Counting Wolves

by Michael F Stewart

  He nods. At least that seems to add up.

  “Would you try something for me?” he asks. “Would you try counting to ten next time? Ten out of ten on a test is one hundred percent, right?”

  I raise my eyebrow to show I think he’s crazy. He doesn’t understand this at all.

  “Okay, how about ninety-nine?”

  . . . “Do you want a one percent chance of dying today?” I ask. “I mean, a one percent chance that you’ll be hit by a car, have a heart attack, be struck by lightning?”

  He’s smart enough to know this is a rhetorical question and doesn’t reply, but I still need to count.

  . . . “No, you wouldn’t. So why would I want to take a risk like that?”

  He purses his lips. “Do you really believe that you cause these terrible things to happen?”

  I shrug. I don’t, but I’m the only one who can stop them from happening.

  “These automatic thoughts that come with a wave of anxiety are your OCD, your Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Next time you have a thought like—‘Something terrible will happen if I don’t count’—I want you to identify it and say to it, ‘You’re just my OCD talking.’”

  He says it as if it’s a trivial matter. What he doesn’t know is that me and my OCD, we’re real close. Mama taught me never to talk to wolves.

  “We’re going to give you the weapons and training so you can fight this thing.”

  My bow and arrows. I smile despite myself and lean closer. Here’s a language I understand.

  When I don’t say anything, he continues, “How are you enjoying the other patients?”

  . . . “Enjoying? I’m enjoying it like I enjoy watching the circus. These people are crazy. Pig’s lying about everything. So is Vanet. Peter’s the only person being real. One chick won’t even wake up. Wesley, he barely speaks he’s so depressed, perhaps not unusual for a guy who wears that much eyeliner. And Red, well I can understand why Red’s in here, she clearly has some issues to work through, even if I don’t know why yet.”

  “Everyone’s in here for very different reasons, and they all have very different needs,” Doctor Balder says.

  He’s stopped his scribbling and I guess the interview is over. With my counting, the whole thing took an hour, even though I bet we covered less than half of what he would have wanted.

  After my meeting with him I’m bored, not interested in doing crafts with Tink or socializing, so I have a shower. I slide the bar on the door from “Vacant” to “In Use.” It doesn’t seem to matter. As soon as the jet of water hits the tiles, Vanet keeps “accidentally” trying to come in.

  “Occupado!” I shout.

  “Don’t you have to count to shut a door?” he asks after I shove it back closed.

  . . . “No, idiot, just to hop through it. Whatever you’re taking, they need to increase the dosage.” He gives up on his fourth attempt to see me naked.

  At least he steers clear of my changing. My room’s in sight of the nursing station, and Vanet’s not allowed in. I slip into an I love NY T-shirt and a pair of jeans. No one else is in the room except Sleeping Beauty. I pick up my book of tales, the cloth binding warm beneath fingertips chilled from the shower. I open it to the first page and count the words, knowing where I’ll end. At the word wolf. The hundredth word. A nutty scent wafts from the pages as I turn to the hundredth page, which begins, There once was a girl who was the wolf’s coveted meal. Why do I count to one hundred? Because that’s the magic.

  I turn the page to a short tale, hoping for some new magic, even though I’ve read the book a hundred times.

  There once was a girl who wandered into the woods on her sixth birthday. Everyone who met her, loved her, and her mother loved her most of all. So when she was found killed by a wolf, the whole town mourned for a week. But not a day went by that the mother didn’t visit the little girl’s grave and sob as she left flowers. At night the mother cried herself to sleep, and all through the day, small things that the little girl had loved brought tears to the mother’s eyes. On the little girl’s seventh birthday, the little girl appeared to her mother, who cried in the kitchen baking her daughter’s favorite cake. The little girl said, “Please, Mother, I cannot rest for all your crying. Please stop.”

  Seeing that her daughter could not rest for her grief, the mother stopped her tears and only lit a candle for each year thereafter.

  Suck it up. Let go and move on. Fairy tales make it look easy.

  I snap the book closed. Beauty turns in her sleep.

  There’s something freeing about talking to the comatose. When talking, if I pause too long, I have to count again, but if I can get it right, I can speak without counting for a long time.

  . . . “Hi, Beauty.” She is certainly pretty in a delicate kind of way. “Why so sleepy? Waiting for your prince charming? I wouldn’t wait. Those boys are fickle. I mean, could you imagine dating Vanet?” I chuckle and that definitely counts as a pause, and so I count again. I want to talk to Bill so badly it hurts, but he won’t be home for an hour, so talking about him is the next best thing.

  . . . “I have a date for the dance, if you’re wondering. Dances aren’t real dates, I guess. They rank with going to a movie. At least I hope we’re going to the dance. His name’s Bill—I know, Milly and Billy, ha-ha, but he really is cool. Black, dense hair, awesome body, plays tennis and runs a lot. He’s a popular guy. I don’t know what he sees in me, especially with my counting and all. What’s awesome is he doesn’t expect me to talk much, so we’re a perfect match.

  “So far we’ve seen two movies, tried to play tennis, and went to a noisy party where I never had to bother counting to talk. This will be our fifth not-real date. I don’t really like the movies, but going with Bill makes me feel safe. Like the dance: without him I don’t think I’d go, not by myself. Maybe he’ll figure me out soon. Luckily I don’t have to count before we kiss.” I smile and start counting again.

  . . . “I want to dance with him. I bet he’s good, though, and I dance like an ostrich. It sucks when your stepmother dances better than you do. Twelve months after my mom died, she moved in. It’s been two years and counting. Counting . . . ha-ha. So what’s with the IV?”

  I check the empty bag and choke back a cry. I know the name of the drug labeled on it. My mom was on it once. Beauty is undergoing chemotherapy. She has cancer.

  When I look back, she’s staring at me.

  “Jesus says I’m healed,” she says, eyes moving all over the place in their sockets.

  . . . “Looks like the hospital isn’t so sure Jesus got it all,” I say.

  Her eyes clear, and she seems to spot the IV port in her arm for the first time. She screeches and starts clawing at the needle. It pulls out of her arm, blood smearing across her wrist. I’m counting like mad and finally clue into the red button on the wall and slam my fist into it. Beauty has already pretty much tired herself out by the time Nurse Abby and Stenson rush in, followed by Balder. In a minute, Beauty’s sedated and Nurse Stenson’s charting.

  . . . “She’s refusing treatment, right?” I ask.

  Doctor Balder draws a deep breath and then returns to check his patient’s pulse. And I think I get it. Beauty believes Jesus has healed her already. If she is healed, then to her the IV is renouncing His gift. Or at best filling her body with toxic chemicals for no reason.

  Christ, I really don’t belong here.

  Chapter 13

  While I was in my meeting with Doctor Balder, the teaching aide dropped off my course work from yesterday, plus what the teachers plan to cover the rest of the week. A stack of paper teeters on my desk. There’s no way they will cover anywhere close to this much. I bet the teachers looked at what they had actually planned to cover, were embarrassed, and so tripled it. Except for my math teacher, he doesn’t need to triple anything. Or maybe they know something I don’t, that I’ll be in here longer than the doctor’s telling me.

  Why don’t adults tell kids everything? Why hide things? Sometime
s I wonder whether my mom knew about her breast cancer long before she told me. So instead of having all those nights of arguments, I could have known she was dying. I could have helped her.

  Breaking the truth slowly just means telling lots of little lies to avoid one big reality. I bet Adriana has had a conversation with Balder that went something like:

  Don’t worry, ma’am, she’ll be here for a month, maybe four. She’s good and mixed up. I’ll give her so many diagnoses that her head will spin. And if she isn’t sick, I’ll be sure to make her sick within the week.

  And then Adriana asked: What about the dance, good, silver-templed doctor?

  That’s when they both started laughing at the shared joke of me ever making it to the dance.

  I like the concept of the dance. No one talks at a dance, not really. It’s too loud in the school gym. And what else, other than chips and punch, is there to eat and drink? I’d be normal for the night, communicating in nods, smiles, and hand waves, swaying to the music.

  I sit down at my desk and put my new workbook on top. I can see that Pig has a copy of it too amongst her clutter of papers and books. Other kids have scratched things into the desk’s surface. Swearing, names and dates, silly faces, penises, the usual, plus some biblical scripture, death threats, and images of what looks like a hanging doctor or nurse. And a wolf. Just the head this time, as if its body is stuck through a knot in the wood. I don’t remember this and wonder if it’s new. I peer into the room’s shadows, but nothing moves. Hair lifts at the back of my neck.

  I try to start some math, but I can feel the eyes of the wolf under the pages, so I take a pen and scribble over it. It only serves to remind me of how it hides in the trees, waiting for me to slip off the path. I etch at the wood, covering every inch until I can’t make it out. But it’s still there. Underneath. In its den. My stomach clenches. It’s my OCD, I tell myself. But just thinking that doesn’t seem like much of a weapon.

  Maybe I can use the workbook. Maybe if it seems like I’m trying, Balder will let me get the hell back to home, where it’s safe.

  Some doctor has written a blurb on the cover: “The first anxiety workbook written in a language teens can really dig. Rock-on!”

  Dig? Rock-on? Seriously? I bet it was written in the sixties.

  I turn to the purple tab.

  So, you’ve got a problem. People probably think you’re wiggin’ out, am I right? What a drag. Don’t be bummed. I’m here to help you fix it. The first thing you need to decide is what groovy looks like.

  Oh, my, god, it might as well be written in a different language.

  Answer the following:

  What changes will help you get your groove back?

  What does groovy look like?

  How will groovy change your relationships with your steady, your old man, or old lady?

  Draw a picture of a gnarly life:

  There’s a big space where I’m supposed to draw. I burst out laughing.

  When I stop, I get down to filling in blanks. How to become groovy? That’s pretty simple. Stop the wolf. Kill it. If the wolf’s gone, I can stop counting. Stop hopping. Stop being so nervous about everything. Stop fighting with Adriana, although I can’t stop her from acting like an idiot. Stop having nightmares. Stop the wolf. Yeah, pretty much sums it up. Gnarly.

  Groovy is this magical world where I can have a conversation without pissing off everyone around me. Where I actually talk to people rather than veer away when I see them coming. No wonder people call me stuck-up.

  What’s a steady? I’m going to assume it means boyfriend. How would my relationship change with Bill? I’d talk a lot more. But maybe he likes girls with problems. Would he be my boyfriend if I wasn’t such a loser? Not that he’s a loser, but would we be compatible?

  How would things change with my dad? He’d worry less. It must be hard for him knowing I’m in the hospital and bummed and wiggin’ out. I bite my knuckles to suppress a giggle. My relationship with Adriana would sure change. She likes how weak I am. It makes her look strong.

  I skip the blank where I’m supposed to draw something and reread what I wrote.

  Maybe I do have a problem. I mean, look at all the parts of my life affected by my counting. By the wolf.

  It’s my OCD . . . .

  I glance at the black square, the buried wolf, and squint at it. Then I turn back to the blank area. I draw a picture of stick-me. The girl has stringy brown hair and bangs trimmed to fall just above green eyes. She’s skinny, but then it’s a stick girl. Then I give her a cap like Robin Hood might have worn and a quiver of arrows and bow. At her stick-hip I draw a fat hunting blade. After, small as I can, I rewrite the hunting license Vanet gave me and place it in the stick-hunter-me’s hand.

  I open the book of tales to page one hundred and read from halfway down.

  Each day, the wolf crept closer, and grew bolder, and the magic of the spell grew weaker. The girl had to learn new magic, darker and more difficult magic. The dark magic drew the wood closer until the path overgrew with thorns and no new magic could protect her from the wolf.

  That day the girl sharpened a hunting knife; she shouldered a quiver of arrows and strung a bow of yew. That day the girl gave up her magic and hunted the hunter.

  Gave up her magic. She had no choice. She had no choice, because the Dark Wood became too strong. The wolf too ferocious.

  But where are my real weapons? I can call out the wolf, but what then?

  Pig enters. She scratches at her head, sighing deeply. “Anyone got a match?” she asks. “Just kidding. Don’t go calling the nurses on me.”

  Pig slumps into her chair, rolls her bald head to me, and then huffs.

  I shrug.

  “When’s your birthday?” she asks and then waits.

  . . . “Friday, actually.” I’d forgotten. “I’ll be sixteen. I can drive. Sweet, sweet, crazy sixteen.”

  “Oh, nice, I’ve been sixteen for almost two years and the only car I’ve been in is a cop car.” The thought seems to upset her because she starts banging her fist against the table. “Sorry.” Pig’s eyes flick to the ceiling. “Nerves. Getting out soon, end of my sentence is Saturday.”

  . . . “Congratulations,” I say, but wondering if she’s really ready to leave. She’s more twitchy than Red. “You must be excited.”

  Her head lolls back and forth. “No, no, no,” she says. “Not excited.”

  We sit in silence for a bit. It lets me count. “What happened, Pig?” I ask. “Why the fires? Is it like OCD and you can’t stop yourself?”

  She looks me up and down and then picks my book of tales off the table. “Let me tell you a little fairy tale.

  “Once there were three little piggies who had to leave home. The momma piggy used to beat the pulp out of the girl piggy. And the daddy piggy beat up the two boy piggies. The piggy parents were gender-specific beaters, see? Momma piggy would never beat her baby boys, and daddy would never beat his girl. Even psychos have boundaries.” She shudders, and I clench my hands to forestall a shiver of my own. My eyes are watering. I know far too well what she’s really saying. “So the three little piggies left together. The little piggies couldn’t do it each on their own, but together they could escape. But they didn’t stay together. They didn’t have much money, and no one wants to have to protect a sister piggy.

  “The first little piggy, let’s call him Jess. Jess found a bus shelter that he used as a home until a pack of wolves came and pounded his ass. He joined the wolves for protection. That lasted a year before the sister piggy had to identify him at the butcher.

  “The second little piggy was the eldest. Call him Andy. He took his sister to a shelter for homeless piggies, but his money was stolen and he wanted to pimp out his sister piggy, so she ran. So the first piggy didn’t find any help with the wolves. And the second piggy didn’t get help from the shelters. So the third little piggy had to protect herself.”

  She stares at me as if to catch my reaction, but I go dead neu
tral, even though I suddenly want to run.

  “So whenever this little piggy didn’t feel safe, she’d light a fire. At first it was little fires in garbage cans. While they burned, no one touched her money or stuff, not with all the police about. No one dared touch her.” She grimaced. “The bigger the fire, the more uniforms, the safer, the better. So, yeah, the fires got bigger.”

  . . . “Whoa.”

  “I wait for you to count and all I get is a whoa?” She keeps pulling at an eyebrow ring, hauling on it so hard that her skin tents up.

  As I count, I nod. We stare at each other. This is Pig. Pig’s never felt safe unless surrounded by the police. I understand why. Especially if she couldn’t even trust her brothers. The third little piggy built her house out of fire. Pig has magic of her own. She has a weapon.

  . . . “Sorry,” I say. “I hope you find a home near a police station.”

  She laughs and lets the brow ring snap back. “How about you, what’s got you counting up a storm?”

  Suddenly, I don’t want to talk anymore. Or rather, I don’t want to talk about illness, or trauma, or magic. I want to hear about too much homework or what some chick said about some boy, or who cheated on whom. There’s life and then there’s too much life.

  . . . “I—I’ll tell everyone at group. Better to say it all at once, right?”

  Pig’s face sours. “No way. I tell you, you tell me.”

  I shake my head, and she squints.

  “Do you even know?” she asks. “I didn’t figure out why I lit fires for a year. Not really. Most secrets we hide even from ourselves.”

  . . . “Like fears.”

  “Like wolves.”

  . . . “I gotta make a call.”

  “Have it your way.” She folds her arms across her chest and watches me leave.

  It’s not only to get away from Pig. I need to talk to Bill, and there’s only a narrow window of time that he’s home. As I approach the nursing station, I smile nervously at Nurse Abby and nod to the phone. She leans forward to hand it to me. Her dark eyes flick from me to the acute room hallway. She checks that the corridor’s empty, then she sits back and returns to her work.