Page 16 of Dark

I rolled my eyes. Like we both couldn’t feel his pulse skyrocket every time he glanced down at the screen.

He switched his phone off. “Tell you what, Hayden. You don’t believe what this town says about me, and I won’t listen to the crap making the rounds about you.”

My cheeks flamed.

Dropping the phone, Ethan rubbed his face.

“Hays, I’m—”

“Don’t.” A furious tear streaked past the edge of my nose. I quickly swiped it away. “Don’t call me that. We’re not friends. We’re not… anything. I made the mistake of believing that once. I won’t make it again.”

And with that, I stormed from the room.

Then

Ethan

WHEN BEN TOLD US his father was coming to visit, I hid in the barn the rest of the afternoon. To be fair, I’d done the grandparent thing before. Twice. After our parents died, one set couldn’t take us. The other didn’t want us. August was too young to remember. Me? Not so much.

“Grandpas bring presents,” August informed me the following day at the bus stop in all of his six-year-old wisdom while I was trying to show him for the thousandth time how to make bunny ears out of his shoelaces so he wouldn’t come home with a bunch of scraggly knots for me to pick out.

“Okay,” I said neutrally. No way was I telling him that just because River and the others could expect presents, he shouldn’t get his hopes up. I’d already done that back in December, trying to prepare him so he wouldn’t cry and make a scene Christmas morning. Instead, River had started going on about putting out carrots for the reindeer. And my little brother had burst into tears over his tamales.

Which had earned me yet another talking to from Ben.

That afternoon, I felt the unfamiliar wolf the moment I got off the bus. As soon as my brother’s sneakers hit the porch steps, I dropped my backpack in the bed of Ben’s truck and snuck off to the back fields.

After an entire day imprisoned in a hard plastic chair behind a scratched desk, shifting was like cannonballing into a deep, cold lake. The tight fist in my chest gradually unclenched as I tore through rows of newly planted watermelons and jumped irrigation ditches. By the time I’d chased a rabbit through the peach orchards, dug a hole in the dirt a mile or so from the house, and spent an hour peering up at the sky beneath the shade of a scraggly fig tree, I could almost breathe again.

A brilliant orange sunset had me longing for my pencils when I felt the first push in the back of my mind. Stomach growling, I snapped off another green stalk of grass with my teeth. Every day I got better at suppressing the pack bonds the rest of them wore like seconds skins.

But ten minutes later, a lanky, dust-brown wolf loped up, gave me and the chewed-up grass a withering look and shifted into West.

“C’mon,” he said, kicking at a sod of dirt. “Everyone’s hungry. Mom’s pissed.”

Sulking, I followed. The two of us wriggled under fences until we reached the edge of the fields and the water tanks. On the porch of the Caldwell’s sprawling ranch house, I kicked off my shoes, wrinkling my nose at the new-leather smell of baseball gloves dropped just beside the door. The living room floor was strewn with so many sharp plastic game pieces there were barely any safe patches in the carpet for my toes. Behind me, West yelped.

The rest of the family was seated at the long dining room table where heaping platters of food sat going cold. I slunk into my chair, avoiding nine identical dirty looks.

“Ethan.”

I twisted my napkin in my lap until it looked like a strip of rawhide. Swallowing, I lifted my eyes to Ben’s.

He nodded across the table. “This is Jameson.”

No one moved. They knew I wouldn’t be calling him anything. August, on the other hand, would have no problem adopting a virtual stranger as his long-lost grandfather because River’s grandpa must be his grandpa, too, and that was just that. He also had no problem calling Sofia and Ben ‘Mom and Dad,’ and at least once a week, reminded everyone at the table that some stupid girl in his first-grade class was adopted, and when were Ben and Sofia going to adopt us, too?

Those were the nights I usually threw up.

I stared at the edge of my plate.

“Hello.”

For once, Ben let it go. Everyone tore into fried catfish, hush puppies, coleslaw and green bean salad. Brody, in the middle of track season, wolfed down fish filets without pausing for air. West slathered his entire plate in ketchup like it was the main course and ran to the kitchen for a fresh bottle, only to scowl when he returned to discover a smirking Dallas had crowned the center of his masterpiece with a dime-sized dollop of tartar sauce. Ignored by all, I picked at my food.

“—police officer took Hayden Crowe away at recess.”

“Why?” I cut in sharply.