What was surprising was how much each crossed-out line wounded me?as if the points of the letters had cutting edges. I'd known the essence of what it would say before I'd opened it. His answer to my pleading note?passed from Charlie to Billy to him, just like second grade, as he'd pointed out?was no surprise. Laughing was the last thing I felt like doing now as I reread the words I'd already memorized. Don't give yourself a brain hemorrhage, Jacob, I would have told him. If it'd been there, I might have laughed. I could imagine the frustration pulling his black eyebrows together and crumpling his forehead. I could picture him writing this?scrawling the angry letters in his rough handwriting, slashing through line after line when the words came out wrong, maybe even snapping the pen in his too-big hand that would explain the ink splatters. I ran my fingers across the page, feeling the dents where he had pressed the pen to the paper so hard that it had nearly broken through. It just makes it worse when I think about you too much, so don't write anymore We can't be friends when you're spending all your time with a bunch of Look, I know I'm being a jerk, but there's just no way around What part of 'mortal enemies' is too complicated for you to You made the choice here, okay? You can't have it both ways when I don't know why you're making Charlie carry notes to Billy like we're in second grade if I Somewhere, far, far away in the cold forest, a wolf howled. Would I ever learn the outcome of that other fight? Find out who the winners and the losers were? Would I live long enough for that?īlack eyes, wild with their fierce craving for my death, watched for the moment when my protector's attention would be diverted. I knew that we could expect no help - at this moment, his family was fighting for their lives just as surely as he was for ours. His intense concentration betrayed no hint of doubt, though he was outnumbered.
With ice in my heart, I watched him prepare to defend me. ALL OUR ATTEMPTS AT SUBTERFUGE HAD BEEN IN VAIN.