Chapter 4. Most Girls Your Age

Wren POV

Heat.

The word hung in the air between us like it meant something everyone knew.

Dr. Asher was already steering me into an exam room with one hand on my back. "Juno, is it? Thank you, sweetheart. Wait outside, she'll be fine." The door clicked shut. "Up on the table. Let's get that temperature down."

I sat. The paper crinkled under me, loud as thunder. She stuck a thermometer in my ear, glanced at it and made a small, unimpressed sound, like a mechanic looking at a car that had been driven too long without oil.

"A hundred and three. You've been fighting this all morning, haven't you?"

I nodded.

I pulled out my phone with shaking hands and typed.

What's a heat?

I turned the screen toward her.

She read it, and for a second her face did something complicated. Then she smoothed it out and opened a cabinet.

"First one away from home?" she asked.

I didn't know what to answer. I nodded again, because it was easier.

"That explains the panic. Back home, someone always knows what's coming. Here, it sneaks up on you." She came back with a small paper cup of water and two pale green tablets. "These will take the edge off. Not all the way. Enough to get you home."

I stared at the pills.

"They're safe," she said. "Every girl on this campus who needs them takes them. Go on."

Every girl on this campus.

I swallowed them. They tasted like mint and chalk.

Dr. Asher pulled a stool over and sat down in front of me, elbows on her knees, the way people do when they're about to give you news.

"It comes in cycles," she said, matter-of-fact. "Every few months, three or four days. Fever, aches, every sense turned up too high. And yes," she added, with a look over her glasses, "a lot of wanting. That part's normal too. Your body's loud, but it doesn't get to make your decisions for you. Remember that."

My face went hot all over again, and this time it had nothing to do with the fever.

"What helps is rest, fluids, these tablets and staying away from crowded rooms full of strangers. Some boys have terrible manners around a girl in heat." She paused. "And your mate, of course, if you've found him. That helps most of all."

I typed so fast I misspelled it twice.

My mate?

Dr. Asher looked at the word for a long moment.

"You know," she said slowly, "I think that's a conversation for your family, not for me. You should call your mother tonight, honey. She'll explain it better than I can."

My mother.

My mother, who had tucked me into bed every bad week since I was eighteen and called it hormones. Who had driven me to a human doctor two towns away who used the word "irregular" and nothing else.

My mother knew what this was?

No. That wasn't possible. Mom didn't know. Mom couldn't know, because if she knew, she'd know the rest of it. The room. The night my bones broke. What I was.

I typed again, slower.

Most girls my age have this?

Dr. Asher stood and patted my knee, already moving toward the door. "Most girls your age have had them for years. You're a little late, that's all. Nothing to be ashamed of."

She opened the door. Then she stopped and looked back at me.

"And Wren? Three days. No lectures. Lock your door and sleep it off."

She was gone before I could ask how she knew my name.

I sat on the crinkling paper and stared at the wall.

Most girls my age.

For two years, I'd believed I was the only one. That whatever had happened in that room had broken something in me that would never be fixed. That I was a mistake, a monster, a thing that shouldn't exist.

And a doctor in a cardigan had just looked at me like I had a cold.

I wasn't the only one.

I didn't know if I wanted to laugh or be sick.

Juno was waiting in the lobby, scrolling on her phone with one sneaker bouncing. She jumped up when she saw me.

"Hey. You look less like a microwave. What'd she say?"

I typed: Bad fever. Need to rest. Thank you for finding me.

I hesitated. Then I added: How did you know where I was?

Juno blinked. "Honestly? The hockey guy."

My stomach dropped.

"The tall one, back row, permanent bad mood," she said. "He leaned over and told me the girl in the purple sweater was sick and someone should check the bathroom. Then he walked out the other door." She shrugged. "That man has sat behind me in two lectures. He has never said one word to me. I figured if he was talking, it was serious."

I looked down at my phone.

Stay where you are. Help is coming.

"Anyway," Juno said, taking my phone right out of my hand and typing in her number. "Text me when you get home, or I'll assume you died. I'm very dramatic."

She hugged me before I could decide if I wanted to be hugged, then jogged off toward the nursing building.

I stepped outside.

The air was cooler now, the sky going gold behind the pines. I took a deep breath, the first one in hours that didn't burn.

Then I smelled him again.

He was standing by the bike rack at the edge of the parking lot, hands in his jacket pockets, jaw so tight I could see the muscle jumping from here. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the street. At the trees. At every car that pulled in.

The way Dad did.

He didn't come over. He didn't say anything.

When I started walking, he started walking too.

Half a block behind me. Always half a block. When I crossed the street, he crossed. When I stopped at the corner to catch my breath, he stopped, and pulled out his phone, and looked at it with great interest.

I could hear his heartbeat. It wasn't slow anymore.

The pills were working, but not enough. Every step, the pull got worse. I wanted to turn around. I wanted to walk straight back to him. The thing under my skin was pressing against my ribs, and I didn't know if it wanted to run toward him or away.

I didn't turn around.

At my building, I fumbled the key twice before I got it in the lock. I looked back from the doorway.

The street was empty.

Upstairs, I locked my bedroom door, crawled onto the bed and lay there in the dark, waiting for my heart to slow down.

It didn't.

Because something was bothering me. Something small, under all the fever and fear. A detail my brain had filed away while I was too sick to notice.

The restroom.

When I'd stumbled out of the stall with Juno holding me up, I'd grabbed the door handle on the way out.

It had smelled like woodsmoke and frost.

Someone had stood outside that door before Juno ever opened it. Someone who'd known exactly where I was. Someone who'd waited until help came, and then walked away.

And I knew only one person on this campus who smelled like that.