Sometimes the bed is too comfortable.
Allison and Lydia sit cross legged on it, books at their sides. They're supposed to be studying. They're not. They're talking about how annoying it is that werewolves don't actually turn into wolves, because wouldn't it be fun if they could hang out with wolves. They're talking about what dresses they want for prom. Allison wants pink. Lydia wants blue. They both want it to be a normal night. They want to dance and twirl and sing to their favorite songs and not have to worry about their dates getting into some hell raising fight.
For now, all they've got for their peaceful nights are their beds. Tonight it's Allison's bed. Her room is neater than Lydia's. She's got weapons stashed under the bed, knives slipped between the rungs of the radiator. Allison hides her whole hunter-warrior-princess thing beneath her laughter. She looks like a normal teenage girl. Lydia looks like a normal teenage girl. But within seconds, they can both turn inside out.
Their short skirts will be practical, because they can run faster in them. Braided hair is cute and deadly; Allison shows Lydia how to whip it like the blades of a helicopter. And their smiles, all glossed over, can ruin lives.
But they're tired of all of that. And they want to be normal. Just for one night. Chances are, Scott and Stiles are going to come barging in begging for research.
"You guys doing okay on that project?" because even Mr. Argent can be normal sometimes, even if there's a gun in his hand as he pokes his head in the doorway.
Allison holds up the book. "Yeah, we're fine, Dad."
Because they're totally already doing research. Well. They should be. They'll actually do the work Scott asks of them, just because they know lives can end otherwise. But sometimes they think about how far they won't be going if their grades are low. If they don't pay attention in class. If their only extracurricular activities revolve around shooting arrows at monsters and screaming every time someone dies.
"We really should be doing this," Lydia says, flipping through the pages of the book. "I mean, we don't want to fail."
Allison sighs. "Come on. One night where we don't have to worry about anything, okay?"
"Allison, if I fail this -"
"You won't." Allison smiles. "You're a genius, Lydia."
Oh, yeah, Lydia thinks. Total genius. Can somehow sense whenever someone's about to die, can't really do anything about it. She'll be sure to put that on her resume.
God, she doesn't even have a job.
Even Scott has a job. A nice one. With dogs. Lydia likes dogs. Allison likes dogs. It kind of bothers them that Scott keeps going back there with his issues. The dogs could get hurt. What if someone was trying to hunt him down and found the dogs and used them against him?
They overthink things, sometimes. But then, with their lives, they really need to overthink.
Just this once, Allison would like to underthink.
"What's your favorite animal?" she asks.
Lydia says, "Lions." She tugs on her hair. "You know The Lion King?"
"Everyone knows The Lion King."
"I used to watch it and Simba's mane would remind me of my hair. I wanted to be a lioness for like, five years."
"Mine was a wolf."
They're laughing. Shaking. The bed's shaking with them. It's different. Allison's used to sharing this bed with a guy. Feeling his skin on hers, swimming in the sheets. And it always feels like there's something to hide when she's doing that. That means the quilted blanket, the one she's had since she was a kid, gets rolled to the end of the bed, all scrunched up like something useless. It means growing up, suddenly having to give up every little nice thing.
Sitting with Lydia, laughing so hard they're crying, it's so damn nice. It's so damn nice to cry because they're happy, not because someone's dead or bleeding or lost a stupid lacrosse game. Crying is chaos.
They want their happiness to be uncontrollable.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" asks Lydia, smiling through her aching breaths. She can hardly breathe. She really can't. And dying feels great. She almost wonders why they even try saving people.
"Olympic athlete." Allison grips the blanket, holds her childhood between her fingers. "It would be nice. Using arrows to show off or something, for once. Not to kill someone."
Lydia grins. "Oh, people will be wanting to kill me."
"Why?"
"I'm going to be a teacher."
"After living in a town like this?"
And she's thinking of the tortured school hallways, lockers with scratches and dents and bloody marks and terrified students and that sleepover in the lab where they learned how to make molotov cocktails.
They honestly cannot stop laughing.
Allison presses her back against the headboard and tries to speak. "Okay." She giggles. "So where do you want to go to college?"
"Ivy League. Definitely."
"But that's so far away."
"I don't mind. I need that. After everything that's happened here . . . I mean, I figure it's got to be better than this, right? All those cities. There's not enough room for anything wild."
She can imagine Lydia as a scientist. Wearing a floral dress under a white lab coat, fashionable and efficient as ever. She can imagine her mixing chemicals. Flasks as familiar in her hands as a cellphone.
Lydia can do it. Allison cannot.
The Argents used to live everywhere, making the world their home. There was a seaside cottage in Rhode Island. Small town, big beaches. The sea was always storming. Her dad would stand by the window, gun in hand, watching the shore. "You think if I shot a wave, it'd do anything?" he asked, once. And Allison had pressed her fingers to the glass and wondered what it was like to hold water in her hands.
Then there had been that month in New York City. The streets were stormier than the sea. People punched each other on the sidewalks and they'd bleed and that was how they made their mark, letting their blood drip into the sewers. Otherwise they were too small. You'd have to be famous to be noticed in New York. No one knew the Argents. They never stayed anywhere long enough to be cared about. So when they walked those streets in their leather jackets and ripped jeans, they did not leave bits of themselves behind, but instead carried the city with them wherever they went.
Sitting on this small bed in a small town, Allison hears cars rush by and thinks she is by the sea, and she sees their headlights on the ceiling and thinks there is a fight outside.
But now she knows better. Now she knows that there had been a family of werewolves in Rhode Island, who had owned a bookstore and went fishing sometimes. There had been a pack of werewolves in New York City, wearing even more leather than her family, and they had trained themselves to be more controlled than the chaotic humans.
Allison cannot think about any of her old homes, of swamps and forests and deserts, without thinking of the way werewolves fit into them.
"I have to stay here," she tells Lydia, turning away from the window. There's so many stars out there. Beacon Hills has always been good for that kind of thing. "I've been all over the place, Lyds. Which means my family has killed all over the place. I can't live with that."
Lydia tilts her head. Thank God for that. She's blocking the window even more with that crazy red hair. "They were werewolves, Allison."
"So is Scott!" And she's shaking. Even under Lydia's hand, resting on her shoulder. She can hardly think. "What if some of them were innocent, like him? What if they were just trying to live their lives, not hurting anyone?"
"You don't know that. Some of them probably really did hurt someone."
They sit there. Close as they can possibly be, because this is northern California and it's cold as hell, and they're both wearing really soft sweaters so they might as well huddle up. And Allison is still shaking and wondering how she is breathing when someone out there isn't, thanks to her.
She is supposed to be helpful, she thinks. After all she's done, she thinks there must be something she can do. Something she can fix.
She is not supposed to get along just fine. Get good grades. Hold a rose in her hand, the one Scott gave her. She needs to get bad grades. Needs to let that rose's thorns bleed her out. And she is supposed to stand strong and brave. Because if she doesn't do it, who will?
"Allison, Allison, you're okay. Breathe."
Lydia's arms are around her. Rocking her like she's a little kid who needs protecting.
Does she?
Or does she need to protect?
"It's just." She swallows. Breathes in the air that her best friend is telling her to. "I have no idea what to do."
And that's the thing. "Honestly, Allison, no teenage girl knows what to do. That's normal."
Normal.
Normal.
Allison thinks, for a moment, that she wants to be normal. For these tears to be over a bad breakup, a failed essay. Yet she wants other girls to have that, too. Can they have that without her? Without the arrows she shoots at wolves?
"I wish we could be everything, Lydia. I'm tired of having to choose."
For now, choosing a dress for prom should be enough. When the boys text them about some creature, the girls stay on the laptop, pointing out dresses they think would look good on each other. They try not to think how they'd look if they were bleeding. They shouldn't have to make that choice.