Soon we’re all eating in the kitchen. My dad comes in to be social and says hello to everyone and then my parents leave my friends and me to eat.
Karen and Enrique pass me bean tacos with a secret beef center and a small hamburger that Karen had concealed in her hoodie. I wolf it all down.
With my stomach full of forbidden flesh, it’s a lot easier to concentrate on my mom’s chili. My parents turn off the already-dimmed lights and come in with the birthday cake with its fifteen candles. My little brother Josh is singing at the top of his lungs, holding his terrified cat in his arms, and I’m so happy and sated that I’m only a little ashamed to tell you that as my parents and friends and little brother sing me happy birthday, Stanley the teen werewolf weeps.
As I blow out the candles I wish for just one thing, and a microsecond later, it comes true.
Her cold hand makes mine tingle. A strange pricking tingle that grows up my arm to my face, like a thorny climbing rose covered with cold, burning thorns. The pricking, tingling cold runs down my face to my chest, to my legs and feet. I burn as hot as a sun; my vision goes red, and I can’t smell the candles, can’t smell anything—
Anything but the roses, gloriously red.
Blood red.
Chapter 15: BACK ON TRACK
I meet Enrique after school at my locker. They’re having cross-country tryouts. He smiles at me. “How does it feel to be fifteen?”
“It feels good,” I say. “I think. Are we running fast today?”
He nods. “If your knee can handle it.”
“My knee can handle it.”
Enrique is so cool. I’m lucky to have him as a friend. I have this feeling if someone walked up with a gun in his hand he would just stare at him and keep on walking. He seems impossible to faze, kind of like my opposite, the anti-Stanley.
We walk into the gym and into the locker room. People I knew years ago from cross-country stop and look at me. I ignore them. Me and Enrique go to our lockers.
“How about you?” I ask him. “You sure about this?”
He nods. “You have seen me training. I am ready.”
Someone comes up to me. “How are the vitamins working out with you two?”
I look at Enrique. You two?
“
It was just for my skin,” Enrique whispers, his face red.
“I didn’t notice until now,” I say. “But yeah, your face has cleared up.”
“You see?” Zach says. “Another testimonial.”
“Look, Zach,” I say. “We appreciate your concern. But we’re trying to get dressed.”
“Yeah, what are you doing here?” Enrique asks him.
“I’m trying out for the high school team, just like you two. You’ll see. The supplements make you fast.”
“They’re just vitamins,” I say. “Right?”
“Believe what you want,” he says. “I’ll see you out on the track.”
He always sounds like he knows something that I don’t. But I try to forget about Zach. I’m full of nervous energy, anyhow. Is it my imagination, or do I feel fast today in gym shorts, a gym shirt and my sneaks?
We walk outside and meet on the track. The coach tells us to warm up first with a slow jog for two laps, and then we will stretch a little, have one more slow jog, and then do four-hundred-meter sprints. My legs and arms are burning to run. How long has it been since my last time trial? A year, at least.
It’s hard to tell if anyone is looking at us now, because I focus on running smoothly, trying to loosen up my upper body as well, which tends to tense up. Enrique tells me about his weekend as we run the first lap.