Liar. Part 34

Telling the truth gives you strength.

Telling Yayeko gave me strength. Even though she didn't believe me it made me feel more real, more like someone.

I used to think I was nothing: not black, not white; not a girl, not a boy; not human, not a wolf. Not dangerous, but not exactly safe. Not crazy, but not entirely sane.

I felt like nothing at all.

I thought that half of everything added up to nothing. I was a nonperson who belonged nowhere. Not in the city, not with the Greats.

I have never known what I was. If I'm not completely any one thing, then what am I? Who am I? Something in between?

Or nothing?

I don't think that now: half of everything is something, not nothing.

Lots of somethings.

AFTER.

This is what I thought would happen. This is what could have happened. This is what did happen.

We go to a track at the local middle school where Yayeko's daughter is a member of the girls' basketball team. Yayeko talks to the track team's coach. He's thin and lean-muscled like a marathon runner. A silver whistle bounces at his chest when he moves. I don't know what she says but he agrees to let me race with his sprinters. A hundred-meter sprint.

They line up, putting their feet in the blocks. They are all smaller than me. Except for one boy who is muscle-heavy and tall for a fourteen-year-old.

I have never raced before. Never put my feet in blocks. I glance at them, copy what they do. Place my hands precisely on the line just as they do. The muscly boy notices and grins. He thinks he's about to blast me. I know better.

When their coach blows his whistle I stumble, but then I find my balance, lift my knees high, pump my elbows. I do everything Zach taught me. The track is springy, the give helps propel me along. I run faster than I ever have before. I pa.s.s the other sprinters. Easy. There's a hum of air past my ears. I turn with the track. The world blurs. It feels so good that I'm long past the finish line before I stop.

I jog up to Yayeko and the coach. They're staring at me.

"Holy s.h.i.+t, girl," the muscly boy says. He's staring at me, too. So are all the runners. Their mouths are open. All set to catch flies, Grandmother would say.

The coach looks at his stopwatch, then at me, then at the stopwatch again. The whistle around his neck bounces with every twitch. "Just over eight and a half seconds," he says at last. "I must have made a mistake."

I have beaten the men's world record. Crushed it. I grin at Yayeko. She is ashen.

"We need to do it again," the coach says.

I laugh. "Wanna see me run a mile?"

HISTORY OF ME.

Maybe it was ten seconds?

I'm dizzy.

So many lies.

I thought I'd done better than this.

What number lie is this? Eight? Nine? Ten? I can't even figure out how to count them anymore.

The fabric of my life unravels. Is anything I've said true?

It's cold in here. Dark, too. No windows.

My grip slips. The cogs grind. Do I know anything that's true?

Actual real genuine true truth.

Is there anything at all?

I'm a wolf.

A wolf. All the way down to the marrow of my bones. Every cell. Every fiber.

Wolf = me.

That's all I've got.

AFTER.

I do know what's real and what's not.

I did run on that track. I did prove what I am. But not the way I said.

Here's how it really happened.

Yayeko does not believe me. Though she pretends she does. Or at least she lets me stay. She introduces me to her daughter, who is fourteen years old and wary. Megan holds a basketball behind her back and stays in the doorway, her hair falling over her eyes. She's short. Shorter than Yayeko. Point guard.

"Wanna shoot some outside?" I ask. I noticed a netless hoop on the side of the apartment building on our way here.

The girl's still looking down.

"Answer her, Megan."

Megan mumbles.

Yayeko's mother arrives, pulling a briefcase on wheels through the door, dressed in a suit, tiny and elegant and frostily polite. I smile. She smiles. She makes me feel oversized and badly designed. We eat Lebanese delivery. After, I wash. Yayeko's mother dries. As soon as the dishes are done she disappears into her room, as Megan has long since disappeared into her own.

From Yayeko's room I hear phone calls. First she calls Mom and Dad. Her side of the conversation is spa.r.s.e. She must be talking to Dad. He doesn't want to hear what she has to say. I hear Yayeko straining not to raise her voice. Then the call's over. I wonder what Dad said. "Keep that monster away from me!" Or worse.

The next call isn't short. Nor the one after. No one wants to take me in.

Yayeko comes back into the kitchen, blinks at me, sits at the table opposite.

I can't imagine this working.

She talks about making the couch into a bed, wonders about whether I should go back to school. I'm all paid up, after all. She prattles on like this and I nod and grunt and think about whether I should go back to the farm.

Then her tone changes. "There's nothing wrong with being a girl, Micah. There really isn't."

"This again," I think, but I don't say it.

"You need to accept who you are."

She's right, but not the way she thinks she is.

"I don't want to be a boy," I tell her. "Honest."

I don't know what Yayeko is thinking, not till later. But I can tell you now: while she talks about my denying my femininity, she's thinking about subst.i.tuting sugar pills for my real ones, which she does.

On the third day in her home, I change.

AFTER.

It's 5:00 a.m. and I wake out of a dream of forest and deer. I'm flushed and sweating and I know.

I've thrown off the blanket. There's spotting on the sheets.

I'm itchy, I'm worse than itchy, it's like my skin is trying to tear itself from my flesh. Coa.r.s.e hair has sprouted across my arms, my back, my everywhere. My head throbs, my eyes. Everything blurs. My muscles ache, my bones. My teeth s.h.i.+ft, get bigger, move. My jaw is breaking.

I roll off the couch, land heavily on the floor. The shudder goes through the apartment.

I hear stirring. Yayeko, her daughter, Megan, her mother. Their breathing hurts my ears. My hands and feet slip on the floor because they're not hands and feet anymore: paws, claws.

I'm crouching, my backbone ripples, lengthens. There's howling. I think it's me.

Smells flood me. Human smells: salt, sweat, meat, blood, fear.

I smell prey.

Lots of it.

I'm always hungry after the change.

HISTORY OF ME.

My first memory is of looking into the eyes of a wolf. They were gigantic and blue. I was small enough that when the wolf looked at me, sniffed at me, and then licked me, it was all I could see. I stared up into those wolf eyes.

Except it wasn't a wolf, it was a husky. Owned by the old couple who used to live next door.

I remember that I liked its smell. I remember that it smelled like home to me. I couldn't have been more than a baby. Later I asked. My parents told me that the old couple and their dog moved away before Jordan was born. Before I was two. "So cruel," Mom said. "Keeping such a big dog in so small a s.p.a.ce."

I wonder if the wolf in that dog could see the wolf in me?

It accepted me without question. Let me pull its tail, lean against its belly, and fall asleep.

Wolves don't lie. Nor do their dog relations. We recognize each other.

I didn't feel that at home again until I met Zach.

But there was no wolf in him.

AFTER.

I smell blood moving in the veins of the tallest one. I smell it in the other two, hiding behind salt, water, and fear. Their fear smells delicious. It's the prey smell.

I move toward them, growling. I am hungry; saliva drips over my teeth, down my jaw. The smaller one backs away. The old one moves with her. Their movements are slow and awkward. Even without kin here, this is an easy hunt. But I wish Hilliard could see me corralling them.

The tallest one takes a step toward me. She does not smell like fear.

The young one moves again.

I leap.

But the tall one moves between me and my prey. I land on her, pus.h.i.+ng her to the floor, my teeth bared.

The small one and the old one yelp and whine. I swipe a paw and knock the old one over. She lands hard and is quiet. I smell urine. The young one caterwauls as if I've already gutted her. I tense to leap again.

But the tall one is looking up at me, low sounds vibrating in her throat.

I know those sounds.

I turn back to the little one. I'm hungry and she's whining at me to eat her.

The tallest one reaches up and touches the fur around my neck, she digs her fingers in, pulls my gaze back to her. My saliva drips on her face.

Her low sounds continue, unwavering and steady and sure. "Micah," she is saying. Over and over again.

My name.

"Micah," Yayeko says.

I'm hungry. I'm a wolf.

"Micah, Micah, Micah, Micah, Micah, Micah, Micah."

"Micah's a wolf," I want to tell her. But wolves can't talk.

Megan is leaning over her grandmother, crying.

"Micah," Yayeko says again and again. "Micah."

Her words are making me sleepier than I am hungry.

I rest my snout on my paws, remembering what it's like to have fingers.