Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

The next morning, I woke up and got ready for my run. It was supposed to be a warm day, so I opted for a black sports bra and green running shorts. Throwing my hair up into a bun, I walked down the hall toward the kitchen. Leo’s room was already empty. We would have to finish our conversation soon. He had never shown an interest in me or my work before, his focus only on Jenny and his research. His behavior last night had been strange.

Jenny waved quickly at me as I passed her room. I breathed a sigh of relief that no one had heard my guest last night. She certainly would have brought it up.

About a mile into my run, I was feeling good and ready to sweat out all my sexual frustration. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large black wolf running parallel to me about twenty feet away.

I tripped over my own feet before catching myself on my hands and knees. I slowly lifted my head from the ground to see the black wolf sitting on his haunches with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, staring at me.

What did he want?

Standing up, the wolf followed my lead, standing on four giant paws. I took a couple of steps forward, and the wolf did too, looking at me to take the lead.

I started off in a jog, keeping my eyes on the wolf jogging with me. He didn’t get closer and kept my pace, running alongside me. It was like going for a run with a dog.

When I turned around after another mile, the wolf turned with me and began running alongside me back the way I’d come. He kept his distance, seeming to enjoy himself as his tongue hung out the side of his mouth in a steady pant.

At about a mile to my cabin, he let out a short bark, startling me. I stopped running and watched the wolf stop and stare at me with those gold eyes. He stared for a few seconds and then turned and ran back into the woods, leaving me to complete my run.

It was finally Thursday, and I was looking forward to meeting with Professor Robinson. I was hoping he would have some results from the rotted plant samples I had given him last week. Especially since I hadn’t had a chance to talk more about it with Leo yet. Jenny was right. He’d been gone a lot the past two days, only coming home late at night to sleep. Maybe she could corner him when he was required to show up for Robinson’s meeting.

It was raining outside, and I made the call to postpone my morning run to the afternoon. The clicking of my computer keys mimicked the rain out my window, and the sounds put me in a daze.

I only woke from the meditative sounds when there was a knock on our front door. I looked at the clock on my computer and was stunned that the morning had gone by so quickly. Scrolling through my document, I saw that I had written a lot. Apparently all I’d needed was some rain pattering against my window to get work done.

I heard voices coming from the living room, ones I must’ve previously tuned out while I’d been working. Professor Robinson was here.

I quickly walked toward the living room, seeing Jenny and Leo with paperwork already in their hands.

“So nice of you to join us, Ms. Wilson,” Professor Robinson said. “Jenny and Leo, you are dismissed.” Robinson ran his fingers through his mustache, slightly curling the ends. Jenny and Leo scurried to their rooms, leaving me with the professor.

“Letter for you, Elise, and a package.” Professor Robinson handed me a letter and a brown cardboard box that were addressed to me in my mother’s handwriting. I set them on the table next to me to look at later.

Robinson handed me yet another envelope. “Your results from the samples you sent with me last week.”

I snatched them from him and opened the manila envelope that contained them. I skimmed over the findings, and a heaviness came over me.

Robinson narrated the findings out loud: “We found nothing. I had my undergraduates run the samples, and then I ran them myself. It’s common dust. A mixture of plant matter, human matter, and animal matter.”

My stomach dropped. This didn’t make sense. A plant that had once been alive had turned into nothing more than what someone would find in dust that collected on a shelf. “I don’t even know what to say…”

“Have you been distracted, Elise? Focused on things other than your work?” I looked up at Professor Robinson, dumbstruck. “There have been rumors of you disappearing for days at a time.”

A high-pitched gasp from the hallway caught my attention, I looked over to see a flash of blonde hair disappear into Jenny’s room.

“This isn’t some vacation for you out here. You don’t have time to be going out drinking, or whatever you young people do.” Robinson looked at me with his eyebrows raised, waiting for an explanation.

I didn’t have one. I had been absent from the cabin for days at a time, but not for the reasons he assumed. How did he know I wasn’t always sleeping at the cabin? There wasn’t any excuse that I could give him that would be remotely truthful.

“You’ll want to check in with your supervising professor. I sent her an email once we found the results,” he said. “She hasn’t heard from you. You missed the second check-in call last week.” My heart stopped beating and my ears rang. I’d been with the shifters again when I was supposed to be making my check-in call. “We’re both disappointed that you wasted our time running samples that you apparently collected from a bookshelf here in the cabin. We expected more from you.”

My body went numb with shock. How could they not believe that I had found these plants in the forest? I would never lie about something like this, wasting everyone’s time.

“I truly found this in the forest, about five miles from the cabin,” I said. But I had no proof of where I’d taken the sample, no witnesses…other than Everett, and I wasn’t about to mention him.

Robinson still had a look of disappointment and disbelief on his face. “Nothing more than household dust, Elise. The data doesn’t lie,” he said. “We could decide to put you on academic probation for this.”

I froze as the word probation echoed loudly in my head.

“We don’t take forged data lightly. One published paper with inaccurate or false information can stain an entire university.” Professor Robinson gave me a glare that cut to my core.

The sound of shuffling feet came from the hallway that housed our bedrooms, and I knew Jenny and Leo were listening.

I turned back to the sheet of results. Something had to be wrong. A miscalculation or an uncalibrated instrument. I had misrepresented nothing. I stood there, dumbstruck. What the hell was going on?

The professor zipped up his bag. “Make good choices, Elise. I wouldn’t want someone with promise like you to be tarnished for one misstep for the rest of their career.”

I couldn’t say anything to him. He had clearly already decided that I was a cheat and a drunk, spending my time here partying instead of researching. I stood with my hands crossed over my chest as he walked out the door. I was fuming. Hot bubbles popped in my chest, boiling.

“I know you’re both listening!” I yelled into the quiet cabin after the front door slammed shut.

Leo and Jenny poked their heads out of their respective doors, guilty looks on their faces. Leo’s cheeks were sunken in and his under eyes dark. He looked like he had gone days without more than a few hours of sleep.

“What the hell, Leo?” I slammed my hands on the table harder than I meant to. “Why didn’t you say anything? Haven’t you been seeing it too?”

“I’m sorry, Elise. I couldn’t say anything to back you up,” he said. “Something weird is happening in the woods, and I can’t explain it. I have seen the rot, but if the samples came back from the lab as just dust, I don’t know what to think. I can’t make it make sense.” Leo looked just as confused as I had been reading the lab report.

The boiling in my chest continued. “Who told Robinson I wasn’t sleeping at the cabin?”

Jenny slowly raised her hand. “It was an accident. I didn’t intend it to mean anything…”

“What did you do, Jenny?” My voice turned growly as I stalked closer.

“Nothing! I mean, I might have mentioned something about you spending time a lot of time with locals in the call to my professor, but I didn’t say you were doing something you weren’t supposed to.” She was stumbling over her words, trying to explain herself as quickly as possible. “Just that you were probably getting a lot of good plant information from them.”

The sheets of data left my hand and hit the floor with a smack. “I have so much riding on this scholarship. I don’t have parents paying for my tuition.” I narrowed my eyes at Jenny. “Or a bunch of previous publications to pad my CV like you, Leo.” He looked down at his hands.

“This is it for me. This is all I have.”

I turned to Leo. “What were you going to tell me about the rot the other night?” If he knew something that would explain the rot and clear my name with the university, I needed to know about it.

Leo nodded his head in agreement. “I just…noticed…” he began. But by the way he couldn’t finish a though and his stare was getting more disoriented by the second, I could tell he was exhausted.

I felt the urge to know what he needed to tell me as soon as possible, but Leo needed to be rested so he could tell me precisely what he knew about the rot. There could be no more mistakes or misunderstandings.

“You should go to bed and sleep until tomorrow morning,” I said to Leo as less of a suggestion than as an order. “We can talk tomorrow.” One day wouldn’t make or break my standing with the university.

One problem down, I looked at our other roommate. “And Jenny, stop gossiping about me. I thought we were friends.”

She looked down at her feet. “We are friends. I’m sorry, Elise. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Sitting down in my chair at the table, I slumped over, tired from my outburst. Being angry took so much energy. “I’m sorry, you guys. It’s just a lot to be accused of forging samples. I’m trying so hard, but I keep screwing up. This is so nerve-wracking.”

Both Jenny and Leo looked at me with understanding. They didn’t want to be in the position I was in.

“Let me make it up to you, Elise,” Jenny said. “Come to No Bars with me tonight. I’ll buy you a drink.”

Leo caught my eye as his hunched over form trudged back to his bedroom. I hoped he would get some sleep and look better in the morning.

“I promise I won’t tell anyone you’re going out,” she insisted. “Never again.”

“No way,” I said.

“Please! I feel so bad.”

“Nope.”

“Just one drink? I promise—just one. And then we can leave.”

Jenny was relentless. I couldn’t lie to myself; I could use a drink after the accusations Robinson had thrown at me, and I was getting a little bit of cabin fever. Maybe I could even talk through some stuff with Jenny without giving too much away. If we had one drink and then came back, what could it hurt?

“Fine,” I said.

Jenny clapped and bounced up and down at my response. I pushed back in my chair and announced I was going for a run. The rain had let up, and I needed some stress relief.