"Yeah," Kelly said, not bothering to look at Vivian. She wore a black T-shirt, black shorts, and low black boots. Vivian hoped she sweltered.

"Hey, man." The hipster with the lopsided haircut she'd seen with them the other day joined them. He turned out to be Jem, the dragon artist. He doled out sodas from an oversized cooler. Aiden grabbed two Cokes and collapsed onto the stone ledge, flicking his hair back. He handed Vivian one when she sat beside him. Vivian was annoyed that Kelly was on his other side talking incessantly, so she sat close, almost touching, and let him feel her breath on his neck. His head turned, his eyes questioned, and his breath mingled for a moment with hers.

"Jeez, they suck," a tall redhead said, climbing over the seat on Vivian's other side and nodding toward the stage. "Yo, Aiden." He slapped Aiden's hand.

"Go home!" his pudgy sidekick yelled at the band. Some kids behind him told him to sit down, and he made a rude gesture at them with little malice attached.

Another girl, a blonde with a nose ring and a pimple on her chin, was close behind them. "Yeah, sit down, shut up, and gimme a beer," she said.

"Christ, Bingo, you're gonna get us thrown outta here," Jem complained. Vivian didn't know if Bingo was the girl or the pudgy guy who pulled a red-and-white can from his backpack.

"Bingo!" Aiden held out his arms to the blonde, and Vivian's eyes narrowed.

The blonde leaned over and planted a fat, sisterly kiss on his forehead. "Hiya, douchebag."

Vivian relaxed.

Bingo noticed Vivian. "Hey, new girl."

Vivian raised two fingers in acknowledgment and said, "Hi." That was good enough for the blonde; she climbed into the row in front and went back to teasing Pudgy Boy.

A crashing chord filled the air, and the band onstage filed off. Some in the crowd applauded, a few whistled, but most seemed to be of the same opinion as the redhead. "Vi-sions, Vi-sions, Vi-sions," some kids in front chanted, impatient for the next act, and others took up the call, but no new band came out. Instead, fuzzy loud rock blurted out from a nearby speaker.

"You go to Wilson?" one of the giggling girls asked.

"Yeah, she does," answered the redheaded boy. Vivian was surprised he knew.

"Who do you hang with?" the girl asked.

"No one really," Vivian answered.

"I've seen you with those hard-core types down by the park," Kelly said, a sneer in her voice.

"You mean the Five," Vivian answered, unwilling to disown them in the face of Kelly's scorn, no matter how she felt about them right now.

"Is that what they call themselves?" Kelly laughed.

"It's what my family calls them," Vivian said. "They grew up together."

"You're related to them?" Kelly asked, seeming shocked.

"They're cousins, sort of."

"Ooh, they're cute," said the other giggler. "Especially that one with the little beard."

"Stay away from him; he bites."

The girl giggled louder.

Two boys in baggy shorts, high-tops, and loud T-shirts showed up and slapped hands with the other boys. "This is Vivian," Aiden said, slinking a firm arm of ownership across her shoulders in response to their covetous gazes. Vivian's toes curled with pleasure at the pride in his voice, and she glanced Kelly's way. She liked the way Aiden made her feel like a treasure others should envy him for having. If one of the Five had acted that way she'd have been annoyed, but Aiden made it seem right.

"Welcome to the Amoeba," one of the boys said.

"The Amoeba?" she asked Aiden.

"The gang," he said, tossing his hand to indicate all around. "My people. A large amorphous mass that keeps on changing size, hasn't much apparent use, sometimes makes you sick, and occasionally breaks off into smaller parts that act exactly like the parent."

Behind her laughter Vivian inspected him with interest. He had a sense of pack. She liked that. In fact, despite Kelly, she liked his pack. They hadn't challenged her, they had accepted her. Get more than one of her people together nowadays and the sparks flew. This comfort was a relief.

Kelly stood up. "We're going to the bathroom." All the meat-girls followed her obediently; she was head bitch.

"Coming?" Bingo called over her shoulder.

Vivian shook her head. I piss when I please, she thought.

As Aiden bantered with his friends, Vivian teased herself with his closeness. He felt good, he smelled sexy, she didn't know why she'd worried so much before. If she bit him it would be a bite he'd enjoy. Her breast lightly touched his arm and her breath skipped faster. When would he kiss her? Would she like it? She had only kissed her own kind. Could it compare?

Right after the girls filed back from the bathroom a cheer went up from the crowd and Vivian automatically looked at the stage. Six figures in motley colors pranced out, grabbing instruments and mikes. The fuzzy loudspeakers cut off midphrase and in seconds the air was laced with live music.

The tunes were light, jangly, and airy, full of love and dreams, totally different from the thumping, grinding, wrenching music the Five played loud  -  music to rip out guts by, Vivian called it, though she couldn't deny that it usually gave her a fierce delight. But this music was good, too. There was a sweet yearning in it. She let the music take her, so she could be one with something for a while, instead of an outsider looking in.

The sun was warm on her back and she sucked the warmth up like life. Aiden's hand slid across her neck. She turned to him and met his eyes.

"What red lips you have," he said in her ear.

Did she dare say it? "All the better to kiss you with, my dear," she replied.

And then their lips met.

He was gentle. She hadn't expected that. Kisses to her were a tight clutch, teeth, and tongue. His torturing hands slid down her sides and lightly caressed her back. When he flicked her lip with his tongue, she parted her mouth to invite him in. Instead, he pulled away and sighed. She was intrigued.

His eyes were shy beneath his dark lashes, and his lips curved with delight and desire - desire he wouldn't force on her. Then the crowd was on its feet, moving to the swelling music she had forgotten about, and they had to rise and be part of the world.

She looked around her at the excited faces. They were different. He was different. She realized she didn't know their rules.

Bingo danced on her seat in a swirl of shirt, the gigglers danced in the aisle, and the crowd around bobbed and waved their arms. When Aiden pulled Vivian close to sway alongside him she met his embrace, but how close was she allowed? She didn't want to scare him away but she didn't like to wait. Maybe this was all wrong.

This is the last time, she thought. No more dates. I can't go through this agony.

The crowd was cheering and his fingers tipped her chin. His soft lips were on hers once more, his tongue more adventurous, but his hands still tame. It's a game, she thought, a game, of pretend we don't want sex so badly. Maybe he thought wanting wasn't polite.

His eyes were closed. He enjoyed her taste. His nostrils flared with the smell of her. That was good. But as her eyes began to close, too, she saw familiar figures on the hill above - the Five.

A busty girl was draped around Rafe's neck, his hand inserted halfway down the back of her shorts. Three other teased-hair dolls in jeans and skimpy tops completed their entourage. This wasn't their music  -  far from it; they were spying on her.

Vivian took a lesson from Pudgy Boy and made an unmistakable gesture in their direction, behind Aiden's back. Then her fingers curled in Aiden's hair. I will teach you to be less polite, she thought.

Chapter 6

6

That week Vivian couldn't tell if the singing in her blood was for Aiden or for the ripening Midsummer Moon. Each night she ran for joy, but It's not love, she argued to herself at breakfast as she traced Aiden's face in her mind. I'm only having fun.

She came to school early so she would have more time with him, and they stole kisses in the hallway between classes. She liked to watch the color rise on the cheeks of the young men who passed, and see the envy on the faces of the unkissed girls. I am someone now, she thought.

Aiden had a job after school in a video store so she couldn't hang out with him then, but he called her in the evenings, waking her from her pre-run nap, and it turned out they had a lot to talk about. He liked to play "what if." He'd say, "What if a mysterious illness wiped out everyone on Earth but us, what would we do?" and they'd make up all sorts of possibilities.

Vivian was reluctant to answer his questions about her family at first, but before long she revealed that her father had died in a fire, and that she was always fighting with her mother, although she didn't tell him what those fights were about. He never made fun of anything she cared about, and he was always interested in what she had to say. What a relief to have someone to listen to her, even if she could only talk about half her life.

Kelly stopped showing up in the quad at lunch, and she took the gigglers with her wherever it was she went. Smart choice, girl, Vivian thought. 'Cus one wrong move and I'll be on you. The thought crossed her mind that maybe now she understood why Esmé fought Astrid. She shrugged that off fast. Esmé had no right to fight for Gabriel; he was too young for her.

"There's an anti-prom party at Bingo's house Saturday," Aiden said one day. "Her parents are away. It'll be wild."

"I like wild," Vivian said, nuzzling his ear. Saturday maybe she'd make him hers for sure.

But on Thursday night when she flung up her bedroom window and looked at the sky, she realized that the moon would be full on Saturday. There was no way she could go to that party with Aiden. The hair prickled roughly on her arms. She climbed hastily onto the porch roof outside her window, leaped to the yard, and the change was upon her almost before she reached the cover of the riverbank weeds.

The nearer to full moon, the quicker the change, the less control; and the night Earth's sister loomed round and whole there was no choice - a loup-garou must change no matter what. Saturday, Vivian thought with dismay as she shuddered to all fours. But then the perfume of the night wiped away her thoughts.

Before dawn Vivian stretched into her human shape amid the weeds, wiping the river mud in smears across her naked abdomen. She yawned wide, tongue curling. Time for another nap before school.

The tall grass rustled, but there was no wind. Vivian's eyes narrowed. Then she sniffed the musky smell of wolf-kind and her hairs lay flat again.

"Vivian," a harsh voice whispered. Rafe crawled from his hidden nest. He waved her underwear at her. "I've been waiting for you."

"Gimme those." She snatched them from him.

He crouched, watching her dress. "I miss you," he said.

Vivian shrugged. "You see me."

"Not like before."

"We grew apart. You know." They'd been through all that.

"I don't understand you, Vivian."

"You sound like my mother."

Rafe stuck his face in hers. "You broke up with me because of the girl I killed to get Axel out of jail," he said. "But I bet if you got a sniff of human blood you'd get your muzzle wet."

She jerked away.

When the Goddess, the Lady Moon, gave wolf-kind the gift to change, she warned the first loups-garoux to pity humans for their soft, immutable flesh, for wolf-kind had once been like them. "Use your eyes," the Goddess said. "Look at them and praise my name for changing you; kill them and kill yourselves." But humans were vulnerable and prey-like. They triggered the instinct to hunt.

"We should stay far from humans when we're changed."

"They are ours to hunt," Rafe said. "Axel knew. He couldn't hold back any longer. We were losing our balls in West Virginia, Vivian."

"You can hold tight to your balls and twist," said Vivian, dragging her T-shirt over her head.

How many of the pack yearn to hunt like the Five? Vivian wondered later as she crawled into bed. How long do we have until we are destroyed?

The phone rang while Vivian ate breakfast with Esmé. Rudy answered it. After a short conversation he came into the kitchen. "That was the last agreement. The Ordeal is on."

"It can't be this full moon," Esmé said.

Rudy sat down at the table with them. "I know. Orlando says that by law we have to allow a full month in case others want to come from afar."

"So it's July then," Esmé said. "July thirteenth?"

"Sounds right." Rudy shook his head. "I wish it wasn't so far away, though." He finished his coffee and stood up. "Gotta get to work."

"Yeah, me too." Esmé said. "Wash up for me, babe. Okay?" She left, followed by the sounds of Vivian's protests.

"I'm grounded," Vivian told Aiden at lunch time. The idea that someone could limit her freedom was mortifying, but the excuse was something Aiden could understand.

"Grounded?" He looked at her in amazement. "What did you do to get grounded?"

"Stayed out all night with my cousins smoking dope." She was damned if she'd pretend to be grounded for some tame reason.

He ran his fingers through his hair as he digested what she'd told him. Silently, she dared him to tell her off. Apparently he decided not to comment. "How long?"

"Until I talk my mother out of it, which is usually a week." That was a tiny bit of truth.

Aiden's dark eyes lowered in disappointment. "I guess the party tomorrow night is off, huh?"