During the first game, I was a villager. My boyfriend’s little brother was
a werewolf. When he found me hiding in the pantry, he tapped on my shoulder
and I fell, silently, like they’d told me to. I lay against the cold tiles
until my boyfriend’s sister discovered me.

“Dead body, dead body!” she screamed. The lights turned on. Everyone rushed
to the kitchen. They all exclaimed. My boyfriend nudged me and said it was
time for the town meeting, to deliberate and vote on who the werewolves
were. I stayed dead for a moment longer than I needed to. The voices of my
boyfriend’s family frothed in my head like foam around a mouth. I could
smell a lemony cleaning product on the tiles. My eyes were heavy. At
dinner, I drank lots of wine.

It was my first time meeting my boyfriend’s family. I wasn’t nervous, but I
was drowsy. I’d been losing sleep, staying up and thinking about all the
things I could do if I wasn’t so tired. Two years ago, I was bitten by a
tick. The tick gave me Lyme disease, which flared up every few months in
bouts of fatigue.

On the drive to my boyfriend’s parents’ house, I hit a dog. This was the
first thing my boyfriend said to his father when we arrived.

“We hit a dog,” my boyfriend said as his father shook my hand.

“It lived,” I said quickly, because when my boyfriend got out to check on
it, he’d told me it had.

“That’s terrible,” my boyfriend’s father said.

My boyfriend’s father was shorter than my boyfriend but more muscular. He
had a goatee and wore a tight sweater. It was black, a V-neck. The house
was modern in a West Coast-y way—open floor plan, suede furniture. Abstract
paintings hung on the walls, the colors thick and churning.

“Come in, come in,” my boyfriend’s father said. “You must be exhausted.”

I was. I thought I might cry with relief, hearing a stranger say it aloud.
My appearance suggested that I was generally well. It was important to me
that people knew I wasn’t. That people knew that what I was, really, was
sick. I was so grateful for my boyfriend’s father’s sympathy for my
condition, I forgot that you must be exhausted was what healthy people said
to other healthy people after any kind of travel.

“Thanks,” I said. “The medication doesn’t always work all that well.”

My boyfriend’s father squinted.

“From the drive, I meant,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “Yes. The drive.” I blushed and apologized.

“But also that,” my boyfriend said to his father, jumping in. “Also what
she just said. Don’t apologize,” my boyfriend continued, turning to me. He
rubbed my back. “You don’t have to pretend around us.”

My boyfriend was very supportive during my flares. We’d been together for
eight months and I was tired during half of them, but he cooked me meals
from a book called “Foods that Fight Fatigue,” made sure I was well
hydrated, researched supplements I should take. Whenever something slipped
from my mind—a word or a date or what I was going into the bathroom for—he
told me. The fog came and went. Sometimes, it felt like wet cotton balls
were stuffed into the folds of my brain.

He was always telling me that he didn’t want me to pretend. It upset him
when I acted better than I felt. I thought it a strange word to use.
Pretend. It brought to my mind a kid costumed in their parents’ clothes,
feet drowning in shoes that were too large.

We sat down for dinner at a glass table: me, my boyfriend, my boyfriend’s
father, my boyfriend’s little brother, my boyfriend’s sister, and my
boyfriend’s sister’s boyfriend.

My boyfriend’s mother wasn’t there.

“She’s in bed,” my boyfriend’s father explained in the same voice one might
use to talk about the weather.

“Such a shame,” my boyfriend’s sister’s boyfriend offered mildly. Everyone
mumbled in agreement.

I was disappointed but not entirely surprised. My boyfriend spoke of his
mother rarely and when he did, he talked only of how she wasn’t well. How’d
she’d never been well. From what I’d been able to gather, she’d spent most
of his childhood drifting in and out of health.

“She’s just weak,” my boyfriend told me when I first asked. “Her body isn’t
right.”

I pushed for more. He got quiet. Naturally, I was curious. His mother
seemed like the kind of woman whose personality was that she was sick, the
kind of woman I was afraid of becoming. But I didn’t want to upset him.

When I asked if I’d meet her during our visit, he told me that he never
knew when she’d be in one of her spells.

We started dinner by passing around trays of steaming meat.

My boyfriend’s father told me I had a choice of lamb shoulder soaked in a
veal marinade, or duck breast topped with red currant jelly. The sides, he
went on, pointing, were sweet potatoes, wild rice and kale casserole, and
cider-glazed Brussel sprouts with bacon.

“The special guest,” he said, sweeping his arm out across the table,
“chooses first.”

I chose the duck. We ate. Everyone exclaimed loudly over the food.

“You’ve done it again,” my boyfriend said.

“This meat,” my boyfriend’s sister said, stabbing a chunk of it with the
tip of her knife. “It’s so tender.”

“Juicy,” my boyfriend agreed.

I chewed slowly. The duck was rubbery against my tongue, tasteless. The
Brussel sprouts were burnt. I tried not to cringe as the char flaked off
and stuck to my teeth. My boyfriend’s family helped themselves to seconds,
then thirds.

“I’m close to bursting!” they announced, forking food into their mouths.

“It’s nothing,” my boyfriend’s father kept saying as they fawned. “Nothing
at all.”

I tried to keep my eyes open. My joints throbbed beneath my clothes. My
boyfriend reached over and put his hand on my back. I knew he was glad to
have someone to bring home. I was glad, too. We were beginning to give
ourselves to each other. He’d even started to call me “his girl.”

As we cleared the dishes and prepared for dessert, my boyfriend’s father
suggested that my boyfriend go say hello to his mother—before it was too
late. My boyfriend’s father turned to me.

“We don’t want to overtax her,” he told me. “You’ll probably want to stay
down here.”

“Oh,” I said. “Of course.” But I followed my boyfriend to the bottom of the
stairs.

“Are you sure I shouldn’t meet her now?” I asked. “I wouldn’t want to be
rude.”

This was true—it was important that my boyfriend’s family liked me,
especially his mother—but I also felt I had to see it, the mysterious
nature of her illness, with my own eyes. I wanted to know what it looked
like to be a woman that sick.

“I wouldn’t want to be rude,” I said again.

“It’s not rude,” he told me, starting up the stairs. I stood at the bottom
and watched him go. My boyfriend was more attractive from behind. He was
lanky, really, but the way his t-shirt stretched tight across his shoulder
blades made him seem burly, like the kind of man who could crush my torso
with his, if he wanted to.

I walked back to the kitchen and dried plates with my boyfriend’s sister.

“Is it always like this?” I asked. “With your mother?”

“It comes and goes,” she said.

When my boyfriend came back down, we ate dessert: lemon meringue ricotta
cheesecake. The meringue was spread on thick, five inches high. It jiggled
as my boyfriend’s father brought it to the table, the way thighs do.

Halfway through, my boyfriend’s little brother let his fork clatter against
his plate.

“Oh my god,” he said. “We have enough people for the game.”

My boyfriend’s father looked around the table, chewing slowly.

“You’re right,” he said. He swallowed. “We do.”

“What game?” I asked.

“Villagers and Werewolves. It’s something we do at family gatherings,” my
boyfriend said. “Thanksgiving and stuff.”

My boyfriend’s little brother said it was their favorite game but they
hardly ever had enough people to play. Now, with me here, the numbers were
just right.

They explained it to me.

It was played in the dark. You could either be a villager or a werewolf.
There were always two werewolves, and everyone else was a villager. It was
a secret, who was what—roles were assigned by picking a card that told you
what you were.

“We made our own deck,” my boyfriend’s father said proudly.

The werewolves won if they killed off the villagers. The villagers won if
they guessed correctly who the werewolves were before the werewolves
destroyed them all. If a villager got tapped on the shoulder, they had to
fall to the ground and stay there until someone found them. Then came the
town meeting, where everyone voted on who they thought made the kill. It
was majority rule, and whoever the majority voted for got hanged. The
hanged person had to reveal what they were. They also had to stop playing,
which meant—if they were a werewolf—that they couldn’t kill any more
villagers. But if everyone voted incorrectly to hang a villager, the real
werewolf would roam free.

Outside and upstairs were out of bounds.

My boyfriend’s sister’s boyfriend leaned in while they talked.

“You should know they take this seriously,” he said.

I laughed politely and glanced at my boyfriend’s father. He was licking the
last of the meringue from his plate, sucking carefully on one finger at a
time.

Right before we started, my boyfriend pulled me aside.

“My girl,” he said, “I know you’re tired. We can get you to bed, if you
want.”

“That’s okay,” I told him. “I want to play.”

I was glad to be a villager for that first round, glad to take refuge in
the pantry. When my boyfriend’s little brother approached and whispered
that I was dead, I didn’t mind collapsing. It was exactly what I felt like
doing.

After my boyfriend’s sister found me dead, we had a town meeting so
everyone could vote on who they thought had killed me. I couldn’t vote,
because I knew. The rest of the villagers still got it right.

“You’re hanged, you’re hanged,” they told my boyfriend’s little brother,
pointing. “We found you out and now you’re hanged.”

When the first game was over, I scooted in close to my boyfriend on the
couch.

“Hey,” I whispered. “Can we talk?”

We got up and went into the kitchen. He rubbed my arms.

“How are you?” he asked. “Are you too tired? Are you feeling faint?”

The dog incident, I could tell, had only amplified his concern. He hadn’t
wanted me to do any of the driving, but I’d promised him I was perfectly
capable. Despite my insistence that the people around me remember I was
sick—that they see it—I wanted them to forget it, too.

I hated this about myself—that I needed both at once.

When the dog ran out from behind a parked car and made a dull thump against
our bumper, my boyfriend said he’d told me so. I started to sob. He had me
pull over, and then he got out. He was gone for several minutes. When he
came back, he told me the dog was completely fine, that it’d run off back
the way we came.

“Are you sure?” I asked. I looked in the rearview. I did not see the dog
lying where I’d imagined it, heaped in a bloody tangle of fur and bones.

“Yes,” he told me. “But I wish you’d listened to me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s not your fault,” he said. “You can’t see how tired you are.”

He drove the rest of the way.

Now, I kissed him gently. He moved his hand and grabbed my butt, opened my
mouth with his, edged his tongue inside.

“Are you okay?” I asked, pulling away. “After seeing your mom.”

He frowned, drew me in.

“You’re my girl,” he said. “Don’t worry about me, let me worry about you.”

We gathered in the living room, and my boyfriend’s sister did what she’d
done the first time: handed out cards from the homemade deck that said
either villager or werewolf on the back. Mine said werewolf. Underneath the
word, there was an illustration of a man with tufts of fur sprouting from
his chest. His clothing ripped at the seams.

“These drawings are beautiful,” I said, examining my card. “Who did them?”

For a moment, nobody said anything.

“Mom did,” my boyfriend’s sister told me. She paused. “She’s an artist, all
the stuff on the walls is hers, too.”

“Was an artist,” my boyfriend’s father interrupted. He grimaced. “She can’t
paint, anymore, unfortunately.”

The room was quiet.

My boyfriend’s sister nodded her head sadly, and my boyfriend’s sister’s
boyfriend reached out to squeeze her arm.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay,” my boyfriend’s sister told me. Then she clapped her hands
twice.

“Now that everybody knows what they are, put your heads down and close your
eyes.”

I obeyed. My boyfriend’s little brother let out an excited giggle.

“Without speaking,” my boyfriend’s sister instructed, her own head down,
“the two werewolves should open their eyes, so you know who the both of you
are.”

I did as she said and peered around the circle. Everyone had their eyes
closed except for my boyfriend’s father. He was staring at me. He winked.

“Okay,” my boyfriend’s sister announced. “If the two werewolves would like
to make a plan together for who to kill, now is the time to do so.”

My boyfriend’s father pointed at my boyfriend and my boyfriend’s sister’s
boyfriend and took his throat in his hands. He let his tongue hang out of
his mouth. I nodded. I wasn’t sure what else to do. My boyfriend’s sister
announced that the werewolves should put their heads down again and that on
the count of three, we could all open our eyes. When we did, my boyfriend’s
family looked around, furrowing their brows and squinting with mock
suspicion.

“Alright,” my boyfriend’s sister said, her hand on the light switch. “Let’s
begin.”

The room sunk into darkness.

I felt my boyfriend leave the couch, heard the stairs to the basement
creak. It was dark in the house, but you could still make out shapes.
Smells. The particular texture of a sweater. I stood. I wanted to stall
before making my first kill, hide so that everyone would think I was a
villager, too. One of them, equally as worried about survival.

I walked from the living room, guided by the streetlights coming in through
the windows. I turned a corner and it was darker, almost pitch black. I ran
my fingertips along the wall. Turned another corner. I was about to head
back, realizing how few places there were to hide in this part of the
house, when my hand hit a door.

I pawed around until I found the handle and then I opened it, walking
forward with my arms out in front of me. I brushed up against wool, nylon,
denim. Coats, I realized. A closet. I decided I’d hide until someone else
walked by and then I’d reach out, tap them on the shoulder. I stood between
the coats and the cracked door for several minutes, waiting, but my legs
were aching, heavy with Lyme. I wanted to sit. As I moved to a crouch, I
lost my balance and toppled, falling backward into the coats. The sound of
something knocked over filled the small space. I got back on my feet and
pulled my phone out for light.

The closet was much larger than it felt in the dark, not a wall behind the
coats dangling from their hangers, but more space. Storage. Stacks of
boxes, books. And, I noticed as my eyes adjusted, canvases. Paintings.
There were several of them—propped up on shelves, leaning against one
another. A few were on easels.

I looked at them, wondering if my boyfriend’s mother felt frightened that
her illness made it difficult for her to hold a brush, to sit upright at an
easel, to feel like her ribs and spine still belonged to her.

When I first began to suspect I had Lyme—that the itchy, red rash on my
knee needed to be diagnosed—I thought it odd that the disease came from a
bite. It didn’t sound like the sort of thing that should happen to a human.
Later, though, after my symptoms worsened, I began to have cravings. I
fought the urge to eat gravel, dirt, chalk. Sticks, pebbles. Apparently,
the Lyme had drained my iron stores. Doctors told me not to worry, that
this was normal. But I wasn’t concerned. The bite started to make more
sense to me then, considering that it made me want to feel the crunch of
something hard and brittle between my jaw.

I didn’t have the cravings so much anymore, now that the Lyme came and went
sporadically. The doctor said I was susceptible to flares because the
disease hadn’t been treated soon enough. Some days I’d be myself and other
days, I wouldn’t.

“You’re my girl,” my boyfriend told me during the flares. “It’s up to me to
take care of you.”

The way he nursed me, it was as though my body were a part of his, a limb
or a lung. He was able to see, even before I could, when I was beginning to
feel unwell, when I was not entirely myself. And though I was grateful for
this—that he could tell me what time of day I’d get a migraine, the foods
that might make me sick to my stomach—I worried, too.

A few months into dating my boyfriend, I experienced an extended period of
wellness. For a full nine weeks, I didn’t have any symptoms. And yet, my
boyfriend continued to keep my light therapy energy lamp free of dust,
continued to arrange my medications alphabetically, and cook large vats of
fortifying, nutrient dense stews.

Once, I woke in the night to my boyfriend massaging my joints like I’d told
him they were swollen. His hands clenched around my kneecaps. Something
about his fingers, the knuckled pressure of them, made my mouth go dry. But
I couldn’t bring myself to tell him to stop.

I assumed it was because of his sick mother. He knew how to be around a
woman who needed help.

I looked away from the paintings when I heard a muffled shout, calling for
me. I picked up the canvas I’d knocked over and placed it back on an empty
easel.

In the living room, the lamp was on. My boyfriend’s father had killed off
the villagers in one round.

“What happened?” my boyfriend asked, kissing my cheek. “Too nervous to make
a kill?”

“I was hiding,” I told them. “Playing it safe.”

I didn’t mention what I’d seen in the closet. I felt I shouldn’t have been
there at all.

They laughed. My boyfriend’s sister started to hand out cards and I reached
for one. But my boyfriend grabbed my arm and turned it over, pointed to a
spot of red.

“Are you bleeding?” he asked.

I squinted at my skin.

“Maybe I clawed myself,” I joked. “I’m not used to being a werewolf.”

I got up and went to the bathroom, ran the tap and began to scrub the red
off. My boyfriend appeared a moment later.

“Can I get you a Band-Aid?” he asked, leaning against the doorframe.

I shook my head.

I shook my head, because when I’d stuck my arm beneath the faucet, I’d
realized that it wasn’t blood at all. It was paint. Wet, still.

“I’m good,” I said. I smiled at him. “Just a scratch.”

In the living room, I took my card from my boyfriend’s sister and glanced
at it. My boyfriend’s family were peeking at their cards, too.

“Eye’s closed,” announced my boyfriend’s sister.

We put our heads down.

Maybe, I thought, someone else had done the painting. Or else maybe it was
a surprise. Something my boyfriend’s mother would reveal to her family to
show that she was slowly gaining strength.

Yes, I thought, holding my card tight to my chest, careful not to let
anyone see it, a surprise. It had to be a surprise.

I wondered when she’d put it in the closet to dry. Was she out of bed?
Wandering around the halls amongst the rest of us? I pictured bumping into
her in the dark, how she might clap a hand over my mouth, bring a finger to
her lips.

During the last game, my boyfriend and I were the werewolves.

He blew me a kiss from across the room. When the lights went out, he got up
quickly, disappearing into the dark. I was glad to be a werewolf again. As
I padded through the dusky kitchen, I embraced the role, gave myself over
to it. I snarled under my breath a little, clawed at the air. I felt safe
that way, inching around with my invisible fur and fangs.

I found my boyfriend’s father behind the washing machine in the farthest
corner of the laundry room, his husky body hunched over. He had his back to
me. I was startled by my excitement. I was a werewolf, ready to make my
first kill. It was the most alive I’d felt in weeks.

I extended my hand and touched my boyfriend’s father’s shoulder. But
instead of crumpling to the ground he turned and smiled. His mouth curved
upward—slowly, with his teeth hidden behind his lips. He held my gaze and
then he fell like a tree in a forest, hitting the floor with a thump.

The adrenaline that billowed through me before making the kill disappeared
once my boyfriend’s father lay below me, my usual weariness taking up
residence in my bones once again. I was more exhausted than I’d thought. I
wanted to lie down, too. I stared at my boyfriend’s father’s figure. His
arm muscles bulged beneath his tight black sweater, the fabric stretching
as if his clothes were struggling to contain him. Something about it was
familiar, but I couldn’t place how or why. My brain was beginning to soften
with the late hour.

I wanted a breath of fresh air, to wake me up. I didn’t think stepping onto
the porch would count as being out of bounds because I wasn’t trying to
hide. I wasn’t trying to find anyone, either.

I slipped my feet into my shoes. On the front porch, I leaned against the
railing and stared at the dark street. It was a brisk night. I put my head
in my hands and let my eyes rest. My right knee, where the tick had bit me,
was throbbing. This happened during my flares whenever I stayed on my feet
for too long. It was uncomfortable but not quite painful. A dull pulsing.
As if something were trapped behind my kneecap, knocking to be let out.

When I opened my eyes, I thought I was imagining it at first, the dark
figure moving towards the house. I blinked, squinted, and realized it was a
jogger, coming up the sidewalk. I checked my phone. Ten thirty. Late for a
run. The jogger got closer. I could hear the slap of sneakers on pavement.
When the figure passed under the streetlight closest to my boyfriend’s
parent’s house, I saw that it was a woman. She was moving at quite a pace.

I watched her, expecting that she’d continue to make her way up the hill.
But the jogger slowed. She crossed the street and walked up to the edge of
my boyfriend’s parent’s driveway where she paused next to a large tree and
began to stretch.

A neighbor, probably, I thought. Stopping here to rest before continuing
on.

She lifted one leg to her chest. Then the other. I moved towards the door,
but I could not bring myself to open it. A thought snagged on the fog in my
brain like clothing on a nail. I could not shake it loose. But surely, I
was wrong. Surely it was only some housewife, her children finally asleep,
taking advantage of the clear, cool night. Surely it was only the Lyme
making me think in zigzags. I needed to resume my part in the game.

But the jogger stopped stretching. She turned away from the street and
began to walk up the driveway, towards the back of the house.

I paused, hand on the doorknob.

No one who was sick—really, actually, sick—would go running. Probably,
there were trails behind the house. Some kind of shortcut that the joggers
in the neighborhood used.

Back in the house, I tried to remember that I was a werewolf, that I had
claws and fangs and an appetite for blood. But I was distracted. Thrown off
the scent. I wandered around the first floor. My boyfriend’s father was
still lying where I’d left him. I didn’t know where my boyfriend was or
which of the other villagers he’d managed to kill.

I descended the stairs to the basement, walked into the den, a bathroom, a
bedroom. The house, it seemed, was getting bigger and bigger and I knew,
too, that villagers could move as they pleased, run when they heard me
coming.

My eyes watered, straining with the difficulty of trying to see in the
dark. As I walked back through the den a second time, I took my phone out
and let its glow brighten my path. It might’ve been cheating but I didn’t
care. I was tired. So very tired. I needed the game to end.

I was about to start up the stairs when I saw them. Dark patches on the
white shag carpet. Tracks. Sneaker prints.

I froze.

I held my phone up and spun in a circle, illuminating the room bit by bit.
I stopped when I saw a sliding glass door. It led to the backyard. On the
carpet below it, more footprints. My head swelled with dizziness and my
fingertips and toes tingled unpleasantly, as though I were standing on the
edge of something very, very high.

That’s when I heard her. It was a floorboard moving. I wasn’t alone. She
was there, with me.

I stopped and tried to hold my breath but it was impossible. I was sure she
could hear me too. I stared into the dark. Something moved to the left of
me. I turned, waiting to see her long legs emerge.

Another floorboard creaked behind me. I felt her hand on my shoulder. I
turned to face her.

But it wasn’t my boyfriend’s mother. It was my boyfriend, trying to kill
me.

“Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”

He grabbed my hands. They shook.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

He took his own phone out of his pocket and pointed it at me.

“Listen,” I said, “I saw someone running outside, before, and now—”

“You went outside?” he asked, interrupting me.

I told him I’d needed air to clear my foggy head. He said that I should’ve
found him if I wasn’t feeling well, that we could’ve stopped playing.

“We can always stop playing,” he said. “Anytime you want. We can always
stop playing.”

The light from his phone made my temples vibrate. I thought I might vomit.
I had to tell him. He needed to know. I blurted out that there were wet
tracks on the carpet, that someone had come in through the door. I could
hear that I was talking very fast—my words scattering like marbles spilled.
I was about to tell him that the footprints were his mother’s, that
something was very wrong, when he put two hands on my shoulders.

“Take a deep breath,” he said. When I didn’t, he grabbed my face with his
palms and pointed my head down.

“It’s okay you didn’t notice,” he said. “You’re totally exhausted.”

He pointed at my feet. I still had my shoes on.

I frowned. The footprints were coming in through the door. I hadn’t walked
by the door. Not that I could recall. Unless I had and the memory of it was
gone, lost to the haze. It was possible. Anything was possible. Was it me?
I didn’t know. I didn’t know what was me.

I stared at my boyfriend’s face. Usually—in the daylight especially—his
eyes were startlingly glassy. So much so that whenever I looked into them,
it was an image of my own face I saw, reflected back to me in the corners
of his irises. But now, in the dim glow of his phone’s flashlight, there
was only the dark chasm of his pupils. I felt a sudden panic claw up my
throat. I imagined my boyfriend out in the road earlier that day, pulling
the dog’s limp, dead body away from my sight, its paws dragging on the
pavement.

“Listen,” he said. “Why don’t you go ahead and get settled in the guest
room? I’m going to tell everyone we’re done playing.”

He disappeared.

I made it up the two flights of stairs without running into anyone. On the
third floor, only one door was closed. I pressed my ear to it and turned
the knob. I had to look at it. Her illness. I had to look at it to believe
it was real.

The bedroom was very large and dark, thick with the smell of sweat and
sleep. I squinted. Gradually, a dark shape came into focus. She was on the
floor, her back to me.

She was panting. Quick, shallow gasps of air.

I stepped into the room and concealed myself in the shadow of a dresser,
crouching. I blinked, uncertain of what I was watching until the high beams
of a passing car shone through the window. For a moment, my boyfriend’s
mother’s figure was illuminated.

She was doing crunches.

I stared as she switched positions, flipping over to do push-ups. As my
eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that she was beautiful, but not in the
way I expected her to be. Her features were rugged and severe—a strong,
fixed jawline, protruding cheeks, thick brows that obscured her eyes. Her
hair was untied, so long it gathered on the floor below her.

The headlights faded. She panted.

Another car passed. The room lit up. My boyfriend’s mother had curled onto
her side. She was doing leg lifts. Something—the floor or a wall—creaked.
And there—standing in front of a different door than the one I’d used—was
my boyfriend.

He didn’t see me, kneeling behind the dresser, as he stepped towards his
mother.

“Mom,” my boyfriend said, clearing his throat.

My boyfriend’s mother looked up at my boyfriend and her posture suddenly
shifted, loosened. She let herself crumple to the ground.

“My darling,” she said, lifting a hand up towards him. “I’ve fallen.”

My boyfriend nodded, and then the room went dark.

“Yes,” I could hear him saying. “It looks that way.”

Maybe, I thought, my palms dampening, my boyfriend believed that his
mother’s panting and her quick, sharp movements were some kind of fit. An
attack. After all, I did not know what he could see—what was hidden from
his view, what was visible. I did not know if he’d seen, as I did, that
she’d crumpled into weakness upon laying eyes on him.

“I’m ill,” she said. “I’m so very ill today.”

Another beam of light shone through. He was close to her, bending to scoop
her up.

“Can’t you see it?” she said. “Can’t you see how sick I am?”

“I’ve got you,” he said, quietly. “I’ve got you.”

I watched as he carried her to the bed and set her down. He squeezed her
shoulder, kissed her forehead.

Right before he turned to go, she reached a hand out and caressed his face.

“Thank you,” she said.

He leaned down to embrace her.

“My sweetie,” she murmured.

And then, slowly, my boyfriend’s mother twisted her head. She looked at me.
Her eyes bore into mine.

“My boy,” she said.

In the hall outside my boyfriend’s mother’s bedroom, I stood still and
listened to my heart bump up against my skin. I wondered if someone was
about to yell “dead body,” if the lights would come back on, if we’d meet
and deliberate, decide who ought to be punished. Hanged.

I wasn’t sure who it would be: my boyfriend or me. I wasn’t sure who was at
fault. Because I’d given my body over to the werewolf, hadn’t I? Let myself
be taken by it, let it become me. I’d wanted to.

I was walking into the living room when the house lit up, when my boyfriend
called out that it was over.

“She needs to rest,” my boyfriend said to his family once we were all
gathered. He gestured at me.

My boyfriend’s father showed us to the guest room, a stack of fresh sheets
and towels in his arms. His strides were determined and purposeful. A
strong, manly gait.

I trailed behind. My stomach stewed. The lingering taste of duck and red
currant jelly and meringue filled my mouth. The sounds my boyfriend’s
family made during dinner rang in my ears—their lip smacking and plate
scraping, their wild exclamations over the food, the production they put
on.

Before getting into bed, my boyfriend reached out and placed a palm on my
forehead.

“You’re a little warm,” he said. He brought me to his chest.

“Hey,” I said, extracting myself. “Was the dog actually okay today? Were
you just saying that?”

I knew as soon as I said it, as soon as his arms were no longer holding me
up, that I had killed that dog.

“What?” he said. “Of course it was.”

We crawled into bed. I let my boyfriend pull my body into his own. He ran a
hand across my arm—the spot where he thought he’d seen blood. The spot that
I’d joked was a wound I’d given myself.

I felt heavy, my muscles like chains.

As my breathing slowed, I thought about how, at the beginning of the last
game, in the safety of the warm, bright living room, we’d all put our heads
down after getting our cards. My boyfriend wasn’t next to me but I could
feel him in the room—the smell of his aftershave, the soft rumble of his
stomach.

And when it was time for the werewolves to raise their heads, to open our
eyes, it was the two of us who did so. We looked at each other like my
boyfriend’s sister said we should, so that we both knew who the other one
was.