Aside from becoming a werewolf, June was actually pretty non-eventful. 

Everything was simpler when I shifted. I didn’t think about Mama crying over the mountains of bills on our kitchen table. I didn’t think about Taylor Nelson. I couldn’t control when I changed, but god, the running felt amazing. 

I didn’t eat very much, in all honesty. It didn’t even occur to me that I could hunt until I found a big stag grazing in the field behind our neighborhood. It smelled so good that it didn’t feel guilty until I was already tearing into its belly. Being a wolf was wilder, a little more instinct driven, but I was still mostly myself inside.

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe the wolf that turned me would come back and fight me for the territory, or one of the neighbors would see me sneaking out of the house and try to shoot me. But nothing ever happened, so I just kept running. That was really all there was to look forward to that summer, all except for Gabe. 

Irish Hills was the only place in our part of Cary that hired at fifteen, though just for the summer. It advertised itself as a “luxury recreational club,” but it was really just a dinky pool with a puny tennis court attached. My cousin had worked there the summer before her sophomore year as a lifeguard, and she’d used the money she made in those three months to buy herself her first iPhone. I didn’t like the idea of being a lifeguard (I was self-conscious enough in my cross country uniform to ever consider sitting outside in a bathing suit all summer long), so I ended up working the snack bar, heating up greasy Red Baron pizzas for customers and making those blue slushies that always stained your tongue.

Before Gabe came along, I’d read during slow hours at work, sitting in the loving embrace of the mostly-functional desk fan with fat romance novels that I borrowed from Mama’s endless collection. I consumed those books the way I ate popcorn during a movie or painted drugstore concealer over my acne scars every morning: mindlessly, constantly, without ever wondering why I did it. It always struck me as funny that Mama had so many of them, mostly because she hated men. “Loving a man is like pouring lemonade on gravel,” she liked to say. “All that sweetness, and for what?” 

Gabe was one of the college lifeguards who worked at Irish Hills while they were home for the summer. One day he came up to the snack bar after his afternoon shift and asked me to make him some popcorn, and that’s how it all began. Without his shirt on, you could see that he was skinny in a painful way, like instead of growing properly someone had grabbed him by his wrists and ankles and just stretched him out, all bones and no muscle. His face was pretty, though. But the thing that really made me stare was the tattoo underneath his collarbone: a white, giant-beaked bird with human hands. It was holding a big pair of golden scissors and the speech bubble next to its head said ga, ga, ga.

Gabe saw me looking at it and asked me what my name was. 

I told him it was Dolores, but he thought I said Duchess. 

After that, Gabe and I talked over the phone line that connected our stations whenever he worked the front desk. He called it “Dialing the Duchess.” Sometimes he’d even sit next to me behind the snack bar when he was on his lunch break. He told me about life at Appalachian State, way up in the mountains, where it was always just a little bit cold. He was a pre-med student, said he wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon one day. I couldn’t imagine being that smart, the kind of smart that meant you could cut someone open and put them right back together again. He laughed when I said that. 

  Gabe told me about his parents, how they’d met at a YMCA party in Raleigh when both of them had just come to the US from different countries: his dad from Russia, and his mom from El Salvador. Gabe said they fell in love as soon as they saw each other, and they got married just six months later. I thought that was very romantic, more romantic than how Mama met my dad, who ran off with one of Mama’s coworkers when I was nine. He used to bring me back little spoons from his business trips, the state-themed kind you get from the gift shops. He still sent me some every now and then: a gold one with a little cardinal at the top from Virginia, a heavy silver one with the Empire State Building carved on the back from New York City. I kept them tied up with a rubber band and shoved into the back of my pajama drawer. 

Gabe asked me about myself too, and I tried to always have something interesting to tell him. Aside from the whole creature of the night thing, there wasn’t much. I ran cross country. I liked to cook. I got along with most everyone in my grade, but I didn’t really have any close friends. I was good at English and hopeless at Math. I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, except that I wanted to make enough for Mama to quit her job. 

Gabe never made me feel like I was silly, though. Whenever I talked, he listened, his eyes big and serious, and sometimes there was this tiny little smile at the corner of his mouth when he looked at me. I thought about that smile a lot, what it meant, what it didn’t. I started thinking about Gabe even while I was a wolf. Weirdly enough, I didn’t think he would freak out if I told him. Once Gabe saw that I was still me, he’d probably just laugh. 

I wondered if being a werewolf meant that I would live longer than the average human. If Gabe and I got married one day, would our babies be werewolves? I saw them in my head sometimes: happy and pudgy, with those little Michelin-tire rings of fat on their arms. Gabe would take us along with him when he went to medical conferences in big cities, and we’d go to the fancy restaurants I saw on the Food Network. We’d take photos and send them to Mama and she’d post them on her Facebook wall for all of her church friends to see. They’d tell her what a beautiful family we were.

 I knew I was being ridiculous, and I also knew that I was fifteen. He could have any girl he wanted; he probably had one waiting for him back at App State, though he never mentioned a girlfriend. 

But still, it was something to think about.

◆

It happened on the last Thursday in July.

The rain started at nine and only got heavier as the day wore on, and a grand total of zero people came to swim. Corey, our manager, was tucked away in his office with the door closed and, from the smell of it, getting very, very high.

Gabe was supposed to be on lifeguarding duty, but for now we were side by side in the snack bar, warm and dry and out of the rain. Gabe was telling me about how damn small his dorm room was, mapping it out on the desk with his hands and whatever he could find on the counter. The napkin dispenser was his roommate’s minifridge that hummed right next to his head when he was trying to sleep. The desk fan was the life-size Iron Man cutout he’d won from his Organic Chemistry professor in a game of spades. When he reached over to move the napkin dispenser, his hand almost brushed mine.

I was so fucking happy I could taste it in my spit.

Then Gabe looked over at the entrance and smiled.

“Taylor!” he yelled. “Long time no see!”

Taylor Nelson sauntered right up the snack bar and did that clap/handshake hybrid thing that all guys seem to know how to do on instinct. I felt like I was watching it all from a million miles away.

“Well, would you look at that,” Taylor said, giving us both a shit-eating grin.

“You taking good care of my boy, Miss Dolores?”

“Y’all know each other?” I asked.

“Yeah!” Gabe said. “We went to church together when we were—” 

Gabe’s smile dropped when he saw my face.

“Hey, Dolores,” Taylor said, nice as you please. “You feel like getting me a pizza?”

I nodded and turned away.

I watched the pizza spin through the murky little window. I wanted to shift, right then and right there. Snap Taylor’s head off. I wouldn’t eat him, though: I didn’t want any part of him inside me, any of his dead meat rotting away in my stomach.

God, I felt like a monster, even though I couldn’t change. I felt tiny and ugly and so, so useless.

The timer went off on the microwave and I heard Gabe and Taylor talking. 

“Yeah,” Taylor said. “Just had to drop by my mom’s membership fee.” And, “Shit, wasn’t this a nice surprise.” 

I turned around and gave Taylor his pizza. He winked at me and took a huge bite, the cheese stringing out from his teeth like intestines.

I started scrubbing the inside of the microwave. The rain kept falling.

“Well, it was nice seeing you, Gabe,” Taylor said, “and careful with that one.” He jutted his chin out towards me. “She’s feisty.”

After Taylor left I threw up in the trash can under my desk. I kept heaving even after there was nothing left. Gabe’s arms snaked around me and pulled me back against him, rocking me back and forth as I cried. I heard his voice in my ear, and it was quiet, so quiet.

“Duchess,” he was saying. “Duchess, what’s wrong?”

I told Gabe. I didn’t know if it was the kind of thing you should tell a guy, but I told him. It just flew out of me, right there on the floor.

I told him about the night of Nicole’s graduation party, how midway through I looked up and realized that all the girls I came with had gone off on their own. I went outside and sat down on one of the swings in the backyard. And maybe it was the blunt someone had let me take a hit of earlier, but the moon looked like a big lemon meringue pie, and I almost cried because it was so beautiful.

Taylor came and sat down on the swing next to me, and I didn’t think it was strange because he was my neighbor, and even though he was really too old for high school parties, I was happy to see him. He offered me one of the beers he was holding, and I said no because Mama was always telling me not to drink anything that hadn’t been fixed in front of me.

I told him how Taylor leaned in and kissed me, and even though I didn’t kiss him back, I didn’t stop him.

I told Gabe that was my first kiss, and no matter what I do or who I end up dating, that will always be my first fucking kiss, with fucking Taylor Nelson, and it didn’t feel like anything at all. His cologne smelled like bug spray and tangerines.

I told Gabe how Taylor tried to put his hand up my dress, and then I did say no. But Taylor didn’t care.

I told Gabe how the ground felt under my back, how I kicked and hit. How every time I pushed one of Taylor’s hands away another replaced it.

How every time I tried to scream, Taylor smacked me across the mouth, and the third time he hit me my lip started bleeding.

Then someone opened the back door and a girl screamed long and endless. I still don’t know who that girl was. And isn’t that fucked up? The girl who saved me could be standing right next to me and I wouldn’t even recognize her.

◆

Gabe went and knocked on Corey’s door, told him that my mama had been in a car accident and that he needed to drive me home. Corey cracked his door, took one look at me, and waved us on.

Gabe was quiet in the car. He gripped the steering wheel so tight I could hear his skin unstick from it whenever he moved his hands.  When we got to the first stoplight, he punched the wheel once, twice, three times. 

“Sorry,” he said when he was done. “I’m not mad at you. I’m sorry.”

I told him there wasn’t anything to be sorry about.

At the second stoplight, he asked if he could get us some Cook Out. I said that’d be just fine.

Gabe bought us each a cheeseburger and a great big Cheerwine. The rain had stopped, and little bits of steam curled up from the asphalt. We sat there in the parking lot and ate silently, watching a group of kids my age laugh and shove each other over near the ordering window. 

When we finished, Gabe turned towards me. 

“Hey,” he said. 

I looked over at him. 

“Do you want me to call the police?” 

I shook my head. 

“No,” I said. “I mean, it’s not like he ended up doing anything, and it’s been too long. They’d just laugh at me.”

Gabe nodded.

 “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

He didn’t say anything for a while. I tucked my burger wrapper back into its paper bag and wished I could’ve been a werewolf the night that Taylor tried to hurt me. I dreamed of smelling him on the breeze, the tangerines and bug spray. Finding him sitting on some tree stump, smoking a cigarette. He’d stumble over roots and little juts of rock, but I’d let him get back on his feet each time. And every now and then he’d stop and say, “No, no, no.” And I’d stop and watch him, hear him panting and scared before I started running again. I wiped my hands on some napkins and balled them up in my palms. 

“You’re a good person, Duchess,” Gabe said. “You’re good and smart and kind, and you deserve to be treated like it. I’m not gonna do anything that’ll create more problems for you, but if…if he ever tries to hurt you again, I’ll fuck him up. That’s a promise.”

I wanted to laugh and cry right then: laugh because I knew that Gabe’s skinny ass wouldn’t stand a chance against Taylor, and cry because none of the things he said about me were true.

It was just getting dark when he pulled up in front of my house, and the moon was starting to show. It’d be a full one tonight: but for now it just looked like something someone had forgotten to wipe away. 

Gabe got out and came around to my side of the car and I threw my arms around his shoulders. He held me like that for what could have been minutes or hours, my forehead resting on his neck. It felt like everything good and real and right, and when he drove away I waved and waved until his car disappeared around the corner.

◆

Inside, Mama was eating spaghetti at the kitchen table, still in her uniform from the post office. 

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Just a guy from work,” I said. I slipped my shoes off by the door and sat down next to her. Her lip liner was showing, and there were little flecks of mascara on her cheekbones. 

“Really?” she said. “And how old is this guy from work?”

“Mama—”

“How old is he, Dolores?”

Under the table, I clenched my hands.

“Twenty, I think?”

“Twenty?”

“It’s not like that, Mama,” I said. “He just gave me a ride home because I didn’t want to get caught in the rain if it started pouring again. That’s all.”

“Could’ve called one of your cousins if you needed a ride that badly,” Mama said. The prongs of her fork scraped against her plate, and I bit down on my tongue. “Is this something you do a lot when I’m not around to watch you? Get rides from grown men I don’t know?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. 

Mama looked at me for a second, and then she tucked back into her spaghetti.

“See that he doesn’t try anything,” she said, “and don’t you think for a second that I won’t call the police if he does.”

Mama hated cops, so I knew she wasn’t fucking around. I nodded, and then I got up and started walking towards my bedroom.

“Dolores.”

I turned around, and Mama was slouched back in her chair. She looked tired, more so than usual. I knew she loved me, but I also knew it wasn’t the kind of love you chose. You couldn’t just up and decide you didn’t want to be a mom because you were sick or hurting. No matter how bad they treated her at work, she got up every day and went, because of me. No matter how sad she was when Dad left, she couldn’t let herself break down and cry, because she had a little girl to take care of. Sometimes I wondered if she ever dreamed of never meeting my dad, moving to California with her friends from high school. Sometimes I wondered if she ever woke up and was sad to find me standing there in the kitchen.

“I didn’t mean to get ugly,” Mama said. “It’s just that I see these men chasing after these little girls who don’t know any better, and it makes me so goddamn angry, you know? You deserve better than that.”

“I don’t like him like that, Mama,” I said, ignoring the pit it made in my stomach. “He’s…he’s just nice to me.”

Mama opened her mouth, but then she shut it and smiled.

“Of course,” she said. She held out her arm and crooked her fingers back towards herself. “Come hang out with your old lady for a second, will you? Could use some friendly company.”

Mama fell asleep halfway through the first episode of The Golden Girls. I draped a blanket over her and kissed her forehead before I went off to my room.

That night I went running and killed two rabbits and a doe. It didn’t make me feel any better, though. The rabbits wriggled around between my jaws before I bit down, and it reminded me of holding my neighbor’s kittens in my hands when I was little, and how scared I’d been of dropping them.

◆

I told Gabe that I loved him in August, on my last day at Irish Hills.

We were standing in the empty parking lot after we clocked out. We were laughing about something Corey had said high as hell earlier, and suddenly all I could think about was how we’d both be going back to school the next week, and I’d probably never see him again. It all came pouring out before I could stop it, and Gabe listened to me like he always did: totally, completely, without a hint of judgment. When I finished, he just smiled sadly and shook his head.

“Duchess,” he said, “Duchess, I’m sorry.”

I walked home alone. I took the long way around, and the sun had set by the time I got there. The moon was full, and everything in me felt like fire. I barely made it to the back yard before I changed, my joints screaming as they broke and ground into place.