Linger by Maggie Stiefvater Page B

shoulders and muscles like a gladiator. “It’s not as good as being in here, but it’ll spare you the brambles.”
    He cast his brilliant eyes up at me and the sardonic look in them made me realize he’d never given me any reason to believe the wounds bothered him. “Thanks for the tip,” he said, and my remaining words felt sour in my mouth.
    Beck had told me that the three new wolves he’d created had been recruited — that they knew what they were getting into. I hadn’t considered, before now, what sort of person would choose this life. Someone who would willingly lose themselves for more and more of the year until eventually it was good-bye to all of it. It was a sort of suicide, really, and as soon as I thought the word, it made me look at the guy in an entirely different way. As the newcomer’s body twisted on the floor, his expressionstill controlled — expectant, if anything — I just had time to see the old track marks on his arms before his skin twisted into a wolf’s.
    I hurried to get the back door open so that the wolf, brownish and dark in the dim light, could escape into the snow and away from the too-human environment of the kitchen. This wolf didn’t dart for the door, however, like other wolves would have. Like I would have, as a wolf. Instead, he stalked slowly by me, head low, pausing to look directly into my eyes with his green ones. I didn’t look away, and finally he slid out the door, stopping once again in the backyard to look at me appraisingly.
    Long after the new wolf had gone, the image of him haunted me: the puncture wounds in the bends of his elbows, the arrogance in his eyes, the familiarity of his face.
    Retreating back to the kitchen to clean up the blood and dirt from the tile, I saw the spare key lying on the floor. I returned it to its hiding place, by the back door.
    As I did, I felt watched, and I turned, expecting to see the new wolf at the edge of the forest. But instead it was a big, gray wolf, eyes steady on me, familiar in an entirely different way.
    â€œBeck,” I whispered. He didn’t move, but his nostrils worked, smelling the same thing I did: the new wolf. “Beck, what did you bring us?”

• ISABEL •
    I stayed after class for a student government meeting. The meeting was boring as hell and I didn’t give a crap about how Mercy Falls High chose to organize itself, but it served the dual purpose of keeping me away from home and letting me sit in the back of the assembly with my silent smirk on, my eyes painted dark, being unattainable. I had my usual group of girls who sat around me, eyes painted like mine, looking unattainable — which was not the same as being unattainable.
    Being popular in a town the size of Mercy Falls was ridiculously easy. You only had to believe you were a hot commodity, and you were. It wasn’t like San Diego, where being popular was like a full-time career. The effects of attending the assembly — an hour-long ad for the Isabel Culpeper brand — would last for a week.
    But finally I had to make my way home. Delightfully, both of my parents’ cars were in the driveway. I was beside myself with joy. I sat in my SUV in the driveway, opened the Shakespeare I was supposed to be reading, and turned up my music loud enough that I could see the bass vibrating the rearview mirror.After about ten minutes, my mother’s silhouette appeared in one of the windows, with an exaggerated motion for me to come in.
    And so the evening was under way.
    Inside our vast stainless-steel kitchen, it was the Culpeper Show at its finest.
    Mom: “I’m sure the neighbors love your white trash music. Thanks for playing it loud enough for them to hear it.”
    Dad: “Where were you, anyway?”
    Mom: “Student assembly.”
    Dad: “I didn’t ask you. I asked our daughter.”
    Mom: “Honestly, Thomas, does it matter who