This Is Not a Werewolf Story (11 page)

It walked toward me and it spoke to me. It told me what to do so that someone I had lost could return to me. I listened so hard I forgot to breathe.

What would you do to see your mom if you had lost her? Would you go hungry? Would you run for miles and miles? Would you walk in the snow barefoot or under a boiling sun in a fur coat? Yes. Yes. Yes, you would.

I can't tell you the exact words White Deer said. That will always be a secret that I must keep. All I can say is that White Deer told me the light of the woods had spoken to my mother and told her where to find me. That she had been lost to me but that I could never be lost to her.

I put my pole down. Dandelion fluff floated everywhere. I walked out into the water, the twirling seeds catching the last of the day's light and dancing all around me. I dunked my head three times and said the things White Deer told me to say.

Then the woods were illuminated, but not from the sky above. It was from under and inside every dark, damp place. I saw light everywhere. Glowing hunks of green gold in the crevices where logs rotted to the forest floor. Foxfire. Then I saw the will-o'-the-wisp. Over the lake it bounced and shimmered, reaching back to me and hurrying ahead of me, drawing me forward.

As the sun slipped back and away behind the sea, I followed a path of light to the old lighthouse. I felt something watching me and running beside me again, and this time, because of White Deer, I knew who it was and my face was dripping with tears. I wasn't bawling. It was just like water flowing down a river. It was my whole heart in that river of tears, and I was happy.

When I came to the clearing on the cliff, the lighthouse was lit up. The light wasn't coming from inside it, though. The lichen on the tower glowed pale green like water breaking on sand in the morning.

On the threshold, the flowers called bleeding hearts bloomed. I pushed aside the red-green-gold ivy that covered the door. The soft leaves bent toward me and
then away. They whispered to me in the language of leaves.

I walked into the lighthouse.

I took off my damp clothes, folded them, and tucked them into the iron stove like White Deer said.

Wings beat in the lantern room above, and I remembered the swallows and wondered if they had come home too.

Then the change came. I can't tell you how it happens. It doesn't hurt. My spine sparks. My skin prickles; it feels warm like it does when you stretch out in the cool grass under a summer sun. My ears pull up, my nose twitches, and my teeth sharpen. The pads of my fingers and toes press against the broken-up linoleum floor of the lighthouse. Do you know how good it feels to have a tail? Humans were meant to have tails. You don't know until you have one just how much you've missed it. You can't imagine what I smell—clover, dirt, bee pollen, frog spit, moss, bunny-rabbit breath, blackberry leaves, water. You can't imagine what I hear—worms sliming, bats hanging, leaves fluttering to the ground, tree trunks heating in the sun.

It's true. Every Friday night at dusk, I become a wolf.

Not a werewolf, don't say a werewolf.

A werewolf is a story someone made up to scare little kids. It's a monster that's half man and half wolf
at the same time
.

Me, when I'm a wolf, I'm a wolf. When I'm a boy, I'm a boy. Do you get it? It's not all mixed up. I'm one and then I'm the other. I change and I change back. I'm not some knuckle-dragging, hairy-faced monster who eats people.

A werewolf changes when he sees the full moon. He can't help it; he has no control over how he acts—it's why he's always gonna be alone. You never know if he's gonna feed you or eat you.

But for me it's a choice. White Deer told me the recipe, but I choose to follow it.

And when I'm a wolf, I'm never alone.

A white wolf meets me as I come out of the lighthouse door. She licks my face and my fur. In her throat she makes happy sounds, and in my throat the same sounds purr and rumble. Together we go to the woods on the side of the lake that nobody knows. We howl at the moon and we chase rabbits. When we walk through the woods together, the other animals fall back into the shrubs and leap under the fallen trees. Our shoulders touch as we sway along, our tails flick the wind.

We don't speak, of course not, don't be silly. We have calls that mean only true things. Not like words.

I have one that means
Where are you?

She has one that means
I'm waiting right here.

We have ones that mean
Watch out
and
There's a rabbit nearby, don't look but he's there in the blackberry leaves
and
I'm hungry
and
I'm tired
and
The sun feels good
and
This water is cold and fresh
and the one I hate that means
It's time for us to say good-bye.

On Sunday mornings I become a boy again. I forget a lot of what happens when I'm in my wolf skin. But I remember enough.

When I'm tired I sleep, curled into her flank, and she watches over me, making soft music in her throat.

She's my wolf mother. She's my mother.

She followed me here all those years ago. She's been waiting for me to find a way to be with her. The lights in the woods told her. White Deer helped her. Those things I know because those are the things she doesn't need words to tell me. The important things, right? The things that matter.

I don't know why the change happened to her in the first place, or why she can't change back and be a human during the week like me. Maybe she forgot the recipe. It's why I'm always so careful to do everything the same way every single time. It's like with bread. If you forget the yeast, then the dough won't rise. Only with magic, when the recipe is wrong, what you get is a lot worse than crackers instead of bread.

And now that Dean Swift has helped me get rid of Tuffman, I'm going to go meet her tonight.

On Sunday my wolf mother and I return to the lighthouse. I'm always sad on Sundays. But this Sunday I'm worried, too. Something bad happened to her last week. When she met me Friday she had a deep scrape about eight inches long slicing down her left side. It was red and puffy. I could tell it had bled a lot.

There's nothing big enough in White Deer Woods to hurt her like that.

It has to be the new housing development. Because of it, she won't go as far north as she used to. White Wolf must be moving into another predator's territory. Maybe she's going south toward the fort to find food. But it can't be the coyote. A coyote would take one look at White Wolf and run off with flat ears and its tail squished up against its belly.

Something else is out there. I hope she stays out of its way this week.

A rabbit sits in the tall grass. We smell it before we see it. Twice its nose flutters open and shut.

White Wolf swings her head to look at me.
Go on. Get it.

There's a reason people say “quick like a bunny.” I charge into the underbrush. The smell of the rabbit is to my wolf nose what a paved road is to a boy's eyes. A path.

Rabbit scrambles under a fallen log and I leap over it. The air lifts me and for a minute I fly. I can't see anything but the chase. Boulder, ditch, log, thorn bush—my wolf body leaps and scampers and stretches and tumbles.

Rabbit turns. He's heading toward his burrow.

Bad idea, bunny.

The scent path opens up in front of us now. It's like he turned on headlights. He's been back and forth, in and out of that burrow so many times I can smell where he is going.

I corner him against a rock.
Snap.
I'm quick. Rabbit felt nothing. I promise.

I carry it back to her by the nape of its neck.

She makes a low growl.
Eat, Raul, eat.
She used to say that to me in a funny accent. It must be a line from an old movie she liked. I bet by now we would have watched it together.

I push the rabbit toward her. I'm returning to the world of refrigerators. She's recovering from an injury.

She growls, but I nose the meat toward her again. I
look at her, my neck straight, and my eyes speak to her.
You eat. You get strong.

She puts her nose against mine.

Wolf kiss.

The bunny chase has brought us to the meadow where the wind has shoved back the trees. Every Sunday White Wolf leads me back to the lighthouse. There's a small growl that comes with a little nip that she only makes at the edge of the woods, and it means
Go now and be the boy you are.

Her tail drops. She's sad to see me leave.

But there's more to it. White Wolf has regrets. I think she's sorry that we have to meet the way we do.

I lope toward the lighthouse.

White Wolf settles down under a big cedar and rests her head on her paws. The bunny is next to her. She better eat it.

My clothes are in the stove where I left them. As I put them on, I lose my wolf face and my wolf ways. When I walk out of the lighthouse, I'm no longer my second self, I'm no longer wolf me. I'm Raul, and the White Wolf who loves me is gone.

I head back toward the school. The sky is gray. A mist creeps up over the cliff, spreading a wet and glaring light into the woods.

The dean will be back by now, turning on the heat and the lights, making coffee and setting out cookies
for the parents who take the time to come in. Some of the kids, like Mary Anne, just jump out of the car. Her parents don't even turn the engine off. They hit a button that makes the trunk pop open so that she can pull out her bags.

Dean Swift always runs down to help kids whose parents do this. He puts his arm around the boy or girl and takes the bag.

Sometimes I see Dean Swift look after the parents' car as it drives away, and his face looks like my insides feel—angry and sort of like he can't believe it. What kind of grown-up is too busy to carry his kid's suitcase up the stairs?

Thinking of the dean makes me feel better about going back. It'll be good to see Sparrow and hear about this weekend's disgusting casserole. His grandma throws everything she didn't eat that week into a pot for Sunday lunch—cottage cheese, refried beans, creamed spinach, spaghetti, fish sticks—if it's in her fridge Sunday morning, it's on Sparrow's plate at noon. She calls it Dutch soup, but me and Sparrow and some of the other kids like to make up different names for it. I draw pictures until someone guesses the name. So far we have barf bowl (Sparrow's), rat bath soup (mine), fungus 'n' feces (mine), poo punch (Sparrow's), dog drool dumplings (Dean Swift's), calamity casserole (Mary Anne's), and the newest one, stomach acid stew (Vincent's).

Maybe Mean Jack got to know Gollum. Do they pump your stomach for a mildly venomous snake bite? I'll ask the dean.

Maybe Vincent pranked his stepfather so good that he moved back out.

And maybe at dinner tonight Mary Anne will sit next to me at the counter.

I have a great idea. If I get there in time for drop-off, I can be the one to help her with her bag when her parents drive up. Dean Swift should be pretty easy to outrun.

Then I do what I do every Sunday when I'm halfway to the lake. I sniff until I find the stinkiest stick on the forest floor. It'll keep Bobo busy all week long.

I can tell by where the sun is in the sky that I'm earlier than usual, so I head toward the lake. I'm laughing over two new ones I thought up—scab surprise and maggot meatloaf.

But when the path opens out to the lake, I stop laughing pretty quick.

Tuffman is standing in front of the straw man.

“Was this your idea?”

I look at him. I remember the crazy idea I had about him on Friday afternoon—that he was one of my kind. I must be losing my marbles, as my dad would say. I think White Deer calls to people who need a second self because their first self has lost something so big it's not whole anymore.

Tuffman isn't the type who loses anything.

“You better talk to me, weirdo. I'm not playing games.” He yanks the straw man off the tree. The heavy-duty ropes I used to tie it to the trunk snap like old rubber bands.

I can't believe it. The kids call me freaky strong, but the only word for Tuffman-strong is superhuman.

“You think it's funny to steal a man's clothes?” He strips the straw man.

The blood pumps in my neck. I want to run.

“This shirt means something,” he says. “It means I'm a champion.” He's ripping the straw man up as he talks. “Kids think they're the only ones with dreams. Grown-ups have dreams too. Dreams that die just like yours will unless you listen up and listen good.”

He unzips his running jacket. He's not wearing a shirt underneath. The skin of his chest is smooth and tan and muscles bump and bulge. He turns around and points to a scar on his back. It's white and raised. It looks like he has two spines, almost.

“That's what happened to my dream. I was running in the woods one day, just like you.” He steps toward me. “One wrong move, that's all it took.” He tilts his head and I see his eyes glow. “They told me I'd never walk again. One wrong move in the woods, Raul, and everything changed. And now I'm a joke to you, huh?”

I shake my head. Nothing about Tuffman makes me
want to laugh. The scar is awful, like a thick seam of doubled-over skin.

“Bet you think that story has nothing to do with you. It has
everything
to do with you. You think you get to choose what happens next.” He steps toward me again. “Well, you don't. Life happens to you.”

He's about three feet away. I can sense he's about to grab me. The hairs on the back of my neck stand straight out.

“Listen, Raul,” he says. His eyes fix on me. I can't move.

“Here's the moral to the story. Not just
my
story.
Your
story too. I was like you. I wasn't alone in the woods that day either. I was with a friend, Raul. More than a friend. She was family. I loved her like a little sister. She did that to me.” He twists around again to show me the scar.