Shiver Quotes

Tonight,

I couldn’t stop remembering what it had felt like when I’d been just about to shift. The way the cold had crawled along my skin, trailing goosebumps behind it. The turn, turn, turn of my stomach, aching nausea unfurling. The slow sunburst of pain up my spine as it stretched according to memories of another shape. My thoughts slipping away from me, crushed and reformed to fit my winter skull.

Sleep evaded me, just out of my grasp. My instincts prickled relentlessly, urging me to alertness. The darkness pressed against my eyes while the wolf inside me sang something is not right.

Outside, the wolves began to howl.

I opened the paper.

And I completely forgot what my face was supposed to look like. I just sat there, staring at the words on the paper, not really believing them. It wasn’t the hugest of presents, though for Grace, it must’ve been difficult to manage. What was amazing was that it was me, a resolution I hadn’t be brave enough to write down. It was something that said she knew me. Something that made the I love yous real.

It was an invoice. For five hours of studio time.

I wondered if I was really remembering my mother making me cupcakes, or if it was something my brain had stolen from one of the thousands of books I had read. Someone else’s mother, pasted on to my own, slinking in to fill the void.

Mandlestam,

who wrote about me without having any way to know me:

But by blood no wolf am I

    ”You and those cranes!” She laughed as she saw that I was folding the tidier of the two sandwich papers into a big floppy bird printed with the Subway logo. ”What is it with you and them?”

    ”I used to make them for good times. To remember the moment.” I waved the Subway crane at her; it flapped its loose, wrinkled wings. ”You know you’ll never forget where this crane came from.”

    Grace studied it. ”I think that’s a pretty safe assumption.”

    ”Mission accomplished,” I said softly, and rested the crane on the floor beside the love seat.

I missed my mother.

I couldn’t explain this to Grace, because I knew all she could see when she thought of my mother were the savage scars that my parents had left on my wrists.

    Cole stretched his arm above his head to put it on, and suddenly all I could think was that I couldn’t stand to see anyone but my brother wear that T-shirt. Unthinkingly, I grabbed a handful of the fabric and Cole froze, looking down at me, expression blank. Maybe a little puzzled.

    I tugged, indicating what I wanted, and still with a vaguely curious expression, he released his fist, letting me pull the shirt from his hands. Once I had the shirt, I didn’t want to explain why I had taken it back, so I kissed him instead. It was easier kissing him, pressing him back up against the wall, trying out the shape of his smirk on my lips, than it was to sort out why Jack’s shirt in someone else’s hands made me feel so sharp and exposed inside.

    And he was a good kisser.