assumption that I would either grow out of it or come home after graduation. They thought they would lose, at most, four years of manipulation and micromanagement. They were wrong.
I’d intentionally spent an extra year as an undergrad, then applied to the graduate program without telling anyone. The day after graduation, I enrolled in two summer classes. The only notice my father got that I’d completed my B.A. was the bill for grad school tuition. He’d underestimated me. Like Marc.
I scanned the car for somewhere to put the blood-smeared tissue but couldn’t find anyplace that didn’t involve making Marc bend over. Stifling a laugh at the thought of where I’d like to shove the tissue, I dropped it on the floorboard, making a mental note to clean up my mess when we got home.
“What about you?” I asked, thinking of the sorority girls in the food court. “Have you been dating?”
“No, I haven’t been dating.” He spat the word as if it tasted bad, and I suppose it did. Marc had never been one for casual relationships, which had been a big part of our problem. Everything he did, he did with his whole heart and soul. Including me. It was sweet for about the first ten minutes. After that, it got old quickly.
“Do you really think that’s healthy?” I asked, still irritated by his prying questions. “It’s been years, Marc. You can’t be my father’s hired muscle forever. You need a plan for your life, something to give it meaning.” Like I was one to talk. My grand scheme, which consisted of avoiding my family for as long as possible, had already failed. But that didn’t stop me from dispensing advice I couldn’t follow.
“I had a plan.” The gold specks in Marc’s irises flashed at me in the glow of passing headlights. I started to respond but he cut me off with a look. A very angry look. He was mad enough that I almost felt sorry for the steering wheel. “My personal life is none of your business, Faythe. Not anymore.”
“That’s a two-way street.”
“No, it really isn’t.” He glared at me, ignoring the road long enough that I wanted to grab the wheel. “Your personal life is the business of the entire Pride, by custom and by necessity. You can’t change that, no matter how long you hide out at school pretending to be human.”
I growled, deep in my throat; it was a sound no human could have made. Some people think only dogs growl, but cats growl too, mostly in warning. For once, Marc took my warning and shut up.
For the next two hours, I faked sleep, beyond caring whether or not he bought the act. Just as my eyes were starting to close for real, Marc jerked the wheel to the right and veered across two lanes of highway—both empty, fortunately. He sped down the off-ramp and swerved into an all-night service station, sliding in front of another customer in line for the only available pump.
I twisted in my seat to see the unfortunate driver—a chunky man in ill-fitting slacks and a dress shirt—burst from his Volkswagen Passat and slam the door. His face was comically red in the fluorescent light from the awning overhead. He was yelling before he’d taken two steps, his gestures becoming more and more animated with each word.
Marc watched in the rearview mirror. His grip on the steering wheel tightened. The metal began to groan.
“Play nice with the other boys,” I warned, watching his jaw tense and relax.
He ignored me. Without a word, Marc opened his door and set first one foot, then the other on the concrete. He stood slowly and smoothed his black T-shirt, giving the other man a chance to realize that he lacked both the size and the build to back up his big talk. When that didn’t work, Marc took a single step forward.
The other man dove into his car, pulled the door shut, and slammed his hand down on the lock.
Satisfied, Marc nodded politely at the man, as if in greeting. The Passat pulled out of the parking lot as Marc lifted the nozzle from the pump.
Shaking my head at the near-toxic level of testosterone, I headed for the convenience store. While Marc pumped, I called Andrew from the one-man restroom, standing to avoid any contact with the filthy toilet seat.
“How ’bout pizza?” Andrew said by way of answering his phone. He never bothered to say hi, but spoke as if continuing the same ongoing conversation we’d been having for the entire four months of our relationship. I thought it was cute, but also wondered how he answered when someone else’s number showed up on his caller ID. Did he ask the guy selling magazine subscriptions whether he wanted mushrooms or pepperoni?
I glanced at my watch: 11:04 p.m. “It’s too late for dinner, and too early for a midnight snack.”
“It’s never too early for pizza.” He sounded a little stuffy, as if he had a head cold.
“You okay?” I eyed the scum-coated cinder-block walls for a spot clean enough to lean against. No such luck. “You sound a little nasal.”
“I think I’m getting a cold. It’s not affecting my appetite, though. I’m starved. I’ll pick up a large with everything. Unless you’re afraid of catching my germs.”
I smiled. “No, I don’t mind your germs.” I probably couldn’t catch them anyway. “But it’ll take you a while to get here.”
“Why, where are you?” he asked, sniffling. Over the phone, loud grunge music echoed with a reverberation apparently unique to thin apartment walls.
“Twenty miles north of Waco.”
No pause, and no questions. “Okay, but it’ll be cold by the time I get there.”
The grimy concrete seemed to absorb the sound of my laughter as soon as it left my throat. Andrew’s sense of humor was contagious. It made him very easy to be around, which had become my only prerequisite for boyfriends lately. Not that he couldn’t set the jokes aside when he needed to. But his smile was genuine, and it was always lurking on the edge of his other expressions. Talking to him never felt like work, as it did with some people. Andrew knew how to take things in stride, such as my sudden departure from campus.
I glanced at my face in the grease-streaked mirror. I looked tired, but it was probably just the thick layer of dirt. On the mirror, not on me. “I think you’ll have to eat without me tonight. And tomorrow. And maybe for the rest of the summer.”
“Why, what’s up?”
“My dad’s mad ’cause I didn’t invite my family to graduation. He threatened to yank my funds unless I spend the summer at home.”
Andrew laughed. “So the mysterious Faythe Sanders does have a family. And where is home?”
I hesitated long enough that anyone else would have commented on my reluctance to answer. Not Andrew. He never acknowledged an uncomfortable situation, unlike Marc, who wallowed in tension like pigs roll in the mud. “A ranch near the Louisiana border,” I said finally.
For years, I’d carefully avoided any conversation that might have led to questions about my childhood, because it had always been easier for me to pretend I hadn’t had one than to try to explain the Sanders family dynamic. From a human perspective, we didn’t make sense, and struggling to explain it only made things worse.
As children, humans learned to compromise, share and make friends. I learned to identify animals by scent and to stalk them without betraying my presence. While normal parents
