Midnight Howl (7 page)

I managed to get my mind off Hailey during our astronomy club meeting. The presentation was on exoplanets, and we made a lot of plans for the camping trip. Lily announced that Jack had promised to get the cooking club to make extra food as well as the hot dogs, hamburgers, and s’mores they had every year.

On the bus home, I started thinking about Hailey again, though. Had I ever seen Hailey cross running water? I kept coming back to her mysterious disappearance the night of the full moon, her dirt-streaked face, and the leaf in her hair the next morning. I also couldn’t help but notice her quiet watchfulness, the way she got defensive whenever the subject of wolves came up, and how nervous the horses had
been around her. There were plenty of other possible explanations, I guessed, but it was all so … weird. As a scientist, what kind of tests could I do to make sure?

I stared out the window, but all I saw was a blur.

Lily shifted in her seat next to me. “Marisol?” she said. “Earth to Marisol.” Her amused tone told me this wasn’t the first time she’d said my name.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“You can tell me if you’re worried about something, you know,” she said. Her eyes were serious and concerned. “Are you homesick?”

“Not really,” I said. Not at all, I realized, a little surprised. I missed Tasha and some of my other friends, but I liked Wolf Valley. My old life seemed a long way away.

I wanted to tell Lily everything. She was smart and practical, and I really wanted someone to talk to.

“Listen,” I said, and hesitated. I couldn’t tell anyone at school; it wouldn’t be fair to Hailey. I was only here for a few months, and Hailey lived here. If I started rumors about her and then left town, I’d be
leaving her in a whirlpool of gossip she might be stuck in all the way through school.

“I’m listening, but I’m not hearing anything,” Lily joked after a minute.

How could I get Lily’s opinion without saying something that would either sound stupid or get her wondering about Hailey?

“Hailey said some interesting stuff about wolves today, don’t you think?” I said weakly.

“She was right, you know,” Lily said. “Wolves are persecuted by humans in a lot of ways. They’re really pretty peaceful animals. For predators. I don’t recommend trying to keep one as a pet, though.” She grinned and, when I didn’t say anything right away, frowned. “Marisol, you’re not obsessing about Anderson’s crazy ideas, are you?”

“What makes you say that?” I asked guiltily.

Lily sighed and rolled her eyes. “Anderson’s got a lot to say, but he’s usually wrong. Last year he was sure we were due for a zombie invasion, and had a bunch of kids spending lunch planning how they were going to defend themselves when the zombies arrived. Wolves are interesting, but they’re animals. There’s no such thing as a werewolf.”

Lily’s words echoed in my mind as I trudged up the driveway to the house.
There’s no such thing as a werewolf.

Once I got inside, I could smell dinner cooking. The TV was on in the living room, and Molly waved to me from the kitchen. It was all normal and cozy, and I felt a million percent better.

I checked my e-mail. I had told Tasha that the silver test had shown Hailey wasn’t a werewolf, and I hadn’t shared my doubts with her. Her latest e-mail was full of news about people back home, but for some reason my life in Austin seemed really far away.

On the way to my room, I passed Hailey’s open door. The light was on, but her room was empty, and the wall of animals watched me as I peered inside. One gray wolf seemed to be staring right into my eyes, his own yellow eyes wide and his lips drawn back over his teeth in a fierce snarl.

I hurried away, past my room, and tapped on my mother’s door. She was sitting at the desk, working on her laptop.

“Hi, honey,” she said. “Home already? This day has just shot by. I have so much to do to pull the
November issue together, but I think I may actually finish by deadline.” She got up from her chair and stretched. Her curls were messy, as if she’d been running her fingers through her hair all day while she thought.

“Anyway,” she said, sitting down on her bed and patting a place next to her, “I’m ready to stop and talk to my girl. How was your day?”

“Pretty good,” I said, sitting next to her. “Astronomy club was cool. And we had a science quiz that I think I did okay on.” The bed in her room was a sleigh bed, all curving wood, with a big yellow patchwork quilt. The walls were a lighter yellow, with horse pictures hung here and there (Molly said horse pictures were good business for the bed-and-breakfast). It was a happy-feeling room. I traced a square of the quilt with my finger.

“Is something wrong, Marisol?” my mom asked, leaning forward to look into my eyes. “You seem distracted.”

I couldn’t tell my mom everything. Molly was one of her oldest friends, and we were living in her family’s house. But I could tell her some of it.

“Mom, did you ever hear wolves howling outside the house?” I asked.

She frowned. “A few days ago, but not since then. It’s nothing to worry about, sweetheart. Wolves stay away from people when they can.”

“I’m not worried about the wolves.” I said. This was hard. “Well, not because they’re wolves. A few days ago, when you heard the howling, there was a full moon, right?”

She looked puzzled. “If you say so.”

“Well, there was that book in my room,” I said nervously.

My mom’s frown disappeared and she started laughing. “The werewolf book? Marisol! That’s ridiculous!” She pulled herself together and stopped laughing, although she was still smiling. “Marisol, local legends are good business for bed-and-breakfasts and tourist places. Molly puts those in all the rooms just like the hiking guides. The book’s fun to look at, but you can’t take it seriously.”

“It’s not just that,” I said hesitantly. “Some of the kids at school say there are werewolves. This one boy told me his great-great-grandmother knew a werewolf. And he said there are more wolves around during a full moon.” I couldn’t tell her anything about Hailey, but I could mention the creepy feeling I had gotten outside in front of the ranch. “And
sometimes I have a funny feeling. Like something’s
watching
me.”

My mother’s face was perfectly serious, but her voice still sounded amused. “Listen, sweetheart,” she said. “You know my grandmother, my
abuela,
came from Mexico, right?”

“Right.” I wondered where she was going with this.

“Well, my
abuela,
God bless her, was a lovely, loving woman, and she used to tell me stories that practically scared the pants off me.” My mom laughed, remembering. “There were these great scary, dramatic stories about the
chupacabra,
which is sort of like a vampire, and all kinds of monsters. My dad made her stop for a while because I wouldn’t go down into the basement by myself — I was sure
something
was going to jump out at me. But I begged her to start telling them again. Do you know why?”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I’m like everyone else. People
love
to be scared. And they love telling scary stories. And that’s all the werewolves they talk about around here are — stories.” She paused. “Maybe you’re feeling a bit vulnerable and jittery because you’re still getting used to a new place?” I leaned against her
and nodded a little. It was true that I was still getting used to living here. But my worries about Hailey being a werewolf had
evidence
to back them up. Sort of. I didn’t think my evidence would convince my mother, though.

She reached out and stroked my hair, pushing it out of my face. “Does that make sense to you? Does it help?”

“Sure,” I lied, and smiled at her.

Really, though? Really, I didn’t feel better at all.

The next week flew by with normal school stuff — homework, gym, quizzes, lunch. And then it was the week of the camping trip. We were leaving after school on Friday, and there was a lot to do. At home, Jack had roped Hailey and me into being his kitchen assistants (Hailey had decided to come on the trip: yay!). And at school, Lily wanted me to go over the millions of details of organizing the trip with her.

Here’s what the week looked like.

Monday.
During lunch, I met Lily in the science classroom to help her check over the arrangements for the trip. She had checks from everyone who was going, notes on supplies, reservations, and numbers to call. She was going over everyhing so fiercely that her normally smooth hair had escaped from its
headband, little strands standing up in the air and giving her a wild look.

“Tents,” she said to me with a strained intensity. “Sleeping bags. The teachers are driving most people in minivans, and parents are bringing pickups with more kids and all the stuff to drop off. We have to remind everyone to bring extra-warm sleep clothes.”

“Definitely,” I said. It was still light jacket weather during the day, but it was starting to dip down toward freezing at night. “Do you have to plan this all yourself? What about Mr. Samuels?”

Lily shrugged. “He’ll check up on what I decide, but I want to get everything right.” She tapped a pencil against her desk and went on. “Water. Toilet paper. How much water do thirty people need for a two-night stay?”

“Back up,” I said, alarmed. “I thought there were bathrooms and showers and a camp store and things. Isn’t this a regular public campsite?”

“Sure,” said Lily. “But not in October. After the summer, there’s only primitive camping. Everything’s closed up. There are pit toilets, but that’s it.”

I didn’t know what a pit toilet was, but I could make a pretty good guess. Yuck.

Lily jumped to her feet. “No!” she said. “Don’t look like that! It’s going to be
awesome
!”

“Awesome?” I said doubtfully.

“Absolutely,” she said, spreading her arms wide and giving me a joyful smile. “Picture it,” she went on dreamily, “a starry night, the campfire burning, the smell of wood smoke in the air, the quiet movements of tiny animals, and us, surrounded by the universe.”

“Wow,” I said, “I never thought about it that way before.” I hadn’t realized Lily was the type to get poetic about the outdoors. She’d always struck me as very down-to-earth.

“Anyway,” she said, and shrugged, “I just want everyone to have a good time.”

“We will,” I said firmly.
It’s only two nights,
I thought.
Who needs running water?
I smiled encouragingly at Lily.

“I’ll get online and see if I can figure out how much water the average person needs to use every day,” I offered. “Piece of cake.”

Tuesday.
“Taste this,” Jack demanded.

Something smelled good, like roasting nuts. Hailey looked up, keeping her finger in her book
to mark her place. “Jack,” she said, “we’ve got a math quiz tomorrow. We don’t have time to taste test for you.”

“Taste
it,” Jack said again, frowning at his sister. He thrust a spoonful of what looked like grains and nuts at her, and she tried it.

“Not bad,” she admitted. “I like the honey.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“My special granola,” Jack said proudly. “I’m getting ready for the trip. Taste!”

I tried some. It was good. Warm and sweet and chewy. Still … “Wouldn’t it be easier just to take boxes of cereal?” I asked.

“Cereal from a box is horrible!” Jack said, and then he bared his teeth and actually
growled
at me. For a moment, his face was really scary. His eyes were slits and his hair was bristling.

“Maniac,” said Hailey affectionately. Then she turned to look at me.

“Marisol?” she asked, a worried note in her voice. “You look freaked out. Are you okay?”

“Sure,” I said. But it had suddenly hit me:
If Hailey is a werewolf, then what is Jack?

The werewolf book had said whole families were suspected of being werewolves, and that the
families had disappeared together. They were thought to have retreated to the woods. Was it possible that if Hailey was a werewolf, the rest of her family were, too?

It was hard to picture Molly and Mike as werewolves. And they had definitely been around downstairs, fully human, until late the night of the full moon. So they
must
be human. Plus I figured my mom would have noticed if Molly was a werewolf during the four years they lived together in college. But Molly had said her family was one of those driven from the town for being werewolves, hadn’t she?

No, it was a ridiculous idea. Still, though … I remembered my friend Olivia back home. Both her parents had dark brown hair and dark eyes, but Olivia was blond and green-eyed. People asked sometimes if she was adopted, but she wasn’t — she had inherited her grandmother’s coloring. Could being a werewolf be a recessive gene that had skipped Molly?

“Marisol?” Hailey asked again. She and Jack were both staring at me, and I gave them a shaky smile.

“Oh, I’m fine,” I said as brightly as I could manage.

Suddenly, I was very glad we’d be back from the camping trip before the full moon.

Wednesday.
After school, I stayed late at the library.

“Can I help you get started?” the librarian asked when I took an unoccupied computer.

“No thanks,” I said, “I know what I’m doing.” I didn’t want anyone to see what I was looking up.

Once she left and I was sure no one was watching, I typed “genetic werewolf” into a search engine. Nothing useful came up.

I typed “becoming a werewolf” and clicked through the most promising-looking links. One was clearly part of a role-playing game, a couple were movie reviews, but one was exactly what I was looking for.

“Ways of Becoming a Werewolf,” it said, and it detailed different ways legends said people had become werewolves. It wasn’t just getting bitten. If you
wanted
to be a werewolf, you could drink dew from a wolf’s footprint (ew), eat a wolf’s brain (double ew!), make a magic lotion to rub on yourself (weird), or wear a special flower (lame). You could
also become a werewolf by being bitten, or
as the result of a family curse.

I grinned as I pictured Jack and Hailey mixing up a magic lotion instead of Jack’s special granola. But a family curse fit in with Molly’s being descended from one of the original families of Wolf Valley. The site also confirmed my thoughts about the fact that becoming a werewolf could be a recessive trait. It said:
Even if you are born into a werewolf family, only some children will inherit the gene, and it may skip multiple generations, only to pop up unexpectedly.

So Jack and Hailey could be werewolves even if Molly wasn’t. She could have carried the gene and passed it down to them unknowingly.

Or Jack didn’t have to be a werewolf even if Hailey was: They weren’t identical twins, after all. They had different genes. I had to admit to myself that, while I didn’t want Hailey to be a werewolf, I
really
didn’t want Jack to be one. I pictured his friendly blue eyes, his bright smile — he was just too
sunny
(in the nicest way) to be a creature of the night.

Still, I thought I should probably keep an eye on both of them.

Thursday.
Thursday, Hailey and I helped Jack pack his food into coolers, and I was so busy getting ready for the trip I hardly thought about wolves or werewolves at all.

But that night, I dreamed.

I woke up with my mouth dry with terror, my heart pounding. The dream had been pretty bland:
Nothing had actually happened other than a twig snapping, but I had been so terrified, and in the dream I had known why. It was because the wolf was coming, and there was no way I could escape.

Friday.
Friday it seemed like hardly anyone could concentrate in class. When the final bell rang, we met in the science lab: twenty-five kids, chaperones, duffel bags, tents, backpacks, coolers of food, water, and sleeping bags.

Anderson was practically vibrating with excitement. He pulled a Frisbee out of his backpack and flung it at random. Someone caught it, and soon it was flying all over the room. “We’re going to party in the woods!” he shouted.

I glanced over at Mr. Samuels, who was so deep in conversation with Lily he didn’t even notice. But Hailey caught my eye. She was loaded down with a cooler with foil-wrapped packages sitting on top. I made my way through the crowded room to her and took some of the stuff off the top.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Should I ask?” I said, nodding to the packages.

“Food, of course,” she said. “You should see what
Jack left in the truck.” She looked around the room, which was now full of yelling, jumping, and a million different intense conversations. Someone had pulled out a tennis ball and was bouncing it off the wall. “Do you think we’ll be going anytime soon?” Hailey asked wistfully. “This stuff is getting awfully heavy.”

Surely a werewolf would be super-strong,
I thought. One point for Hailey being a regular person. I tried to shake off the thought. Dreams or no dreams, I wasn’t going to obsess about it this weekend — I was going to have fun.

Lily hopped up on a chair, stuck two fingers in her mouth, and gave a loud whistle. She reached out and caught the Frisbee, then glared at the boy with the ball until he caught it and stuck it back in his backpack. “Okay,” she announced. “Let’s hit the road.” People cheered and she smiled. “Listen up for your van assignments,” she went on, and everyone settled down immediately. I looked at her admiringly. Lily could get a whole group of excited kids to do what she said, without yelling at them.

Assignments were given out, we picked up our bags and tents and everything else, and at last we were off!