This Is Not a Werewolf Story (12 page)

My mouth pops open. The scar has changed color. The muscles in his back twitch, and for a second I think it's a bloodred snake slithering along his spine.

“She broke my back. Maybe I had it coming. I'm the one that taught her to fight, that woke up the predator in her. I never thought she'd turn on me. I hate her sometimes, but I shouldn't. It's natural law. The strongest one wins. That day, she won.”

He zips up his jacket.

“What are you doing out here, anyway? Is this your
territory?” He smiles a little, like he's teasing. But his eyes glow like he's not. He shifts.

I imagine the snake of a scar, twisting red with his every move. I remember the wounds in his neck that Mean Jack pointed out. My skin crawls. Everything about him is awful.

“Raul?” He says my name again.

I know better than to look in his eyes.

I run.

My second self is still awake. After the first step I go down on all fours and race wolf-style off the path and through the underbrush.

I hear Tuffman shout and curse, crashing down the path behind me. I barely have a head start, but I know these woods better than he does, and he only has two legs. I have four. I just have to make it to the road. It's drop-off day. Parents will be coming soon, right? Tuffman wouldn't want them to see him force-feeding me that bird's-nest toupee.

When I get to the road, I stand upright like a boy. The woods behind me are quiet, but I know he's in there, breathing hard and watching.

I brush my hands off on my jeans. I'm shaking. It's not just fear and adrenaline. It's shame. Tuffman saw me run on all fours like a wolf wearing the skin of a boy. It's like he saw me naked.

But that was a choice. I
chose
to run like a wolf.

I book it up the hill.

Please let Dean Swift be there. Please let the doors be unlocked.

I try the handle of the front door. I sigh with relief as it turns.

Bobo comes up and puts her nose in my pocket.
Give me the stinky stick.
Here's a conversation I understand. I give her the stick. She shoves her smooth head into my leg for a second.
Thank you.

Welcome back to the world of doggy doors, kibble, and leashes. Where dogs are dogs and humans are humans.

I lie down on the blue sofa in the parlor. I feel like the straw man—like everything that holds me up snapped, and the stuffing got ripped out of me.

“What are you, sick?” a voice asks.

I scream a roller-coaster scream. “Eeeeek!”

Mary Anne is standing over me. She jumps when I scream and drops her notebook. I sit up and put my head in my hands. She sits down next to me.

“Sorry, Raul, I didn't mean to startle you,” she says in a very kind voice. Then she starts to giggle. “That was funny, though.”

It makes me laugh too. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. Maybe when Little John filled Mean Jack's shoes with crabs that had washed up dead on the beach. Or when Tuffman was showing us the proper form for sit-ups (
NO LIFTING YOUR BUTTS
OFF THE FLOOR, YOU WEENIES),
and he farted.

This is better, because there's no ghastly odor. Mary Anne smells like honey and daffodils. Trust me. If you had a wolf nose you'd know what a daffodil smells like, and it smells like it looks—yellow and frilly. Did you notice daffodils are always, always nodding yes at you? Remember that. Whenever you have a day where everyone is saying no to you, just find a daffodil. It will say yes.

Man. This is what Mary Anne does to me. Flowers and giggles. I make myself sick.

I stop laughing and look at her. Why is she here so early?

She reads my face. “My mom has to fly to Chicago tonight, so she dropped me off early. I got here before Dean Swift did.” She frowns and then smiles quick to hide it.

I know how that feels. I wonder how long she sat on the front steps with her suitcase, waiting in the fog. No wolf coat to keep her warm. I pat her on the shoulder.

“No big deal. I'm working on a novel,” she says. “I have the setting—Norway. And the villain—a sorcerer named Rodrigo who has a secret formula that will turn the world into a huge ocean. I have a heroine, a mermaid whose parents work for Rodrigo. But I need a hero.”

She looks at me for a long time. Her eyes get very small like she's thinking hard.

“You could be a hero,” she says slowly.

I look down at my hands. I got a few cuts during that tussle with the rabbit. Do not, I repeat, do
not
get the wrong end of a rabbit that doesn't want to be eaten.

Mary Anne's words make me feel so good it's embarrassing. I want to float away and bury my head under a pile of blankets at the same time.

Then I hear Mary Anne sigh. “No,” she says in her serious voice, “no, the hero needs to be more . . . hmm.” She pauses, scratching her chin. “More what, exactly? What is the word I am looking for?”

I feel a little irritated. I watch her from the corner of my eye. Just because I don't talk much doesn't mean I can't hear.

“More heroic,” she says finally. “You'll make a fine helper for the mermaid. But the hero needs to be more . . . There's only the one word for it, isn't there?”

I get up from the couch and head up to the bathroom to take a shower.

What a day. Five minutes of conversation with Tuffman and I felt like I'd been doing sudoku for three hours straight. Five minutes of conversation with Mary Anne and I went from king of the world to feeling like a worm a bird pecked in half and then left because it didn't taste good enough.

There's been too much talking already today, and I haven't even said a word.

Bad news at dinner Sunday night.

“Children.” Dean Swift comes into the dining hall to make an announcement. “Listen! There is no call for panic, but it appears that a cougar has taken up residence near Fort Casey. Two guards and three tourists have described hearing the cry of a cougar while walking in the park at dusk.” The dean clears his throat. He throws his head back and opens his mouth and makes a screech like a cat screaming and a dog snarling and a ghost sobbing.

The sound makes cold sharp fingernails walk up my spine.

But Mean Jack has to make a joke. “Was that a wildebeest burp, sir?”

Dean Swift doesn't even notice the Cubs laughing. “No, it's a cougar, Mean Jack, uh, I mean
Jack
,” he answers, and then his face gets red and his eyes bulge because he said “mean Jack” twice now instead of once. “Scratch marks have been found about nine feet up on
the trunks of several trees near the road to our school. This tells us it is a large cougar, and that it is actively roaming our grounds. Chances are good that it will move on shortly. But until it does, we must take precautions when we leave the building.”

A cougar? The word gives me a strange feeling. It's like an itch in my brain I can't scratch. After a minute I realize it has to do with what happened in the woods this weekend. Sometimes what happens when I wear my wolf skin is hard to remember when I'm a boy.

My mind scratches around, and then Vincent sits down next to me.

“Don't look at me,” he warns. “I'll die laughing if you look at me.”

I stare straight out the window at the water.

“So I hid behind the bathroom door,” Vincent says. “I put on the zombie mask I told you about. My stepfather was watching the game, and he drinks a lot of beer when he watches a game, right? So I knew he'd have to go to the bathroom, right?”

I look at him with a face that says,
Yeah, yeah, you told me all this on Friday
. There's a little piece of wolf worry left dangling in my head, and I'm not gonna feel like joking around until I rip it off.

“Okay, right. I told you that.” He starts to giggle. “So look out the window, okay? I can't tell it without laughing if you look at me.”

By now all the weirdos are leaning across to listen, and a couple of the kids from nearby tables have come over.

“So he comes into the bathroom, and he's unzipping his pants, and boom! I jump out at him and he
screams
.” Vincent can hardly talk, he's laughing so much. “He screamed like a wee little girl, and then he peed his pants.”

I can't help it. I laugh so hard I forget my wolf worries.

Nobody's eating anymore, everyone's laughing, and the story starts flying around the room. By the time it gets to the little kids' table, it's turned into
Vincent's dad went pee in his pants.
That's enough of a story for the Cubs, and half of them laugh so hard they fall out of their chairs and roll around on the floor. Little John ends up with nacho cheese mashed into his hair. Three peas get jammed up Peter's nose.

After dinner I realize it's no joke. Vincent has changed everything in less than a week.

Normally during TV time I sit in a ratty old armchair off to one side. All the other kids sit on the floor or the sofa. Nobody makes me sit where I sit. But nobody ever sits in my chair either.

Tonight, when Vincent walks into the TV room, everyone shifts around a little. Mary Anne scoots closer to Jenny to make a space for him next to her on the carpet. Mean Jack punches Little John in the shoulder
to get him to slide down from the sofa to the floor.

Vincent doesn't notice them. He scans the room. When he sees me, he walks over and perches on the arm of my chair.

“Hey,” he says. “I almost forgot. I told my mom about you this weekend. She wants you to spend spring break with us.”

I can feel everyone's ears stretch toward us.

“Will your dad be cool with that?”

I nod. I can see the other kids look at me like they've never seen me before. Vincent has cool. It's contagious. Now I have it too.

All the chairs are turned toward the TV as usual, but the kids sitting in them are turned toward Vincent. He has a million and one jokes and stories. My armchair is the center of the room. Once or twice I start to open my mouth. I don't say anything. But I could have. I think they would have listened.

Later in bed I turn on my LED flashlight from the cereal box.

I hate the dark. It was hardest when I first got here. The sound of the madrona's branches scraping the window made me think of monsters. Even now I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night, and at first I'm half asleep and I forget that White Wolf found me. It's a feeling like night is inside of me.

Let's not talk about it.

Tonight I think I have a friend. It's a light inside me. But it scares me a little. I wonder how I can make him keep liking me. I wonder if he'll get tired of me.

There's no answer to that. I take out the code-cracking book Cook Patsy gave me. Last week I thought I'd need it to start up a conversation with Vincent. Like making friends was an uncrackable code.

I must fall asleep, because I wake up in the dark. The flashlight is on the floor. I hear footsteps in the hall outside my room. My heart bumps. A voice mumbles. My mind wants me to run, but my legs aren't listening.

A monster or a murderer jiggles the doorknob to the utility closet next to my room.

The next doorknob in the hall is mine.

Did I lock my door?

In my mind I see Tuffman's glowing eyes. I hear him saying my name. I can't move.

I wonder if they will find my last will and testament in my sock drawer. A cold sweat covers my body. I go over the distribution of my earthly possessions.

Sparrow will get my clothes and my books.

Cook Patsy gets my mom's box full of recipes. I've never opened it, so they will be good as new.

Dean Swift will get my shark-tooth necklace for his science cabinet.

My dad—if he's not too busy to come and pick it
up—will get the shoebox where I keep things that remind me of my mom: her velvet headband that used to smell like her, her gold bracelet with her name engraved on the inside and flowers and vines on the outside, a CD she used to play when she rocked me, one of her gloves that for a long time I put my hand inside whenever I slept.

Keys jangle. The utility closet door opens. I hear feet on steps. Whoever heard of a closet with stairs?

I scrabble my hand across the floor until I find the flashlight. When I flip its beam at the clock, I see it's midnight. This is a strange time for someone to be concerned about utilities.

I lie there for a long time. It feels like five hours, but the clock says it's only been two minutes. I tiptoe to the door and stand there with my ear to it for another five hours that turns out to be one minute. Slowly I open my door.

I look to the right. The door to the closet is ajar. I peek in and see a staircase. The stairs must lead up into the north turret, overlooking White Deer Woods. From the outside of the building it's obvious my room is just beside and below it. But from the inside I never thought of it as anything but a utility closet. Maybe because the sign on the door says
UTILITY CLOSET
.