I’m almost to the stairs when she calls my name.

“Yeah?” I ask, turning around.

“I am happy, about you and Ian. I always rooted for him,” she says. “I’m not sad. I don’t know why I started crying. I don’t have any control.”

“What do you mean?”

“My body, my emotions,” she says. “It’s frustrating. I don’t feel like myself. I’m not myself. And . . . I don’t know. It’s just weird to see you starting something, when I’m—”

“Yeah,” I say. “I get it.”

“You sure you don’t want tea?” she asks, filling the kettle.

“I’m good.”

“All right,” she says. “And I didn’t mean to spring it on you. About Mom. I just didn’t know how to tell you. It’s a tough spot.”

“Yeah,” I say, foot on the first step.

“Maybe it’s good she’s coming. Maybe it’ll give you guys the time to talk things out.”

“Right. I’m going upstairs now. Night.”

I hold Ian’s bottle of bourbon close to my chest as I climb the stairs. Reaper is there at the top, growling at me per usual. I’m really not in the mood.

So I growl back.

I don’t intend for it to come out the way it does. I had no idea I was capable of such a sound. It’s beastly.

It sends Reaper off whimpering.

I hide in my room before any more unpleasantness can occur.

I undress immediately, tossing my costume into the laundry basket, even though I’m tempted to put it straight into the trash.

What stops me from doing that is it’s what I was wearing when I first kissed Ian.

Shameful. Gross.

I’d continue to bully myself over my newfound mawkishness, but I’m distracted by my bandaging. It’s so itchy underneath. I relent, peeling back the tape so I can scratch.

I haven’t leaked much; there’s only a little drip of silver clinging to the disturbed skin. I use the gauze to wipe it away. Then I scratch.

It feels so good, I keep going past the point when I know I should stop. I keep going until I feel the sticky wetness.

Until I feel the fur.

I look down. I’ve ripped myself open. My skin falls away in oddly neat spirals. There’s no red, no blood. Only silver. I’m all oozy silver inside.

Silver and fur.

There’s fur under my skin. Prickly gray fur.

“Uhhhh, what the fuck?” I ask, holding my breath.

I try to mash the shreds of skin back into place and then restore the bandaging, but they keep slipping.

I’m panicking now.

This is next-level disgusting. This is a problem.

This is a big problem.

I manage to get the gauze back in place and tape it down. Then I add another layer of gauze, more tape, more gauze, more tape.

I sit on the bed for a minute, chewing the inside of my cheek and anxiously plucking fuzz from my sock.

“All right,” I say, my best attempt at a pep talk. “All right.”