This Is Not a Werewolf Story (23 page)

It makes me so angry. I can't take another bite. I put my tray in the dirty dishes bin and walk over to Sparrow's table.

I kneel down and put my hand under his chin and make him look up at me. There's no bruise on his face, but his eyes fill up with tears pretty quick.

I tilt my head so he can see I'm ready to listen.

“I lost it,” he says, and makes a huge gulping sound. “I lost your fishing pole.”

“What?” I ask. I spent so much time on that pole. It's the best carving I've ever made.

“I left it at the lake on Friday. When I went to look for it after Grammy dropped me off on Sunday, it was gone.” He starts to cry really hard now.

All morning it's been cooking in me. Rage. And now it's like when frozen fries get thrown into a deep fat fryer and the oil spatters and jumps. Someone is gonna get burned.

“You promised. How could you?” First I whisper it. Then I say it louder because it makes me feel good to shout. “How could you?”

Sparrow's face crumples.

I don't stop. “Tuffman's right,” I say. “You
are
a loser.”

Everyone in the dining hall stops talking and eating. First they look at me, but my face must be even more scary than normal, because right away they turn and look at Sparrow. He can't stop crying, and now everyone is staring at him crying.

Good,
I think. Now they'll think he's a baby, and he
is
a baby because a baby can't be trusted with important things.

Sparrow says something, but I can't understand it since he's sobbing so hard. I only hear the word “rain.”

I stomp out of the dining hall and up to my room.

But before I even get to the second floor, I feel terrible. What is wrong with me?

He's only five. A five-year-old is going to lose things from time to time. When I was five, I lost plenty of things. Like the time I lost my mom's favorite bracelet. I remember how she almost started to cry, she was so sad, how she said she got it from her mother and her
mother had gotten it from her mother and so on and so on. But did she yell at me? No. She hugged me and said she knew I felt even worse than she did and that even though the bracelet was a gift that reminded her of all the mothers who had made her, I was the gift who had made her a mother herself.

She found it a week later in the trunk of my Flintstones car, along with the remote for the garage door, an old slice of cheddar cheese, and twenty-five paper clips. How many times did I hear her tell that story to someone on the phone, saying it like it was the funniest, smartest thing a kid could do?

I turn around and head back to the dining hall. I'll tell him not to worry about it. We'll find the pole. And if we don't, then we'll go out to the woods and look for another straight branch so I can make him a new one. It won't be as great as the last one, that'll be the lesson for him, but it will still be pretty darn good.

Halfway down the hall I slap my hand to my forehead.
Rain.
That's what he was saying. It's why he forgot the pole on Friday. He wasn't being careless. It was raining so hard and so fast we all scrambled out of the woods like the cougar was after us.

I feel bad all right, but not as bad as I'm going to feel, because when I turn the corner, guess who is standing in front of me with a look in her eyes so mean it could shatter a window or make a building fall down
or bend a telephone pole? You got it. Mary Anne.

“Was I wrong about you!” she says in a very quiet voice. “I thought you were different from all these other primates.” She stares at me like I'm more disgusting than mushroom casserole. “Jack is a real Prince Charming next to you, you know that?”

I look down.

“You're out of the book,” she hisses, knocking into me as she walks past. “You get that? You're
out
of my novel.”

I hadn't known I was in it, but there's nothing she could say that would make me feel worse.

“I guess I shouldn't be surprised. There's a saying for it. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. You didn't get Tuffman's looks, but you sure got all of his cruelty,” she calls back.

I was dead wrong. She
could
say something that makes me feel worse. And that was it.

I can't believe Vincent told her I was related to Tuffman.

I couldn't find Sparrow. After about ten minutes I had to stop looking and go to class.

Have you ever done something as bad as what I did? Lose your temper like that, make a little guy who looks up to you cry, make the girl you love hate you? But it gets worse. At lunch I don't see Sparrow at his table, so I go pound on his bedroom door. He doesn't answer, and when I hit it one last time the door opens a little. I peek around the corner. Maybe he's hiding behind the door. But he's not. He's not under the bed or in the closet, and when I've looked inside and under everywhere a five-year-old could hide, I notice how cold the room is. The window is open. It's a short jump to the ground even for Sparrow's little legs.

I run to Dean Swift's office and stand in the open doorway. Four teachers are hunched over his desk.

The math teacher is talking. “I think we're looking at a boy with anger management issues.”

The social studies teacher clucks. “I'm not sure he
should be supervising the little ones on Fridays.”

Ms. Tern shakes her head. “You're both mad. The doctor told us that the concussion could make him prone to irrational behavior. If anyone's at fault here, I am. I saw him acting strangely before breakfast. He was deeply affected by Bobo's injury. I should have taken him back to his room.”

“Hey, Nicky, we all dropped the ball on this one,” Tuffman says. “I should've checked on him first thing this morning. I can tell you from personal experience, a concussion brings out the worst in a man. Add that to the family temper and kaboom, whaddya expect?”

Have you ever walked into a room where everyone's talking about you? You know how part of you wants to run away and part of you wants to act normal so nobody can tell how much it hurts?

They all turn to stare at me, long wrinkles between their eyes. Ms. Tern looks worried. Tuffman looks sympathetic. Dean Swift looks disappointed.

In me. He's disappointed in me.

I hang back a little as we head into the dining hall. It's the middle of lunch and the noise makes me feel like someone stuffed a pillow in my brain. But the minute the kids notice the dean, four teachers, and me, all standing in the doorway, it gets as quiet as the library on a Saturday.

“Children,” the dean says, “Sparrow has not come to
any of his classes. Please finish your lunches quickly. We will start a search. Students will work with a supervising adult.”

Dean Swift doesn't look at me as he chooses his group, and Mary Anne flounces over to him before he even calls her name. Me, Mean Jack, Vincent, and Little John get assigned to Tuffman. The cafeteria bustles and booms as everyone starts talking and Cook Patsy distributes flashlights for the tunnels and walkie-talkies.

But when Dean Swift raises a hand, the room goes silent in a split-second. “Children,” he says in a voice so serious it makes my skin tingle and my ears burn, “you must stay within sight of an adult at all times.
Do You Understand?
”

Why doesn't he just say the word we're all thinking?

Cougar.

I made a mistake. Everyone knows it. Me most of all.

And now I'm going to fix it.

“Come on,” I say, pushing my way out the door. “I know where he is.”

No one else knows it all. I know where Sparrow hides when someone he loves hurts him. I know his hideout is also the cougar's den. I guess we all know the cougar has three German shepherd teeth sunk in him and is getting meaner by the minute.

But I'm the
only one who knows—who
really
knows—how dangerous a wounded predator is. Because I'm the only one who's ever worn that skin. I keep thinking how I charged Tuffman and Vincent down by the lake. What would I have done if one of them had tripped as he ran out of my territory? Would the boy in me have been able to reason with the wounded wolf?

I sprint down the zigzag path to the beach. I don't care how many spiderwebs break up on my face and arms. I don't care how many blackberry thorns rip my shirt and scrape my bare legs. I run. Tuffman and Vincent are right behind me as I jump from the path to the driftwood pile and then onto the sand. We are racing three across now, our feet pounding in the hard-packed sand. Behind us, Mean Jack stumbles over the driftwood. I glance back and see Little John at the top of the zigzag path. He's throwing rocks as hard as he can down at Mean Jack and whooping every time he hears the big kid curse and moan, “You're breakin' my heart Johnny, you're breakin' my heart.”

We don't need them anyway.

I turn up the path that leads from the beach to the fort, and Vincent and Tuffman stay beside me. We're a team and we're running like one, our feet hitting the ground all at the same time.

Tuffman reaches out and punches me lightly on the shoulder. “We'll find him, Raul,” he says. “You lead the way. It's your show, Raul.”

I swallow hard. Tuffman drops back, like he knows
I'm about to cry and he doesn't want to embarrass me. Man, was I wrong about this guy. It's just been a misunderstanding, like the dean said. He's on my side. Look how he's treating me now, like he has respect for me. Like I made a mistake and he respects me enough to let me be the one to fix it.

Maybe he does know my mom is White Wolf. Maybe he's looking for her because he wants to help her.

Didn't he tell me
twice
that he loved her like a little sister?

The thought gives me a burst of energy. We pound across the field. A group of police officers is getting out of a squad car in the parking lot as we run by. They nod at us, and I feel another surge of energy as I see that our team is part of a bigger team. We're gonna find Sparrow. He'll be all right.

The Blackout Tunnel is on the far side of the fort, separate from the main building. It's a U shape, with two ways in or out. As we get nearer I put my finger to my lips. I signal to Tuffman to guard the first entrance to the tunnel in case Sparrow runs out that end. I try not to think about the cougar.

“Wait here,” I whisper, and Tuffman gives me a sharp salute.

“You bet, Captain Raul,” he says.

I've been thinking like a lunatic. This is what happens when you've got a bruised melon for a brain.
Thank goodness I kept my yap shut. One good thing about being the quiet type—even your fever talk is all in your head.

Vincent and I creep toward the other entrance. Then we hear it.

The cougar scream. It rings on and on with a cold, echoing sound, like it's coming to us from the bottom of a well.

When you were little, what scared you? Toilets flushing? Spiders? Or dogs? For me it was being alone in the dark. When I saw my mom's hand reach up to turn off the lights, my whole body felt like it was screaming NO!

That's how I feel when I hear the cougar screech.

I'm a big No. My legs are a jelly of No. My head has no thoughts but the word “No.” My stomach jumps like a trampoline that squeaks the word “No.”

I look at Vincent, and my eyes are so wide open, I wonder if I'll ever be able to shut them again. Vincent stares back.

“We gotta get Sparrow out of that tunnel,” I manage to say.

Vincent starts to shake all over. He falls to the ground.

Looks like I'm on my own.

“Sparrow!” I shout. Halfway into the tunnel I trip over something. I scream. The thing on the ground
screams. It jumps on me and starts scratching and clawing me.

It's not the cougar. It smells like maple syrup, for starters.

“Sparrow,” I say after a second. My voice is very calm. The scratching stops.

“Raul?” his little voice asks.

“Yeah, it's me,” I say. I try to pull him up, but I can't tell which end of him I've got.

We shuffle around for a second.

“Sorry,” he says with a little sob once we're sitting shoulder to shoulder with our backs to the wall.

“No, Sparrow, I'm sorry. I acted like a total jerk. I know you only forgot it because of the rain,” I say.

I stand up, because all of a sudden my legs want to run really fast. I sense the cougar. I try to keep my voice calm. “Okay, which way did I come in?” I ask, reaching down and patting around to find Sparrow again. I pull him up next to me.

“It doesn't matter,” Sparrow says. “Either way leads out.”

If either way leads out, then either way leads in. And I only know one thing for sure—the way I came in there was no cougar.

“Stay with me,” I say. I walk with one hand on the wall to my left and the other hand holding tight to Sparrow's. It's so dark, I realize I've closed my eyes.
There's no point in keeping them open. I could not see my finger even if I stuck it into my eyeball.

The screech of the cougar echoes toward us. The back of my neck prickles. The tingly, chicken-flesh feeling spreads all the way from my neck up over the top of my head and then down into my ears.

I hear a sound like claws clicking on the cement. I look back. Two yellow eyes glow. Then I
feel
the cougar's low growl and the hot breath that carries it. I sense the cougar tensing its back, leaning into its hind legs, gathering all of its muscle into a force strong enough to knock the two of us down with one pounce. I can't explain what happens next. It's the wolf in me. It's the light in me. Without having any idea of what I'm doing, I scoop Sparrow up with one hand and then I leap blindly into the air, grabbing at a ladder that I somehow know is bolted to the wall in front of us. My hand grasps the middle rung and I pull us both up to safety in one insanely accurate jump into total blackness.