“You could fly? Like, really fly in the sky? Can shifters of yore really do that?”
“Only the good ones,” she said with an evil cackle. “Why do you think there are so few of us left?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, what do you think happens if you lose your shift in the sky? Hmm?”
I’d never given it a moment’s thought. “I guess you fall.”
“That’s right. You fall. You fall hard. Lost most of my family that way.”
I was aghast. I had no idea. She’d never mentioned her family to me. Based on the information she’d given me over the years, I’d been led to believe her life started the day she met Herbert. “W-why did you keep doing it, if it was so dangerous?”
“To see if I could. To feel like a bird. To feel as free as a little bird in the wide-open sky.”
“How do you do it? How do you make yourself shift?”
“Aha,” she said, smiling and pointing at me. “I know your tricks. You’re getting better at them, too. I’ve said too much but I couldn’t help it.” She was quiet for a while. We both were. She looked at me and smiled. “You’ve got your momma’s eyes. You know that, Sully?”
And like that, I doubted everything she’d just said. My mother’s eyes were dark brown, almost black. My father’s eyes were such a pale blue that from certain angles they looked see-through. Mine were even lighter than his. I might have had my mother’s olive skin, but I got my eyes from my father. My eyes couldn’t have been less like my mother’s if that was their sole goal in life.
A storm blew into town not two days after my conversation with Mrs. O’Malley. Only it wasn’t astormstorm. It was a girl named Storm.
“Whoopsie.” Mrs. O’Malley shrugged sheepishly as she opened her shutters early the next morning. “Wrong kind of storm. Must have gotten my wires crossed.”
Storm was a shifter like us. She was our age. A couple of years older, maybe, but let’s just say she was a lot closer to our age than any of the other wolves in our pack were. It was the first time we’d spent much time around a wolf close to our age in Clearwater Valley, and it was the first time I’d spent any time whatsoever with a wolf our age who’d already shifted.
She had long blonde hair that was a little tangled and shrouded her face like a mane. She wore ripped jeans and a well-worn leather jacket. She had high cheekbones and dark eyes. She wasn’t what you’d call conventionally pretty, but she was one of those girls who seemed to grow more attractive every time she opened her mouth. She spoke softly. Her voice was breathy and a little deep for a girl. There was something about the way her hips moved when she shifted her weight from one leg to the other that had a very, very profound effect on me. She might not have been the type of storm that brought rain or wind, but she certainly had the capacity to cause plenty of destruction.
I wanted her from the second I heard her speak. We were at the pack house and Dalton introduced her to Jules first.
“Hey,” she said to him, “I’m Storm. Why’s your mouth open like that?”
Jules clamped his lips shut, but I could see his jaw was still ajar. I don’t know if he wanted her then, too, or if he started wanting her after what she said to me.
“Sully, huh? Good to meet you. You should stop gawking, too. You guys are embarrassing yourselves.”
All I know is, before the sun set on the first day we met her, Jules and I both wanted Storm.
We spent the first couple of days showing her around. We took her for walks in the forest and helped her find materials. She was a sculptor and worked with objects she found in nature. Jules and I both took pains to find pieces of wood or rocks and the like that made her smile and nod and say, “Yeah, let’s keep that one.”
We took her down to the creek in the evenings and Jules pushed her on the swing. Her hair flew back like a veil as she sailed through the air and Jules giggled like a schoolboy every time she smiled at him. I felt embarrassed for him. It was hard to see him like that.
“Where’s the best place you’ve been on your travels?” I asked her.
“I liked Montana best, I think. I was there when the leaves turned, and it was magical. I felt at home there,” she said.
“What was the pack like up there?” I asked.
“They were interesting. It was a small pack, super close-knit. They asked me to stay, but I’m looking for something different.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Dunno. Guess I’ll know it when I see it.”
When I ran out of questions for her, I told her about things I’d learned in the philosophy class I hadn’t signed up for but had been sitting in on during the semester that had just passed. She seemed engrossed. Jules pouted a little more every time I quoted Descartes or Foucault.
We took her into town as well. We took her to the best burger joint in the valley. When our food came, Jules and I both opened our burgers. He picked the onion rings off my burger and put them on his. I speared his slice of tomato and put it down the hatch in one bite. We both closed our burgers again and dug into them without saying a word. When we’d finished our meals, we squabbled over who got to pay for Storm’s meal. While we were at it, she paid for ours. When the day was done and we couldn’t convince her to stay out with us any longer, we walked her to the motel she was staying in.
