chapter eighteen

I rested my head on Bobby's shoulder, chewing on my cheek and listening to her breath. Bobby was supposed to drive me to school, but my general demeanor resulted in a change of plans, and now we sat on the couch in her living room, realty television providing background noise. The cold of last night was still soaked into my bones and I kept a blanket tight over my body. "Where were you last night?" I asked, hushed.

Bobby hugged me, one arm draped over my body and it was comforting but it didn't have the same warmth that I craved. "I was with Amber. She came over and we talked and she may have committed an act of adultery," she said, and I smiled, "but I would've told her to get the hell out of my house if I had known you needed me. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," I said, not recognizing the resignation in my own voice. "It's not your fault."

I stared ahead at the screen and tried to ignore the gaping hole in my chest that made me feel like my whole body was crumbling away. "I wish I could've been there for you, Remy. I'd choose you over an average hookup any day."

"Did you tell anyone about how I lost my virginity?" I asked. I didn't know how my mother knew. The only people I had ever told were Bobby and Kim, and I thought that even if Kim hated me as much as she did, she wouldn't go out of her way to tell my mother about my exploits, not when I could do the same to her.

"No," Bobby replied firmly. "I wouldn't do that to you."

I shifted around, pulling my feet under me and turning to face Bobby. "Well, have you heard any rumors or anything? Like, have people been saying shit about me like, sleeping with anyone?"

There was genuine concern on her face. "No one has the balls to say anything negative about you around me," she said, and with a sigh, I collapsed back into her side. "Why? What happened last night?"

I shook my head, watching skinny blond girls jump into pools in a world that seemed so far away. "Oh, my mom just heard some fun little rumors and now she thinks I'm a whore," I said, like it was nothing, and the weight of the words wasn't banging into the side of my head. "Do you think your parents would mind if I stayed here for a night or two? I don't wanna go back home."

"I don't even think they'd notice," Bobby mumbled, and then said, "but you can stay here as long as you want." I gave her a smile of thanks. "Your mom really said that to you?" Bobby asked after a moment, voice laced with worry and anger.

The thing about my mom and I was that we had this cycle. For months on end, it would be like there was nothing that could come between the two of us, and I really was her little girl. But then that mother-daughter love would fade away, and the annoyance and groundings and fighting would start up again. And then, after weeks of being at each other's throats, my mother and I would just come back together. It happened seamlessly, but the pendulum was swinging to more extremes, and I struggled to see a way my mother and I could recover from this, from what I said. "Yeah, but I also told her it was her fault my brother's dead. So I guess I'm not blameless."

But Bobby was shaking her head. "No. No, Remy. That's not how it should be. You're the kid and she's your mother. You shouldn't be operating on equal levels of maturity. She shouldn't be calling you, her own daughter, a whore because she heard some stupid rumor that's not even true. Your mom should know better. And besides, even if you were sleeping around with every single dude on this reservation, that doesn't make you any less deserving of respect or love. Especially not from your mother."

"That's the worst part about all of this, I'm not even getting any dick. I'd be somewhat worth it if I was," I joked, feeling tired of the way everything was so severe. I knew it was bad if even Bobby was talking to me like a therapist.

She shook her head, my comment bringing her down. "You're too goddamn much, Remy."

I sat on the couch with Bobby for a while, trying to focus on nothing but the stupid show in front of me. Being there on the couch with Bobby made me feel safe, like I was so far away from everything that none of it could touch me. All of my problems seemed like someone else's problems, and the memory of my mother standing in front of the smoke in the kitchen felt as distant to me as whatever mindless shit was playing on the television. But I still felt sick from the compression on my chest and the gaping hole in it. I closed my eyes.

It didn't take long for me to float, drift to places other than Bobby's, thinking of things I couldn't remember when my eyes were open.

When I was thirteen, I had a boyfriend. He wasn't a real boyfriend and we never did anything other than pass each other notes in class and our relationship only lasted a week. It ended on the day that he knocked on my door to come and see me, and Bear answered. Bear was lanky and smirking and he held a bottle of whiskey in his hand. He was fifteen, and he said to my fake boyfriend, "If you wanna hang out with my sister, you gotta take a shot." And when the kid refused, my brother slammed the door in his face, and kept the rest of the bottle for himself.

I picked him up one day while he was too drunk to walk, nevermind drive, and he whooped and hollered from the passanger seat, leaning out the window and cursing at the people who dared to stand on the sidewalk. He grabbed a water bottle from my car and uncapped it, and threw it at a group of cops while we drove by. He ignored me when I begged him to stop.

Briah never yelled at me. He was gentle with me, like I would break. But he did, once, when I walked into his room without knocking and he was struggling with a bag full of sharp needles and little plastic bags of white powder. And I stood there, arms frozen by my side while his face flushed and his eyes narrowed and he screamed. He screamed at me like he screamed at our parents, voice hoarse and it hit me so hard I cried and disappeared into my room and I didn't talk to him for days.

I saw the look on Briah's face when it was covered in blood, how his eyes got excited and he licked the blood of others of his face.

He was in the cafeteria again, throwing punches and laughing. He looked at me and he said, "Remy, I'm doing this for you," in a voice that was not his and the blood was flying so far it splattered on my clothes. I asked him to stop but he kept going, each hit harder and harder and I started crying and begging because I saw Embry's face under his fists, and it was Embry's blood that I was covered in. My legs wouldn't move. I begged Briah to stop but my voice wouldn't carry and bright, white tooth landed at my feet.

When I woke up, my throat was dry and Bobby was gone from underneath me. Everything felt cold. I stretched out my limbs, moving slowly and awkwardly, trying to think of anything other than that last little dream. The T.V was dark and the house was void of any sound but the humming of a microwave. I followed the noise into the kitchen, where Bobby was sitting at the counter, scrolling through her phone. "How long was I asleep?" I asked with a yawn.

Bobby glanced at me before dropping her eyes back on her phone. "Just a few hours. You looked like you needed it, though. I'm making pizza rolls."

"I think I'm gonna go back to my place and grab some clothes and shit if I'm gonna stay here. Do you mind if I borrow your car?" I asked, the idea of pizza rolls making me feel substantially worse.

She raised an eyebrow at me. "You're not gonna eat?"

"Not hungry."

"Remy, cut the fucking crap. You look like you haven't eaten in days. Just eat a goddamn pizza roll," she snapped, putting her phone down on the counter and leaning towards me.

"I'm not doing it on purpose," I said with a shrug, "all food feels like gross wet clay in my mouth. Makes me sick."

Bobby stood and approached me, taking my face in her hands. "My poor, depressed little angel," she said, and then sighed. "Fine, you can borrow my car. But only if you suck it the fuck up and eat a big ass dinner with me tonight."

The windows were all the way down on my drive back home. I liked the way the wind felt in between my knotted strands of hair, and how it reminded me of the drive to Port Angeles with Bobby. The air smelt fresh and I inhaled it so sharply because I thought that if I got enough of it all the thoughts I couldn't get rid of would be purified and I'd be safe from the image of Embry being beaten to death by my brother.

There were no cars in my driveway, so I pulled in, knowing I had to be quick. I left a little note on the fridge, an aggressive one that told them I'd be saying at Bobby's for a few days and that it was totally my mother's fault. I ended it with a little heart, signed it, 'your only living kid.' It felt fair.

When I steped into my room, it felt charged. Like this was the place where my mother and I's relationship deteriorated and where I spent all my time agonizing over the disappearance of Bear and where I locked myself up to avoid Kim. It was where Embry placed me in my bed and I begged him not to leave. And it felt like so much more than a room but a catalyst for things to go wrong. I moved quickly, throwing random clothes and toiletries. I didn't want to be in there long.

But before I left, I leaned out the window, eyes on the trees, watching and hoping that in the time I stuck my head out Briah would be there. I looked for him everywhere I went, and at this point it felt more like a compulsion. But he wasn't there; he was never there. He was only there that once, and I thought that maybe he would never be close enough for me to see him again. And I had to ask myself if I was okay with just knowing that he was somewhere out there.

I dropped back onto my bed, back hitting the blankets with a thud. There was something poking uncomfortably into my spine, and I shifted around, reaching my hand around until I pulled out my crumbled and tattered journal. It was opened, lying flat on my bed and I wondered how I didn't notice there in the first place. I hadn't thought of my journal recently, not since I knew that it was Embry dragging me around with his stupid little notes. I never followed up on that confrontation with him, and he never told me why he did it. And I figured I would have to be stuck with a lot of dead ends like that.

My thumb traced over the spine, and then I flipped it over to the page it was open on. It was the page on Adlets, the strongest theory I had and the last thing I thought could possibly be true before I got completely lost in everything. But there, at the bottom of the page, was messy handwriting. It was fresh and smudged and made my breathing stop.

You've spent all your time looking up cryptids, but you didn't even think about your own tribes legends.

And I took my journal in my hand and I flung it out the window and I screamed. I didn't know what to do so I screamed and I plunged my fist into the wall and I felt so fucking stupid. It was tribal law not to kill a wolf. The drywall was cracked and I felt dizzy, grabbing my bag and running back down the stairs and into Bobby's car and I pulled out of the driveway in such a way that I thought I might crash her car.

I was so fucking stupid.

My mother never told me about our tribe's legends; cultural pride wasn't her knack and I figured she spent half of her time fantasizing about leaving. But I heard about them in school. They were always apart of our curriculum. We would sit in a circle with our legs crossed while our teachers told us about the brave members of our tribe who defended our lands and our people with the power of a wolf. They were spirit warriors shapeshifters. I remembered the way we used to play, when we were younger, with leaves in our hair like we were the wolves, and it was our job to protect and defend. I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it.

I wasn't thinking anymore. I was just driving, feeling the adrenaline pulsing through my whole body. I didn't know what to feel because I had spent so much of my time trying to figure out what the fuck was going on around here and now that I knew it was so dissatisfying. And I chewed on my lip and pressed down a little harder on the accelerator and wondered if it was even true. I couldn't stomach it. I couldn't think of it and I didn't know what it meant for Bear but I pictured him twisting and morphing into a monster and I was sick once more.

His car was in his driveway and but I knocked on his front for three straight minutes and there was no response. And I didn't know where he could've been but it didn't matter. Because I was going to drive around this stupid place for hours until I found him and I was going to get the answers I deserved and he was going to tell me what happened to Briah and I would know once and for all.

Because I knew that he knew, and when I thought about Embry throwing his arm over my shoulder and holding me close to him while he knew what happened to my brother and not telling me I wanted to snap the steering wheel off of Bobby's car. I thought about how much I hated him while I drove and how fucking stupid I was for letting him get close to me just so he could betray me.

He wasn't at Quil's house. He wasn't at Jacob's. And with every place I stopped and I couldn't see him I wanted to rip something to shreds. But I kept my face expressionless and moved onto the next place. I had never been to Sam Uley's house but I remembered where it was. Briah made me drive him there to throw eggs at his windows whenever Sam snitched on him for dealing. I got there quickly, with shaking arms and blurred vision. I didn't knock on the door because I heard their laughter and voices and I knew he was in there and I threw the door open.

They were all there, all the fucking cult boys with their big cult leader. Jacob and Jared and Quil, Big Brother Quil, another betrayer. And all of their heads were turned to me when I stormed into the kitchen and I didn't care that this was the rudest thing I had ever done because I saw Embry right away, feet kicked up on the chair next to him. But when he saw me his face fell and he stood, back straight and eyes wide. "Remy," he said, shocked at my appearance.

And I hated public confrontation but right now I hated Embry more. "I need to talk to you right now," I demanded.

In the room that was just filled with laughter there was just silence. They all seemed to have some general understanding of what was going on, eyes switching between Embry and I. Embry nodded. "Alright, let's go outside."

Embry passed me, not meeting my eyes, but I stood with my feet planted firmly on the ground. I looked at Quil with narrowed eyes. I wanted to open my mouth and cuss him out but when I looked into his eyes, I saw Briah. So I closed my mouth and followed Embry outside without a word.

He stood in the grass across from me, and there was so much agony and shame in his expression but I was past the point of feeling bad for him. I stomped up to him, placing my hands on either side of his shoulders and shoving him. "What the fuck!" I shouted, and he stumbled back. And it made me even more mad because I knew I couldn't knock him over but he just let me push him around. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Remy," he said, hushed and hurt, "can you please give me a chance to explain?"

"Explain what? Explain how you played dumb to trick me into being your friend when you knew what happened to my brother the whole time?"

His voice was tight. "It's not that simple."

"I always knew there was something going on with you guys! And I thought it might be connected to what happened to Bear but I never thought that you and Quil would be so fucked up that you would hide it from me like this! He's one of you and you hid that from me!"

"I wanted to be sure of everything," he started.

But I was on a roll. "Do you even realize how fucked that is Embry? You knew how badly I wanted Bear to be okay and you just exploited that to get close to me."

"You still don't understand anything," Embry said lowly, and it set me off. I raised my fist at him, but before I could swing it, Embry grabbed me by the wrist. I tried to pull it away from him but his grip was tight and he wouldn't let me go. He leaned in close and looked me in the eyes. "Remy, you don't understand. You need to calm down and let me explain."

I stared up at him defiantly. "Fine."

Embry didn't let go of my wrist, but used it to make me follow him away from Sam's house and towards the woods. There was a tiny little trail in his backyard and I stumbled behind him while he maintained a confident stride. "Where are we going?" I asked, voice still sharp.

"I don't need them listening," he said while the leaves provided a shade over us. And he stopped when Sam's house was completely blocked by the leaves and branches, dropping my wrist and turning to face me. "So you know what I am," he stated. It wasn't a question.

"You're a shapeshifter," I spat out, not trying to think about how stupid it sounded coming out of my mouth. "You all are."

His expression was hard. "Right, we are. Everyone in Sam's house right now, we've all wolves. You figured that much out, great, but have you figured out why Briah isn't with us?" he questioned, and I halted, letting that information process in my head. Briah was never with them; Briah disappeared and everyone else stayed. I didn't have an explanation for that. "It's because he's not one of us, Remy."

My head was spinning. "What?"

Embry leaned in close and took my face in his hands the same way Bobby did. "If he was, you would know. Okay? He wouldn't have disappeared," he sighed.

"You weren't lying to me about him?" I asked, face getting hot at the idea of my mislead outburst.

He nodded. "When I said I would help you look for him, I wasn't lying either. That's what me and Quil were doing yesterday; we were looking for Briah." He paused, exhaling heavily. "I didn't want to tell you before I found him. I didn't want to get your hopes up."

I felt faint, lightheaded. I grabbed onto Embry's wrist to stay stable, looking at my feet. "What happened to him?" I asked, voice hushed.

"I don't know. I have a theory, but I can't prove it until I find him," he said, and then raised my face so my eyes met his. "But Remy, I told you I was gonna find him, and I'm gonna keep that promise."

And I wasn't sure why but the anger was leaving my body and it was being replaced by the idea that the boy cupping my face in his hands had the ability to shift into the giant wolf I had seen dancing in between the trees. "I don't feel good," I said, and I pushed Embry's hands away from me to drop to my knees because the weight of everything was just too heavy for me.

He was sitting in front of me in a second, reaching to take my hands in his. "I know this is a lot, Remy. I'm sorry. I didn't want to tell you this soon." And then, after a moment, he said, "How did you figure it out?"

My thoughts starting moving slowly, piecing things together. "You left the note in my journal."

Embry's features twisted in confusion. "I didn't leave you a note, Remy."

"Well someone did," I asserted. "Someone left a note in my journal and said that I should look for answer in my own tribe's legends."

Embry's expression became grave. And he was looking beyond me, his frantic eyes the only thing that gave me any insight into how he was feeling. And then he looked down at me with a fierceness in his eyes. "This is too much for you to take in right now, Remy. You should go to Bobby's house tonight, spend some time with your friend and process all of this. We can talk more about it tomorrow, okay?"

I nodded, feeling numb. Embry stood, and he didn't let me get up on my own. He wrapped his arms under me and lifted me up to his chest, carrying me out of the woods. "I have a lot of questions," I said after a while, when we were halfway through Sam's backyard.

"I know," Embry said, his chest rumbling while he spoke to me. "Do you want me to drive you to Bobby's?" he asked, and I nodded.

He placed me down next to Bobby's car, and I handed him the keys before settling into the passenger seat. He told me he would be right back, and then disappeared into Sam's house once more.

I thought I might throw up. Every thought that passed through my head made me sicker and I didn't know whether or not Embry was dangerous but there was a carefulness in the way he carried me that made me think he wasn't. I knew the legends said they were meant to protect us, but I didn't know what from. I thought of the wolf that snarled and snapped at me before I crawled back into my tent and I wondered who it was and who the woman was that laughed like that. It didn't feel real, none of it did, and I felt like my body was somewhere else and I was just floating. I pinched at my thighs and chewed on my cheek but I felt nothing and now that all the anger was gone there was nothing left.

Embry was back after a few minutes, expression tight. And when he got in the car next to me I wanted to ask him everything but I couldn't think of anything to say. He pulled out of Sam's driveway and I settled on, "I'm scared."

Embry looked at me with the same gentle eyes he always gave me. "You don't have to be afraid of me, Remy. I'd never do anything to hurt you. Wolf or not."

"I wish I could be mad at you still," I said, fiddling with my thumbs.

"I thought you would hate me for it," he said, voice husky. "I thought you'd never want to talk to me again."

I thought I would've, too. The idea that I hated Embry passed through my head so quickly and it was gone before it could be solidified. I couldn't stay mad at him for very long. "You'll tell me about it more?"

"Tomorrow," he said. "I'll tell you everything tomorrow. You just," he looked over at me and I felt tiny under his gaze, "you need to rest, take this all in. You look exhausted."

I nodded, looking out to the road. We were almost at Bobby's house. I could see her driveway at the end of the road. "You promise you won't lie to me anymore?" I asked.

"I'm never gonna lie to you again, Remy. Come here," he said, extending his arm towards me and I leaned over the dashboard and into his side. "I'm sorry I ever had to lie to you in the first place. But starting now, that's over."

He pulled into Bobby's driveway, but we both stayed in her car for a moment, listening to each other breath. I didn't want to get out of the car. I didn't want want to leave Embry's side again.

she knows! well, kind of. i've been waiting FOREVER to write this chapter i've had it planned out in my head since before i ever even wrote chapter one. let me know what you guys think, and thank you for reading!