The red walls in Haley's room are absolutely covered in art. Movie posters, game art, photography, music albums, some of which are even signed. What really stands out to me, though, is that nothing is taped to the wall. Everything is in custom-made identical black frames. As I look around, Haley walks over to the couch by one of the tall windows on the opposite end of the room and plops down with a long sigh. Missile settles by his feet.

I only look over at them for a moment before I get distracted again. There's a print of a colorful abstract painting that I need to get a closer look at.

"Wait," I say, pointing, "is this an original?"

"Yeah!" Haley says, leaning back to lay his arms across the backrest with a grin. "It was done by Ortéga, my favorite artist."

I've never heard of Ortéga, but I tell him, "That's cool."

"Thanks." He reaches down to play with Missile's ears again. "So how did your test go?"

"Well enough."

"Which directions did you choose, anyway?" he asks. "You're in pre-uni, right?"

I like that he doesn't ask why I'm in pre-uni at all. As if I have the money to go to university after this. The truth is, I do, technically, but only for a year. What I'm gonna do after that, I don't know. "Yeah. History and language arts."

"Makes sense."

"How so?"

He shrugs.

"I considered science," I tell him. "Biology."

"Why didn't you do it?"

This time, I'm the one shrugging. "Too expensive. I like history and lang, though."

He nods, and silence falls. Missile puts his head on his paws and sighs. I go back to looking at art. There's one above the bed, which is ridiculously large for how averagely sized Haley is. His feet probably don't hang over the edge, like mine do.

Finally, Haley says, "Sorry about yesterday. I didn't think it'd be that much of a problem."

"'Fraid so," I reply, shrugging.

"Which one of my friends threatened you again?"

I smile. "I didn't say, and I'm not going to."

He gives me a look.

"Nope."

"Okay, listen. I get that you're scared, but you shouldn't—"

"I'm not scared. I just wanna be left alone."

He raises a brow. "Do you want to be alone? Or lonely?"

"Those are two very different things."

"I don't think you know the difference."

His tone ticks me off. "I never said I didn't want to be friends, Haley," I say hotly. I know he wasn't there when I panicked about saying the wrong thing, when Kurt warned me about him, when Margie said he and I would never be friends, or when Davy, Sam, and Daniel told me I'd had my last chance. But I feel like he should know that these things don't just happen. "I never said I wanted you to leave me alone."

"And I don't want to pretend like I don't even know you!"

Missile's ears swivel in Haley's direction at his raised voice.

"It's not that hard to keep your mouth shut," I mutter.

"That's not fair, Gus," he says.

"Life isn't fair."

He makes a displeased noise. "You wanna talk to me about how life isn't fair?"

"You wanna talk to me about it?" I laugh mirthlessly.

He opens his mouth.

"You have everything, Haley. You've got a fancy car and a cute dog and a family and friends. You've got all this shit here"—I gesture around—"and you don't even have to get a job to keep up with it, or count the days until your next paycheck. That's stuff I struggle with every day of my life, whether I'm alone or not, or lonely—whatever. What does it fucking matter if you can tell people that we're friends or not? Isn't it enough that we are?"

For a long moment, he just stares at me, sitting on his big soft couch.

Then he asks, "Are you done?"

I could go on, but I don't. I feel like I'm talking to a wall. It's getting harder and harder to keep my emotions from rising too high—my skin is itchy. I shove my hands into my pockets.

"It's not a competition," Haley says.

"I didn't say it was."

"You did. If it makes you feel better, you can keep telling me about how shitty your life is, and I'll sit here and listen because I'm not going to invalidate your feelings, but I'm not going to let you invalidate mine."

I don't know what to say to that, so I look away from him.

"Life isn't fair to anyone," he says. "It just looks different. Money can buy a lot of things, but not everything. You of all people should know that."

"What?"

He gets up from the couch and walks over to the nightstand on the left side of his bed, where the sheets are wrinkled. Next to a stack of books and a tall frosted glass, there's a small standing picture frame I hadn't noticed before, which he takes and hands over to me. The picture shows a younger version of Haley, his dark hair long enough to touch his jaw, his grin unabashed, and there's a girl beside him. She's about the same age as him, about fifteen. Her hair is dark and frizzy, her skin a golden brown, and her smile as wide as his.

"Who is this?" I ask, but I feel like I already know.

"She was my friend."

Was.

"A real friend," he says before he takes back the picture frame and returns it to its rightful place, beside his bed. He looks at me while he does it, but his expression is blank. The shame that replaces my anger is so sudden it almost makes me shudder.

"I'm sorry."

He nods in acknowledgement but doesn't reply.

"What was her name?" I ask.

"Cecilia," he says, his voice soft. "I called her Cee. She was rich, too, but she wasn't like the other upper-class kids. She was just . . . Cee, you know?"

I nod, even though I don't know. I wish I did.

"I just miss that. And maybe you think I'm stupid for looking for that in a person who has every reason to grudge me, but if I can't get it from those who have no reason to . . ." He shrugs instead of finishing his sentence. I guess he doesn't need to. "I don't judge you for how much money you have—or don't have."

"I don't judge you," I say, and I can tell he doesn't believe me. "Believe me, I didn't say all of that because I judge you. I just don't understand. I didn't. It didn't make sense to me why you cared so much about our friendship."

He shrugs. "None of my other friends are bears."

I can't help but laugh.

"So what are we gonna do?" he asks.

"How confident are you in your ability to convince everyone to let us be friends?"

"Fairly."

"Okay. I'm not gonna sit with them, though. You can join me at my table."

"Done."

☽〇☾

We take Missile for a walk. There's a small patch of forest behind the house where the trails are trampled by dog and human, but I smell other animals, too. Passing through. When Missile sniffs at a bush, I tell Haley, "Deer."

"How do you know?" he asks.

I tap my nose. "Bears have the best sense of smell."

"Really?" he says, eyes growing wide. "You can smell that? I thought it was, like, wolves that had the best sense of smell. How much can you smell?"

"I don't know. My nose is better in bear form. It's hard to say exactly how much."

"Come on. Give me an example. How far do I have to be for you to lose me?"

"Uh . . . like, fifteen miles? Twenty maybe?"

"Twenty miles," he says.

"Yeah."

"You're joking."

"You wanna test me?" I ask, amused.

"Yeah, I do, actually. That's fucking insane."

I laugh. "Sure. Next time I change forms we'll test it."

"How often do you do it?"

"Depends. If I'm stressed, I have to do it more often. It's like your thirst for blood. I try to do it at least once a week to make sure I don't get too . . . agitated." I watch Missile sniffing at another plant and scratch my arm. "When my mom died, I went almost every day. Sometimes just to take a walk. Sometimes I'd stay out for hours."

"Yeah, I get that."

"It was especially hard because she taught me how to control my emotions."

He looks at me. "Was she a bear, too?"

"No, actually. My father is—was? I don't know. As you've probably guessed, I don't really talk to him." At his curious face, I chuckle. "Sorry, all I know is that he disappeared pretty soon after I was born."

"Damn. Asshole."

I shrug. I actually don't know if he left intentionally or died or whatever. Mom said he was good guy, so I like to think he didn't mean to disappear. That's why I wear his jacket. It would just be catching dust otherwise. "At least he told my mom what I'd grow up to be."

Haley nods.

"It took her, like, a decade to find someone who could tell her more, and I don't blame her. It's not an easy thing, asking around about mythical creatures without making yourself sound crazy. I'd already started showing signs I was going to turn soon when she finally found someone. A snake. Which is the worst type of animal you could ask for help, by the way. She made my mom pay for it."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. She was lucky to run into her, though."

"Why? She took advantage of her!"

"Oh, yeah, totally, but I don't think anyone else would have told us anything. They're all terrified of hunters, and 'my son is a bear, please help' sounds like pretty obvious bait. Snakes aren't the most . . . loyal type, so it's possible that she was working with the hunters and took my mother's money as payment for silence or something. Or maybe she was just selling information to anyone who asked. She did warn us about the hunters, though, so that's nice."

He snorts. "Bless her soul."

I smile, and we walk in silence for a while.

Haley picks up a stick and throws it for Missile to fetch, and I see why he's named Missile; he shoots through the trees like a black projectile. When he returns with the stick between his jaws, Haley says, "My dad taught me about shapeshifters."

"He's a shapeshifter, too?"

"No, he only carries the gene. It skips a few generations, apparently. He didn't know if any of his kids would be able to shapeshift and he didn't want to risk getting us excited or worried for nothing, so he just made these really cryptic comments about how we could always talk to him. I thought he was talking about my sexuality, so I came out to him when I was thirteen. He was very surprised but supportive."

I laugh.

"It wasn't a very effective way to prepare us, I think. I didn't go to him about my weird obsession with blood until it was too late. You know, when the incident with the blonde happened." For a second, his face morphs into that of the woman he imitated on the first night we talked before changing back to his own. Then he smiles, softly. "It took me a week to work up the courage to tell him."

"How old were you?"

"Sixteen, but the signs started earlier."

"Around thirteen, fourteen?" I ask.

"Yeah."

"I guess that's the same for all mythicals, then."

"Too young."

"Yeah."

"My dad is not the most helpful, either," he says. "He remembers what his dad told him, and he remembered what his mom told him, but it's like a game of telephone. Everything gets lost in translation. My dad had no idea the urge would be that strong, let alone what his grandmother did to fight it. Maybe she didn't."

"Maybe you're not supposed to."

"Yeah, that's helpful."

I shrug. "The relief you get from smoking is only temporary. At least, that's what it's like for me, so I assume it's the same for you. It's like a painkiller. The pain is still there. You just can't feel it until the drug is out of your system."

"Taking someone's likeness is just a stronger painkiller, then."

"No, that's your way of living. When you've got a bad back, it doesn't hurt unless you do a lot of heavy lifting. If you avoid that, you don't need the painkillers. That's why I turn into a bear every week."

He gives me a look.

"I'm not saying you should start asking people for blood every week. Just theorizing."

"Thankfully, it's not that bad. It usually lasts a month."

"A month is doable."

"Okay, but I don't get a lot of opportunities to taste new blood. And when I do, it just feels so wrong to actually do it." He pauses and gestures at me. "Be honest. If your friend is bleeding, would you put your hand on their wound just so you can taste it?"

"Probably. It doesn't hurt them, does it?"

"No, but . . . Kissing doesn't hurt, and you don't see me going around kissing everyone."

"That's not the same thing."

"Isn't it?"

"I think you're overthinking this."

He lets out a sigh and mutters, "We should stop talking about it, anyway. I don't have any cigarettes on me right now."

"We can go back. Also, I was serious about my offer."

"What offer?"

"To taste my blood."

"Oh." He looks ahead of him for a few seconds, maybe at Missile, though his eyes are distant. Then he asks, "Are you sure? I could use—I mean, not to say that I will, but I could use your face for . . . basically whatever I want."

The last time we had this conversation, we were talking about him trying to imitate my bear form, so I did not consider he'd be able to use my face, too. My mistake.

I don't think he would use it for anything, though. He doesn't even want to take someone's face without them knowing, and now he's warning someone who's willingly offering what he could do with it. If he wanted to take advantage of me, he wouldn't have said anything. His mistake, really.

"Well, that would be a good way to ruin our friendship," I tell him.

"I wouldn't," he says quickly.

I raise a brow.

He groans. "I'm just going to forget you offered."

"Okay."

"For the record, I wouldn't do that."

Yeah, I figured. "Okay."

"Don't offer again."

"I make no promises."

He glares at me, and I smile.

Missile runs ahead, reminding us it's time to go back.

☽〇☾