"Daddy?"
It can't be. There is no way, but it sounds just like him. My tongue seems to stick to my throat and my chest squeezes tightly, but I manage to say it again.
"Daddy?"
Nick's growling goes out of control. His body shakes with it. It rattles. My body rattles too.
A wolf growling is not something you want to be within ten feet of, and I'm much closer than that and it's scary. It's really scary, but not as scary as what is on the other side of that door.
My dad died. And yet my dad is speaking. I can hear him over the growls. I can. I can hear him somehow, right behind the door.
My feet silently move across the floor.
"Daddy, is that you?" I whisper.
He hears me somehow.
"Open the door, Zara honey, and let me in."
I want to. I really want to, but shock makes my limbs slow and heavy. Then Nick smashes up onto his hind legs and presses his front paws against the door, blocking me.
"Move, Nick," I beg and step closer, lean in, put my hands flat against the door, like I can somehow feel through to the other side and touch my dad's face, feel his skin warm again, pulsing with life. But I can't.
Of course I can't. The cold wood against my hands seems so unfair.
"You can't be here." My voice sounds tiny and weak. My heart thumps in my chest.
If I opened that door would he be there? Would he smile at me and show his dimples? Would his cheeks be scruffy because he needed a shave? Would he hug me? All I've wanted all these months was for him to be alive.
But I'dseen him on the floor. I'd seen him in the coffin. And you can feel it when someone has died, you can feel that his soul is gone, just gone, the emptiness of his body. But if werewolves and pixies can be real, then maybe this can be happening. Maybe my dad can actually be here, right here, just a few inches of wood away from me.
I sway against the door. My shoulder presses into Nick's side. "You can't. You can't be here."
"I am, Zara. Let me in. I'll explain," he says.
He died. He died. I saw him die. The water on the floor. His face cold beneath my fingers.
But what if he didn't? "Daddy?"
"I'm right here, baby."
Lumps form in my throat, going all the way down into the core of me.
It's his voice. His. Right there. I reach toward the doorknob but I don't get to turn it.
Nick smashes at me with his head, pushing against my lower jaw and cheek, like a blow. His muzzle moves my head away from the door. He presses his face in between me and the wood. Fur gets in my mouth. I spit it out and push at him.
"That's my dad. My dad." I slap the door. "He's on the other side. The pixies will get him."
Nick shows me his teeth.
"I can't lose him again, Nick."
The wolf snarls like he's ready to bite. My head jerks back and away, but then I steady myself.
"Get… out… of… the… way."
Pushing against his thick neck, I slam my hands against him over and over again, pummeling him. He doesn't budge.
"Move!" I order. "Move."
"Zara, is there a wolf in there with you? Do not trust him," my dad's voice says, calmly, really calmly.
I grab a fistful of fur and freeze. All at once it hits me that something is not right. My dad would never be calm if I was in my bedroom with a wolf. He'd be stressed and screaming, breaking the door down, kicking it in like he did once when I was really little and had accidentally locked myself in the bathroom and couldn't get the lock out of the bolt because it was so old. He'd kicked that door down, splintering the wood, clutching me to him. He'd kissed my forehead over and over again.
"I'd never let anything happen to you, princess," he'd said. "You're my baby."
My dad would be kicking the door in. My dad would be saving me.
"Let me in," he says. "Zara…"
Letting go of Nick, I stagger backward. My hands fly up to my mouth, covering it.
Nick stops snarling at me and wags his fluffy tail.
How would my dad know that it is a wolf in here and not a dog? How would he know that it isn't pixies?
I shudder. Nick pounds next to me, pressing his side against my legs. I drop my hands and plunge my fingers into his fur, burying them there, looking for something. Maybe comfort. Maybe warmth. Maybe strength. Maybe all three.
"You're dead," I say and a sob breaks through my chest, exploding out of me. "You can't be here."
"I'm not dead, Zara."
I move away from Nick, grab a pillow instead, clutching it against me like a shield. The memory of my dad on the floor assails me. I see the water bottle rolling across the wood. I see his mouth, loose, open, aching for air.
"Yes, you are. You're dead," I say. "You left me. I saw you. You left me. And now I'm here in Maine where everything is crazy and you can't run at night and it's cold."
"Zara, let me in. I'll explain."
I throw theAnnual Report on Human Rights 2009 at the door. It wallops against the wood. Nick ducks and scrambles out of the way. I grab another annual report and smash it against the doorknob.
"You liar! You can't explain. You can't! You left me!"
Sobbing, heaving, I race at the door and hit it with my fists.
"You left."
He was the best hugger, my dad. He was an encompassing safe hugger, like a giant teddy bear, only warmer.
"Just let me in, Zara." He sounds angry now, the way he sounded when I talked back to my mom. He sounds just like my dad.
One step forward, another. Nick's wolf voice lets out a low rumbling growl. I hold my finger to my lips, trying to tell him to be quiet.
My fingers tremble but they still unlock the door.
"Open the door for me, Zara," he says.
Nick nudges me away from the door and I let him.
"No," I say. "If you were really my father you could open it yourself."
There is no answer.
I knew that. I knew there would be no answer.
Nick nuzzles my hand. My fingers plunge into the fur.
"Why don't you open the door then?" I ask. "It's unlocked."
Something shrieks inside of me, something violent and desperate and real.
"Go ahead!" I scream, wild and lost, alone but not alone. Nick pushes his side in front of me, blocking me from the door and whatever is beyond it. "Why aren't you, huh? Why aren't you opening the goddamn door?"
I stare at the doorknob. It doesn't move. He knows he can't fool me.
Nick was right. Pixies can only go into homes and places they've been invited into or places they've been in before.
My stepdad has been in this room a million times. If it were him he would have just walked right in the moment I unlocked the door.
But it isn't him. He isn't magically back from the dead.
It's someone else. Or something else, something that has been in the house but not in the room. It's something that sounds just like my dad.
"Just come to me, Zara. I need you to come to me."
"What?"
"My need… I can't hold it back any longer… it's huge."
"What arc you?" I ask, staggering backward, still staring at the doorknob. "What the hell are you?"
Whatever he is roars with rage. He storms up and down the stairs and it sounds as if he has summoned a tornado to trash Grammy Betty's house. Books crash. Glass breaks. I close my eyes and cover my ears.
Nick growls.
I crumple on my bed. For a second, I believed that what I wanted more than anything in the world had come true. For a second, I believed that my dad was back. But he isn't. He's gone again. He's really, truly gone and I know it. I know I'll never see him again no matter how much I want to.
The candle in me has blown out and I'm afraid, really, really afraid, because my biggest fear is true. I have to live my life without my dad, my running partner, the guy who taught me about Amnesty and sang John Lennon songs really off-key.