“Oh,” I said, and tried not to worry about how different my dream had been.
7
JulesandIgota job hauling debris at a construction site that first summer after we graduated high school. We were made up about it. It was the first time either of us had ever earned anything worth writing home about. Our moods took a knock when we got our first paycheck and Dalton came knocking, hand out, demanding half of it as pack tax.
That didn’t sit well with me either. It didn’t sit well with me at all.
I’d been granted a scholarship at the local college on account of my grades, and I’d been hemming and hawing about going. I couldn’t really see the point of studying further. Shifters weren’t known to pursue white-collar careers. It wasn’t like I didn’t already know most of what I’d be learning. Dalton hadn’t flat out said that I had to go, but he loved the idea of a member of the Cleary pack being a college graduate.
I strolled down to the pack house and asked to see Dalton. My request drew a few looks, but nothing too serious. I’d done a lot of calculations since Jules and I had paid the pack tax. No matter how I looked at it, the numbers didn’t stack up. The pack was living on fumes, but by my calculation Dalton had cash. Real cash. He had to. He’d been pack leader for almost twenty years and even though he and The Brothers lived a very different standard of living from the rest of the pack, they weren’t what you’d call extravagant. He had to have cash.
“Dalton,” I said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about college.”
“Mm-hmm, been thinking about that a lot, too. You’re making us awful proud, Sully boy.”
“Thing is, I don’t think I can go.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I just don’t think it’s fair for me to go, but not Jules.”
“Aw, Sully. Jules is many things, but he isn’t what one would call college material.”
“There are two of us left, Dalton. Only two. Jules and me. We’re the last two wolves in this pack. What’s going to make a shifter girl choose us when they could have wolves from big packs like the Cedar Key pack?” It wasn’t a threat to leave exactly, but it also wasn’t a promise to stay. Dalton’s face twisted and his teeth clenched when I spoke. “Neither of us have much to offer. Just think how much better it would look for the future of the pack if we were both college grads?”
“Hmmm,” he said. His eyes ignited and burned gold striations into the brown of his irises. I made myself drop my eyes down. I expected to feel small being alphaed by him, but I didn’t. I expected to feel nervous or put in my place, but I felt nothing at all, except for simple determination to get my own way.
And I did get my way. When I started college that fall, I did it with Jules at my side. I’d enrolled to study business management and Jules was doing sports science. College was way better than high school had been. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was significantly better.
I took Jules’s advice about smiling at girls and after overdoing it—“You’re showing too many teeth. You look like you’re fixing to bite someone”—and then under doing it—“I couldn’t even tell you were smiling. You just looked like you were trying to take a shit”—I finally struck a balance. I lost my virginity less than a month after I started college. Her name was Clara. I’d been smiling at her for a couple of weeks, and she’d asked me to help her with an economics assignment. Her skin was soft, and she smelled like tuberose and grapefruit. The first time we had sex, we were in the rare books section of the campus library. She hiked her skirt up and when I asked her what she wanted, she buried her face in my chest and simply said, “Everything you’ve got.”
The whole thing lasted less than four minutes. I liked it a lot, but not as much as I’d thought I would.
Jules couldn’t have been prouder.
8
AFTERWARD
Itwasthewinterbreak of our third year of college. Mrs. O’Malley was out on her porch, taping the windows and shutting the blinds. The sky was clear blue. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. In fact, it had been unseasonably warm for Colorado from fall into winter that year. I checked the weather app on my phone. There was no hint of a storm headed our way. I wondered if Mrs. O’Malley was all right. I’d been noticing some changes in her. The other day, she leaned her head out of the window and yelled, “Yoooo, boy. Too loud!”
I hadn’t even been talking or anything. I was just crunching over the gravel on my way home from hanging out with Jules. It wasn’t the only change I’d noticed. She was talking a lot about shifting. She was still leaving me without any real detail, but sometimes she’d look up and say things like, “Ah, I was a little deer once. It had just rained, and the woods smelled brand new. I was a happy little deer, and sometimes I think I still am.”
When I asked her about it, she said, “Don’t be so silly, Sully. I’m not a deer. I can’t shift like that anymore. I haven’t been able to shift to anything but a wolf since my Herbert died. You know that.”
I categorically did not know that. She’d never mentioned it once. In fact, that was the first time she’d ever directly said that she could shift into anything other than a wolf.
“What was it like being a deer?”
“Exactly like you’d imagine.”
“What did you like shifting into best?” I knew I had to ask my questions fast, before she clammed up.
“The best thing to be is what we are, wolves…but if not a wolf, then a bird. Big birds are easier, but little birds are the best.”
“What’s nice about being a bird?”
“Wouldn’t you like to fly, Sully boy?”
