This Is Not a Werewolf Story

by Sandra Evans

  I keep thinking about it, shaking my head. Liver in dessert? No wonder she messed up the recipe to change herself back.

  Have you ever taken a joke too far? That’s how that thought makes me feel. Bad and sad, like you would if you were teasing someone and took it too far.

  How do I get her back? The question aches like a bruise. And how do I protect her from the cougar until I figure it out?

  Last night it sounded like Dean Swift thought the cougar had something to do with the lens. My books are still spread out all over the floor. It sounds crazy, but I go ahead and look for words like “measurements” and “formula” in some of the BOBs. (That’s what Ms. Tern calls the Back Of the Book.)

  I find a few pages listed for the word “measurements” in a book about lighthouses during the Civil War. It turns out that in wartime lighthouse lenses got taken apart so enemy ships couldn’t navigate the coastline. After the war some lenses got put back together wrong. That’s not a big surprise, since all one thousand prisms have to be angled in just the right way. If the measurements are off, the beam won’t be very strong.

  It reminds me of what Dean Swift said about making the beam more powerful. I squint to remember how he said he figured out the correct measurements. Did he really say he found them in a “secret” book by Fresnel? I’m pretty sure the title was something like The Generative Power of Light. I pull out my dictionary. “Generative” is the adjective for “generation,” and that means “to bring into being or existence.” So to make something live.

  I think about it for a while. Light makes things live. But why would that be a secret? Even Little John knows about photosynthesis. We’ve all put dirt, water, and a bean in a plastic cup and set it in the light or out of the light or to the side of the light. The sprout is phototropic. That means it will grow toward the light.

  I sigh. It’s hard to believe that Dean Swift thinks the light made the cougar come here, like a sprout turns to the sun. A cougar is not a bean.

  Maybe I didn’t hear him right.

  I feel like a dog biting his tail, going around in circles. My mom and her wolf skin and me and mine, the cougar and a light made by a flame and 1,032 prisms.

  Then I stop. My mind sits down. It’s all very simple. Who knows when Dean Swift will light the lens, or why he thinks the cougar has turned toward it. I can’t control that—just like I can’t tell my mom where to find her human skin.

  But I do have a choice. There’s one thing I can choose to do that will keep my mom safe and give us more time to figure out her recipe. I can get rid of the cougar.

  A funny thought comes to me.

  You want a hero, Mary Anne? You’re looking right at him.

  Chapter 12

  WHERE RAUL LEARNS VINCENT’S PROBLEM

  I wait until midnight. Then I put my flashlight in my pocket and stand at my door for a minute, listening. All is quiet.

  “Come with me,” I whisper to Vincent five minutes later.

  He pokes his head out from under his covers. He screams. I hold the flashlight up so that he can see it’s me.

  “What are you doing in here?” he asks. “How did you get in?”

  “I opened your door. It wasn’t locked,” I say. “I need your help for an undertaking of great importance.”

  He hops out of bed and pulls on his jeans. “Do I need a jacket?” is all he asks.

  That’s a friend for you. The kind of kid who grabs a jacket and goes with you—even when you are waking him up in the middle of the night to sneak out a window and climb down a tree taller than a three-story building and walk out into the pitch black to hunt a wild cougar.

  I lead him out of his room to the end of the hall. The madrona that goes past my bedroom window reaches all the way up here. The window groans as I lift it. I go out first and then point the flashlight up so Vincent can see where to step.

  He drops from the lowest branch and lands even more quietly than I do.

  The flashlight makes a circle of light at our feet. Outside of that circle, we can’t see a thing. We walk very slowly, since we are walking toward a cliff. Very. Slowly. We step off the mowed lawn of the school grounds and onto the zigzag path.

  We walk one behind the other, Vincent in front and me in back.

  “Maybe we should get Bobo,” Vincent says. “Just to scare off the cougar if it’s out there.”

  “No,” I say. “That’s our mission. We want to find the cougar.”

  Vincent stops so suddenly that I run into him and we end up taking a shortcut down the hill to the beach. In the beginning we do something very like somersaults, but by the end we have crashed into enough stuff on our way down that we have straightened out a little and are rolling on our sides like kids do down grassy hills for fun.

  Only this hill is not grassy. And we are not having fun.

  Of course I drop the flashlight when we meet the raccoon.

  When we finally fall onto the wet sand at the bottom of the hill, we lay there for a while, breathing. The air smells good, like fish and salt and the tar they paint on wood that sits near water. Sand fleas are jumping all over us. I pull some leaves and small branches out of my hair. I’m bleeding—just a little bit—in about twenty places.

  After a minute I start to wonder, why is the sand so wet this far up the beach? I get a bad feeling.

  Then I hear it.

  Keep in mind, it’s pitch-black.

  But I know a killer wave coming when I hear it.

  “Get up!” I yell to Vincent. We barely have time to jump up onto the driftwood pile behind us before it hits.

  We hang on to a big log as the wave washes over us, bashing us against the wood and leaving us sputtering and coughing.

  “Move!” I shout as I hear another wave gathering itself up.

  Vincent and I scuttle over the rest of the driftwood logs. We find the zigzag path and sit down. Our teeth are chattering. Sand crunches between my molars. My nose and throat have that scratchy feeling you get after you throw up.

  “At least it washed all the twigs out of my hair,” Vincent says.

  “And the salt in the salt water is antiseptic,” I say, trying to look on the bright side too. “That’s why all of our cuts and welts and scrapes and abrasions hurt so especially bad.”

  “Yes,” says Vincent. “It’s good to think that we won’t have to worry about any minor infections.”

  We find the flashlight at the top of the path, right near where we bumped into each other. I pick it up and we set out across the lawn to the school.

  “Try again tomorrow night?” I ask.

  Vincent takes a long time to answer.

  “Listen,” I say, “I’ll get us headlamps. And I’ll check the tide tables in Dean Swift’s office to make sure no waves sneak up on us.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” says Vincent. He sounds a little grumpy. “I’m in.”

  I sigh. I’m sticky, soaked, bruised, and battered. But I’m glad to have a friend like Vincent.

  We start up the tree. When he gets to the window and I’m in the fork of the two biggest branches, we hear it.

  The cougar’s screech fills the night. I can see the sound like a funnel cloud, almost, narrow where it begins and then opening out into the sky. The sound is coming from the edge of the fort closest to the beach. The cougar screams again, and a shudder jerks my head hard to the side. That animal is close.

  It’s on the beach.

  Near the driftwood pile.

  Where we were standing ten minutes ago.

  We climb through the window. Vincent is shaking now, and I don’t think it’s just the wind and his wet clothes. I think he can see the cougar in his mind the way I can see it in mine, the huge cat pacing, sniffing the wet wood, leaping onto the pile and pausing, one paw up, its nose in the air, tracking a scent.

  Our scent.

  “Tomorrow night, same time,” I say when we get to his room.

  “But why are we doing this?” Vincent asks.

  “We need to get t
hat cougar,” I whisper. “I think it’s trying to hurt someone I love.”

  Vincent turns his back to me. He opens his door without saying a word.

  I can’t blame him for bailing out. The mission tonight was a ridiculous disaster, a miserable failure, a complete catastrophe. And that’s only if you look at it in a really, really positive light.

  He steps into his room and then turns around to face me.

  “Then we’ll take care of it. You and me together. We’ll get it.” His eyes are scared, but he bobs his head up and down like he really means it.

  “You know why?” he says. He pulls me into his room. “It’s a secret. Nobody at the school but Dean Swift knows. And he only knows part of it.”

  I sit down on the desk chair next to his bed. He sits facing me.

  “This summer there was a fire in my house. Me and my baby brother were sleeping upstairs. I tried to run out the door, but there was too much smoke. I ran to the window. My mom was down there. She was crying. She said to get the baby and climb out the window. I couldn’t move. I started shaking and shaking and I fell down. I was so scared. Then a fireman broke through the door. Another one came through the window. They picked us both up and got us out of there.” He stops talking, and I let him. I’m soaked and frozen to the bone, but I know better than to rush a kid through his secret.

  “The firemen gave me a sticker and said I was really brave. But that was a lie. I didn’t think about my brother once. I didn’t try to save him or anything.” His mouth pulls out into a straight line, and I can tell he’s trying really hard not to cry.

  “I think it’s why my mom sent me here,” he says. “She wants me to get tough.”

  After a minute he looks up at me sideways, so I can only see half his face.

  “You know how that fire started?”

  I shake my head.

  “It was me. I found some matches in my stepdad’s jacket. I wanted to see what it felt like to light one. Right before bed, while they were giving my brother a bath, I hid in the coat closet and lit them all up. I thought I stomped them out. But I missed one.” He covers his mouth with his hand. “You’re the only person who knows. My mom would leave me here forever if she knew.”

  “I won’t ever tell,” I say.

  Then all of a sudden he grins. “My mom blamed my stepdad for the fire. She almost kicked him out for it. Wouldn’t that have been great? She made him give up smoking. He’d kill me if he knew it was me. Whenever they argue, she brings it up and says how his smoking almost fried us all.”

  I try to smile, but I don’t think that’s funny. I know Vincent hates his stepdad. But that’s a whale of a lie.

  “This time I’m not gonna let anyone down.” Vincent keeps talking. “You’re gonna put a rock in that sling of yours and you’re gonna hit that cat between the eyes. You’re gonna knock him out, and we’re gonna hog-tie him. When we get back to school, I’ll tell everyone the whole story and you’ll be a big hero.”

  I imagine the look on Mary Anne’s face when she hears about it.

  “Yeah, then that Mary Anne will notice you for sure,” he says with a grin.

  My cheeks get hot.

  “What, you think I didn’t know you’re crushing on her?” He rolls his eyes. “She likes you already, but this will show her what you’re made of.”

  As I walk back to my room, I leave squishy footprints in the carpet and on the stairs. I’m cold. I’m wet. But I’m warm inside as I think about Vincent.

  A hero and a storyteller. They go together. You can’t have one without the other.

  Chapter 13

  WHERE RAUL LEARNS ABOUT COUGARS AND HUNTERS AND DRAWS A DANGEROUS DOCUMENT

  I wake up thinking how last night I missed the cougar by ten minutes. Did it find White Wolf? The worry hooks into my heart like a claw.

  And there’s a new problem. I’m scared now. I can hear that shriek in my head. It put a bone-deep, teeth-chattering, knee-knocking kind of fear in me. What makes me think I can catch a cougar with a sling and a little help from a friend?

  I need information. How much do they weigh? How fast are they? How well do they see in the dark?

  I stop by Dean Swift’s office on my way to breakfast. He’s busy writing, but for once the words won’t wait.

  “Do cougars hunt wolves?” is the first question I ask. Say no, I think. Please say no. If the answer’s no, then I’m barking up the wrong tree.

  Dean Swift looks at me for a long time.

  Maybe he knows I was spying on him in the turret, and he’s so furious he doesn’t even know what to say. What if he calls my dad about it? There’s a can of worms I’d like to keep sealed.

  Then I see that even though he’s staring right at me, his hand is writing. The man isn’t listening.

  “Do cougars kill wolves?” I ask again.

  The question finally sinks in. His eyes bulge.

  “Well,” he says. He stands up and puts his hands in his coat pockets so his elbows stick out a little. He looks like a penguin.

  Bobo is at his feet. She sighs.

  I sit down. I sigh too.

  When Dean Swift looks like a penguin, we all know he is about to give a lecture.

  Sometimes, when Dean Swift is very interested in and very informed about a subject—like cougars and wolves it turns out—he takes a very long time to get to the point.

  I am very hungry. But I listen long and hard.

  Here’s the point: Cougars attack wolves, but only rarely. It has to do with territory. Sometimes a cougar gets “displaced,” which means it doesn’t have a territory of its own. Then it might try to move into a wolf’s territory. Or a wolf might feel its territory shrinking due to human population growth. It may begin to hunt in a cougar’s territory. Either way, there’s bound to be a fight. If there’s more than one wolf, then the cougar doesn’t stand much of a chance. The wolves will follow the cougar around, and then when it makes a kill, the wolves will leap in and chase the cougar off and eat his dinner. Cool, huh? Well, not for the cougar. It spends so much energy making kills it can’t eat, it eventually starves to death. Or it gets so hungry it does something risky—like pounce from too high—and ends up snapping its spine.

  So much for the good news.

  Here’s the bad news: In a fair fight between predators—when there’s only one wolf and one cougar—the cougar will most likely win.

  First period is PE. It might as well be. It’s not like the day is going to get better.

  Tuffman calls my name for roll like usual. Maybe he’s not holding a grudge about our voodoo doll in the woods. I don’t see the bird’s-nest toupee anywhere handy. He doesn’t say much of anything to me. Instead he throws a ball out at us and barks, “Dodgeball!”

  His feelings toward me become pretty clear though, when the first round ends.

  “Raul, stand at the wall!” he yells. “And the rest of you little blue-haired ladies, don’t tell me you can’t hit him.”

  Oh yeah, he’s still mad. Guess he decided that since I used the straw man of him for target practice, he’d turn me into a bull’s-eye.

  “I’ll give a quarter to whoever leaves a mark,” he hollers. He jingles the change in his pockets. They look very, very full.

  I gulp. And dodge and duck and dart for my life.

  Tuffman’s pockets are empty in fifteen minutes. When the quarters run out, kids get dimes. Then nickels. The darnedest thing is that those kids throw just as hard for the pennies, in the end.

  The good part is that every time Vincent gets the ball, he heaves it, granny-shot style, at the hoop at the other end of court. The bad part is that even though everyone laughs every time he does it, nobody copies him.

  Of course Tuffman’s gonna put a stop to that. The next time Vincent gets the ball, Tuffman booms, “What are you two, besties?”

  He stalks over. “Vincent. You hit him fair and square, or you drop and give me fifty.”

  Vincent glances at me.

  All the boys star
t to chant, “Hit him, hit him.”

  Fifty push-ups? Vincent doesn’t have five in him.

  Vincent lifts the ball. He stares at the ground. Then he looks up and takes aim.

  My stomach jumps.

  Right as he’s about to throw it, Tuffman smacks the ball down.

  “See?” Tuffman says. “Some things never change. It’s always your best friend who betrays you in the end.”

  They don’t even know what Tuffman’s talking about, but all the boys hoot.

  “Burn!” says Mean Jack.

  Vincent looks off to the side.

  All I can do is remember Tuffman’s story about how his best friend broke Tuffman’s back in the woods. Why is everything he says to me lately so personal? It’s creepy.

  Game over, people. I’m done.

  “Where you going?” Tuffman asks when he sees me heading toward the locker room. “Don’t be a quitter. We’re only going after you because you’re so good at running away. Heck, you can get down on all fours if you want.”

  My cheeks burn. I look around to see if any of the other boys heard. But Mean Jack is picking his nose, and Little John is scraping off the scab on his elbow and eating it, and Jason is walking around the room doing a chicken dance.

  Tuffman sends the ball at Jason, so hard his last “squawk” comes out like a scream.

  Vincent walks over to me. “I was going to take that ball and slam him with it,” he says. “He wouldn’t have known what hit him.”

  You promised your mom not to lie, I almost say to him, but instead I nod like I believe him. It’s not easy to change. And it’s hard not to do what Tuffman wants. It’s the way he says your name.

  I don’t blame him. But I would’ve done all fifty push-ups with him.

  Tuffman looks over at us, the ball raised high. I pick up the bathroom pass that’s on a hook by the locker room door and hold it up to him.