Three
Cella was still half asleep the next morning when I told her about the werewolf.
We were stopped at the first intersection outside of her neighborhood, bathed red by the traffic light.
I blurted it out in one breath and watched her react in slow motion, as if waking from a dream.
Her nostrils flared, her bottom lip dropped, and her half-shut eyes popped wide.
She asked how I was feeling, so I told her honestly that I didn’t know. Then she asked if Cedric had done anything wild yet, like reveal his secret werewolf torture dungeon.
I didn’t tell her that I believed, or at least suspected, or at least wondered if our new classmate had anything to do with the werewolf at the hardware store. Cella didn’t need more monster secrets to burden her.
It was still a barely born suspicion. Telling my family was out of the question—I wasn’t fully convinced Cedric didn’t have a silver thumbscrew or a wolf-shaped iron maiden in some hidden cell in the basement.
If he caught wind of a possible werewolf at my school, I couldn’t put it past him to do something reckless.
He’d always been clever, and right now he seemed .
. . volatile. Even more than usual. I could track his movements around the house by the sounds of stomping and door slamming.
All night, I had been kept up by a raven’s croak: deep, raspy, and full of rage.
Cedric was abusing the shape-shifting he’d inherited from Mom.
I had been tempted to use my dad’s gift of hypnotic speech, our velvet tongue, just to tell him to shut up.
But it wasn’t the kind of weapon you were supposed to use on family—or anyone at all.
Cedric liked to keep his fingernails sharp, and that morning, I’d seen him rip a blood packet open with his teeth and grip it so tightly his claws pierced through.
Crimson blood gushed over black nail polish like lava slowly oozing over a mountainside.
It dripped down his arm, and I noticed a new stick-and-poke tattoo beneath his left elbow, a two-headed scorpion.
All bad signs. I’d have to be absolutely sure before I cried wolf to a trigger-happy vampire with a grudge. Anyone deserved that much. Even Mason.
Speak of the devil and he shall already be at your table when you get to art class, sitting in your seat. Mason looked up when we walked in, beaming like a spotlight at Cella. My eyes flitted over his figure, looking for clues. There were those bizarre teeth of his . . .
I tried to stare him into the ground. “Move,” I said.
Cella waved a hand.
“It’s all the same,” she said, taking the seat across from Mason.
Allowing the new seating arrangement felt like accepting defeat until I noticed Mason glancing forlornly at the Cella-less chair beside him.
I would have laughed out loud at his failed attempt to take my spot, but I was busy studying him for holes.
Our fourth tablemate arrived, paused for half a step, and took the last seat across from me without a word.
Our teacher explained that we would be working with watercolors. I stood to fill two cracked Solo cups with water and returned to find Mason opening a Tupperware.
“My sister and I made mocha cookies,” he said.
The cookies were green. Cella’s eyes were candle flames. “Do you mean matcha?”
Mason laughed a laugh that had never known shame. It was arrogant, being so unembarrassed—being wrong and happy about it.
“Ericka did most of the research, but I brought the muscle.” And then Mason, in all seriousness, flexed his bicep. Our fourth tablemate took a curious peek. “I can stir all day, baby.” His other arm pushed the container toward Cella.
Absolutely not. For all I knew, his freak-show family baked their cookies with deer blood. I stuck out a hand across the table, intercepting. “You’re going to ruin the paint,” I said.
“Go tell the teacher, then. Maybe she’ll put me in time-out,” Mason taunted. He tried to push the cookies forward. My hand was an iron gate. “Dude. Don’t be lame.”
He waited, then pushed again, and my hand was a great wall. Mason flattened his brow. Pushed more insistently. Impenetrable fortress. Pushed. I let go. Mason pushed right into the water cup between himself and Cella. His cookies were quickly drenched.
That harsh scrunch reappeared at the bridge of his nose. “Are you—?”
“I hope we are all cleaning up our messes,” Mrs. G.
said from across the room, directly toward Mason.
He snatched up most of the stack of paper towels on the table; the rest had been soaked through.
He shooed Cella away when she tried to help him sop up the mess.
The cookies floated in their Tupperware.
I watched him as he stood and took the next table’s paper towels.
He didn’t even ask. The students sitting there stared at him in bewilderment.
I studied his stride—a little slouchy but proud—as he replaced the water, and I snuck looks at him as I gently sketched heart-shaped petals.
Mason had gone straight for the watercolors and was painting a gumball machine .
. . or a ball pit . . . So far it was just a bunch of colorful circles.
It seemed unfair that if someone suspected me of being a vampire, they could just threaten me with a cross or splash some holy water and it would all be over. They only had to watch closely during the morning Pledge of Allegiance to see that I skipped over “under God” every day.
Werewolves weren’t like that.
At two that morning, my cousin had shown up at my door, pale in the dark like a reverse silhouette, arms weighed down by a stack of heavy books.
Annalisa had guessed that I would be too restless to sleep—tricking my body into sleeping at night was already hard enough without added stress—so she’d brought me books on werewolves from our library.
She had clearly just gone for whichever were the thickest, which turned out to be children’s tales and encyclopedias.
We read by candlelight until it was time for me to get ready for school.
So I knew: werewolves don’t have obvious tells like we do. I was tempted to throw a pencil across the room and see if Mason would run after it like a dog chasing a stick.
“We should work on the project tomorrow night,” I said, green rippling from my paintbrush as I swirled it in the water cup, very casual-like.
“I can’t,” said Mason. Distracted, I forgot to dab my paintbrush dry before I dipped it into the pink watercolor, and murky water pooled in the pan.
Tomorrow night was the full moon. I knew better than anyone what a werewolf could do under the moon’s influence.
Just thinking about it brought a wave of decade-old fear.
But Mason was staying home tomorrow night. That was proof, right?
“You know Blake? Big guy, killer quarterback?” Mason went on. “He invited me to tomorrow’s practice. A few of his teammates got mono and they’re short a player for scrimmage. Awesome, right? We’re all getting food, and possibly stoned, after.”
Not staying home, then. I ground my teeth but didn’t give up.
Minutes later, I asked Cella out of the blue: “Are you still trying to make that bench?”
Her carpentry phase had directly followed her blue-hair phase. Remembering what my dad had said yesterday, I asked, “What was it you needed . . . a better drill or something? Maybe the star athlete has one you can borrow.”
Cella squinted. “What I needed was more patience and better grip strength. Three years ago.”
Mason just looked puzzled.
Not my best work.
As we racked our paintings at the end of class, I frowned at my unfinished wild rose and Mason’s . . . It looked like “a bunch of colorful circles” was what he was going for.
Despite my efforts to escape quickly with Cella, Mason stuck to her side like a burr.
He nudged her shoulder with his often, leaning his head close.
He would probably walk on top of her if he could.
He told her she smelled good. I had the urge to do something outlandish, shove him against the lockers like a real kid-bully, maybe even force him inside of one and take a picture of him all origami-folded.
That day, the snow-cone truck made its quarterly appearance outside of the lunchroom.
Unlike every single other student, I dreaded Cone Day.
Cella loved Cone Day, which meant we had to walk through the cafeteria instead of slipping around it like we usually did.
We normally spent lunch in the teacher’s lounge in the music building, which was always empty and almost always unlocked due to all the noise nearby or maybe due to the deeply ingrained smell of burnt coffee and Alfredo.
Following Cella through the cafeteria—loud with chattering voices and the erratic beating of hundreds of sugar-rushed hearts—I always felt unmoored.
And I didn’t even get to enjoy the snow cone.
I nearly jumped when Mason appeared out of nowhere, holding two strawberry cones.
One for Cella. I wanted to smack it out of his hand.
Maybe smoosh the other over his head. But Cella looked as though she’d been gifted a golden rose, so I settled for pulling her through the doors while she practically made out with the cone.
***
After Mason messed up a blocking exercise in drama class for the fourth time because he kept following Cella like a fucking shadow, I asked him, sincerely, if he was stupid.
Miss Jenkins sent me back to my desk with a pair of Greek theater masks and sweetly told me to rejoin the group when I felt more like the comedy mask.
I sat there for the rest of class, scrolling on my phone and holding up the tragedy mask.
“He likes you,” I said when Cella and I were back in my car, squeezing out of the lot as quickly as foot traffic allowed. I might have said it with more distress if I hadn’t known her for nearly a decade. “Thank fuck you aren’t into guys like him.”