of the surrounding darkness flooded over me. I leaned to one side and slid from the chair onto the floor with a crash. My father knelt beside me.
“Drew?”
I couldn’t see anything. Just blackness.
He slapped my cheeks. Felt my pulse.
“Drew! Open your eyes.”
Open my eyes? I hadn’t realized they were closed. I blinked and saw my father’s floating face. His long nose and sharp angles. He scooped me up and placed me, not back in the chair, but on his bed, propped against the headboard. Slumped in his arms, I got a whiff of Scotch and sweat, very sour, and my heart raced. Why were all his clothes off? His chest was covered in fur. Like a pelt.
“Dad?”
“What?”
“Where’s Siobhan?”
“At home. With your mother. They couldn’t make it up here—”
“No! Tonight. Where’s Siobhan tonight? Is she safe?”
The creases around his eyes were like slot canyons in the desert. Deep. Impenetrable.
“Siobhan is safe. Okay? Don’t worry. Just so long as you relax.”
I nodded. The buzzing in my ears began, that soft, chemical calling. A familiar sound. A familiar exiting of my body. A familiar distortion of time and place. My mind sloshed from truth to falsehood. Soon I was not Drew. I was not me.
Soon my clothes were off, too.
Part of me didn’t know why.
But a part of me did.
My father stood and walked to the window. He stared out at the full moon. His hands pressed against the glass, long, shadowy fingers splayed like spider legs stuck in a web of leaded panes.
My head bobbed, drugged and heavy.
Don’t go to sleep. You’ll miss the wolves.
A rattling staccato broke my daze. My eyes widened. The noise originated from my father’s fingers as they quivered and rattled against the glass. The sound grew louder, rhythmic and hypnotic. The muscles in his hands tensed until his palms shook, then his arms. Then his whole body.
My mouth worked to call to him, but no sound came out. Instead, I bit down hard on my own fist.
Claws grew from my father’s hands like blades of grass sprouting from the earth, and the rattling grew louder, louder. It rose and swelled into an agonizing screech-scratching that made me want to run-flee-hide. I bit down harder
(it’ll be over soon)
and the sharp taste of blood filled my mouth. I knew what was happening. I knew what was coming. But I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t tear my gaze away. I couldn’t help but watch as
(soon soon soon)
he changed.
My father took a step back. His spine bulged and twisted. His skin stretched impossibly in all directions, as if something bad were lodged deep inside him, needing to work its way out. His hands flew to the top of his head, the new blade-claws digging, peeling, rending back his own scalp, a wrinkled gathered mass of hair and flesh that he worked furiously down toward his neck and shoulders.
Hand still jammed in my mouth, I had no more restraint. I screamed.
He twisted in my direction. My father was gone. A black wet whiskered snout pushed from where his head had been. Two dark ears stuck up like bat wings.
I choked. I wanted to die. Maybe I was already dead.
Jaws open wide, the wolf leapt for me.
And the stars began to sing.
Don’t look. Don’t. Look at the moon instead. Listen to it.
I jerked my head so that I could see out the window, out at the blackest night and the fullest moon. I tried losing myself in the lunar warmth, letting it wash over me, while somewhere else, in another world, another body, another mind, my heart beat madly, madly, too fast, like it wanted its job to just be done, finished, terminated. Over.
This is love,
the stars sang.
This is power. This is family.
Something famished and sick tore at my skin, tore at me. I cried out.
I felt pain. And fear.
But I held tight to the fierce promise of the moon.
I am not broken.
I am savage.
I endured.
chapter
twenty-nine
matter
I chase the night and it’s so obvious.
Me. It’s been up to me all this time.
What took so long? Deep down I know I may not be as strong as I appear. All these minutes, hours, days, years, spent with Jordan, Lex, Teddy, Mr. Byles, the ballerina, whomever, all this time I’ve just been stalling. I’ve clung to the belief that change will come by waiting for it.
How could I have been so stupid?
I aced chemistry. I know how change comes about.
Reactants are transformed into products when the matter involved undergoes an alteration of bonds.
But chemical reactions can take time, a lot of time if there isn’t a catalyst to speed things up.
A catalyst.
It’s the moon. I need as much of it as possible. In every cell. Every molecule. Every atom. Every quark. I know that now. I can no longer stand in my own way. It’s who I am. It’s
what
I am. From the kinky coils of my DNA to deeper still, I’m the product of the parts of me that matter and the parts I so wish didn’t.
Nothing more.
My bare feet read the forest floor like Braille. I’m heading up the mountain, to the highest elevation possible. The sharp rocks gouging the soles of my feet and the sound of dripping water echoing across the barren talus slopes tell me I’m getting close. I wind higher as the footpath narrows, and as I come around the northern side of the summit trail, rising above the tree line, there’s moonlight bouncing off the nearby rock wall, illuminating great sheets of mineral deposits. Sparks of quartz and mica dance in the amber glow, but it’s a strain to see real shapes or the trail’s sudden drop-off. I grit my teeth and slow down. I can move only so quickly given the darkness and the fact that I’m completely naked.
I bite back a laugh. So much for modesty. Just one more thing I need to let go of.
I think back to that night with Lex. That might have been the closest I’ve ever gotten to just being me. My true nature. No pretending to be good. No hiding behind different names, behind self-restraint.
A late storm brought snow to Vermont in mid-April. Soft flakes covered newborn crocuses peeking through the wet earth, like the quiet falling of the softest death. Lex wanted me to go with him and Teddy up to Eden for the Rite of Spring and I told him no like I always did, begging off easily due to a tennis match the following day. That wasn’t the real reason, though. Crowds made me unhappy. Other people made me unhappy. The way they pulled and pried with their hammer-claw questions. I had too much to hide to risk putting any part of myself out into the open. By being vulnerable.
Lex went. I stayed in and studied.
Eventually I grew bored and left our room, with its cramped corners and stray pieces of Lex’s drum equipment scattered about like fossils. I dragged my feet down from the third floor, descending to earth slowly, slowly. The halls hummed with fluorescent lighting, but the dorm was ghost-ship still, every space abandoned pre-curfew on a Friday night. No one lingered in the common room with the television on or out in the hall with the stereo up too loud. I was alone. I was friendless. I slipped into the icy spring night and stole through campus. A glance into the student lounge told me the freshmen were having hot chocolate and warm cookies. I could have gone in, but the thought of eating made me uncomfortable because I’d recently started abstaining from food whenever I got too tense or had too many nightmares. Not eating felt less risky than some of the other things that came to mind, only now, when I did get hungry, I felt burdened by this latent weight of guilt. And the easiest way to avoid the guilt was to not eat some more. Kind of a lose-lose cycle, but not without its thrills—I’d blacked out once in film class. After, Lex covered for me and said I had the flu, which wasn’t far from the truth. These days I felt wildly delirious.
I stuck my hands into the pockets of my jeans and walked around and around the campus, then into town, where everything was already closed. On my way back, I saw a group of girls, including the ballerina, sitting on the steps to their dorm, watching the flurries come down. Despite the cold, the girls were in their pajamas, done up in pinks and pastels and glittery lip gloss. They laid their heads in each other’s laps and played with each other’s hair. I held my breath and my chest tightened. Everything about them was unimaginable, untouchable. They laughed and waved to me and said happy last snow. Part of me wanted to stop and talk, but I didn’t trust myself. The pressure inside was too much. Self-preservation won out. I simply skulked in the shadows, then headed back to the dorms long before our midnight curfew.