Maggie Stiefvater by Shiver

Author:Shiver [Shiver]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-05-13T23:59:08+00:00

emote

for once. Instead of being so damn stoic.”

I smiled at the thought. “Stoic? I like it.”

“Figured you would. But it was nice to not be the wishy-washy one for once.”

I burst out laughing. “Those aren’t the words I’d use to describe you.”

“You don’t think of me as a delicate flower in comparison to you?” When I laughed again, he pressed, “Okay, what words would you use, then?”

I leaned back in the seat, thinking, as Sam looked at me doubtfully. He was right to look doubtful. My head didn’t work with words very well—at least not in this abstract, descriptive sort of way. “Sensitive,” I tried.

Sam translated: “Squishy.”

“Creative.”

“Dangerously emo.”

“Thoughtful.”

“Feng shui.”

I laughed so hard I snorted. “How do you get feng shui out of ’thoughtful’?”

“You know, because in feng shui, you arrange furniture and plants and stuff in thoughtful ways.” Sam shrugged. “To make you calm. Zenlike. Or something. I’m not one hundred percent sure how it all works, besides the thoughtful part.”

I playfully punched his arm and looked out the window as we got closer to home. We were driving through a stand of oak trees on the way to my parents’ house. Dull orange-brown leaves, dry and dead, clung to the branches and fluttered in the wind, waiting for the gust of wind that would knock them to the ground. That was what Sam was: transient. A summer leaf clinging to a frozen branch for as long as possible.

“You’re beautiful and sad,” I said finally, not looking at him when I did. “Just like your eyes. You’re like a song that I heard when I was a little kid but forgot I knew until I heard it again.”

For a long moment there was only the whirring sound of the tires on the road, and then Sam said softly, “Thank you.”

We went home and slept on my bed all afternoon, our jeancovered legs tangled together and my face buried in his neck, the radio murmuring in the background. Around dinnertime, we wandered out to the kitchen to find food. As Sam carefully assembled sandwiches, I tried calling Olivia.

John answered. “Sorry, Grace. She’s out. Do you want me to tell her anything, or just to call you?”

“Just have her call me,” I said, somehow feeling like I’d let Olivia down. I hung up the phone and ran a finger along the counter absently. I kept thinking about what she had said: Stupid thing to argue about. “Did you notice,” I asked Sam, “when we came in, that it smelled out front? By the front step?”

Sam handed me a sandwich. “Yeah.”

“Like pee,” I said. “Like wolf pee.”

Sam’s voice sounded unhappy. “Yeah.”

“Who do you think it was?”

“I don’t think,” Sam said. “I know. It’s Shelby. I can smell her. She peed on the deck again, too. I smelled it when I was out there yesterday.”

I remembered her eyes, looking at mine through my bedroom window, and made a face. “Why is she doing this?”

Sam shook his head, and he sounded uncertain when he said, “I just hope it’s about me and not about you.

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