All Hallows' Moon (4 page)

She could hear her name underneath it all, like the whispering of a river:
Rylie
.

Homeroom was supposed to be a half hour period of silent reading. She didn’t have a book. The teacher loaned her a dog-eared copy of “The Handmaiden’s Tale,” but he didn’t try to keep everyone quiet, so murmurs rolled through the room. Rylie’s sensitive hearing picked it all up.

I heard she’s from the city.

What’s she doing here?

She’s so skinny.

She looks mean.

Rylie opened her book to a random page and pretended to read, but she couldn’t stop listening to everyone. After everything she endured at camp, she felt like she should have been immune to the attention. All she wanted was to be invisible and ignored, and being new in a small farming town was just about the worst way to disappear.

The half hour homeroom period crept along too slowly. When she finally escaped into the fresh air and sunlight, Rylie stood in the quad taking deep breaths with her eyes shut.

When the bell rang for the next period, she opened her eyes to find a short girl standing in front of her.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Recharging my solar batteries,” Rylie said.

“You’re weird.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

She moved to find her next class, and the girl followed. “Why did you move here?”

“I was extradited,” she said without stopping.

“God, I’m just trying to be friendly. I’m Kathleen, by the way. I’m on the leadership committee. I was going to offer to show you around.”

Rylie gave Kathleen a second look. She was one of those girls who had grown
out
rather than
up
when she hit puberty, and she had the unpleasant face of a pig digging through the mud. Even though she didn’t look anything like Amber, who taunted Rylie for weeks at camp before getting killed, something about Kathleen brought that horrible girl to mind anyway.

“I know your type,” Rylie said in a low voice so nobody else could hear. “Don’t mess with me. I will mess you up.”

Kathleen looked like she’d been slapped, and she was still standing there when Rylie went into her geography class.

Ms. Reedy hovered over her desk and stared at her through glasses that made her look like an owl. Rylie tried to ignore her, but the teacher didn’t move until the bell gave its final chime. Kathleen took her seat just in time.

“Rylie Gresham,” Ms. Reedy said.

“What?”

“Would you please come to the front of the class?”

The teacher followed as Rylie went to stand in front of the blackboard and face her classmates. She had spent all morning trying not to look at these people, hoping that they would go away if she ignored them. Now she could do nothing but look at rows of unfamiliar faces.

There was Kathleen, next to a freckled girl who might have been a cheerleader, and then there was a boy with slicked-back brown hair. Only eight in all. Small class.

And they all
stared
at her.

Ms. Reedy’s lips twitched in what was either a smile or a grimace. “Tell us about yourself.”

I’m a werewolf. I would kill all of you and eat your organs.

“My name is Rylie.” She focused on a world map on the back wall. “I’m not from around here.”

“What do you like to do?”

Kill
.

Her nerves had stirred the werewolf within. It was interested in these young, vulnerable faces. It was thinking about the one exit to the room and how easy it would be to trap everyone inside.

“I like movies and art,” Rylie said.
Let me sit down, let me get out of here, I don’t want to be up here anymore
…

“And?”

Annoyance clenched in her stomach. Rylie opened her mouth to—to what? Growl? Snap at the teacher? Now
that
would be a great way to start the school year.

She shut her mouth, bit her lip, and sat down at her desk. Her face burned.

Ms. Reedy stared at her. They all did. Kathleen was whispering to someone, and Rylie could feel every word like a nail in the back of her neck. Now that the wolf had awakened, it wasn’t happy with such an anticlimax. She tried to ignore it.

After a long, awkward silence, the teacher went to her lectern. “We’re going to review chapter four today. Please open your books…”

Rylie
.

Her name. Someone was whispering her name.

She dug the fingernails of one hand into her knee while she took the school book from the tray under her desk with the other.

“She snapped at me on the way into class… just trying to be nice…”

Kathleen. It was that girl talking about her, and Rylie remembered how the other girls at camp read her diary. At the time, she had responded by leaving the cabin, but retreating only made her more of a target. She wouldn’t be a target anymore. She wasn’t prey.

Chapter four. Her eyes blurred. She couldn’t make out the page.

“…so weird…”

“…wonder why she would…”

“…what’s with her?”

A growl rumbled in her chest. She couldn’t stop it.

Kathleen’s head was bent over her book, but she was whispering out of the corner of her mouth to someone.

“Stop it!” Rylie hissed.

“What? I wasn’t—”

“Just shut up. Shut
up
.”

Kathleen’s eyes went round. Her lips sealed tight. Her gaze flicked over Rylie’s shoulder, and she turned to see Ms. Reedy hovering again.

“Is there a problem?” the teacher asked. The whole class was silent.

“No,” she said, her heart pounding. “No problem at all.”

They went through the chapter review question by question. Each person had to answer at least one, although Ms. Reedy skipped over Rylie, since she hadn’t had the chance to read the book.

Slowly, so slowly, the voices started again.

Rylie… Rylie…

It was that Kathleen girl.

“We’re going to get in groups of three to work on the test quiz,” Ms. Reedy announced halfway through the class. “You can look up the answers in the book, but no cell phones.” She gave a pointed look at Rylie even though her phone didn’t get very good reception out in the country.

The teacher separated them into groups, and Rylie ended up with Kathleen and the cheerleader, who turned out to be named Maxine.

“So… do you want to look up different questions, or should we…?” Kathleen ventured. So it was like that, then. She didn’t want to work with Rylie. She just wanted to get rid of her.
She was just like Amber
.

“Fine. I’ll do it myself,” Rylie snapped.

“That’s not—”

“Don’t pick on me!” She shoved her chair back and flung the book off her desk. Rylie was stronger than ever before. It flipped over and smacked into Kathleen’s arm.

“Hey!”

“Miss Gresham!” snapped Ms. Reedy, hurrying over. “What’s the problem?”

Rylie spun, baring her teeth. She couldn’t even think of what to say. She didn’t know how to defend herself. All she could think was
hungry
and—

“She freaked out at me!” complained Kathleen.

Maxine nodded. “It’s true. I saw it.”

Rylie floundered for human language. “They just—I don’t—”

Ms. Reedy pointed at her. “Dean’s office. Now.”

She didn’t wait to be escorted, since she had seen the sign for the dean at the front office that morning. Rylie stormed out of the room as the teacher picked up her phone to alert the office she was on her way.

As soon as she hit the sunshine and fresh air, her head cleared, and she felt a little ridiculous.

What had she been thinking?

The anger vanished before she’d taken three steps away from the building, and she was cold with nerves by the time she reached the dean. The secretary was expecting her. He directed Rylie to a chair in the hallway behind him, and Rylie sat with her face buried in her hands.

“Who are you?”

She took a sniff of the air before checking the source of the drawling voice. She was surprised to pair the sticky-sweet scent of marijuana with the guy sitting on the other end of the hallway. He wore a polo shirt and loafers, and he looked like he fit into the farming community about as well as Rylie did. His hair was even spiked in the front.

“Who are
you
?” Rylie countered.

“I’m Tate. You must have done something good to visit the dean on your first day of school.”

“How did you know?”

“I’ve lived here for longer than a week. I know
everyone
.” He kicked his feet up on the opposite chair, cupping his hands behind his head. “So you’re Rylie. I saw you on TV.”

Of course. Rylie’s face had been splashed all over the city back home after she went missing at summer camp. There had been a small media storm when they found her. Just another reason for her to avoid the city.

“I didn’t think I made the news this far west,” she said.

“You didn’t. I spend a lot of time online. So was it really bears?”

“No,” she said. On a whim, she added, “It was werewolves.”

Tate seemed to find this hilarious. His laugh sounded too feminine coming out of his large frame. “Nice. So, I don’t suppose you like four-twenty, do you?”

“What’s that?”

“You know. Ganja. Mary Jane.”

Rylie snorted. “No. I don’t smoke pot.”

“Have you tried it? You might like it> I’m the only guy in town who sells it,” Tate said.

“No thanks. You’ll be the first person to hear about it if I change my mind, though.” Which Rylie didn’t see happening anytime soon. But Tate reminded her a lot of some of her stoner friends back home, so she couldn’t help smiling.

He took her rejection with a shrug. “So what did you do to earn a visit to the dean? Piss off Ms. Reedy?”

“Kathleen, actually.”

“Nice,” he said again. “Nice. I was caught smoking behind the bleachers again. I don’t know why it surprises them anymore. What else am I supposed to do in this dump of a town?”

“Vandalism?” she suggested.

Dean Block found them laughing in the hall, and she gave her face a tired rub. “Great,” she muttered. “Miss Gresham, please wait in my office. Tate…”

He held up his hands. “I know. Don’t do it again.”

“Just… wait out here.”

Tate gave Rylie a little ironic wave goodbye. She smiled sheepishly.

Everything in the dean’s office was brown. The only light came through a tiny window with frosted glass. It was probably supposed to feel warm and cozy, but Rylie felt claustrophobic.

She sat in the chair across from the desk to wait, and the dean came back in after talking to Tate. The circles under her eyes looked even darker after their conversation. “Your aunt is on her way,” she said. “She should be here in about a half an hour. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“No,” Rylie said, focusing on the cup of pens on the corner of the desk.

“Ms. Reedy said you picked a fight with Kathleen.”

The wolf swelled inside of her, and she clenched her hand into a fist. Her fingernails dug into her palm. “She’s the one who started it!”

“I’m sure.” Dean Block didn’t look impressed. “What happened?”

Rylie opened her mouth to spill—then shut it again. “Nothing.”

“If you don’t give me your side, then all I can do is take the teacher’s story as fact. We may not be some big city school like you’re used to, but we do have rules about how we handle this kind of thing, if it’s true. You could get a suspension.”

“I’m not talking until my aunt gets here.”

The dean rubbed her face again. “All right, all right.”

Rylie passed the time by stealing a pen out of the cup and doodling curling lines from one corner of a sticky-note to the other. Dean Block worked on the computer, ignoring her completely. She wondered if the silent treatment was supposed to make her nervous. It was working. She had never been in any dean’s office before.

A half hour inched past on the clock. Finally, the door opened, and Aunt Gwyn came in. She set her hat on the edge of the desk, then dusted her hands off on her jeans. “Sorry. I’ve been working all day. I’m a downright mess.”

“Thanks for coming. Please take a seat.”

Gwyn stayed standing. “Tell me what Rylie did.”

“She provoked a fight and threw a book,” the dean said. “We understand transitions to new schools are difficult, but—”

Her aunt cut Dean Block off with a hand. “Yeah, I get that. Can we talk in private?”