Page 114 of Such Sharp Teeth

“Why am I in the bathtub?” I ask, blinking. The lights are bright. There’s a high-pitched ringing in my ears. “Are you trying to harvest my organs?”

She scoffs, releases my face. “You were unresponsive.”

“When?” I ask.

“You were locked in your room for three days. I got freaked out. I knocked and nothing. You weren’t answering your phone. I picked the lock and found you passed out in bed, surrounded by chicken carcasses. You wouldn’t wake up. I didn’t want to call nine-one-one because, you know . . . I dragged you in here. Then I saw your wrist.”

I look down. There’s a vibrant pink line around my wrist. It’s bubbling. Smoking. It has a hideous smell.

“I took the bracelet off, and you woke up.”

“Huh,” I say, blowing on my wrist like it’s hot food. The silver burned through to my fur.

Scarlett sobs into a cage of her arms. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Frankly I’m surprised you care.”

She looks up at me, wearing her dagger stare. “How could you say that?”

I stare back at her. “You’ve wanted nothing to do with me since I told you.”

“It’s a lot to process, Rory! And I have enough to deal with right now. I have other things going on. I can’t give you all of me all the time.”

“I don’t want all of you all the time. I just wanted some support. Acceptance. I don’t know. Something.”

“And what about me? You don’t think I’ve needed support from you? I’ve needed you, and you haven’t been here.”

“I’ve been here the whole time.”

“You were with Ian, or Mia, or Ash, or—”

“You were with Matty!” I say, splashing her.

She leans back. “Did you just splash me?”

“Yeah.” I do it again.

She wipes the water from her face and, astonishingly, starts to laugh.

So I laugh.

I don’t know how long this goes on for. The two of us laughing, soaking wet. The drip drip drip of a leaky faucet. The pained gurgle of a drain clogged with hair. My hair. Werewolf hair.

Finally, Scarlett stands and throws me a towel. “Dry off and get dressed. We’re going for a drive.”

—

She takes me to Hillside Cemetery. A morbid, albeit picturesque, location. It’s old but well maintained. There are no rotting bouquets resting on cracked headstones, no sinking mausoleums. Paved pathways lined with Victorian-era lampposts weave through family plots. A thin layer of clean white snow covers the ground. Icicles glisten in the afternoon sun. They weep from the trees, slowly returning to their former state of matter.

“I come here sometimes to think,” Scarlett says, leading me down a particularly winding path.

“And I’m the weird sister.”

“Did you know? That the bracelet would do that to you?”

I shake my head. “It was an experiment.”

“You weren’t trying to hurt yourself?”