Chapter 141

The world is alive with the flicker of sprites, their light spilling across the bark of barren trees.

My breath catches when a figure is illuminated through the swirl of magic.

"Momma?"

In the glowing, dewy haze, she stands before me. My heart thunders against my chest.

It's been years since I last saw her, and, yet, nothing seems to have changed. She's lean and muscular, her eyes are serious, and there's a determined set to her jaw. She was once one of the pack's best fighters and still looks every bit the part.

"Your mom's kind of a badass."

Kadeem walks me home the night we stumbled upon the illicit meeting between my dad, Layla, and the others planning to turn on Cedric, Red Moon's alpha.

My heart has only begun to slow to the serenade of crickets. Street lights dot our way.

"Am I about to get beaten up for bringing you home past your curfew?"

He's trying to break the tension, of course. Normal teenage trouble is the last thing on either of our minds after what has just transpired.

"You won't."

Immediately, I regret the words that tumble out just a little too painfully.

Kadeem pauses for a long moment in the dark. The smell of water spraying from sprinklers across neighborhood lawns is sweet in the air. He takes my hand.

The feel of his palm pressed against mine sends sparks of electricity through me, speeding my heart again. He smiles ever so gently, as though he’s feeling the same, but it doesn't quite meet his brown eyes, which are watching me closely.

I pull my hand from his and busy myself with hair, smoothing and tightening my loosened, messy ponytail. A dog barks further up the street.

"What if we didn’t go back? Like, at all.”My steps slow, then I stop. "You're serious, I think."

Ahead, I see my childhood home, waiting. The porchlight out front shines like a prison watchtower.

"Why not?" He shrugs, but his brow is furrowed. "Maybe we could find that mermaid in Miami.”

I'm in the realm of sprites.

My estranged mother's watching me quietly in a blurry mist of phosphorescence. Tears begin to prick at my eyes.

"It really is you, isn't it," she asks, "Ardal?"

And just like that, all the emotions come crashing down on me, but before I can even process them, I feel a sharp sting across my face as her hand connects with my skin.

I stumble backwards, clutching my throbbing cheek, warmed by the heat of her slap.

Kadeem is kissing my cheek…

I'm seventeen. He’s nineteen and his heart’s full. No rough edges yet. I can’t say the same for me.

He’s kissing my jaw, now... my neck… I close my eyes.

I miss him like this.

His lips press against mine. His fingertips are soft against my face. He's whispering something in my ear. My hand slides down his chest - and then I freeze. Kadeem immediately picks up on the tension in my body, and I feel him freeze, too.

"I told you, didn't I?"

My father's face is haloed against the ethereal light. He’s speaking to my mom, but he’s eyeing me.

I’m holding a bowl of cereal. I’m thirteen. We’re in the kitchen, but the air is chilly around me. The crunch of leaves is underfoot.

“She’s a force to be reckoned with,” Dad says. He doesn’t mean it as a compliment.

Like a glitch in the Matrix, my parents blink into new shapes - strangers to me. It happens in a fraction of a second, before they blink back.

“Just quantum mechanics,” Jack says, entering the room. Starlight dapples his hair. He takes the bowl from me, and begins to eat from it. “We slip in and out of slightly different universes -“ He stops to swallow. “At least twice a week now. Side effect of living in the continual degradation of time. Reality is less orderly.”

"Pull over" I say.

That night of our planned escape, Kadeem and I get as far as a ditch a few miles outside of town.

"Why?"

"Just do it!"

If Kadeem wanted someone to temper him, he found the wrong girl. He’s a new song I can’t stop listening to and I want to memorize every note. I want to close my eyes on the bridge. I want to belt out every word.

He jerks the wheel and the car hurdles over, before the brakes tighten and it lumbers into the ditch alongside the deserted road.

Frantically, I unbuckle, and by this time, Kadeem's getting the idea. He unbuckles, too, and I throw myself at him, vaulting into his lap. My arms are tentacles around him. My mouth is against his. He kisses me back, hard, meeting my crazed, hormonal energy.

I start to wonder what sex would be like, but he keeps his hands in chaste territory - in my hair, at the base of my head and neck, across my back, and the most deliciously sensual, at my hips.

I've made-out with guys before, if being felt-up and having a tongue jammed into my mouth counts, but Kadeem is teaching me in real-time what it is to be truly, properly kissed. I mirror back what he's doing with his tongue and lips, until it feels so good I can't think about anything at all, and I simply lose myself to him.

A sudden knock on the passenger window puts an end to it. I startle. Kadeem grimaces.

"Shit," he says.

The biggest drawback of having werewolf parents: between the keen sense of hearing and smell, it’s hard to hide anything. Definitely hard to run away if you don't leave far enough or fast enough for them to lose your scent trail.

Mr. Hadid is looking at us disapprovingly through the glass.

Mortified, I scramble off of Kadeem. I feel my face turning ghost-pepper hot.

Kadeem rolls down the window. He adopts a lopsided, "Rebel Without a Cause" grin.

"Hey Dad."

We never did make it to Miami, or Portland, or anywhere much in between. Not even in the years after.

My eyelids flutter open.

Seventeen and nineteen once more.

A bolt of panic shoots through me, when my brain clicks and I process what Kadeem whispered into my ear.

"Wait, what?"

"Um, nothing." Kadeem scratches his nose. Then, he manages a soft smile. His dimples brighten his face.

I stare hard at him before sitting up. The squeaky bed groans underneath me. The mattress is pancake flat and lumpy, laying pathetically on top of an ancient set of box springs.

Through a thin wall behind us, a girl moans theatrically. Kadeem rolls his eyes. "I really regret renting this shithole. Longest three days of my life. Forget frugality. When I get paid on Friday-"

"Did you just..." I push my hair behind my ears, "Tell me you love m-"

"No."

His interruption is abrupt and we're both keenly aware of it. He exhales, before shaking his head and arching an eyebrow. "I didn't."

The bed next door begins to creak back and forth. Kadeem's forehead furrows.

"Why would I tell you, 'I love you,' for the first time in some cheap, rent-by-the-hour motel?" His expression warms into a silly smirk. "I'd wait, wouldn't I? For the presidential suite at the Ritz."

I frown up at him. He lays down beside me and sighs, dropping the grin. The girl next door is crying out to her deity, and the headboard starts to make a slamming noise against our shared wall.

"She's faking it," I pronounce.

"I'm sure she was hired to," Kadeem grumbles.

I give him a faint smile and put my head on his chest. He could very well push me away for my less-than-warm reaction to this first declaration of love, but he never does… until he finally does…

Did I deserve it?

He wraps his arm around me, cocooning me against him.

The sex next door is mercifully brief - the sounds of knocking and creaking coming to a frantic eruption of noise before quickly slowing. Kadeem makes a crack about the guy's short-lived performance while I stare across at the window, shuttered by burgundy curtains.

"Ardal?"

I feel his lungs rising and falling beneath me, his heart thumping against my ear.

He kisses the crown of my head and murmurs into my hair, "Would it be so bad, if I did... love you?"

My own heart starts to race, fear knotting my stomach.

A toilet flushes from the room on the other side of us. The obnoxiousness of it becomes my opportunity.

"Oh my God, this noise is driving me crazy," I say, bolting up. My tone is strangely declarative. Now, I'm the theatrical motel-girl. "How do you stand it?"

Kadeem isn't falling for it. He watches me while I hop up from the bed. I step into my boots and swipe my Columbia zip-up from the small, musty-smelling couch near the window.

"I should go."

He gets up and walks over to me as I slide my arms into the gray fleece.

Wordlessly, he adjusts my collar. I swallow. My fingers find a Wheat Penny he gave me earlier in the day, for luck.

"Can I tell you something?" He drops his hands by his side.

I push mine deeper into my pockets. "Yeah, sure."

"You don't have to feel the way I feel."

I clear my throat and shuffle one of my feet against the floor. "Okay."

"But you know what's shitty? I can't help but think-" Kadeem turns his head away from me. "Well, my parents chose Layla, didn't they? She formed her own splinter from the pack, and they couldn't be prouder." He spits out the word and I see the disgust come over his face.

"And here I am." He grins in a destitute way and gestures dramatically, "In Shangri-La, and it would be alright, you know," he says, smile fading, "If only, the person I actually want to be good enough for, would just-"

His eyes sink to his bare feet. "If you would just, think I was..."

The knots in my stomach coil tighter. Even my throat feels constricted.

A midsummer night's acid trip.

I'm woozy. The shadows of my parents stretch like flesh-colored slime till they're distorted into creatures with alien eyes the size of teacups.

"Kadeem will save me," I tell them.

I have to work hard to push the words through the heavy air. It's thick, like peanut butter.

"I'll see you later," I choke out.

And I leave him.

Why can’t I just be happy?

“You were only seventeen,” Kadeem says.

He’s somewhere in the twinkling glow.

But it feels like a pattern.

I don’t say it. The words are trapped inside me.

The lights are traps.

Push-and pull, restless, and flighty.

I’m a moth, burning in the flame.

Julia’s voice is in my ear. “It’s not your parents. Look harder.”

Their laughter is deep and dark, like Satan screaming vinyl-toned messages through “Helter Skelter” played in reverse. The creatures' open mouths spin like turntables. Inside, are black holes.