There’s a wolf where my brother used to be, a beast absolutely hellbent on ruining my life. He plunges his broad snoot into the Wednesday night spaghetti, and neither Mom nor Dad cares when half the bite slides off his nose and onto the table, to later be jostled to the floor by his grabbing, grubby paws. But if I came to the table without washing up first . . .

My brother, though, he just goes on as he will, starting to shovel the spaghetti into his mouth with his paws. I set the table and he’s got silverware, but it’s forgotten under the rim of his smeared plate. He takes the meatballs two at a time, into his cheeks, then reaches for the bowl in the center of the table. I gawk, waiting for Mom or Dad to correct this atrocity, but they keep on eating, Mom knifing her meatballs neatly in half, Dad squinting as he wonders how much of the ice has melted into his Old Fashioned.

The big bowl of spaghetti tips, and Nick—brother, wolf, menace—scoops it up in his arms, funneling it into his maw. Spaghetti cascades down his chin, chest, onto the floor. One meatball thinks to escape, but Nick’s on it before it can.

“Elly, honey, eat your peas.”

I don’t eat my peas.

Cleaning up used to be my domain, but after dinner, mom shoos me out of the dining room, saying she wants to work in peace. Dad settles into his chair with his newspaper in front of the nightly news, while Nick has fled to the backyard, flinging himself across the grass in wild abandon. He dips his sauced face to the grass, to drag jowl and cheek clean before he settles down for a more serious grooming.

I focus on Mom, bent to the floor, scooping bits of spaghetti from the linoleum. She almost makes it through the task before she starts to cry.

My brother wasn’t always a wolf, but life is strange and changes you. Mom and Dad say they never wanted this, not for Nick, Nick who had such promise. Nick who pitched for the high school baseball team and Nick who dreamed of being a quarterback, but had no legs for the position. He runs endless circles in the backyard now, like he’s trying to achieve escape velocity if not a touchdown. He leaps for the fence, but can never quite make the top of it. Are wolves jumpers? Runners, sure. Give him a football now, I told Dad one night and he just looked at me like I’d suggested serving Nick dog food for dinner.

My folks don’t mind me much as I tend to homework and my allotted thirty minutes of internet before bed. I make sure they’re watching Nick in the yard as I head for Reddit and see if anyone has replied to r/disbelief where u/sologrrl asked what to do upon her brother turning into a wolf. There are no replies. The main page doesn’t contain anything useful, either. “I saw this girl on the subway licking this guy’s hair,” followed by “there was this weird cliff near my dad’s house and we used to fall off it into the ocean.” No wolves.

I don’t delete my browser history before I go to bed. Ever since Nick changed, Mom and Dad don’t watch me the way they used to. They oversleep their alarms and don’t shower every day and they forget to sign my permission slips or check my report cards. What matters is this thing with Nick. They go to therapy over it, leaving Nick in the car like a dog (well, Gerald, he is) and they debate collars and leashes and nametags (Agnes, gracious no).

When I wake in the night it is to the sound of my Nike high-tops being chewed. Again. I crawl out of the bed, gently shoving Nick away from my shoes. A sliver of light cuts into the room from where he pushed the door open. Nick puts a paw across my hands like we’re playing an old game. Every time I tug the shoes away, he manages to snag a shoelace and hold on. He’s already worked a hole into the toe of the left shoe.

Seeing the frayed leather, I give up, surrendering the shoes to his slobbery love. Nick catches my fingers in his mouth next, but gently, so gently you know he’d never break the skin. His mouth is warm, alive, and gnawing on me. Sharp teeth, soft tongue. Alive and real. I extract myself from this mauling and crawl back to bed, but Nick joins me, nosing his way under the covers the way he used to when he found me up and reading comics.

Under the covers, he smells like grass. His breath is somehow sweet, his eyes black and endless as he watches me watching him. We were never this close when he was a boy—he spent too much time with friends, was just enough older that we were enemies instead of siblings—but now, now . . . He’s a wolf. My brother is gone, but he’s right here, panting in my ear as I drift to sleep.

Mom and Dad don’t notice the hole in my shoe and wouldn’t remember to drop me at school but for me hollering about it. Nick is curled on the backseat beside me until I open the door and then he’s bounding out of the car behind me and Mom is screeching for me to get him back into the car. I abandon my backpack of books, chasing Nick with my arms in the air and he’s running and pouncing like we’re playing. My sock flashes like blood through the hole in my shoe. I can’t breathe for crying; tears are streaming down my cheeks—my mom is red-faced in the car, screaming until Dad gets out and helps me. With Nick secured, they peel away without a goodbye.

Jennifer presses my backpack into my arms. “Hey, here.”

A handful of tissues follow. Jennifer is the mom-friend, the friend who has everything you might ever need in their bag and my need for tissues is mighty. I take the tissues, but can only clutch them, staring at the car as it grows smaller and smaller.

“First day back,” Jennifer says, “you just go to the library if you need alone time. That’s what they had me do. Put your head down, read books, they won’t care. Come on—I’ll walk you to the office.”

Jennifer is a solid presence beside me as we walk toward the school, into the office. People might be murmuring and pointing at me as we go in, but with Jennifer beside me, it doesn’t matter. I’m okay, she’s got me, and the day will end before I know it and I’ll be back home where shit is weird in a different way.

I check in to let them know I’m back—a parent was supposed to come with me, I’m told, and I just stare because how, how could I make that happen? Would they have brought Nick in with them? And then what? Jennifer scoffs for me, then there’s my school counselor. “Homeroom, then library, how about?” she suggests.

The library doesn’t have any helpful books on brothers transforming to wolves. They’ve got an omnibus of X-Men comics, but those just make me think of Nick. After school (I’m allowed to walk home but can’t be trusted to get there on my own), I head to my homework desk, but veer for Reddit first. Mom and Dad aren’t watching—they’ve got Nick between them and they’re crying.

There’s one reply for u/sologrrl. I click.

No advice, only a note: The worst part is when the wolf stops showing up.