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She has to get out of here. The walls are contracting around her. The air feels too thin to breathe. The need to get out is overwhelming.
She snatches her keys from her nightstand and heads for her window, her shaking fingers fumbling with the latch. Her parents are downstairs in the living room watching a movie, and there’s no way she can walk past them and pretend nothing’s wrong. She feels like death warmed over, and she suspects she looks worse. Nausea is climbing up her throat as sweat beads over her skin. That leaves only one option—going out the window.
Her car is parked on the street, so if she can get there without her parents looking out the window and seeing her, she might be able to leave without them ever noticing that she's gone. It feels like her body is one step from shattering like glass, and that’s going to worry them more than anything. She just needs some fresh air. She’ll be back before they ever know that she’s gone.
Elara slips out the window, carefully placing her feet so that she can slide down the tiles of the roof and go to the edge. Thankfully it isn't a far drop, but if feels like it, even as she lands on the bushes that soften her fall. Pain ricochets up her legs and she lays there for long seconds, breathing hard. Everything hurtsso badly at this point that she can’t pick out what hurts the worst. It feels like she’s just one big throbbing mass of agony.
Crawling on all fours, she shuffles away, poking her head up toward the living room window to make sure that her parents aren’t looking back at her. But their backs are to her, watching the rom com on the TV. Once she’s past, Elara rises gingerly to her feet and hobbles toward her car, giving a sigh of relief as she sits down and takes the pressure off her legs, which feel like they're about to snap as well.
It’s only once she’s pulled out of the driveway that she realizes she needs somewhere to go. And quickly. It can’t be where there are people. The thought of anyone seeing her like this is terrifying. There’s only one place that she can think of that would be safe for her—the forest.
And strangely enough, it calls to her. There’s nowhere she wants to be more right now.
Elara concentrates on driving, her sweaty hand slick on the steering wheel, praying that she doesn’t wreck her car before she gets there. The lights from other cars feel too bright and she has to squint. The whole world is still a jaundice yellow. She needs the shadows of the forest. The solitude. The quiet.
The drive is a blur, but relief courses through her veins when she pulls over beside the edge of the nearby trees. Her whole body feels too warm, like she has a fever, and she stumbles out of the car. She half runs, half staggers her way into the tree line. Her car will be fine there, and she can’t shake the feeling that the forest is the safest place for her.
Darkness engulfs Elara along with the strong scent of pine. She falls to her knees, sobbing as the relief becomes overwhelming. She doesn’t know why, but this is where she needs to be right now. She just needs to breathe?—
She cries out as the pain explodes. Rockets through her veins. Blasts apart every cell. Everything is changing, twisting andrearranging like a puzzle box made of muscles and bones. Long, bristling fur sprouts from her arms and legs, and she drops onto all fours, staring in horror as long claws sprout from her fingers, her hands shrinking and morphing into paws.
A tortured cry climbs up her throat, but all that comes out is a savage howl.
A ray of moonlight spears through the branches, blinding her and she knows no more.
11
Elara
Elara blinks awake, her fingers fumbling in the dirt of the forest. Her skin feels as if it’s crawling, and it’s only when she feels the leaves in her hair, and everywhere else, that she realizes that she's completely naked. She gasps, quickly curling up to cover herself. What happened to her? She can’t remember anything about…had it been hours, or days? She has no idea how long it’s been, or why she's out here among the trees. She looks around dazed, noting the pale light filtering through the branches. She’s in a forest. And she needs to find her clothes.
Please let her clothes be here.
Still aching, Elara pushes herself to her feet and shuffles forward, glancing around frantically. She sees her t-shirt hanging on a low branch, then her shorts several feet away to her left. Her clothes are here, but they’re spread out over a wide area. Her hands shake as she scrambles to put them on, feeling vulnerable and exposed. It’s only once she’s dressed that she has a good look around. She blinks, doing a small turn, trying to understand what she’s seeing.
She’s surrounded by claw marks and paw prints that are larger than anything she’s ever seen. Has she been attacked by a bear? She looks down at her body, finding it unscathed. Nothing hurts. She has no injuries. No sign she was attacked by an animal…or human. None of it makes any sense at all.
Elara heads back to her car, parked at a sharp angle on the side of the road. She’s not sure what else to do, so she heads back to the house. Maybe a shower and strong coffee will help her sort out her jumbled thoughts.
She doesn’t realize that she’d left without telling anyone where she’d gone until her parents rush out, her mom yanking her into a hard hug that feels like it might be rearranging some bones. That triggers some sort of memory, but not enough to penetrate the surface of her daze. The whole night is a blank.
Her mom pulls back and frowns at Elara. “Where were you? We were worried.”
Elara hesitates. Telling her parents that she woke up naked in the forest with no memory of how she got there is most definitely not a good idea. Instead, she mumbles something about having gone out and then realizes there are the other vehicles in the driveway.
Kira and Jordyn’s cars are parked there, and her heart sinks. If her parents were this worried about her, then clearly her friends were too, and she doesn’t have any more of an answer for them than she does her parents. Except her friends won’t let up until they push her into admitting more than she wants to. Her parents are trying to give her plenty of space to be an adult, but her friends know her better than that. They’ll know that something’s wrong the second she steps through the door.
Kira and Jordyn rush outside, both of them pulling her into a hug and then into the house. Her parents glance at one another, then retreat to give the girls their privacy.
Kira glares, but her face softens as she pulls Elara into a hug. Elara hugs her back, wondering at the glare. Is Kira angry that Elara gave them a scare?
“I was calling you all night,” Kira says as she pulls back. “You scared us to death.”
“I was just out and I forgot my phone,” Elara says uncomfortably. She can understand they were worried, but it feels like a bigger deal than it needs to be. Come to think of it, she's actually glad that she left her phone in her room last night, because there’s no guarantee that she would have been able to find it after waking up naked. She would’ve had more explaining to do.
A thought strikes her. Why were her friends looking for her? Why were they worried? Surely something else didn’t happen last night… “What happened? What’s wrong?”
Kira glances at Jordyn, her lips thinning. “Laith was attacked by an animal last night, just like you were. He's in the hospital.”
