Under My Skin (Wildlings) by Charles de Lint Page A

on band practice and we're all hanging around in Desmond's back yard. Our hearts just weren't in it and we were playing like crap.
    "Do you think she was happy being a rat?" Desmond asks.
    He's stretched out on a patio couch, his head in Cindy's lap. Marina's sitting cross-legged on one of the patio chairs. Elzie and I are slouched on two more, holding hands in the space between our chairs.
    "Do you mean having a rat as her Wildling shape?" Marina asks.
    "Yeah. If it happened to me, I'd be majorly disappointed. Like when you consider all the cool animals you could be ..." He shrugs. "I don't know. I'd just feel cheated."
    "I think rats are cute," Cindy says. "Not the scuzzy ones that live in storm drains and stuff, but the kind you get from a pet store. I had pet rat when I was a kid and I just loved him."
    We all look at her.
    "Well, I did."
    It's been different having someone hanging with us who doesn't know the secret that Elzie and I are carrying. We find ourselves talking around the simplest things, having to be careful we don't say something that'll give us away. I like Cindy, but having her here gives me a whole new respect for those spandexed superheroes with their secret identities.
    "I'd think," Elzie says, "that you'd end up embracing whatever your animal spirit was."
    Marina nods.
    "Because no matter what it was," Elzie goes on, "it would still be a gift. It wouldn't make any difference how small or insignificant your animal shape might seem from the outside. Or what kind of a bad rep it has in terms of how people look at you."
    That's when I remember that I have no idea what kind of Wildling Elzie is. I keep meaning to ask her, but I only think of it when she's not around. What if she's something small like Laura was and somebody takes a potshot at her ?
    "Do you really think it's a gift?" Cindy asks. "Wouldn't it just make your life a complicated mess—and I'm not talking about what happened to poor Laura. I mean the general day-to-day business of living."
    "Life's probably always going to be complicated," Marina says. "It doesn't matter if you're a Wildling or an ordinary teenager."
    "I suppose," Cindy says, but she doesn't look convinced.

    Marina

    What happened to Laura changes the whole weekend. Where normally we practice at least a couple of times—we've had some of our best practices on Sunday afternoons—we don't take our instruments out again. We don't go skateboarding or even hang out together. I think Desmond spends at least Saturday night with Cindy. I don't know what Josh does. He's probably hanging out with Elzie.
    It's not like I was best friends with Laura, but the shock and the senselessness of how she died really gets to me.
    On Saturday I spend most of my time alone in my room. Mamá has tried to talk to me about what happened to Laura, but nothing she says helps. I know she really believes that God called Laura home and now she's up in heaven with Our Lady of Grace and Los Santos—but you can't tell me that this wasn't way before her time. I keep going back and forth between being really angry and really sad.
    A few of my blog subscribers knew Laura pretty well, so they're a mess, just trying to deal. I wish I could say or do something concrete to help them. I wish I could turn back time and save Laura.
    In the end, all I can do is monitor the comments—listen, sympathize and remind people to try to stay safe. It doesn't seem like enough.
    I wake up just before dawn on Sunday and decide to check out the waves with my board. I walk down the street away from my house, heading for the boardwalk. I feel as though a mental fog is lifting. I love this time of day. It's so full of possibilities. There's just me and the other early birds—a handful of joggers, a few surfers on the far side of the pier, people walking their dogs, the old Chinese man who does his Tai Chi on the beach every morning, no matter what day of the week it is.
    I'm wearing my wetsuit with the top unzipped and rolling my