by Clare Hutton
Lunch is scary when you have no friends, because there are no assigned seats in the cafeteria. And if no one talks to you, you can’t just listen to the teacher, because there is no teacher.
Back home, we could eat outside on the school grounds, but at Wolf Valley everyone ate in the cafeteria. I pulled my shoulders back and stood up straight before walking in, repeating fearless to myself, but not really believing it.
At first, the cafeteria seemed like one big buzz of strangers’ conversations and tons of seats, all filled. I almost turned around and walked right back out.
Then I saw a girl smiling at me, waving and pointing at an empty seat at her table. She looked familiar — she was one of the people Jack had introduced me to (thank you, Jack!) — but I had no idea what her name was. She was athletic-looking, with dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail and a big smile.
“Hey!” she said. “Marisol, right? Come sit with us.”
“Thanks,” I said. I sat down, and there was a little silence as I looked at her and her friends and they looked at me. One of her friends had short, curly red hair and big blue eyes. The other one was the girl from the library who had twisted a note into a flower. She had long hair. “I’m really sorry,” I said. “I’ve met two of you before, but I can’t remember either of your names. This whole day has been a total blur.” They all smiled.
“I’m Amber,” said the athletic-looking girl, “and this is Bonnie.” The redheaded girl smiled and gave me a little wave. “And this is Lily,” Amber said. The long-haired girl nodded.
“I’m sure it’s been a really long morning,” Bonnie said as she bounced in her seat enthusiastically. “Is starting so late and not knowing anybody killing you? We felt sorry for you and thought you looked like you needed somewhere to sit.”
“Bonnie!” said Amber, but she was laughing, too. “Don’t tell her that.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Bonnie said anxiously. “I didn’t, did I?”
“Of course not,” I said. I got out my brown paper bag and started unpacking my lunch. Peanut butter sandwich, tangerine, and cookies. The other girls all had cafeteria trays with burgers on them.
Bonnie giggled. “Only weird people, or people with serious food issues, pack their lunch here. The cafeteria food isn’t that bad.”
“Bonnie!” Amber said again. I could tell she was the bossy one. Lily just sat and watched us eat.
“Sorry again,” Bonnie said. “I wasn’t saying you’re a weirdo, I was just saying you should know what people do here.”
“Um.” I looked at my sandwich. Did people really think you were weird if you didn’t eat the cafeteria lunch? Did I care? “I’m a vegetarian, so I kind of have to bring my lunch.”
“Oh!” Bonnie said. “My dad would kill me if I stopped eating meat. We raise cattle.”
Amber smiled at me. “I like veggies. Lily’s a total carnivore, though.”
Lily nodded seriously. “I like meat a lot.”
“That’s fine with me,” I said. “I mean, I don’t mind other people eating it, it’s just sort of not my thing.”
They let the subject drop, and we talked about other stuff: Austin, and what kids did for fun in Wolf Valley, and TV shows, and people I didn’t know yet but would know a lot of gossip about when I finally met them.
“And of course, you’re totally lucky to live with Jack McManus,” Bonnie said. “He is such a cutie. I actually joined the cooking club to admire him, which is a joke because I can hardly boil water.”
“Mmm,” I said noncommittally. “Jack’s nice. Are you all in the cooking club?”
“Just Bonnie,” said Amber. “I don’t have time for other clubs, with student government — which is a very serious deal here — and the field hockey and volleyball teams. And Lily’s into science. She’s in the astronomy and ecology clubs.”
“Really?” I practically shouted. Lily blinked at me. “I’m dying to join the astronomy club! I was so excited to hear there is one.”
“Oh,” Lily said. She thought it over and gave me a slow smile. “There’s a meeting right after school today. We meet every Monday. You should come.”
By the time the bell rang, I was feeling much better than when I had walked into the cafeteria. I had three potential friends, I was going to join a club, and I had conquered the terrors of a new school’s lunch period. Once again, I felt fearless.
CHAPTER FIVE
After school, I called my mom from the pay phone by the office; my cell didn’t work at school either. Looking at the mountains surrounding the town, I figured I might as well give up trying to use my phone in Wolf Valley. When I asked my mom about staying for astronomy club, she hesitated.
“Marisol, I’m glad you found something you enjoy at school already, but I haven’t rented a car yet. Molly and Mike are being really generous letting us stay here. I don’t think we should ask them to make special trips to drive you around.”
Luckily, I had talked to Jack in social studies that afternoon, and he’d told me that he was staying for cooking club. Not only would he also need a late ride home, there was actually an activities bus that would drop us off. So I could tell my mom that no one was going to have to make a special trip for me. Once she stopped worrying that I was going to be a bad guest, she was really excited that Wolf Valley had an astronomy club.
“See?” she said. “I knew this was going to be a great semester!”
“Whatever, Mom,” I said, laughing. “It’s only been one day.” But I was happy.
I felt shy again when I found Room 204, where the astronomy club meeting was being held. There were about fifteen kids milling around, and the only one I recognized was Lily. She was sitting at a desk, flipping through a notebook. There was a teacher at the back of the room, but he had his head down and looked like he was correcting papers, not getting ready to start the meeting.
“New girl,” said a boy standing near the door. He looked me up and down. “Come on in.” He bared his teeth at me, showing me his braces and a chunk of green stuff caught in them. “We’re ready for some new blood.” He put his arm over the lower half of his face and did a vampire impression. “Wah-ha-ha-ha.”
Lily looked up. “Shut up, Anderson,” she said, and smiled at me. “Hi, Marisol. Come sit with me.”
The boy with the braces mimicked her. “Shut up, Anderson, shut up, Anderson. When is Anderson going to feel the love?” But he stopped bothering me.
I sat down at the desk next to Lily’s. “Thanks,” I said, relieved.
“No problem,” she replied with a smile. “We’re just about ready to get started. I’m the president, so let me tell you about the meetings.”
I glanced at the teacher at the back of the room. “Oh,” said Lily. “Mr. Samuels just shows up because we need a club sponsor. He’s not that interested in astronomy. We really run the club ourselves.
“So …” She slapped a piece of paper down on the desk in front of me. Looking down, I saw a list that read:
Fabric of Space
Steady State versus Expanding Universe
Human Space Exploration
Eclipses
Star Types/Star Life Cycle
Comets
“These are some ideas for topics,” Lily said. “Every week someone gives a presentation. If there’s something else you want to talk about that’s not on the list, that’s okay, too. Um, unless it’s not about astronomy. Somebody wanted to give a presentation on star signs and romance one time, which wasn’t really the same thing.”
She giggled a little as she put down another piece of paper, which had another neat list of topics, each with a person’s name next to it. I saw that today someone named Becka Thompson was giving a presentation on black holes.
“Wow,” I said. “You’re really organized.” I was surprised: Lily had been quiet at lunch and seemed like she took her time at everything, even smiling. I hadn’t thought of her as a take-charge kind of person. The science club I was in back in
Austin was totally run by the teacher, not the students.
As Lily straightened the papers, I noticed a small golden-brown birthmark on her arm in the shape of a crescent moon. It was unusual, and sort of pretty. The moon shape was so perfect for the president of the astronomy club that I almost said something like “Hey, with a moon birthmark you’ll never have to get a tattoo.” Luckily, I bit it back at the last minute. She might not think it was funny, and the last thing I needed was someone else here thinking I was weird (clearly Hailey already did).
“I’ll do comets,” I told her. “But give me a few weeks.” I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of talking in front of a bunch of strangers, but I would worry about that later.
She wrote me down for a date in November, then stood up and looked around. “Guys?” she said. Everyone stopped talking and turned to her. “Becka?” she called out. “You’re up! Becka’s talking about black holes, everybody.”
A skinny girl with messy black curls went to the front of the room and shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Um,” she said. “Well, black holes are places with such strong gravity that nothing can escape, not even light.”
She went on, and, as she talked, she relaxed and spoke more easily. She knew a lot about her topic, and had even brought illustrations from the Hubble Space Telescope website.
The amazing thing was how interested everyone was. No one was whispering, or napping, or passing notes. They were listening and raising their hands to ask questions. Back home, kids at a science club meeting would have been mostly interested, but someone probably would have been zoning out, and someone else would have been passing notes. It wasn’t always easy to pay attention after a long day of school.
Because my dad and I studied it together, astronomy was really special to me, even back when I was a little kid. My friends in science club back home liked science, and a lot of them were interested in astronomy, but not like I was.
I felt a thrill of delight. Here in Montana, I had fallen into some kind of alternate universe, where everyone liked science just as much as I did.
When Becka finished talking, we applauded, and Lily got up. “That was awesome,” she said. “Thanks, Becka. Next week, Tyler’s talking about exoplanets. Yay!” She gathered up some of the papers on her desk. “Okay, moving on to announcements. As you know, our trip to Glacier National Park is two weeks from Friday. If friends want to join us, that’s great. It’s lots of fun, and the more people who go, the cheaper the trip is for everyone. There’s a full moon tonight, so it should be waxing gibbous and almost full again then. If it’s not raining, that’ll be nice.”
Now that we were talking about a field trip instead of black holes, Mr. Samuels got to his feet. “If you haven’t gotten a permission slip, see me,” he said sternly. “No one can attend the field trip without a signed form from their parents. And remember — only students who attend this school can join us on the field trip. No friends from outside.” Everyone started getting their stuff together, and I hurried over to Mr. Samuels to get a permission slip. When I finished talking to him, I found Lily waiting for me.
“So, what’d you think?” she said.
“It was great,” I answered enthusiastically. “I can tell I’m going to have to find out a lot about comets if I’m going to talk without totally embarrassing myself, though.”
“Are you taking the activities bus?” Lily asked as she picked up her pink backpack.
“Yup,” I said. “Are you?”
She nodded. “We’d better hurry to catch it.”
I felt ridiculously pleased with myself: At the beginning of the day, I hadn’t known anyone but Jack and Hailey, and now I was walking down the hall with a potential friend after a club meeting, just as if I’d been at this school forever.
“Tell me about the camping trip,” I said.
“It’s awesome,” Lily replied, her eyes sparkling. “We take a ton of kids for a weekend in Glacier National Park. We bring telescopes and look at constellations, the moon, Jupiter, Venus — everything that’s visible. Last year, we also read myths about the moon and stars. A bunch of teachers chaperone, and we roast marshmallows and do the whole campout thing. I’m pretty sure Jack and his friends are already signed up, and so are Amber and Bonnie. You should totally come.”
“I definitely will,” I said. “I mean, assuming my mom lets me, but I don’t know why she wouldn’t.”
The skinny boy with the braces who’d been all “new girl, new girl” caught up and walked with us. “I can’t wait for the trip,” he said. “I’ve got a ghost story I’ve been working on. It’s going to have the sixth graders running home to their mommies.”
Lily sighed. “Anderson, do you mind? We’re having a conversation here.” I couldn’t believe it, but he actually stopped talking. She turned to me. “Do you have a telescope? We try to bring as many as we can so everybody gets to use them.”
“Yeah, I’ve got one. I’ll be glad to bring it on the trip,” I said. I had lugged it along as a carry-on on the plane, even though my mom thought I should leave it at home. “I didn’t realize there was a full moon tonight until you said so. Maybe I’ll set up the telescope outside. I haven’t gotten a chance to use it here yet, and the stars are way more visible than at home.”
Lily frowned. “Oh … it’s not really the best idea to go out alone at night right around Wolf Valley. Especially during a full moon.”
I stopped walking. “How come?”
Anderson started to laugh and lurched toward me with his hands crooked into claws. “Because of the werewolves,” he said menacingly.
CHAPTER SIX
“Werewolves?” I looked uncertainly back and forth between Lily and Anderson. This was obviously some kind of joke, but I didn’t get it.
Lily rolled her eyes. “There’s no such thing as a werewolf, Anderson,” she said flatly.
“That’s what you say,” Anderson said, grinning. “Everyone knows that Wolf Valley is stalked by werewolves. How do you think it got its name?”
Lily frowned. “Um, from wolves?”
“Yeah, unusually large and intelligent wolves,” Anderson replied. He turned to me. “Hunters are allowed to kill wolves here, but only during wolf hunting season. And they can only kill, like, seventy-five in the whole state, and then the season closes.”
“Yuck,” I said. “I hate hunting.”
“Anyway,” he went on, “all year long, people see huge wolves in this area. Especially at night. And especially around the full moon. So hunters come here during wolf hunting season, and some people around here get wolf licenses, but no one ever kills a single wolf. They always just disappear. And then, once hunting season is over, they’re back. Does that sound normal to you? Do normal wolf wolves know how to read a calendar?”
I looked at Lily skeptically. Was this guy kidding?
She shrugged. “Coincidence. Anderson’s overstating how often people see wolves around here. People hear them, but they hardly ever see them. Students from the university camp out around here to see wolves in what should be peak wolf season, and I don’t think they’ve ever seen one. And with only seventy-five wolves allowed to be killed anywhere in the state before they close the season, it would be statistically more surprising for a hunter to actually shoot one than not.”
“Oh yeah?” Anderson said. “Where did all the werewolf stories about Wolf Valley come from, then? My grandfather told me his own grandmother saw a huge wolf get shot in the leg, a long time ago, and the next day, her neighbor was limping.”
Lily and I stared at him, then glanced at each other and burst out laughing.
“Anderson,” she said between giggles, “that is the weakest story I’ve ever heard.”
We were still laughing when we got on the bus. Lily and I sat together, and Anderson flopped into the seat behind us. Jack was in the back, sitting with some other guys, and he tipped me a little wave.
“Stop laughing at me,” Anderson groused. “There are lots of other stories, t
oo, from people who’ve actually seen werewolves. If we found somebody with the werewolf signs, we could watch them around the full moon.”
“Like what?” I asked him. “What are werewolf signs?”
He straightened up, looking pleased that I was interested. “A long ring finger,” he said. “Pointed ears. Heavy eyebrows.”
Lily made a pfft noise and waved him away. “Please,” she said. “Anyone could have any of those things. I have pointed ears.” She pulled her hair back to show us, and her ears were kind of pointy on top. “And I’m not a werewolf, am I? And my ring fingers are pretty long, too.”
I looked at her hands. The ring fingers didn’t look superlong to me.
“Well …” Anderson frowned at her. “The eyebrows are the most commonly accepted sign.”
“Maybe I pluck them. You’d never know, would you?” Lily smirked at him. Then she turned back to me, and her face got serious. “Marisol, even though there’s no such thing as a werewolf, there are wolf packs in the area, and people around here stay indoors at night. So don’t go wandering around unless you’re with a big group of people, okay?”
I nodded. I shivered when I remembered how I had felt when I had been outside alone my first evening in town.
The bus dropped Jack and me off at the end of the long driveway up to the house, and I walked quickly and nervously. It was past four o’clock. Later in the year, it would be dark by this time, and now that I knew that the forest all around was crawling with wolves, I really wasn’t looking forward to making this walk in the dark. I was glad I wasn’t alone, but I doubted Jack would be much protection from a pack of wolves.
“What’s up?” asked Jack. He jogged to catch up. “How was the meeting?”
“Great,” I said, speeding up even more. “Let’s get inside.” I felt a tingling at the back of my neck, like someone was watching me, and I turned to peer into the shadows in the trees by the driveway. Were the eyes of something (a wolf? a werewolf?) glinting in there? I shivered, grabbed Jack’s arm, and pulled him along the last few yards to the door.