I can see everything. My peripheral vision has expanded. My hearing. Smell, taste. It’s all intensified. Someone smoked weed here earlier today. They had on brand-new sneakers. Axe body spray. There are leaves decaying. Dog shit. Dead birds. There’s a collection of expired milk cartons in the fridge in the cafeteria. Someone left a turkey sandwich in their locker. It’s got Dijon mustard and tomatoes.

In the houses nearby, everyone’s getting ready for bed. I hear running water, the foaming of toothpaste, the swish of brushes. Heartbeats slowing. Bedtime stories.

I see lights going out in first-story windows. I see the wind journeying through the trees, leaves abandoning their branches. Stars burning. Airplanes blinking.

I run and run. It doesn’t matter how fast I’m going, which I know is fast, animal fast, my senses are not dulled by the speed. My pace amplifies everything. There’s no outrunning any of it. Not my senses. Not my feelings. Not myself.

The werewolf thing only enhances all the parts of me that were already broken and wrong. It’s trapped me with the worst of myself. It’s my reckoning.

I crave destruction, desire consequence. I want to rip the world apart, limb from limb, and now I can. Before, it was an urge, one I could quiet and conceal. One I could hide behind a slick facade. It’s not an urge anymore. It’s a need.

I drop down on all fours and go.

—

When I get home, I wash my hands and feet in the tub. I cut my dagger nails. Then I open my laptop and Google “werewolf cure.” I scroll through weird subreddits and random blogs, read about plasma therapy, about wolfsbane. I oscillate between moments of hope and devastation, between grim acceptance and righteous fury. I breathe through the moments of wanting to smash my laptop and scream at the top of my lungs. I breathe.

It’s eleven twenty-eight p.m. and I’m starving. I go downstairs and find the fridge empty of meat.

I decide to venture out to the 7-Eleven in hope they have hot dogs.

They do.

“Hi,” I say to the clerk. “Can I have all the hot dogs?”

There’s a long pause.

“I’m sorry. Did you say you wanted all of the hot dogs?”

“Yes,” I say.

“You want all of the hot dogs?”

“Yes. Please.”

Another pause.

“Okay,” they say, shrugging.

I eat them sitting on the trunk of my car while watching traffic whiz past. I can swallow them whole. A whole hot dog easily. Without ketchup or mustard or any lubricant. It’s pretty incredible. I’m in six deep when I hear, “Rory?”

I look over.

It’s Ian.

Shit shit shit.

“Hi,” I say, the seventh hot dog traveling down my gullet.

“Hi,” he says.

He wears a winter coat, scarf, beanie. I’m still in my joggers and the Led Zeppelin T-shirt. No coat. Sitting on my car next to a box full of hot dogs.

I’ll admit, not my finest look.

He raises an eyebrow at me, and I shrug. He laughs.