Two weeks to pack up the house at the end of the lane.
Two weeks for me to move into Marty’s little house with sunflowers that grew wild and unkempt in the back.
Two weeks for a FOR RENT sign to go up at the empty blue house that we hadn’t used since our pack had been taken from us.
Elizabeth kissed me on the morning they left, telling me she’d call me every day.
Carter cried, unsure of what was happening.
I pressed my cheek against Kelly’s and he blinked at me, hand in my hair.
Thomas stood before me, hands on my shoulders, asking me if I could just say something, anything to him. But I hadn’t spoken to him since that day in his office, so I said nothing.
Mark was the last. Because of course he was.
He hugged me.
He made promises I didn’t believe he could keep.
He had made his choice.
He said, “Gordo.”
He said, “Please.”
He said, “I love you, I need you, I can’t do this without you.”
He said, “I left something for you. Okay? And I know we said we were going to wait, but I need you to see it. I need you to know I will keep my promises. For you. Always for you. Because nothing will stop me from coming back for you. I promise, okay? I promise you, Gordo.”
He kissed my forehead.
And then he was gone.
I watched as they drove away.
Marty came, eventually. He put his hand on my shoulder, fingers digging in. “I don’t expect to understand what’s going on. But you always have a home with me, kid.”
So I said, “I’m a witch. The Bennetts are werewolves. And they chose others over me.”
LATER, AFTER Marty had drunk himself into a hysterical stupor and finally passed out, I went to my new room in his house. Mark and Thomas had unpacked the boxes, trying to set it up just the way I’d had it in the Bennett house.
It wasn’t the same.
A small box had been left on the pillow, wrapped with a red ribbon.
Inside was a stone wolf.
I wanted to shatter it into pieces.
Instead I touched it with the tip of my finger and began to wait for my heart to finish breaking.
THE FOURTH thing that happened during my fifteenth year barely registered because it seemed so inconsequential.
“The house,” Marty said, sitting back in a ratty lawn chair in the back of the garage, cigarette smoke curling up around his head, bad heart be damned. “The one for rent. Next to where you used to live.”
“What about it?” I asked, head tilted back toward the sun.
“Someone rented it out, so I hear.”