The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett(79)

“What happened?” I wasn’t thinking of Enzo’s lips anymore. When he told one of his stories, it was impossible to think of anything else.

“They each came up with complex explanations for how the other guys couldn’t be the real Jesus. The psychologist wrote a book about it, documenting the whole experiment. But in the end, none of the men had been cured. They held on to their beliefs.”

“Good for them,” I said. “Tell me another one.”

Enzo laughed. “I’m not an encyclopedia, you know.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but Enzo’s phone rang. He groaned.

“Let it ring,” I said. “No, never mind. Get it. It might be the towing place.”

Enzo got out of bed and crossed to the kitchen. I immediately wanted him to come back. The bed was cold without him in it.

I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes, listening to Enzo in the background saying hello and yes, it was Lorenzo Calvetti. It wasn’t anyone calling about my car. They would have asked for me. I couldn’t really hear the rest of what he was saying, but it was weird. In all the time I’d spent at Enzo’s apartment, he hadn’t gotten any other calls.

Faintly, I heard him put his phone back on the counter, his feet on the floor as he made his way back to me. I opened my eyes.

Enzo stood at the edge of the bed. Something was wrong. His face was an unnatural shade of whitish green that made him look like wax. His eyes seemed too small and too dark. His mouth was open, as if it had come unhinged and he’d forgotten how to close it.

I sat up. “What’s wrong?”

For a second, he didn’t speak. “It’s Lizzie. They found her.”





Chapter 31


The Lost Girl

Lizzie Lovett did not go into the woods to turn into a werewolf. She went into the woods to die.

There was no shape-shifting involved. Hers was a much simpler story than that. Afterward, everyone nodded and said of course, of course, as if they’d known what happened all along. But they didn’t. How could they have known? Their guesses were as good as mine. Girls like Lizzie are not supposed to die.

I couldn’t make the news more real, no matter how many times I repeated it to myself. Lizzie Lovett was dead. Lizzie Lovett was dead. Lizzie was dead, dead, dead.

She was not a werewolf. She wasn’t hunting or stalking or pouncing. She wasn’t developing a taste for blood or raw flesh. She wasn’t using her powerful wolf jaw to crack bones. Lizzie wasn’t howling at the full moon. She wasn’t searching for a pack. She wasn’t lost or scared or trying to come to terms with her new identity. Lizzie was dead. That’s it. The end. Move along, nothing to see here. Certainly no werewolves. Just another dead girl.

When Enzo first told me what happened, I didn’t understand. I kept asking what he was talking about until he grabbed my shoulders and shook me and shouted, “She’s dead. Don’t you get it?”

I still didn’t. Death wasn’t familiar to me. It wasn’t part of my life. People don’t just die, especially when they’re young and beautiful and have a boyfriend who paints pictures of them.

I asked Enzo how. I asked him why. But he didn’t answer. He sat on the edge of the bed and didn’t move. He didn’t even roll a cigarette.

Everything was wrong, and nothing made sense. Lizzie Lovett was dead. Five minutes ago, Enzo and I had been talking about her in present tense. One phone call, and she became past tense. One phone call changed everything.

That’s when all the details started to blend together. The tow truck showed up, and Enzo had to go down to the police station, and at some point, I must have called my dad, but I didn’t remember it. The afternoon was a whirl of motion and lights, and I kept wondering if I had been the one who’d died, because nothing seemed real anymore.

The next thing I remember, I was at home, lying in bed, and people kept trying to talk to me. I saw their faces, but none of them mattered. My mom said I should eat something, that I had to eat, but I didn’t want food, not even when she brought me fast food, hamburgers and fries and a soda, which weren’t usually allowed in the house. My dad tried to talk to me as if everything were normal. He’d picked up my car from the shop. It was fixed. I could pay him later—or not. He didn’t get that someone was dead. My car didn’t matter.

Even Sundog came to see me at some point. He’d never been inside our house before. My family was all making exceptions for me, breaking all the rules, but Lizzie was the one who was dead. Why weren’t they thinking of her?

When I started crying, I didn’t know if it was for me or Lizzie or just tears that had to come out. My eyes burned. Snot leaked from my nose. I thought, Lizzie will never cry again, and that made me cry harder.

Days passed. I only got up to go to the bathroom. That’s something they don’t tell you about grief and depression. In movies and books, the depressed person doesn’t ever leave bed. In real life, you have to get up to pee. You have to eat some of the food your mom brings you. You have to accept the box of tissues your brother sets on the bed.

“Rush, wait,” I said before he could leave.

He came back and sat down on the edge of my bed. My brother had never seemed so willing to listen to me before. What was happening to the world?

“Where did they find her?”