The anxiety and adrenaline leave me exhausted by the time I arrive home, draining every ounce of energy I have left until even my bones feel too heavy. With great effort, I barely wipe my shoes on the hideous floral welcome mat before stepping through the front door.

An obnoxious flash nearly blinds me and I reel back, my bag crashing onto the hardwood floor. The frantic click of a camera fills the foyer again as my mother peeks from behind her cell phone, grinning like a mischievous child.

I roll my eyes, wanting nothing more than to flop onto my bed and crawl under the covers. I straighten my shoulders and plaster a wide smile on my face. "Hi, Mom."

"Hi, Amaya." She finally lowers her phone, wavy red hair framing the soft features of her face. "How was your first day at school?"

"Great. Until I got home and got ambushed by a cell phone–wielding maniac. Honestly, the paparazzi should hire you."

Her back straightens, head tilts, and her hand finds its way to her hip. I cringe. Lecture time. "I just wanted to commemorate my little girl's day. It's not that long and you're going to be heading off to college or art school. So please don't go calling me a maniac."

Remorseful. Guilty.

No other words can describe how I feel at this very moment. Every time I do something wrong, every time my parents get upset, a tight fist constricts around my heart. Accentuating my mother's pissed-off posture are her wounded eyes. Regret gnaws at me like a worm at the core of an apple. For all the powers that exists, nothing can turn back time. Nothing can rectify using my powers to make my parents adopt me instead of the toddler they'd been interested in.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it." My arms wrap around my mother and squeeze. I owe her and my father so much. I might have manipulated them, their dedication afterwards to making me feel as if I am their own child is all their own doing.

"How about one more photo?" I step back, take off my jacket and hang it in the closet. I smooth my hair into place and tug my sweater straight. Standing in the middle of the hallway, I angle my body, throw my head back a teensy bit, and smile wide—the way teen models do in clothing catalogs. She grins and lifts her phone.

Mom snaps the photo and drops a kiss on the top of my head. "I want to hear all about your first day."

After the constant stomachaches and loss of appetite while in Tokyo, my parents believed school added to my anxiety issues. I couldn't tell her it wasn't school—it was wondering if Raiju was lurking in dark corners. If he'd tracked me down. So, when we left Japan four years ago and moved to Poland, they decided to homeschool me. Until my family decided to move back to the United States and Dad convinced Mom to enroll me in public school.

I nudge her playfully. "Geez, Mom. You'd think I'd never been to school before."

At the orphanage, the kids made fun of me because my command of languages was technical and far too precise.

Ass kisser. Show-off. Robot.

Thankfully, my human mother taught me the intricacies of expressions and dialects. Some days I forget how lucky I am to have manipulated the right adoptive parents. The gods only know what my life might have been like if I'd chosen the wrong people.

Mom strokes my hair. "High school in the States is very different from high school in Japan."

"You can say that again. A woman yelled at me for not having a hall pass. And the cafeteria food..." I shudder. The food at the orphanage wasn't exactly gourmet, but at least the ingredients were visibly identifiable as vegetables and meat. The high school served a meal I'm not one hundred percent sure wasn't some form of plastic with slime sauce. As a fox, the winters in the forest had been long and hard. Sometimes we couldn't scavenge enough food to fill our bellies. And still, I'd prefer the constant grinding pain of starvation to cafeteria mystery meat.

"Well, you won't be hungry here. Dinner will be ready soon. I've made your favorite, chicken kare raisu."

Because I'm not starving already, she needs to make me drool talking about rice with curry and her own added touch of sweet potatoes. "Just how spicy did you make it?"

"I know you can't handle the level of spice your dad likes, so I went easy with the ingredients."

I wrap my arms around her and kiss her cheek. "Thanks, Mom. Can't wait to eat."

Her skin glows. It makes her happy when I'm physically affectionate, a small price to pay for the love she gives me. To tell the truth, I like it, too. It reminds me of cuddling up with members of my skulk on a cold winter's day or play wrestling with my siblings.

Mom pulls away and tucks her cell phone into the back pocket of her jeans. "Go upstairs and relax. I'll call you when dinner's ready."

I grab my bag from the floor and race up the stairs. When I cross the threshold into my bedroom, I shut my door behind me and lock it. I place my phone on my dresser-top speaker and let the thrum of dubstep fill my bedroom. I reach into my shoulder bag, grabbing a charcoal pencil and my sketchbook. Drawing relaxes me the same way meditation works for some people.

But thoughts of Raiju circle around in my mind. After all this time, could he have really found me? My stomach flips and I run a jumpy hand over the semidry pages, trying to smooth down a fresh one. Not to mention I shifted. In broad daylight on a public street. If only another kitsune existed to teach me to control the change. But as far as I know, I'm the last one.

My skulk hadn't come across another kitsune since the beginning of World War II. The world had changed for most creatures by that time. No longer were bow and arrows a danger, but speeding cars and bombs killed off many animals. And with humans cutting down the forests to build new homes, the small number of kitsune left opted to blend into human society. My skulk was one of the last who chose to remain in our true form.

Shaky hands guide the charcoal pencil across the white page of the sketchbook, tears pricking the corner of my eyes, as the newest Skrillex song plays through the speakers. Dad teases constantly that I had an American teenager's taste in music before we even arrived here. He would be surprised if he knew just how long I've enjoyed American music.

Eighty years ago, before I was blessed with the gift of shifting and I was just a normal red fox, I'd been fascinated by humans. I remember the clatter of wooden sandals on the paved street gave away handful of youth in yukata heading toward one of the thatched farmhouses. Curious as most foxes are, I'd pursued them. Soulful strains of what I now know to be jazz emanated from the kitchen. I wondered how on earth simple farmers conjured such beautiful sounds. But by the time I'd solved the mystery of the radio, I'd fallen hard for human music.

My hand dances across the paper, creating bold lines mixed with smooth, rounded curves. The tip of the pencil shades in the chiseled jaw. I bite my bottom lip as I finish outlining a pair of almond eyes, then recline into the puffy pillows at the head of my bed, my gaze skirting over my sketch. Sam. I drew Sam.

I clench my fists and stare at the page, his voice mocking me. Everyone knows everyone, there's no place for fakes. If you want to make friends here, you're gonna have to be honest.

"Amaya, dinner's ready!" Mom calls.

My fingers grasp the edge of the paper, ready to tear the sketch from the book but I stop them. While his words are like fire ants biting raw skin, he's partially right. True friends are honest, which is why I don't have any. Not when my honesty comes with danger. To both myself and the other person. What I would give to just be at peace so I can find out who I am meant to be. I swallow past the lump in my throat, close my sketchbook, stand up, and make my way out of my room.

When I reach the main floor, Dad's putting his briefcase down and peeling off his scarf. Outside the storm door, the wind howls and snowflakes fall, like oversized confetti. Mom walks by carrying food into the dining room, and peers out the door. "There was nothing about a storm on the forecast."

Dad shrugs, hanging up his coat in the hall closet. "Those meteorologists are always getting it wrong. I'm just glad it waited until I was in the car." He kisses my mother on the cheek, then makes his way over to me and kisses my forehead. "How's my girl?"

"Starving."

Mom shoos us into the dining room. "Move it, you two, before the food gets cold."

The terracotta walls of the room display my mother's paintings. The warm colors of the abstract images contrast with the swirling storm of screaming silver and skeletal trees just outside the large windows.

The moment I slide into my chair, Mom serves me an enormous plate of food. I bring a fresh, warm dinner roll to my nose and inhale. So much better than the smell of chips and pork fried beans. Ugh, those beans weren't even warm. Never again will I be able to eat beans and not gag. And I'm never eating school lunch again. I'd rather starve. Picking up a knife, I slather copious amounts of Country Crock onto the bread.

Dad peels off his glasses and wipes the lenses with a napkin. "Did you make any friends?"

"This one girl, Blaire, is nice." I sink my teeth into the cooked dough in my hand. Heaven. "Just stinks I don't have Art class every day.

Mom raises her chin and shoots Dad a smirk. She has a career as a painter, her rich oil paintings decorating every room of our new home. "Art can be as lucrative a field as law, you know."

And here they go. While they are very supportive, they also like to compete with one another, and sometimes my future career becomes the topic they focus on.

Dad quirks a brow at my mother.

I huff and wave my fork through the air. "Only lucrative if you want to live off ramen, right?"

Dad puts down his fork and wipes his mouth with a napkin. "Amaya, you can do anything you put your mind to. The important thing is to choose something you enjoy doing."

Mom grabs a dinner roll and places it on her plate. "Any cute boys?"

Ugh. Which one of us is the teenager here? Not to mention, I'm trying to avoid thinking of the two losers who ditched me today. "Cute, yes. Idiots, also yes. Baxter Warren passed me off onto his brother when I asked if he could show me around. Then his brother shut a door in my face."

Dad frowns. "Warren...as in Sheriff Warren's boys? They are probably used to getting whatever they want. I'd stay away from them, especially after the way they treated you."

"I plan to." I stab at a piece of chicken on my plate and shove it into my mouth, chewing vehemently as I on the painting hanging in front of me. The precise lines are stable but tumble at the same time. Like me, always in free fall inside. "Do you think a relationship based on a lie could ever work out?" We had a debate in English class. About a story we're reading. The main character must lie about who she is to protect herself, but that means people like her for reasons that aren't true."

Dad places his elbows on the table, leaning forward, and steeples his fingers, resting them on his lips. "It's not an easy question to answer. Years ago when I first started in law, I had a client who was in witness protection. He had to hide his identity and I assume most of the relationships he formed during that time would be based on a deception."

Mom pats her lips with a napkin and clears her throat. "There's some relativism involved. But thinking about the client, I would always wonder what if hiding his real identity put those new people in danger. But what it sounds like you are talking about isn't just safety, it's about acceptance. And deceiving people to make them like you doesn't ever end well."

The guilt is like gasoline in my stomach, killing my insides slowly with toxicity, needing no more than a tiny spark to set it ablaze and destroy me. Of course I want to be accepted and belong. For the past five years I often feel as if I'm the only actor on stage pretending to be someone—something—I'm not. And neither of my adoptive parents are Japanese, which further reminds me of how much I don't fit in.

My chest constricts. My stomach clenches and bile claws its way up my throat. I miss being around other kitsune. I miss my kaasan. But if I want to stay in America and away from Raiju for good, hiding what I am is the only way. I shove Sam Warren and his stupid opinions aside. "Could you pass the water, please?"