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The closer the clocks got to 3:30, the more excited the entire student body of Beacon Hills High School became. The last bell to ring would grant them freedom.
Allison allowed herself a small smile as she packed her books into her locker. This school day had been supremely … normal. The most exciting thing to happen to her had been when an overenthusiastic Marci Beckett had tried to badger both her and Lydia into coming to Marci’s upcoming Halloween party. Lydia had given a cool ‘maybe,’ and Allison was still thinking about it.
In addition, Allison had taken two quizzes and been assigned a history project on the Weimar Republic. She had played volleyball in gym class. Lydia had spent thirty minutes of their free period making fun of the South California secession movement. There had been no dead teenagers, no evil witches, and no marauding werewolves, unless she wanted to count Isaac eating all her carrot sticks during lunch.
If anyone had asked, she would have had to describe the whole school day as dull. Dull as dishwater. She was, in a real way, grateful for that. The last month and a half had been very anxiety-producing.
She shivered as she walked out to the school parking lot. She should have worn a heavier shirt; this blouse was cute, but definitely not warm enough for late October.
Standing by her car was Scott McCall. He was waiting for her obviously, leaning up against a nearby bike rack. Unlike her, he had worn a nice heavy jacket.
Immediately, she felt something heavy settle in her gut. “What’s wrong?”
Scott startled at the question, and the corners of his mouth turned down slightly. “Uh, nothing’s wrong. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say that. There’s nothing I know about that’s wrong.”
It said so much about their lives that she knew exactly what he meant. “So why are you here?”
“I came to see if you were okay.”
“No more hallucinations.” She held out her hand, palm down. “Steady as a rock.”
“That’s good, but that’s not what I mean.”
Allison tilted her head to the side.
Scott gathered himself to speak but suddenly changed his mind. “Can we go get coffee or something? I mean, it’s kind of chilly out here.”
She hesitated longer than she meant to. Allison didn’t distrust Scott, and she certainly didn’t dislike him but that didn’t mean that every time she talked to him, it wasn’t like walking through a mine field. “Let me call my dad. I told him I planned to come straight home today, and he gets pretty pissed if I change my mind without telling him.”
“Makes sense, given everything.”
Her father answered on the first ring. “Hey, Scott wants to take me out to get some coffee.” She told herself she wasn’t asking for permission; she didn’t need to. During the summer, her father had really made an effort to respect her boundaries and her independence.
“In what capacity?” he asked. Making an effort didn’t mean he had suddenly become good at it.
“As a friend, Dad.”
Scott grinned at her.
“I was just making sure, honey.”
“He can hear you, remember? And we’re just talking. I’ll be home for dinner.”
Her dad said goodbye and she put away her phone. “He means well.”
“Did you tell him about … everything about Bardo?”
“Did you tell your mom?”
Scott shook his head vigorously.
“He would handcuff himself to me if he learned about any of that stuff, and I don’t need that right now. Let’s go to the Vault.”
A mysterious owner had named the new coffee place for the ridiculous rumors that there was a secret chamber underneath Beacon Hills High. Otherwise, it was popular among students not only because it was close to the school but also because it had a parking lot in the back. Parents driving by wouldn’t see their kids’ cars. Today, Sydney was working at the counter.
Sydney smiled knowingly at Scott and Allison as they placed their orders. Irrationally, Allison had to tamp down the sudden urge to blurt out that she and Scott were here just as friends. It only made sense that people might think she and Scott were together, considering how often they had behaved last semester. They hadn’t been as nearly discreet as they thought they were. Come to think of it, they had been seen together a lot so far this semester, though that had mostly been in the company of their friends.
It had never even occurred before to Allison that people would pay attention to whom she was dating. She wondered if that was normal. She had never had enough time in her previous high schools to get involved in the social scene, as they had moved around so much. On the other hand, Scott was one of the lacrosse team co-captains.
From the outside, it would also seem that they got into a lot of trouble together.
In the end, she decided to leave it be. She ordered a caramel macchiato, and Scott chose a simple black coffee with sugar. They went to the most isolated table in the place, without even having to talk about it. They were used to trying to have discussions where no one else could overhear.
After she had sat down, Allison leaned toward Scott across the table. “So, what did you mean?”
Scott’s face lit up as he leaned in before he processed her question. “Mean? Oh.” The reason they had come here came back to him, and some of the light faded from his eyes. “I know you’re not seeing Kate anymore.”
“Yeah.” Allison said quickly. “My hands have stopped shaking, too. But that’s true for all of us, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but Kate meant a lot to you, both good and bad. Seeing her again had to be upsetting.”
She peered at him, unsure of how to respond, until she was saved by Sydney calling out their names. Scott got up silently and went to fetch them.
Scott had seemed hesitant when he had suggested she could be upset, like he was afraid he had just crossed a line. Allison had to admit that it was nice that he still worried about her even if they weren’t going out anymore and nicer still that he was nervous about expressing it. She had gotten mad at him before for being overprotective.
This wasn’t the same thing. He wasn’t trying to control what she did. That was one of the good things about Scott; it had taken him a few tries but once he understood how much she hated being treated as if she couldn’t handle things, he had stopped trying.
Thus, when he put her drink in front of her and sat back down, Allison found she didn’t have any problem talking to him about Kate. “That’s an understatement.”
Scott took a sip of his coffee, but he didn’t say anything. He simply waited until she was ready to speak again.
“The worst part is that when I saw her, it wasn’t just like a jump scare in a horror movie. There was always more behind it.”
He nodded, but it wasn’t just a signal to show he was listening. He must have experienced something similar.
“I can’t help but wonder …” She trailed off. She glanced at Scott across from her. He wouldn’t judge her; of that much she was certain. “I can’t help but wonder how much I could be like her.”
“I get that. You told me before that she was more like your sister than your aunt, right? I didn’t know her that well.”
She grinned sheepishly at him. “That was the moment when you were supposed to say that I’m nothing like her.”
“I can’t say that.” He raises his hands in panicked defense at the look on her face. “Let me finish. I know you wouldn’t do the things she did, but you could still be like her in other ways. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
Allison felt a little lost. “After what she did to Derek and his family? After she almost executed you? She probably did terrible things to other people that we don’t know about. How can me being like her not be a bad thing?”
“It sounds like a cliche, but no one is all good or all bad. That means we can’t be defined or limited by the best thing we’ve ever done or — more importantly in this case — the worst thing we’ve ever done. Kate was a psycho, but she had to be more.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I may not have known her very well, but I do know you. If Kate had been a monster twenty-four-seven, you wouldn’t have been so close to her.”
Allison thought back to her and Kate’s time together. There were plenty of times when Kate seemed to be the best thing in her life. Kate had always listened to what she had to say even when, looking back, it seemed childish. Once Allison had learned about her aunt’s darker side, she had remembered all the times Kate crossed boundaries with her family, but she had always been careful not to go too far with Allison. Furthermore, Kate was seldom afraid; she never backed down from doing things because they were too hard or the outcome was unsure. Best of all, Kate had expected Allison to act the same way, and that’s one of the reasons Allison had loved her.
She shuddered at the implication. She had loved Kate, and she didn’t really want to give the feelings attached to those memories up, even though they were now messy and raw. “You think so?”
Scott reached out and took her hand. It wasn’t meant to be forward; it wasn’t a violation of the deliberate distance Allison had set up back in the spring. The touch was his attempt to comfort her while still getting her attention. She looked up and straight into his big, beautiful brown eyes.
“I have faith in you.” He made it sound like a benediction.
Allison felt herself blushing. This was the reason she had broken up with him; this was the reason she had gone away to France and had asked him to give her space. His love for her was powerful and deep; it would have been far too easy to have let it wipe away all the terrible things she had done rather than facing them on her own.
As resolute in that decision now as she had been back then, it still didn’t make for a comfortable situation now. She decided to change the subject. “I just thought of something.”
“What is it?”
“You were suffering something similar, but I don’t know what it was. You never said.”
Scott shifted uncomfortably. “Stiles was, too.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to tell me, but I’d like to know.”
Scott thought about it for a moment; it almost seemed that he was going to refuse, but at the last moment, she watched his face soften. “It’s going to sound silly.”
“You saw clowns?”
He boggled at the question, and she grinned at him. After a moment, they both laughed. She felt she had accomplished something wonderful.
“No. I meant that compared to seeing Kate, mine doesn’t seem all that frightening.”
“I think that hallucinations are disturbing whatever they’re about.”
“It was … my shadow.”
It was now Allison’s turn to wait until he was comfortable continuing.
“It’s hard to describe, but it wouldn’t look like it was supposed to. It didn’t look like me.” He gripped his cup so hard Allison worried about him shattering it. “I mean, it did look like me, but how it would look when I was transformed even without me transforming. Like something wanted me to transform. Like something was trying to get out of me. To break free.”
“That doesn’t sound silly.”
“Maybe. But you weren’t expecting to see Kate again. Stiles couldn’t read or couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep; those things were new to him. I learned about the bloodlust and the increased aggression the week after I was bitten. I should have …”
Scott trailed off and while Allison couldn’t detect his chemo signals, she knew shame when it sat in front of her.
“I also started transforming without meaning, too. First, my eyes. Then a full transformation at school.”
“You were afraid of losing control.”
“No!” His voice went up a little too high and a few people glanced at them. “Like you said, it wasn’t that simple.”
“Okay.”
“It wasn’t until what I did to Isaac that I realized what was going on.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t about losing control; it was about wanting to lose control.”
“You did something to Isaac?”
Scott grimaced as if he realized that maybe he should not have said that. “Yes?”
“Isaac didn’t say anything to me. What did you do to him?”
“I …” For a second, it looked like Scott was going to try to avoid telling her, but then he sat up straight. “I threw him into the wall. Twice.”
“Why?” It seemed such a weird thing for Scott to do.
“He was asking me if I was mad at him … no. I was angry. I was angry about the … tether thing. I was angry because he told me he was interested in you. I was angry that he followed you out into the woods.”
“Oh, is that all?” It was a relief to her in several different ways.
“I’m his alpha, he lives in my house, and I threw him into a wall!” As if to restate the magnitude of his crime, he repeated himself. “Twice!”
“You were jealous. You probably still are. I’m sorry to have to break this to you Scott, but that’s normal among teenage boys. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a good thing and you should never ever do it again, but it’s nothing to be that worried about.”
“I’m not a normal teenage boy; I’m a werewolf. I’m still not explaining it right.”
She bit her lips. “Then try again.”
“I wasn’t out of control when I did that to Isaac. If I were, I could have thrown him through the wall. No, what happened then is that I wanted to be out of control. I wanted to hurt him. I’ve seen what people with power like mine can do when they stop caring about hurting others. It was about being just like them.”
Allison thought for a moment and then the perfect answer came to her. “I get that. I know this is the moment where I’m supposed to say that you won’t ever do what they did, but I can’t say that.”
Scott paled at her words before realizing what she was doing. His face softened and it seemed like her words dispelled some darkness within him, at least a little bit. His muscles unclenched and his face bloomed into a smile. “Okay. Okay.”
“If it takes being drowned for sixteen hours for you to even to want to hurt someone else, I think you’re in pretty good shape, Scott.”
He laughed at himself some more, but then he slowly looked over at her. Allison knew that look, and she knew what it meant, but it didn’t bother her. Not today.
Finally, Scott took a deep breath. “Do you ever think about what would have happened if we had met in December rather than January?”
“Before you became what you are, and I became what I am?” Allison hadn’t actually. She had so much learning to do, so much to adapt to, so much she had lost that she found that she couldn’t afford the luxury. “Not really.”
“I know it’s probably not a good idea, but I have. I gotta say I think it could have been good.”
Allison wouldn’t answer, and she tried not to let anything show on her face, but she agreed. But they hadn’t met in December, and nothing would ever change that.
“Or maybe not.” Scott must have picked something up anyway. “We would probably still be complaining, like I did back then, about how boring Beacon Hills was. How dull.”
“Dull as dishwater.”
“Yeah.” Scott repeated wistfully. “Dull as dishwater.”