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  Then Nate stepped out in front of Nessa, with his own hand in the air and it turned out Cassian wasn’t waving. He was holding out a hand for a high five. To Nate.

  Nate?!

  Was Nessa missing something? Nessa gave Bree a “what-the-heck-is-going-on-here?” look, which Bree returned with an “I-have-absolutely-no-idea” shrug.

  “Hey soccer buddy,” she heard Cassian say to Nate. “You gonna play with me today?”

  “Yeah, C-man,” said Nate. “If you can handle how hard I kick the ball to you.”

  “Oh, dude!” said Cassian. He turned away from Nate and put an arm over Sierra’s shoulders. “You guys are going to slay me.”

  Nessa swung up onto her crutches. She was getting better at moving on them but she still made a lot of clomping noise. Cassian didn’t even turn his head.

  In the waiting room, Cassian didn’t lose any time setting up the “soccer” game, using a plush ball from the bucket out in the little kids’ play zone and making a goal out of upholstered cubes meant for climbing. Nessa noticed it wasn’t so much a game as it was scoring practice, which was perfect for Nate, who had a hard time with cooperation, but who loved glory.

  Sierra didn’t shoot the ball, but, clearly worshipful of her older brother, she fetched it when Nate and another boy, Billy Lark, kicked it hard at the wall and made it ricochet all over the waiting room. No one minded because the room had only Dutch Chemical study kids. The study encompassed every child in the town born within about five years of Nate, so the waiting room was always full and the kids all knew each other pretty well by this time. Nate once described the feeling of waiting for his appointment with Dr. Raab as a very boring birthday party.

  When the study began, all the kids in Tether had been included in it, but over the years the numbers had dropped to those really affected: kids who showed signs of exposure or were otherwise at risk. Nessa assumed Billy was there because he had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, but she had no idea why kids like Nate and Sierra were on the “watch” list. It had something to do with markers in their blood. Three kids had developed unusual cancers, and others suffered autoimmune problems like lupus or Crohn’s disease. Paravida was paying for their treatment, too.

  Nate had trouble interacting with kids his age. So having Cassian organize the game and having Billy Lark join in was good for him. Billy was a cute kid too, small for his age and an only child. He had a scar from cleft palate surgery that Nessa could remember from when he was born. Because his family didn’t have health insurance at the time, his mom had made coffee can coin collectors for every store counter in town with homemade labels decorated with the slogan “Help Billy Smile.”

  Billy’s mom was here now. Mrs. Lark looked like Billy—red-haired, small-boned, pretty, and quick to smile. She was always passing Billy homemade snacks: slices of pesticide-free fruit and her own granola bars. Now she was writing down numbers in a notebook.

  “Does your mom do this?” she asked, showing the page to Nessa.

  “Do what?” Nessa asked. She looked over Mrs. Lark’s shoulder at a notebook filled with columns of dates and notes.

  “Track Nate’s vitals after each of these study visits? I check Billy’s temperature, weight, blood pressure before and after. I suppose I’m paranoid, but knowing what our kids were exposed to because of those Dutch Chem hoodlums, I just think you can’t be too careful.”

  Since the lawsuit, everyone in the United States knew what had happened to the water and soil and citizens of Tether. Dutch Chem had dumped more than 9,000 tons of PFOA sludge into “digestive” ponds around the town, knowing full well that it would slowly poison and ultimately kill first the wildlife, then the livestock, and finally the people who lived nearby. Their own internal studies going back 40 years showed as much. All sorts of virulent autoimmune diseases appeared in the human population, followed by a range of rare cancers. Dutch Chemical had been gone for almost ten years, but they said it could take 1,000 years to clean the water table of Tether. The kids in the current study had tested highly positive for various blood markers that could precede all kinds of conditions. Their monitoring and ongoing health care had been part of the settlement struck as the Dutch Chem lawsuit went to trial.

  “I don’t know why, but he always comes out of these appointments with—” Mrs. Lark lowered her voice. Everyone in the town was so grateful to have the kids finally safe and being monitored, they would never complain that the visits were so frequent. Or that sometimes the kids in the study seemed oddly worn out after they’d come in. “Billy comes out of these appointments with a fever,” Mrs. Lark whispered. “And low blood pressure.”

  Bree leaned across Nessa’s lap to ask, “Are you worried these visits aren’t good for him?”

  Mrs. Lark shook her head. “I trust the clinic,” she said but sounded as though she needed convincing. “And Dr. Raab. They’re doctors. Still, it’s just so hard to feel that your child might be at risk and you can’t do anything.”

  Nessa nodded. She didn’t have to imagine. Because of Nate, she knew.

  The receptionist, Gina, called Mrs. Lark to the desk. Nessa liked Gina. She had gone to high school with Vivian.

  Bree’s attention was glued to her phone. She had a nice one from her dad, a long-haul truck driver who came back from every trip with a present to make up for his absence. He had given Bree the Monster after almost a whole summer without him.

  Nessa stood up and hobbled over to the water cooler on her crutches. She wasn’t thirsty but she thought she might catch Cassian’s attention. However, it only resulted in Nate’s saying, “Ness, hurry up. I’m gonna shoot and you’re in the way.”

  “Sorry!” Nessa said, shaking her head. “I’m not as fast as usual!” She leaned out of Nate’s way and her gaze crossed the reception desk, where Mrs. Lark was bent over a form. Nessa noticed Gina had the same travel coffee mug that the guidance counselor Mr. Porter had, with three interlocking triangles forming the Paravida logo. Sheesh. Adults in this town loved freebies from anywhere.

  “Well, this is interesting,” Bree said when Nessa got back. “I just googled Dr. Raab. You won’t believe it. He’s not even from Michigan. I mean he doesn’t live here. Right now. Look.” She held out her phone. “He works out at the University of California at Davis.”

  Bree held the phone so Nessa could see. There was Dr. Raab, complete with his neat, dark brown hair, long chin, heavy eyebrows. He was staring out from behind a very large desk, wearing a lab coat and surrounded by about 40 other adults, also in lab coats. Behind them were tall windows showing only sky.

  “I wonder if all those people work for him?”

  Nessa used her index finger to open a link. “It says here he’s a world leader in human genetics,” she said. “He’s a Nobel laureate!”

  Bree started opening other tabs.

  “His coworkers don’t leave him very good reviews!” she whispered with an evil glint in her eye. Bree was a sucker for gossip, even about an adult they hardly knew. “Look, this nurse calls him Dr. Crab!”

  Just then, Sierra was called in for her appointment. For a brief moment, “Dr. Crab” himself appeared in the doorway before ducking back inside.

  Cassian watched Sierra go, holding the ball at his chest between two outstretched hands like he was about to make a push pass, his eyebrows drawn together in a look of worry. Nessa noticed that Sierra looked a little frightened, too.

  “Hey, Cassian,” Bree said, her voice jumping up an octave. She cleared her throat, stood. “Excuse me,” she said politely. Cassian blinked at her, like he was wondering where she had come from. Was it possible he hadn’t even realized Nessa and Bree were in the room? “If you want, since Sierra’s not here, I can field the ball for you.”

  Nessa had a hard time not smiling at Bree’s offer. Bree hated sports, not to mention her sandals were a little complicated for soccer footwork.

  “That’s okay,” Cassian said. Gone was the welcoming tone he’d been using with Nate and Bill
y when they kicked the ball with Sierra. He was being polite to Bree, nothing more.

  “Oh,” said Bree, smoothing her skirt. “Of course. Just—you know—call if you need me.”

  “Call if you need me?” Nessa said in the car. She was laughing—hard—and Bree, after a few outraged What?! looks, started laughing too. They were laughing so hard that Nate looked up from Bree’s phone to tell them he couldn’t hear the Ninja screams in the game he was playing.

  Nessa and Bree ignored him.

  “Like, ‘here, let me give you my number’?” Nessa shrieked. “Just in case you need help? With the…Nerf ball?” Nessa was not being less loud. “Call anytime. Day or night.”

  “At least I’m putting myself out there!” Bree protested. “I’m not sulking in the corner like some people. You should thank me, actually. I’m getting us noticed. He’s going to look up one day and say, ‘Nessa, Bree, I never noticed how beautiful you two are.’”

  Giving up on his game, Nate reached between the front seats to help himself to one of the sesame candies Bree carried in a little plastic sandwich bag. “But you are beautiful, Bree,” he said, without the slightest sense of embarrassment or irony.

  “Aw, Na-ate!” Bree said shaking her head. “I love you!”

  Nessa turned to see how that went over. Nate was blushing to the roots of his hair, sucking on his candy, looking like the cat who had just swallowed the canary.

  It was so good to get out of the house that Nessa felt better for the rest of the day. It felt like the bite wasn’t even hurting anymore, like she could do things that would have been painful only hours before. That was impossible—she knew the pain would probably come back worse than ever—but then, that night, changing the dressing on the wound, Nessa noticed that it was starting to close up. Dr. Kalish hadn’t told her that would happen. He’d said she could expect it to be oozing for a week. Just as she was thinking of calling her mom in to check it, she heard a knock on the door. “Just a sec!” Nessa called, quickly dabbing on ointment and taping up the new bandage, covering it over again with the waistband of her pajamas.

  When she opened the door, it was Delphine. “Sorry,” Nessa said. When a family of four shares a single bathroom, spacing out, obsessing over your wound—even if you’d been bitten by a wolf—was not cool.

  “No, I’m not waiting,” said Delphine. She stepped back into the hall, leaned back against the wall. “I was looking for you, actually. I have something for you.” She led Nessa into the room they shared, and plucked a small manila envelope about the size of a business card from the top of the bureau and handed it to Nessa.

  Nessa opened the envelope’s flap and slid a hard object on to her opened palm. It was the wolf tooth—the one that had been embedded in her wound. But it wasn’t just the tooth. Delphine had turned it into a necklace, running a tiny ring through a hole drilled in the top of the tooth, then attaching a silver chain to the ring.

  “I made it in shop,” she explained. “I had to use the smallest drill bit they have. Mr. Russo said I was lucky it didn’t crack.”

  Nessa held the tooth in her palm, closed her fist over it, saw the white wolf, felt the rush of her blood pumping in her own ears all over again.

  “I don’t know if you know, but you’ve been talking in your sleep,” Delphine said.

  “Oh, yeah?” Nessa was trying not to sound worried. Or surprised.

  “Nothing that sounds like words,” Delphine said. She looked embarrassed, like now that she’d brought it up she couldn’t take it back, but she didn’t want to explain either. “It’s more like you make this gasp, like you’re surprised. And then you kind of—I don’t know.”

  “What?” said Nessa.

  “Okay,” said Delphine. “You make this noise. It’s kind of like a whining sound.”

  “Whining?” Nessa said.

  “Yeah,” said Delphine. “Like a dog who’s afraid.” She moved her curly dark hair off her face. She looked like their father, wherever he was. Nessa looked like their mom. “Like a whimper. Like you’re scared.”

  “Oh,” said Nessa. She didn’t say anything else because, what are you supposed to say when your sister tells you that you’re dog-whimpering in your sleep?

  Delphine rushed to cover up Nessa’s discomfort. “So I thought the necklace, I thought it might help. I don’t know. It could be like a talisman. You know, keep away whatever it is that’s freaking you out.”

  Nessa looked at the tooth. It was larger than any dog’s tooth she’d ever seen, about the size of a house key. She pinched open the clasp on the chain and, moving aside her ponytail, connected the two ends of the chain behind her neck, allowing the clasp to close. The tooth lay against her skin and she shivered, thinking how this tooth was part of what had cut open her own skin, had dug into her flesh.

  “I hope I’m not waking you up too much,” she said to Delphine.

  “No,” Delphine said. “That’s not it. I just, Nessa—you got attacked. That’s scary. You might be, I don’t know, you might have trauma. Like a veteran.” Veteran trauma was something they learned about in health class. There were vets in Tether, guys eight or ten years older than Nessa who had gone off to fight and come home broken.

  “Yeah, you might be right,” said Nessa. She smiled at her little sister’s concern. “Thanks, D.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Dr. Kalish was surprised Nessa’s wounds were healing so fast but still said she should stay off the leg for one more week. By Thursday, Nessa began to think she could handle walking on it. Or at least not stay alone inside all day long. She decided she needed to get back to school.

  After hobbling around the house pretty effectively when her mom wasn’t home, Nessa also decided to leave the crutches in Bree’s car when Bree dropped her off at the main entrance.

  Nessa was glad to be back. School was distracting. Practice was not. She sat next to Coach Hoffman on the bench, sitting on her hands, squinting out into the sky, waiting for the runners to come back, trying not to see the wolf, the teeth, the black lips, the drip of saliva, trying not to think about how winning races—and her one chance at getting out of Tether—would be all but impossible now.

  “You can read if you like,” Coach Hoffman said. “If you have homework.”

  “That’s okay,” Nessa said. “I’ll just watch.”

  No one on the team talked about what had happened to her. Especially not Cynthia, who had yet to mention to Nessa or anyone else that she had been running on the same path on the same night at the same time. Maybe she hadn’t known Nessa was running behind her, but still, Nessa thought: She knows now.

  Nessa stayed out on the bleachers with Coach Hoffman until the end of practice. When it was over, she found herself walking next to Luc, heading toward the locker-room doors. He had his little black duffel bag slung over his shoulder—his sneakers hanging from his fingers, his feet already stretching out in flip-flops. “So, wolf bite,” he said, in totally the wrong tone of voice. Almost like he was about to make a joke about it.

  “Yep,” said Nessa, turning her head to look at him, then facing forward again. She had never really spoken to him before.

  “Cynthia was there?” he said. “But she didn’t stop to help you?”

  “She didn’t see me,” Nessa said. “She didn’t know.”

  “But she saw the wolf, right? She ran right past it?”

  Nessa nodded. “I think so.”

  She wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it, but she wasn’t going to lie either.

  Luc shook his head slightly, blew air out through parted lips. “Wow,” he said. “That’s cold.”

  And then, without saying anything else, he walked away.

  “See ya?” Nessa said to his back, under her breath.

  Weird guy. Definitely.

  After her first day back, Nessa’s hip was so sore she had to spend the rest of the night on the couch. Vivian was sure she’d overdone it, and Nessa hadn’t even told her about going crutches free. “D
o you want to stay home tomorrow?” Vivian asked. “If you’re not ready, you’re not ready.”

  “I’m ready,” Nessa said, her jaw set. And truthfully, she was. She made it through the next day much more easily and didn’t feel as wiped out that night.

  On Saturday, Bree offered to take over Nessa’s shift cleaning cages at the vet. Nessa accepted the help but felt well enough to tag along. Bree picked her up a little before eight.

  Bree launched into a fairly epic story involving her ex-boyfriend, Sad Matt, who had flooded Instagram with sappy photos of them together (again) the night before. “I reported every single photo and they took them all down. I want someone new, someone more mature. A senior maybe?”

  Suddenly Bree broke off. “Nessa, are you even listening to me?”

  “Sorry,” Nessa said. “Yeah, I’m listening.”

  “No, you’re not,” Bree said. “You’re thinking about something else.”

  Nessa didn’t want to admit she was thinking about the wolf.

  “Okay,” Bree took a deep breath. “I get it. You’re not running and you’re really stressed about that, and you’re Nessa, which means you don’t want to admit that anything is hard.”

  Nessa laughed wryly. “Something like that, yeah.”

  Bree smiled. “Here’s what I think you need to do. I think you need to do some positive imaging.”

  Nessa groaned. “You sound like your mom.” Bree’s mom was into all that hippie New Age woo-woo stuff.

  “I’m serious! I think you need to savor and value the moment in which you got that bite.”

  “What good could it possibly do, if I went back in time?”

  Unruffled, Bree just laughed. “You could own the fact that you are the type of person who does their best to save a trapped animal, regardless. You could own that. Because you’re Nessa.”