Transforming at home, Hannah’s parents insisted, meant having a family meeting about it. Everyone was called to the dining room table. Hannah sat stone-faced, her arms crossed and eyebrows down.

“Han gets to call the shots,” said her father. “I want to make that very clear. What Hannah says tonight – with our guidance, of course – is what goes tomorrow. From now on, full moons are going to be her nights, and I want to make them as easy for her as we can. Got that, boys?”

There were some nods and some groans. Hannah liked the groans better.

“Now. I want to ensure that every single one of us knows what the plan is. You boys and Mom and I know that all of us are going to be perfectly safe. But there might be some people around the neighborhood who have the wrong idea. And so we need to make sure that we’re on the same page at all times.”

“Why would people think we’re not safe?” said Moe.

Her mother’s face tightened. “Moe, please –”

“They think I might bite them,” Hannah explained. “They think I might go crazy and storm through the neighborhood and kill everyone. They’re scaredy-cats.”

“Could you, if you wanted to?” said Moe, his eyes shining. “Kill them, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Hannah. “Do you think I could, Gulliver?”

“Hannah Penelope – he’s only five –”

“Five and one-fourth!” cried Moe.

“Excuse me,” said her father.

“Of course you could,” said Gulliver. “Because wolves have super sharp teeth. If a robber comes in the night, you can stop him from stealing my Nintendo.”

“I need everyone to listen up.”

“But you’re not going to kill anyone, are you, Han?” said Moe.

“Well,” said Hannah, smiling at him, “I’ll try not to.”

Her mother glanced upwards and winced, as though there was something overhead that none of the rest of them could see.

“Everybody be quiet and listen,” said her father. He cleared his throat and stood up.

His face was impassive, but his eyes were deadly serious. Hannah’s father hardly ever looked like that, but when he did, it made her chest clench.

“I don’t want any more talking unless you’re invited to talk,” he said to Hannah and her brothers. “This is exactly what I meant. I do not want to hear anything else about biting, or killing, or –”

“Robbers?” said Gulliver hopefully.

“There aren’t going to be any robbers,” said Hannah’s father. “We’re going to have a quiet, peaceful evening tomorrow. Hannah is not going to be a danger to anyone – anyone, do you understand? And I need you to correct anyone who thinks that she might be. Neighbors, friends, teachers –”

“But what if there is a robber?” said Moe. “If there was, then Hannah could –”

“No. She could not. If there’s a robber – and there won’t be – Mom and I will deal with it. Now, I want to go over the plan.”

Hannah’s father explained all the things that Hannah already knew. The moon would rise at 7:20 that evening, so none of her brothers would be in bed yet. Hannah would transform in private in her father’s study. Nobody was to bother her during that time.

After ten minutes, Hannah’s parents would come in and check that the Moon Pill had worked. This was only a formality, since by now, Hannah had tested it on three separate occasions with Rose and David. But as Rose constantly reminded her, laws were laws, and they had to be observed.

Once her parents had entered the study, the rest of the evening would be up to Hannah.

“What do you mean, up to me?” said Hannah.

“You get to decide how you want to do this. You can stay in the study and rest by yourself if you want. Or you can go somewhere else.”

Hannah scowled. “I didn’t realize we needed to plan where I was going to be in the house.”

“We just – we thought you might prefer not to be disturbed,” said her mother. “We can tell the boys to stay away from wherever you’d like to be.”

“Or let them in, if you’d rather have company,” said her father.

“I hadn’t thought about it,” said Hannah. Then she had a sudden inspiration. “Could I decide later, though? It’s just that I was going to call Aimee about our science project. It’s worth like, half our grade, and it looks really complicated –”

“We have the whole family here right now, you’re transforming tomorrow night, and I happen to know you have an extension on that project until Monday. I’d say now’s the best time, Han.”

Everyone in her family was watching her. Hannah had a strange, savage desire to stand on her chair and throw something hard against the wall, so that their eyes would move to whatever she’d broken instead. She looked around at the possibilities. Her father’s coffee cup? The vase of flowers on the table?

“I guess I want to be in the living room,” she muttered. “Because then maybe I could watch a movie.”

“You’ll probably want to choose what to watch in advance,” said her mother. “That way, Dad and I can get it started for you, so you won’t have to worry about the remote.”

“I could probably still use the remote,” said Hannah indignantly.

“Well, you certainly won’t be able to handle the DVD player.”

“How do you know?”

“Han, be logical –”

“I don’t want to be logical.”

“Can we come in and see you?” said Gulliver eagerly.

“I’m not sure she’s going to want –” said her mother.

Hannah gave her mother a deliberate stare. “They can come in,” she said. “It’s fine with me.”

“Are you sure?” said her mother. “I mean, it’s not my decision to make. But if I were you, I really don’t think I’d want them running all over the place and getting under my feet.”

“But you’re not me,” said Hannah. “So it’s fine.”

***

Hannah hated transforming in the study. It was one thing to do it in a place where everybody else had to go through it, too. It was another to be doing it at home, where her parents might easily be listening at the door.

Still, she couldn’t stop it from happening, and when it did happen – after the pain faded and she was able to distinguish her mind from her surroundings again – she jumped onto her mother’s desk chair and waited for her parents there. That way, she thought, she’d feel slightly taller than she had with Rose and David. Also, the jumping was fun. Hannah hadn’t realized before how good wolves were at jumping.

She spent a few minutes doing tiny, awkward leaps on the desk chair, and then her parents came in.

They entered in a stumble. Her mother’s face had gone pale, and she was shaking visibly, although Hannah could tell she was trying to hide it by the way her teeth were gritted. Her father’s chin was tilted up and his hands were clenched over his stomach. Hannah attempted a lazy wave, but wolves didn’t wave very well, and she almost fell off the chair.

“Hannah,” said her mother softly. “Hannah, can you hear me?”

“Just give us a nod or something,” said her father. “Rose said you’d probably be able to do that.”

A nod was going to look even stupider than a wave, but Hannah supposed she had no choice. She lowered her head and then looked back up.

Her stomach curdled. There were tears in her mother’s eyes. For heaven’s sake! Hannah glared at her and tried to make it obvious that she disapproved, but she couldn’t have done a very good job, because her parents missed it completely.

“Give us one more nod, Hannah?” said her father.

Hannah grudgingly obeyed.

“Then I’ll start your DVD for you,” said her father. “Just give me a minute.”

“And you’re absolutely sure you want your brothers in there with you?” said her mother.

Hannah gave one more stupid nod. She wondered if maybe she growled instead, her parents would run away and she wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore. But then she wouldn’t be able to watch TV. She’d just have to sit there all night, achy and bored out of her mind.

“We told the boys to stay upstairs until we came to get them,” said her father. “Just in case you changed your mind. But since you haven’t, we’ll grab them in a few minutes. Are you going to be able to get down from that chair by yourself?”

Hannah hopped off in answer and found herself level with her parents’ knees.

The owners of the knees opened the door and let her out, and then they turned on the DVD she had chosen. It was an old box set about an alien from a distant planet who had terrible social skills and a long-suffering human girlfriend. Hannah had picked it out on the grocery store discount shelf the previous morning, because it had looked like it was going to be funny, nonsensical, and not about real life.

Her parents watched her as she jumped up on the couch. The theme song started. They kept watching her. Hannah stared straight ahead. The alien started trying to land his spaceship with disastrous results.

“I’ll go tell the boys?” said her father to her mother.

“You’re sure, Hannah?” said her mother.

The first thing she was going to tell them when she turned back was that they had to stop making her nod all the time.

Feet crashed down the stairwell. The noise hurt Hannah’s ears. She whimpered a little without thinking meaning to. Her mother looked at her as if she’d just screamed a string of expletives.

“She’s a wolf!” cried Gulliver. “She really turned into a wolf, you guys!”

Tom came in behind him. He met Hannah’s eyes and then, to her vast relief, he grinned.

“She’s also taking up all the space on the couch,” he said. “Are we going to let her get away with that?”

“No!” cried Gulliver and Moe gleefully.

“She’s probably in pain,” said their mother. “Transformation takes a huge toll on the body. We have plenty of cushions you boys can put on the floor –”

Hannah stretched the wolf’s body out until it covered the entire span of the sofa, despite her sore back. She stuck her tongue out experimentally – it seemed that was still something she could do. Even if it looked more like she was panting than being deliberately annoying.

“Move it, dogface,” said Tom, sitting on her feet.

“Tom,” said her mother and Andrew at the same time, sounding equally appalled.

“She stuck her tongue out at me!” said Tom. “She was asking for it.”

Hannah grinned the best she could.

Then all the youngest boys jumped on top of Tom, which meant that they also jumped on top of Hannah, which hurt a lot, but she pretended it didn’t. Gulliver squealed and touched her nose. Her father barked at him to move his hand away, because it was too near her teeth. Hannah flashed her jaws at him, which sent the boys into bursts of giggles and her parents into shocked silence.

“You’re grounded for a month if you do that again,” said her father, not quite looking at Hannah. “Ever.”

Since wolves couldn’t talk, it was impossible for them to be sarcastic. It was a problem that Hannah would have to solve as soon as possible. Otherwise she would never be able to stand it.

At some point everyone went to bed, and her father turned off the alien show (with a look of relief), and then it was just Hannah, alone in the living room, staring at the place in the window where the full moon shone. Her mother tucked a blanket over her before she went upstairs. Hannah thought about kicking it off, but she didn’t.

She knew she wasn’t going to be able to sleep, and so she didn’t try. Instead, she played a game with the wolf’s nose, trying to tease out different smells from each other, deciding what had made each of them. There was the smell of the horrible new cologne Tom had started using. The plastic cover of Gulliver’s toy racecar. The garbage can, even though it was in all the way in the kitchen. Everything stank on the full moon.

In the morning, Hannah wrapped the blanket around herself and staggered up to her room before anyone could speak to her. It was easier for everyone that way.