She’s alarmed. “Should I get somebody?”
Waves of sadness overwhelm me. With my sorrow comes the simultaneous crash-boom of fear and dread. It’s inescapable. I shake my head, but I can’t stop crying. Maybe if I knew how, I would hold on to Jordan. I would let her comfort me. Instead I hunch and clench my fists and let this storm of emotion run its course.
I look at her again when I can.
“It’s okay,” she says.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“It’s not easy to talk about.”
“I understand.”
“My doctor says that sometimes when things happen to kids, like really little kids and really terrible things, they don’t know how to make sense of it all. So they come up with ways of understanding the world that don’t look like how other people think things work. Almost like a new language.”
“A private language,” she says.
Yes.
“He calls it a system of meaning,” I explain.
“You’re saying something bad happened to you when you were a little kid?”
“I’m saying that my system of meaning about life, about death, everything, is sort of messed up. But…”
“But what?”
“But it doesn’t mean I’m dangerous. That’s what I’ve learned. That’s what’s helped me.”
Jordan frowns more, and I know I’ve made her sad. Maybe she’s wondering what it is that happened. Maybe she’s wondering who it was that hurt me and why my greatest fear is ending up just like him. But then again, maybe she knows.
Because blood is blood, and every family has its own force.
Its own flavor.
Its own charm and strange.
chapter
forty-one
spring
I still don’t feel the presence of God.
But from where I sit beneath the dappled shade of an overgrown sugar maple, I watch as Lex and Jordan race along the riverbank, and warmth fills the air. The sun picks up the glints of life in their hair, their eyes, the flush of their skin. Jordan is faster because she is more determined to win. Lex yells as she pulls ahead and he dives for her feet. They tumble into the grass and their laughter rises above the rush of the water and the call of the birds and the buzz of the deerflies. Jordan’s up again in an instant, dancing away from Lex. He remains on his back, gasping for air and clutching at his chest in dramatic fashion. Jordan says something I can’t hear, then turns her head to smile at me. She mouths one word. My name.
Andrew.
I smile and wave back.
And it hits me. I have changed.
Not everything’s different, of course. My wolf is still here, dormant, yet so very real. But it’s no longer a mystery. It’s a part of me. A part that will someday find its voice.
I know this now.
My story did not begin on that bridge, on that sun-washed morning when Keith told us about the paradise waiting for us on the other side. The wind blew through our clothes and through our hair, and the three of us stepped onto that railing together. We held hands and we readied our legs. Then the train whistle blew. I looked at Keith and he looked at me. I didn’t have to pull my hand back before they jumped.
He let go.
That was their end, but it was not my beginning. My story began earlier, back in Charlottesville, beneath the light of the moon, at the hands of my father. It’s the story that was too big for me to tell, the one that grew to fill the depths of my being and the far corners of my mind. It’s how I lost my system of meaning.
But I haven’t lost everything.
Somewhere, somehow, adrift in the sea and far from the stars, I’ve found faith.
In myself.
And that makes all the difference.
acknowledgments
I can’t begin to show my appreciation for everyone who has helped bring this book to life. You are all the strengths to my frailties.
Many heartfelt thanks to Michael Bourret, for his kindness and guidance, and for seeing the story in my sparseness; to Sara Goodman, for knowing just what needed to be said and for helping me find my way; and to Eileen Rothschild, Kerri Resnick, Jessica Preeg, Matthew Shear, Anne Marie Tallberg, Talia Sherer, and the whole SMP crew, for being so wonderfully talented and supportive.
Thank you also to my dear friends and early readers: Kari Young, Kathy Bradey, Phoebe North, Kristin Halbrook, Kirsten Hubbard, Kate Hart, Cory Jackson, Jay Lehmann, Jillian Smith, Karen Langford, Jenn Walkup, Deb Driza, Lee Bross, and everyone at YA Highway and Write Night, for all their brilliance and insight. Special thanks to Jackie Kinville, Pat Sussman, Peter Sussman, and Nathan Cheng for their wisdom and willingness to answer my questions, be it night or day.
Last, but never least, thank you, Sidney, Tessa, and Severin, for always being proud of me. You three are the brightest stars in my sky.