13 To Life by Shannon Delany

Author:Shannon Delany
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Published: 2010-08-07T03:00:00+00:00

I had never been so exhausted after a dance as I was after Homecoming. It wasn’t just that my feet hurt (they did), but it was the pain in my head and the ache in my chest knowing that I wanted Pietr more than ever. We shared heartache over the loss of family. We were attracted to each other and actually had significant things in common. But I’d pushed him toward Sarah and now he had to play the cards I’d dealt.

I was so stupid. As a writer, I knew if I’d been a character in a novel a good editor would have scrawled TSTL (Too Stupid To Live) on the manuscript pages. Well, maybe not too stupid to live, but definitely too stupid to date.

I tugged on my sleep shirt. The wind was picking up outside, throwing leaves around. But the scratching of leaves on my window wasn’t what pulled me across the room to peer into the darkness outside.

No. It was the howling.

I’d heard coyotes. This was different. Richer, deeper, longer. It was a sound that blended with the night and rose out of the shadows to stroke the starry sky.

I rubbed my arms, fighting the prickling sensation that raced across them. I knew almost instinctively that what I was listening to was a wolf. I wondered if it was what had been outside the barn the night before Pietr came to Junction High. Or if it had been what tore through the bushes and left a bit of its fur behind. Or maybe this was a second one—one wolf tracking the other.

I crawled into my bed, pulling the covers up and adjusting my pillows. I always fell asleep comfortably enough; it was only when I dropped into the nightmare that my body struggled to fight what my mind could not.

The dogwood tree was in full flower, pink petals spread wide, glinting in the sunset’s brilliant blast of color. I remembered reading that its petals showed bite marks of the Devil—that Satan had bitten its flowers, enraged by the tree’s sorrow at being used for Christ’s crucifixion.

I pulled out my cell phone and hit send when Mom’s picture popped up. “Yeah, I’ll be by the dogwood,” I heard myself confirm. “On your way? Awesome.” I flipped the cell shut, looking at the tree’s twisted branches again. At one time the dogwood supposedly grew as big as the oak. When the Romans crucified Christ, legend claimed the dogwood formed the cross. Christ, sensing its sorrow, promised it would never grow so large or straight again that it could be used for such a cruel purpose. And the dogwoods grew shriveled and twisted but also grew content.

A whisper of tires on cracked asphalt signaled the approach of Mom’s sedan. I knew it now without seeing it. But in my nightmare, I always turned, watching her approach. I saw the car turn into the parking lot. And, like dreaded clockwork, Sarah was there—behind the wheel of her parents’ Jag, tearing into the lot.

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