Page 61 of The Initial Insult

And the girl lifts her head,

the salt smell of pain in her eyes,

and reaches for me

—like a cousin—

to touch.

But her hand is not a paw

her blood, not like mine.

And I

am not tame.

I smack, to remind.

A touch that would roll a cousin, expose their belly, tell them,

I am alpha.

But the girl is not a cousin

only a human.

And easily opened.

Chapter 48

Felicity

Annabelle, that’s the first thing, easy to remember.

Tress looks like her, so it’s not hard to conjure my friend’s face, then smooth out some of the sharper edges—the permanent worry line above her nose, the way she holds her body like she’s always ready to fight. It didn’t use to be that way. Her face used to be open, ready to laugh, her body more likely to erupt into dance than a defensive posture.

Taking away Tress’s harder touches gives me Annabelle, tall and dark, graceful. There’s a smile, I know that face. She’s offering me a Popsicle, pressing the cool wrapper against the scrape on my knee before unwrapping it.

“There you go,” she says. “Edible Band-Aid.”

I laugh in the memory, and I realize Tress isn’t the only one who’s changed. It comes out light and airy. I’m not checking to make sure I’m supposed to be laughing. Not doing a quick assessment of Gretchen’s or David’s or Hugh’s faces to make sure it’s okay.

But then Annabelle’s face does change, becomes more like the Tress I know today, that line of worry between her eyebrows, the edges of her mouth down-turned. There’s a light touch on my forehead, and I lean into it, the fingers cool and deft. At my side, Goldie-Dog whines, her cold nose going into my palm. Something is wrong. She knows. She knows something is not right with me, and soon I’ll pee my pants and Annabelle and Tress will know and everyone will know that Felicity Turnado pees her pants sometimes and froths at the mouth and rolls on the floor and no one will ever want to marry me.

“You don’t have a fever,” Annabelle says. “Could it be something you ate?”

I shake my head in the memory, but also here in the basement of the Allan house.

“I don’t feel good,” I say, and my eyes flick to Tress, standing at the top of the stairs, a teddy bear clutched against her side, looking down at us with a frown to match her mother’s.

“Okay.” Annabelle runs her hands down my arms, and I shiver, goose bumps popping under my nightgown.

“I want to go home.” My voice cracks as I say it, a pathetic whimper that Annabelle Montor can’t ignore. It was the one place I didn’t want to be, earlier. The place I ran from after I heard the sound—louder than a smack—while my parents were fighting. I ran from home and came to the Montors’, and Annabelle had called my mom, said I was staying here tonight. Said it in a way that my mom couldn’t argue with, and wouldn’t anyway because

Montor > Turnado.

But that tone is gone from Annabelle’s voice now, and I wish she hadn’t used it then. Wish she hadn’t agreed that I could stay. Wish that I hadn’t run in the first place.