Free Linger by Maggie Stiefvater Page A

a young hippie life in thebackseat of my Volkswagen, without parental constraints. It had never seemed like such a good idea as now, my teeth starting to chatter and my toes and ears going numb.
    I heard Grace say, “Will you show me what you were working on upstairs?”
    Her mom sounded vaguely suspicious as she said, “Okay.”
    â€œLet me just get my sweater,” Grace said. She came over to the glass door of the deck, silently unlocking it as she got her sweater off the back of the kitchen table with her other hand. I saw her mouth Sorry to me. A little louder, she said, “It’s cold in here.”
    I counted to twenty after they’d left the kitchen, and let myself in. I was shuddering uncontrollably with the cold, but I was still Sam.
    I had all the evidence I needed that my cure was real, but I was still waiting for the punch line.
    â€¢ GRACE •
    Sam was still shaking so badly by the time I met him in my room that I completely forgot about my lingering headache. I shoved my bedroom door shut without turning on the light and followed the sound of his voice to the bed.
    â€œM-m-maybe we need to rethink our lifestyle choices,” he whispered to me, teeth chattering, as I climbed into bed and wrapped my arms around him. My fingers brushed against the goose bumps that covered his arms; I could feel them even through the fabric of his shirt.
    I tugged the blanket up to cover both of our heads and pressed my face against the frigid skin of his neck. It felt selfish to say it out loud. “I don’t want to sleep without you.”
    He curled into a tiny ball — his feet, even through his socks, were freezing against my bare legs — and mumbled, “Me neither. B-but we have our whole —” His words piled up on top of one another; he had to stop and rub his hand over his lips to warm them before he went on. “Our whole lives ahead of us. To be together.”
    â€œOur whole lives, starting now,” I said. Outside my bedroom door, I heard my dad’s voice — he must’ve gotten home just as I came into the room — and listened to my parents’ voices as they climbed up the stairs to their room, noisy and jostling against each other. For a brief moment, I envied their freedom to come and go as they pleased, no school, no parents, no rules. “I mean, you don’t have to stay here, if it makes you uncomfortable. If you don’t want to.” I paused. “I didn’t mean for that to sound so clingy.”
    Sam rolled over to face me. I couldn’t see anything but the glint of his eyes in the darkness. “I’ll never get tired of this. I just didn’t want to get you in trouble. I just didn’t want you to feel like you had to ask me to go. If it gets too difficult.”
    I touched his cold cheek with my hand; it felt good against my skin. “You can be pretty stupid sometimes for such a smart guy.” I felt his smile curve against my palm as he pushed his body closer to mine.
    â€œEither you’re really hot,” Sam said, “or I’m really cold.”
    â€œDuh, I’m hot,” I whispered. “Soooo hot.”
    Sam laughed soundlessly — a little, shaky, exhaling sound.
    I reached down to clutch his fingers in mine; we held them like that, smashed between our bodies in a knot, until his fingers stopped feeling so frigid.
    â€œTell me about the new wolf,” I said.
    Sam went still beside me. “There’s something wrong with him. He wasn’t afraid of me.”
    â€œThat’s weird.”
    â€œIt made me wonder what kind of person would choose to be a wolf. They must all be crazy, Grace, every one of Beck’s new wolves. Who would choose that?”
    Now it was my turn to go still. I wondered if Sam remembered lying beside me last year, just like this, and me confessing that I wished I changed, too, to go with him. No, not just to go with him. To feel what it