Unleashed (11 page)

“Hey there, Katalicious,” Trick said when he picked her up in the morning. Katelyn was tired from being awake half the night, jerking out of sleep, replaying the images of the wolf attack over and over in her mind, hearing things.

The sun was just beginning to rise, and he stood on the porch wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans, cowboy boots, and a black cowboy hat. Also his leather bracelet. He smelled like freshly washed cotton, soap, and coffee.

She herself felt gross, having fallen asleep without brushing her teeth or washing her face. Then she’d rushed around to get ready. A hot shower and her electric toothbrush had power-washed away the grime, but still. She wore a black gauze baby doll top embroidered with gold thread over ripped, faded jeans and her Mary Janes. Her blond hair was coiled into a pinwheel-like messy bun with two black-and-gold chopsticks.

“ ‘Katalicious’? You really didn’t just say that.” She looked at him askance as she handed him a coffee mug and a piece of toast.

He dipped the toast in his coffee and took a bite. Balancing her toast on top of her coffee mug, she moved onto the porch and shut the door behind her. The air outside was hot and muggy, as if it had been conjured from the steam in their cups.

“Katalicious,” she grumbled again. “That’s so lame, Trick.”

Trick raised his brows as they headed for his car. “Heavens to Betsy, just how shallow
are
they out there in Hollywood?”

“What is it with you and my grandfather and the corny sayings?” she asked, glancing up at the cloudy sky, wondering if she should bring an umbrella.

He tapped his head. “Brain transplant. I share the thoughts of the grandfather. That was what the surgery was for. You look good,” he added. He smiled, really smiled as he held the Mustang door open for her.

“Thanks.” She dipped her head and climbed inside, drinking down her coffee so it wouldn’t spill when they drove over the bumps and dips in the dirt road. Anxiety fluttered in her stomach. She was trying not to admit to herself that she’d been waiting for him to show up that morning and her mood had lifted when she’d heard his car.

“It
is
a joke, right? The brain surgery.”

His triumphant smile made her feel foolish for asking.

“I never asked you what you did last weekend,” she said, to change the subject.

“Volunteered at a homeless shelter, helped my cat give birth to kittens, wrote poetry.” He grinned at her as he shifted into drive and peeled out onto the road. Her head whipped backward. “Drove like an ass.”

They raced toward the trees with the finesse of a roller coaster. She gripped the armrest and clenched her teeth. “Twenty-five percent of what you just told me is true.”

“Fifty.”

They careered into near darkness. He punched on his car stereo. That day it was Bon Jovi’s “Blaze of Glory.” She felt the bass rumble through her bones and loved the beat, the energy, the “take no prisoners” sense of possibility that rose inside her. A smile cracked her mood. She’d get back to L.A. She’d get back into dance and gymnastics and maybe even acting, and she’d figure out what to do with her life.

And she
hadn’t
heard anything growling or felt anything staring in at her from the skylight the night before. It was just nerves.

“You do drive like an ass,” she said.

“Just outrunning ’em, Kat.” He grinned at her, then growled playfully.

With pleasure, she suspected.

“Hey, I had a nightmare,” she said without thinking.

“I’m not surprised, after the day you had. Care to share?”

She paused, realizing she didn’t want to. Sharing might make it seem more real and she’d rather forget it. “I don’t really remember it. At least, not enough to explain.”

“And they call
me
crazy,” he said, smiling at her to take the sting out of the barb.

“You’re mean,” she said, pouting.

“I’m smart,” he retorted. “
You
try being smart among the ignorant masses. It would make you snarly, too.”

“As far as I can tell, it just gets your tires slashed.” She realized what she’d said after it had already come out of her mouth. “Oh, God, Trick, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”

He sighed. “Don’t you have some texting to do?”

“It’s too early.”

“If she’s your best friend, she won’t care.”

She pulled out her phone, glad to have somewhere else to focus her attention. She was embarrassed. She’d been trying to joke around but knew she’d gone too far.

“Tell her hi.”

“Sure will,” she said, flushing.

But Kimi didn’t reply.

They got to school early and parted ways. Trick said he had something to take care of. She wondered if it had anything to do with slashed tires.

In hopes of having some topic suggestions for her project with Cordelia, she headed for the library. It was a small dusty room inside the main building, and it smelled of mold. Dim light filtered over wooden bookshelves, books crammed in them every which way. There was a desk with a sign that read
LIBRARIAN
but no actual librarian sitting at it, and no evidence one sat there regularly. It was as dusty as the shelves. Maybe no one used the library at this school. Katelyn hunted for a computer, hoping for a digital database of the library’s holdings, but there was nothing that twenty-first century. She didn’t know why she was surprised.

There was, however, an old-fashioned oak card catalog, complete with little white cards and smudged typed titles, authors, and subject headings. She flipped through the cards until she found
WOLF SPRINGS: HISTORY
. According to the catalog, there were two books in the library on the subject.

She jotted down their call numbers and wandered over to the stacks. One of the books was missing. The other, a thin volume with a tattered gray cloth cover, nearly came apart as she pulled it free. Carefully opening it, she glanced at the table of contents.
Spanish Settlers. Outlaws. The Hot Springs. Lost Dreams. The Wolves of Wolf Springs
. Bingo. She flipped to the indicated page and began to read the section about the wolves.

Hated and feared by settlers, the red wolves native to the Ozarks were thought to have been eradicated throughout Arkansas by the early 1900s. However, Wolf Springs locals have reported seeing packs ever since the first Spanish settlers arrived. The priests who founded the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Mercy wrote of the local wolves: “They remained aloof until winter, when lack of food compelled them to raid our barns for chickens and lambs. For ourselves, we had no fear of them, and they never attacked us.”

She grunted. Maybe the nice wolves had died out along with the Spanish priests.

Aware that the hallway outside the library was filling up with students, she read the last two lines on the page:

“However, another creature dwelled in the forest. This one, we feared with all our souls.”

And the next page was missing. Tattered, jagged edges were held by unraveling stitching, but the page itself was gone. She kept reading, in hopes that the mystery creature would be revealed.

“And thus it remains that our good company shuns the wooded hills.”

“Crap,” she said out loud.

The bell rang, and she quickly paged ahead. Apparently that was it for the wolves and the scary thing in the forest, but she still wanted to check out the book. There had to be something useful in it.

“Hello?” she called.

When no librarian appeared, she looked around to make sure she was alone and semi-guiltily dropped the fragile book into her backpack, then slipped out into the hall to join the rest of the student body.

In history class, Cordelia told Katelyn that she’d checked out a ton of books from the public library. She approved of Katelyn’s find and explained, with a laugh, that all she had to do to officially check out books from the school library was show them to Mrs. Walker, who kept a list in the office. After the last librarian had moved, they hadn’t replaced her. It seemed that Mrs. Walker was the go-to person for everything you needed at school.

Katelyn was relieved to see that Mike was absent from gym. Maybe a day away was all it would take for him to forget that she’d embarrassed him. She suited up and stretched out. She enjoyed the strength and elasticity of her muscles as she went through her routines. And she knew that without regular workouts she’d lose it. The familiar dizzying anxiety hit her in the chest as she remembered that all her costumes, all the videos she’d saved on her laptop of her performances, were gone.
I got out with nothing but me. And there are times when I’m not even sure I got out with that
.

At lunch, Cordelia introduced her to a few girls, including those Wolf Springs High cheerleaders who were still speaking to the girl who had made them lose their big competition—versus the ones who were pretending Cordelia Fenner no longer existed. Boys circled their table, some of them really cute, and Katelyn had to answer a lot of questions about L.A. It was clear that Dondi—the girl with the gold fingernails—and Maria, at least, still wanted to be friends with Cordelia. And Cordelia had plenty of guys swooning over her. But Cordelia herself was sending out vibes that she wanted—or needed—to be left alone.

Trick stayed away, watching from a table of gothy kids dressed in black. But there was something about him that kept drawing Katelyn’s attention, and she felt a warmth in the pit of her stomach every time their eyes met. Maybe it was the green of his eyes, or the arty, interesting company he kept. His friends obviously doted on him. He was the center of their attention.

Or maybe she liked it that
she
was the object of
Trick’s
attention. Each time she tried to dart a discreet glance his way, he was looking at her. He intercepted every one of her looks, each time, and his smile got bigger and bigger. At first she was mortified, and then she just laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Cordelia asked her, and Katelyn shifted her focus back to Cordelia and her friends.

“Nothing,” she assured her.

Trick was good with the afternoon off. On the morning drive in, Katelyn had announced that she had plans after school and wouldn’t need a ride.

But now she was a little sorry that they wouldn’t be riding home together.

Then it was time for art, and the girl in the sweatshirt smiled at Katelyn again. When Katelyn smiled back, the girl picked up her sketch pad and a piece of charcoal and moved to the empty chair beside Katelyn, directly beneath the ticking school clock.

“I’m Paulette,” she said by way of greeting. “How’re you doing?”

“Pretty well,” Katelyn replied.

“For someone who had to move from L.A. to
here
,” Paulette said with an eye roll.

“It’s not so bad,” Katelyn replied, but her voice cracked, and they both smiled.

“Look,
I
know how bad it is.” Paulette offered her another friendly smile, then looked down at her sketch pad and drew a long, curving line.

Katelyn let her shoulders sag. “It is kind of … um …”

“Rustic? Quaint?”

“Wolf Springs
is
quaint.” Katelyn decided to try to draw a wolf. How to start? A triangle for the head? She thought about the little town, with its old-fashioned streets. “It would make a great tourist attraction.”

“Too hard to get here,” Paulette said. “Too far from civilization, and bad roads. So.” She glanced at the parking lot. “You’re driving in every day with Trick.”

Katelyn wasn’t surprised by the comment. She figured people were speculating about her. “Yes.”

Katelyn looked up to see her reaction and was jolted to see that Paulette had gone all blushy.

“Lucky,” she said shyly.

Katelyn was caught off guard. It was the opposite of the reaction Cordelia had had. And if Paulette was crushing on Trick, that meant he wasn’t a
total
outcast. She felt a flare of jealousy, then was surprised at herself.

I hardly know him
.