Chapter 1

I replied to the admissions counselor’s email.

[I’ll attend the interview. If I receive the scholarship, can I enroll this fall?]

She asked whether I had my guardian’s permission. I stared at the screen for a moment before typing back.

[I’m eighteen. I don’t need it.]

At the other end of the dining table, Lena was folding her napkin into a neat little square. “Does Nora not want to live in the dorms?”

Mom paused with her fork halfway through picking the bones out of Lena’s grilled fish. Lena had never needed anyone to do it for her. She was simply used to someone always being willing.

“If she doesn’t like it, that’s her problem,” Mom said. “The clinic is signing a long-term contract with North Ridge next month. I can’t drive home every day just to hear her snap at me over every little thing.”

Dad pushed his glass aside. “Last year I missed one phone call, and she sulked for a week. Maybe dorm life will teach her how to get along with people.”

That call had come on the first new-moon night I ever shifted alone. I’d stood outside the training field shaking from the cold, unable to find the jacket I’d left in my locker. Dad hadn’t answered because Lena had twisted her ankle at a Sea Cliff Pack party. He drove there that night and bought her new running shoes the next morning.

I didn’t bring it up. Whenever they talked about my attitude, I used to explain. Somehow, every explanation ended with me apologizing for bothering them.

Mom turned to Dad. “Lena is trying out for the junior patrol next year. You promised you’d meet her coach.”

“I remember.” His whole voice softened when he looked at her. “I’ll pick you up after school on Friday.”

“I tried out last year,” I said. “Do either of you know which team I made?”

Dad frowned as if I’d deliberately asked at the worst possible time. Mom sighed. “Nora, stop turning everything into a competition.”

I looked down at the food going cold on my plate. I hadn’t made a team because I hadn’t been allowed to try out. The registration form required a parent’s signature. Mom assumed Dad would sign it; Dad assumed it was Mom’s year. The school gave me one last chance after the deadline. I waited outside the office with the form in my hands until everyone went home.

I’d spent the last ten years waiting in places like that: bleachers after practice, hallways during parent-teacher conferences, plastic chairs at the physical therapy center. Whenever someone asked about my family, I said they were busy. I said it so often I almost believed it.

During a post-full-moon physical one year, the school nurse discovered that an old injury in my ankle had never been treated. She asked if I’d hurt it during a shift. I told her I couldn’t remember. Then she checked my file and found that I’d visited the infirmary two months earlier. The school had sent follow-up notices to both my parents. Mom’s assistant said she was waiting for confirmation from Dad’s office. Dad’s assistant said Black Pine shouldn’t be booking appointments with a Sea Cliff doctor.

The nurse called the clinic in front of me and booked me in for the next day. When she asked why I hadn’t chased my parents, I tied my shoe and told her I had.

After that, I kept every form, payment, and appointment in a color-coded calendar on my phone, organized by the year each parent was supposed to be responsible for me. The first time Josie saw it, she asked why I had to remind two adults they had a daughter.

“Because I’m the one who misses out if I don’t,” I told her.

The calendar could tell me when to ask. It couldn’t make either of them show up.

In eighth grade, I won first place in the school orienteering race. The organizers wanted a photo of each winner with their family. I said my parents were stuck in traffic. In reality, they were three miles away watching Lena take part in a noncompetitive pup demonstration. She got scared at one of the barriers and cried, so they carried her back between them. I waited until the photographer packed away his camera.

Lena touched my arm. “Can you please not start anything tonight? It’s been forever since the whole family was together.”

The whole family. She sat in the middle, and both our parents angled their chairs toward her. I looked down and realized I had already shifted mine half a step away from the table.

My phone lit up again.

[Redwood Institute: Candidates for the Search-and-Rescue Location Project’s full scholarship must complete a separate interview. Your award-winning paper on mountain signal analysis impressed our admissions committee.]

Redwood was in Oregon, three thousand miles away. Mom’s authority as Alpha of Sea Cliff didn’t reach that far. Neither did Dad’s control over Black Pine.

I turned my phone facedown. For the first time, leaving didn’t make me feel guilty.