At all of them.
At Rodan standing in the yard with his hands behind his back while they whipped me. At Maren speaking about practicality with her face composed and her clothes clean. At Brent laughing because he could. At Vera looking away because looking properly would've required something from her she never intended to give. At Helene choosing absence over action for years and years until absence itself became a kind of cruelty.
And under all of them, the thing that made all the others possible.
The lie.
Wolfless.
The word had been in my head so often it had stopped sounding like a word years ago and become more like weather, always there, always hanging over everything, deciding the shape of the day before anything in it even happened. Wolfless girl. Worthless girl. Useless girl.
