Defining Normal | EMBRY CALL

Prologue

Eventually, we all have to stop and reflect on our lives: the good, the bad, the ugly. What kind of person have I been? What mark have I left on the world? What impact have I had? Somehow, contemplating her countless mistakes is still far more appealing than coming to terms with her current spot on a hospital stretcher, Lex realises, staring pointedly at the ambulance ceiling. She wouldn't consider herself to be anything exceptional; she was average, plain, in every sense of the word, and she was perfectly content with that. At least, that was until Embry came onto the scene.

It would probably make sense to start thinking of her life in two halves: the before, and the after; two distinct chronicles of her existence.

The before was simple. Straightforward. She'd had the kind of ordinary upbringing that virtually every kid in logging country could attest to, a dreadfully isolated existence with only a person's own thoughts for company. As soon as she could walk, Lex was strapped into the passenger seat of her father's beat-up truck, surrounded by the swirling scents of cedar and pine sap. She can recall countless days of peering out of the foggy windows, watching her father chop, load and strap endless cuttings into the battered tray of the truck. Lex remembers the way his hands moved deftly over his tools, labouring away for hours to secure endless piles of wood. Being raised by a logger was a blessing , she thinks, remembering the way she'd scrutinised his work day in and day out. Living out in the backwoods was a continual lesson in valuing hard work and physical prowess, in appreciating the value in the mundane. It wasn't much, but it was what she had, and so they made do.

They always made do.

Many years ago, Lex had asked why they remained in Beaver. More specifically, she'd questioned why he persisted with the gruelling labour that had left him with a hunchback at the ripe old age of fifty-five, but he hadn't seemed to have heard her. Eventually, he'd responded with his typical gruff brevity, offering some thin explanation she'd heard time and time again - this is what the McKinleys do . Logically, it was true - he'd followed in his father's footsteps, who had taken after his parents, and so on. The answer was expected, and yet, Lex was still disappointed. She'd hoped for something different, more revealing, the kind of answer that would tell her more about her father. Her father was the kind of man to sit in silence all day, content with his own thoughts for entertainment. In the absence of any other company, family or otherwise, Lex wondered almost constantly about her history. What was her mother like? What happened to her? She knew was it was some kind of sickness, but her father steadfastly refused to discuss it, just like he remained tight-lipped about everything else.

The silence was one of the many reasons Lex left Beaver.

By the end of senior year, Lex was certain that she could fill an entire spiral-bound notebook with essays of reasons. The isolation, however, was her biggest struggle: though she delighted in the quiet of nature, she longed for real human connection, or at least, attention from something with a pulse. Her father's silence felt stifling, constraining, as if she was imprisoned in some kind of sensory deprivation chamber. Of course, the total absence of opportunity was another - she barely completed high school, and unless she aspired to become a logger just like the men of her family, she had to leave. It was a simple justification, and it appeased her father, although she expected that there was some kind of disappointment buried deep down in his mind. That part didn't matter, though - it wasn't as if he'd ever share his musings.

She'd settled on Forks quickly - it was close enough to home (for the rare moment she would wish to visit), yet far enough that it felt like a break, a clean start. She delighted in its size - the thousands of people swarming around the tiny town was already light-years above the few hundred residents of her hometown. Anything was better than Beaver, and that included the small, dark bedroom that she could barely afford to rent from a stranger. Her housemates were kind enough, and the two women supplied her with more social interaction in her first week in Forks than her entire life in Beaver. Life in Forks was easy, and college was enjoyable enough. Her life lacked excitement, but the stability was more than enough to keep her satisfied. Of course, that was all before.

Trying to make sense of the present is trickier. Some of her surroundings are familiar enough, like the tubing extending from her arm. She'd had an IV once before, when she was a frail little elementary schooler fighting some illness that she can't quite recall. Things have grown fuzzy with time and distance, as if someone's taken an eraser to her memories.

Then again, her current circumstances aren't clear, either.

Lex skims her eyes over the ambulance's interior, though the details are slipping through her fingers faster than she can grasp them. The only thing she can hang on to, squinting through blurry vision, is the kindly EMT stroking her dampened hair, reassuring her in a distant, distorted voice. Somewhere, there are voices speaking, calling to her, but it's like she's at the end of some tunnel, seeing the world at an unreachable distance. None of it was real, surely: it had to be a hallucination, some rapid-fire delusion that her brain had conjured up in an attempt to soothe her. It was like the logical side of her brain was desperately trying to squash her thoughts down into a neat, comprehensible package, one that didn't entirely make sense. But what was the alternative?

She'd have to acknowledge that there was indeed a horse-sized beast in her kitchen, one that had erupted from the figure of her gentle, sweet boyfriend. The same boyfriend that knocked her to her knees, watching the bright bloom of blood spread across the faded linoleum like a sick kind of party confetti. The man she knew wouldn't have left her on the floor, disappearing into the darkness of her yard.

Normal boyfriends don't morph into gigantic wolves.

Nothing about them was normal, though, and the unveiling of the beast that she had previously considered her boyfriend was just the cherry on the top of the shit sundae.

So, the alternative? Acknowledging the truth: that she loves a beast.