This Is Not a Werewolf Story (29 page)

I jump up. My thoughts are zinging around in my head like a BB shot in a metal room.

What was it Tuffman said at the end?

Your mom wasn't white when I knew her.
My ears bend back. He tracked her here to kill her so she wouldn't tell his secret. And now that he knows she's a spirit animal, he wants to eat her too. And I thought
Vincent
was a bad egg.

My skin creeps when I think of how he smiled at me when he shut my door. Like he had something up his sleeve.

I look at the clock. Sunset in ten minutes. It's time to go. I can't mess up the recipe this week of all weeks.

Dean Swift is standing at the door when I get to it. He's looking at me funny.

“How's the old noggin, Raul?” the dean asks. “Could I drive you down to meet your dad this week and tell him how sick you've been?”

I stand there with my hand on the doorknob, shaking my head. The clock is ticking, the sun is setting, the magic is happening. I don't have time to talk about it.

I'm not a dandelion. Tuffman can't puff me away.

Mary Anne got one thing right. I am the strong one.

Dean Swift puts a hand on my forehead. He's been doing it all week, checking if I have a fever. His skin smells like fire.

“Don't you need your bag?” he asks. We both look back to the parlor where my duffel bag is still on the floor.

“Did you light the lens?” I ask instead.

He looks startled. He nods slowly.

“Good,” I say. “I'm gonna need it.”

As I walk out the door, I turn around. The dean is standing in the foyer watching me. His face is gray and old and he looks so worried. I know if he could help me, he would.

“Thank you,” I say. “I'll see you soon.”

“I can only help you if you ask me,” he says. “It's the way.”

He says it sadly, like he'd give anything to save me. I'm tempted. But I don't have the time. I need to get to the lighthouse as quick as I can, and we've been over this, haven't we? When it comes to running, Dean Swift does
not
live up to his name.

“Just keep the light on,” I say. “I've got it all taken care of.”

Then I'm out the door and I'm running as hard as I can. My ears are stretching and my teeth are pulling and I can feel my body changing as I race. Every part of me is alive and alert and listening and sniffing for the cougar.

There's no time to talk.

In the meadow the light blasts through me.

I stand in it so long my skin pulses. Then I walk into the lighthouse.

I step over the threshold with four legs. I'm a wolf with a purpose. I'm a wolf that means business.

I'm ready for whatever Tuffman has cooked up.

All weekend I watch and listen. I lead White Wolf to the lake, just outside the protection of White Deer Woods. But I never catch a whiff of the cougar or the man who wears its skin. We hunt and eat and sleep, but all I want is my chance to fight the cougar.

White Wolf makes me leave on Sunday morning. She nips and nudges me. I want to stay. How will I protect her if I'm not here? Two wolves together can defeat a cougar, right? But one alone cannot. My tail drags as I cross the meadow.

I wish we could speak to each other with words.
Stay in White Deer Woods,
I want to say.
The woods magic will protect you.

There's a scent on the doorstep of the lighthouse. It makes me cold. I see them in my mind before their names come to me. A boy with hair the color of a raven's feathers and a man with a scrape on his cheek that could have been made by a hook stuck in a wall or by a bullet grazing his skin.

At first all I feel is fear. I race back to the edge of the woods to warn her. But White Wolf is gone. Will she be safe? Is this a trap? I stare into the woods. I listen. I sniff. Nothing moves. The cedar fronds sift the sharp gray light that falls across the green grass. The woods are still.

From a distance I watch the lighthouse. I am gray like the light, and I stay in the shadows of the trees as I walk the woods around the building. There's no sign of a boy or a man or the gun he might carry.

I nudge the lighthouse door open. I stop. I listen. But all I hear are wings above in the broken lantern room.

They've come and gone.

Vincent told Tuffman about my lighthouse. What will this do to the magic?

I put my nose to the ground and sniff. The scent trail leads from the door to the oven. The oven door is open. My clothes are gone.

In my wolf's mind's eye I see Tuffman's laughing eyes and the last words he said to me.
Change your clothes.
Vincent didn't just tell him about the lighthouse. He told him everything he knew, and that was all Tuffman needed.

At first I'm stunned, like when someone hits you in the back of a head with a rock. It's that solid kind of ache like when a bone breaks—sharp and hurting the same amount of bad everywhere.

Then I wonder. Was Vincent laughing when he reached into the oven? Did he wear his zombie mask? If I open one of the kitchen cupboards, will golf balls come dropping out?

Does Vincent know this isn't a prank? This isn't stealing or lying. This is a kind of killing. He's stolen the boy in me, and forced me to stay a wolf forever.

It takes the air out of my lungs.

Has someone ever punched you or kicked you? It hurts, right? But what's worse is the way you feel ashamed, like you let it happen, like you had it coming, and now everyone can see how you are stupid and worthless and weak.

What will Dean Swift think? What will Sparrow think?

I know what it's like to lose someone. I don't want them to feel that way.

Bam
goes my heart. Will they call my dad? He doesn't need to feel any sadder than he already does.

Tuffman will think he's won. He must be the one who
trapped my mom, too. This way we can't tell his secret. This way he can keep trying to kill us and nobody will know or care. Nobody goes to jail for shooting a wolf.

And Vincent? If there's one thing I know about Vincent, it's that when he does something wrong, he'll never admit it.

Remember the fire? He started it.

Remember the fishing pole? He broke it.

Remember my clothes? He stole them.

I stumble out of the lighthouse. I need White Wolf. I don't want to be alone.

But I am.

Maybe she only comes on Fridays at sunset. Maybe the magic only works at the moment I change.

I sit down in front of the lighthouse and put my nose on my paws. I feel the lump in my throat and I wait for the tears to come. But wolves don't cry. After a minute I swing my head up high and stretch my neck. I howl my sadness to the great gray sky.

When I stop howling, the woods fall silent. I think every bird feels my loneliness beneath its red or brown or blue feathers. The rabbits and the foxes, the voles and the moles, the frogs and the snakes, they all burrow down deep into the earth at the sound of my sorrow.

And then I hear a crack at the edge of the cedars.

When I look, I see White Wolf loping toward me. I
stand, my tail wagging with a joy so great only a tail can truly tell it.

Together we return to the woods.

We don't do much that day. We listen. I hear cars on the road below. The parents are bringing everyone back.

It may sound strange to be grateful for anything when you've just found out your best friend has stolen your life and that you'll never again eat with a fork or play pinball or baseball or wear shoes or read a book or watch a cartoon or fly a kite or use a straw to drink a soda.

But I'm grateful White Wolf returned when she heard my call. I'm grateful to find out that the magic doesn't happen just when I change. It's always there.

Most of the time, I try not to think. I feel the sun in my fur. I chase a rabbit.

When I do think, I worry about what they told my dad.

The sun rises, and we stay under our ledge because we can hear the men and women and children searching. Most days I try to sleep through it.

The cougar is always a shiver of anger running along my spine. When the sun sets, sometimes we hear the cougar yowling. White Wolf keeps moving us deeper into White Deer Woods, sidling between shaggy cedars and widespread oaks and flowering chestnuts.

Trees have their own magic, I learn. The faces I once saw in their trunks—a wolf sees them too. But a wolf hears them sigh and sing, remember and regret, whisper and worry as well. It's all alive out here. Once you know what to look for, you see everything.

One morning I'm padding along so softly on a thick layer of pine needles that I startle a snake coiled on
a rock, where the sun streaming down through the branches strikes it and heats it. I stop and raise one paw. Gollum. Her tongue flickers out toward me. When she looks at me, I think for a second that I can see the shadow of a girl's head floating just above her. Whoever said a wolf has no imagination? Quick as can be, she uncoils and slips into a crevice in the rock.

A warm feeling spreads through me. I'm happy to see this old friend.

The days grow long and the nights grow short. It must be almost summer.

After a while there are no more searches.

The 5K race comes. I hear the gun shot that starts it.

Did Tuffman get his rifle back? I hope when he comes, he comes as a cougar. There's no fair fight between wolves and guns.

The wind carries the scent of the runners to us as they follow the road that leads down to Highway 20 all the way around White Deer Woods to the ranger station. This is the first year I don't run it, and the only year that I could win it. If I raced in my wolf shape, that is. Ha-ha. A little dark wolf humor there.

Is Vincent sorry?

At first that's all I want. I want for him to be sorry. I want him to be terrified at what he's done. He's killed half of me. Doesn't he understand?

Many times, more than a wolf can count, I return to the lighthouse. Dean Swift keeps his word. The light of the lens is flooding a corner of the meadow every night I find myself there. I let it pulse through me until I feel too big to fit my skin.

White Wolf lets me come alone, to say good-bye to the part of me I have lost. I slink in slow, cautious. I stick my nose into the oven. It's always empty. Each time it surprises me. Each time it hurts.

After a while I just want Vincent to be terrified. He'd better not ride his bike too deep into the woods. A flick of my paw and he'd be over the cliff, swimming with the seals.

One evening the cougar attacks as I leave the lighthouse. He springs at me from a screen of fern and crushed bleeding hearts.

All I see from the corner of my eye is a flash of teeth and a red mouth coming at my throat. But I've stood in the light so many times. I'm quick. I dart away and he gets nothing but a mouthful of air.

I turn back and growl. The cougar jumps up onto a rotting stump of cedar.

Go ahead. Take the higher ground. It won't save you.

I've been waiting for this moment. All my anger—at Vincent, at Tuffman the man and Tuffman the cougar—surges through me.

As I gather my strength to charge, White Wolf streaks from the cedars, barking short and vicious barks. She's trying to protect me. Even she doesn't know what the light has done to me.

The cougar pounces. His claws dig into her back, his mouth gapes, and his teeth plunge toward her neck.

I leap at him, knocking him off balance. He twists and tumbles and just barely finds his feet. He hisses and turns to face us. White Wolf and I crouch. We advance, he retreats. We back him across the meadow and into the woods. White Wolf and I keep moving forward, our heads low. When the path narrows, White Wolf tries to push ahead of me, but I won't let her. Side by side, that's how it's gonna be this time.

You see, cougar, alone you can hurt us. Together we are strong.