Forever. Part 14

Sam was silent, and at first I thought he didn't understand what I meant. But then I saw him working his hands on the steering wheel. By the light of the dashboard, I saw that he still had mud underneath the nails of his right hand. Unlike me, he hadn't left his dirty skin behind.

I asked him, "What are you thinking?"

His voice sounded sticky when he replied, like he had to dislodge the words to get them out. "That this time last year, I wouldn't have wanted to." Sam swallowed. "I was thinking that now, if we could, I would. Can you imagine it?"

I could. I could imagine a life someplace far away, starting over from scratch, just us. But as soon as I pictured it - Sam's socks draped over a window radiator, my books spread across a tiny kitchen table, dirty coffee mugs upside down in the sink - I thought of what I would leave behind: Rachel and Isabel and Olivia and, finally, my parents. I had left them so conclusively, through the dubious miracle of my shift, that my old anger at them felt dull and remote. They had no power over my future now. Nothing did, except for the weather.

Then, suddenly, out Sam's window, I saw the aurora, clear and bright, obviously not a reflection of any store's lights. "Sam, Sam! Look! Turn, turn, turn, go that way!"

Twisting slowly in the sky above to our left was a sinuous, s.h.a.ggy ribbon of pink. It pulsed and brightened like a living thing. Sam pulled a left at a narrow, barely paved road that led through an unending black field. The car dipped through potholes and weaved, loose gravel rattling behind us. My teeth snapped as we went over a b.u.mp. Sam made an ahhhhhhhhh sound so that his voice modulated crazily with the jolting vibration of the Volkswagen.

"Stop here!" I ordered.

The field rolled out for acres in every direction. Sam pulled up the parking brake and together we peered out the windshield.

Hanging in the sky directly above us was the aurora borealis. Like a brilliant pink road, it snaked through the air and disappeared behind the trees, a darker purple aura clinging to one side of it. The lights shimmered and stretched, growing and receding, striving and shrinking. One moment the light was a singular thing, a path to heaven, the next moment it was a collection of many, an army made of light, marching ever northward.

"Do you want to get out?" Sam asked. My hand was already on the door handle. Outside, the air was cold enough to have teeth to it, but I was fine, for now. I joined Sam at the front of the car, where he leaned on the hood. When I leaned back on my hands next to him, the hood was hot from the engine, a buffer against the cool night.

Together we gazed up. The flat black field around us made the sky as big as an ocean. With the wolf inside me and Sam beside me, both of us strange creatures, I felt we were somehow an intrinsic part of this world, this night, this boundless mystery. My heart thumped faster, for a reason I couldn't pinpoint. I was suddenly very aware that Sam was just inches away from me, watching with me, his breaths visible in front of his face.

"This close, it is so hard to believe," I said, and my voice caught for some reason on believe, "that it isn't magic."

Sam kissed me.

His kiss landed sort of on the side of my mouth because my face was still turned up, but it was a real kiss, not a careful one. I turned toward him so that we could kiss again, properly. My lips were hot with the unfamiliar feeling of his stubble and when he touched my arm, I was hyperaware of the rough calluses on his fingertips against my skin. Everything inside me felt raw-edged and hungry. I couldn't understand how something we'd done so many times could feel so strange and new and terrifying.

When we kissed, it didn't matter that I had been a wolf hours ago, or that I would be a wolf again. It didn't matter that a thousand snares were laid for us as soon as we left this moment. All that mattered was this: our noses touching, the softness of his mouth, the ache inside me.

Sam pulled away to press his face into my neck. He remained there, hugging me fiercely. His arms were tight enough around me to constrict my breathing, and my hip bone was pressed against the hood hard enough to hurt, but I would never, ever tell him to let me go.

Sam said something, but his voice was inaudible against my skin.

"What?" I asked.

He released me and looked to where my hand rested on the hood. He pressed the ball of his thumb on the top of my index finger and studied the shape of our fingers together as if it was something fascinating. "I missed looking at your face," he said softly. But he didn't look at my face when he said it.

Above us, the lights shimmered and changed. They had no beginning or end, but it looked like they were leaving us anyway. I thought again about the mud beneath his fingernails, the abrasion on his temple. What else had happened while I'd been in the woods?

"I missed having my face," I said. In my head, it had seemed like it would be funny, but when I said it, neither of us laughed. Sam took his hand back and lifted his eyes to the aurora borealis. Sam was still looking off into the sky like he was thinking of nothing, and suddenly I realized, I was being cruel, not saying anything lovey to him after he had said it to me, not saying anything that he needed after being gone for so long. But the moment to say something right back was gone, and I didn't know how to say something that wouldn't sound corny. I thought about saying I love you to him, but even thinking about saying it out loud made me feel strange. I didn't know why it should; I did love him, so much it hurt.

But I didn't know how to say that. So I held out my hand, and Sam took it.

* SAM *

Outside of the car, the lights were even more dazzling, as if the cold air around us moved and shimmered with violet and pink. I stretched my free hand above me as if I could brush the aurora. It was cold, but a good cold, the sort that made you feel alive. Over our heads, the sky was so clear that we could see every star that could see us. Now that I had kissed Grace, I couldn't stop thinking about touching her. My mind was full of the places I had yet to touch: the soft skin inside the bend of her elbow, the curve right above her hip bone, the line of her collarbone. I wanted to kiss her again, so badly, I wanted more of her, but instead, we held hands, our heads tipped back, and together we slowly turned, looking up into the infinity. It was like falling, or like flying.

I was torn between wanting to rush out of this moment, toward that more, and wanting to stay in it, living in a state of constant antic.i.p.ation and constant safety. As soon as we stepped back into the house, the hunt of the wolves would become a real thing again, and I wasn't ready.

Grace, out of the blue, asked, "Sam, are you going to marry me?"

I jerked, looking over at her, but she was still gazing up into the stars as if she'd merely asked about the weather. Her eyes, however, had a sort of hard, squinty look about them that belied the nonchalant sound of her voice.

I didn't know what she expected me to say. I felt like laughing out loud. Because I realized all in a rush that of course she was right - yes, the woods would claim her for the cold months, but she wasn't dying; I hadn't lost her for good. And I had her right here, now. In comparison, everything else seemed small, manageable, secondary.

Suddenly the world seemed like a promising, friendly place. Suddenly I saw the future, and it was a place I wanted to be.

I realized that Grace was still waiting for an answer. I pulled her closer, until we were nose to nose under the northern lights. "Are you asking?" I said.

"Just clarifying," Grace replied. But she was smiling, a tiny, genuine smile, because she had already read my thoughts. By her temple, little flyaway blond hairs drifted in the breeze; they looked like they must tickle, but she didn't twitch. "I mean, instead of living in sin."

And then I did laugh, even though the future was a dangerous place, because I loved her, and she loved me, and the world was beautiful and awash with pink light around us.

She kissed me, very lightly. "Say okay." She was starting to shiver.

"Okay," I said. "It's a deal."

It felt like a physical thing, held in my hands.

"Do you really mean it?" she asked. "Don't say it if you don't really mean it."

My voice didn't sound as earnest as I felt. "I really mean it."

"Okay," Grace said, and just like that, she seemed content and solid, certain of my affections. She gave a little sigh and rearranged our hands so that our fingers were intertwined. "Now you can take me home."

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

* SAM *

Back at home, Grace fell into my bed and asleep at about the same moment, and I envied her easy friendship with slumber. She lay motionless in the eerie, deathlike sleep of the exhausted. I couldn't join her; everything inside me was awake. My mind was on continuous playback, giving me the events of the day again and again, until they seemed like one long creation, impossible to pull apart into separate minutes.

So I left her upstairs and made my soft way downstairs. In the kitchen, I dug through my pocket to drop my car keys on the counter. It seemed wrong that the kitchen looked the same. Everything should've looked different after tonight. A television humming upstairs was the only indication that Cole was in residence; I was glad for the solitude. I was filled with so much happiness and sadness that I couldn't think of speaking. I could still feel the shape of Grace's face pressed into my neck and see her face when she gazed up at the stars, waiting for my answer. I wasn't ready, yet, to dilute that by speaking out loud.

Instead, I sloughed off my jacket and went to the living room - Cole had left this television on, too, though it was muted, so I switched it off and found my guitar where I'd left it leaning against the armchair. The body of it was a bit grubby from being outside; there was a new nick in the finish where either Cole or I had been too careless with it.

Sorry, I thought, because I still didn't want to speak out loud. I picked the strings softly; the change in temperature from outside to inside had put it a little bit out of tune, but not as much as I would have thought. It was still playable, though I took the moment to make it perfect. I put the strap over my head, familiar and easy as a favorite shirt, and I remembered Grace's smile.

Then I began to play. Variations on a G major chord, the most wonderful chord known to mankind, infinitely happy. I could live inside a G major chord, with Grace, if she was willing. Everything uncomplicated and good about me could be summed up by that chord. It was the second chord Paul had ever taught me, sitting here on that ancient plaid couch. First chord: E minor. "Because," Beck had said, pa.s.sing through the room, quoting one of his favorite movies, a memory that stung a little now, "into every life, a little rain must fall."

"Because," corrected Paul, "into every song, we must have a minor bridge."

Dire E minor was straightforward for a newbie like myself. It was so much harder to play the halcyon G major. But Paul made the cheerfulness seem effortless.

It was that Paul I remembered right now, not the Paul who had pinned me to the snow as a child. Just like it was the Grace that slept upstairs that I remembered now, not the wolf with her eyes that we had found in the sinkhole.

I had spent so much of life being afraid or living in the memory of being afraid.

No more.

I stepped my fingers all around the chord as I walked down the hallway, toward the bathroom. The light was already on, so I didn't have to stop playing as I stood there, looking at the bathtub at the other side of the room.

Darkness pressed on either side of my vision, memories pushing at me. I kept playing my guitar, plucking a song about the present to shove back the past. I stood there, eyes fixed on the empty tub.

Water tipped and steadied washed with blood The weight of the guitar's shoulder strap grounded me. The pressure of the strings against my fingers held me in the here and now. Upstairs, Grace slept.

I took a step into the bathroom; my reflection in the mirror startled me as it moved. I held still to study myself. Was that my face, now?

water snaking up the fabric of my shirt this is not sam three two I walked my fingers up to a C major. Filled my head with everything I could do with that chord: She came to me in summer, my lovely summer girl. I held on to the words Grace had said earlier. Are you going to marry me?

Grace had done so much of the work, saving me. Now it was time to save myself.

My fingers never stilled as I walked toward the tub, my guitar singing if I wouldn't, and I stood by the bathtub, looking in. For a moment, it was just an ordinary, mundane object, just a dry basin waiting to be filled.

Then my ears began to ring.

I saw my mother's face.

I couldn't do this.

My fingers found G major and they played one thousand variations of it without me, songs they could play while my thoughts ran to other things. Songs that were a piece of something bigger than me, some unending reservoir of happiness that anyone could tap.

I hesitated, my chords echoing off the tile back at me. The walls were close around me; the doorway seemed far behind me.

I stepped into the bathtub, my shoes squeaking softly on the dry surface. My heart hammered against my T-shirt. Bees hummed inside my head. One thousand minutes other than this one lived in here: minutes with razors, minutes where everything that was me gurgled down the drain, minutes with hands pinning me in the water. But there was also Grace holding my head above the surface, Grace's voice calling me back to myself, Grace taking me by the hand.

And more important than all of those was this minute. The minute when I, Sam Roth, had come here under my own power, my music held in my hands, strong, finally, strong.

Rilke said: For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter

that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

That was how Cole found me, an hour later. Sitting cross-legged in the empty bathtub, my guitar in my lap, my fingers teasing out a G major chord, singing a song I'd never sung before.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

* SAM *

wake me up wake me up, you said but I was sleeping, too I was dreaming but now I'm waking up still waking up I can see the sun.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

* GRACE *

I was wide awake.

Everything in the room was still and black, and I was sure I had just been dreaming of exactly this moment, only with someone standing by the bed.

"Sam?" I whispered, thinking that it had been only minutes I'd been sleeping, that he'd woken me up when he came to bed.

From behind me, I heard Sam make a low-pitched sleep sound. I could feel, now, that it was not blankets pushed up against me but instead a Sam-blanket. Under normal circ.u.mstances, this small gift of his presence would have thrilled me and then lured me back to sleep, but I was so certain that someone had been standing by the bed that it was disconcerting to realize that he was firmly entrenched next to me instead. The hairs on the back of my neck p.r.i.c.kled, wary. As my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, Sam's paper cranes became visible, swaying and tipping, moved by an invisible wind.

I heard a sound.

It wasn't quite a crash. It was an interrupted crash, like something falling and being caught. I held my breath, listening - it was coming from somewhere downstairs - and was rewarded with another m.u.f.fled thump. The living room? Something knocking something over in the backyard?

"Sam, wake up," I said urgently. Looking over, I had a disorienting jolt when I saw the reflections of Sam's eyes in the darkness beside me; he was already awake and was silent. Listening, like me.

"Did you hear that?" I whispered.

He nodded. I didn't so much see it as hear his head rubbing on the pillowcase behind him.

"Garage?" I suggested. He nodded again.

Another m.u.f.fled sc.r.a.pe seemed to confirm my a.s.sessment. Sam and I tumbled out of bed in slow motion; both of us were still clothed in what we'd worn to chase the aurora borealis. Sam led the way down the stairs and then the hall, so it was me who first saw Cole emerging from the hallway to the downstairs bedrooms. His hair was crazily spiked. I had never thought, before, that he had spent any time on it at all - surely careless rock stars didn't have to work at looking like careless rock stars - but now it was clear that spiky was its natural state and he took care to keep it from being that way. He wore only sweatpants. He looked more annoyed than alarmed.

In a low voice several degrees closer to sleep than wakefulness, Cole said, "What the h.e.l.l?"

The three of us stood there, a bare-footed posse, and listened for another few minutes. There was nothing. Sam rubbed a hand through his hair, leaving it comically fanned. Cole held up a finger to his lips and pointed through the kitchen toward the garage door entrance. Sure enough, if I held my breath, I could still hear scuffling coming from that direction.