This Is Not a Werewolf Story

by Sandra Evans

  White Wolf and I give chase. Vincent is still bawling, but he runs so hard he catches up with Tuffman. If I had a stopwatch and opposable thumbs, I bet I’d clock them at forty mph.

  Before they even reach the road, White Wolf and I stop. We flop, panting, in the shade of the oak tree that is growing around my bike. As the thrill of the chase fades, I realize how bad my head hurts where Tuffman hit me with the rock.

  I meant to take the cougar down with my sling last week. Looks like Tuffman found a rock with my name on it first. That is what Mary Anne would call ironic. I rest my nose in my paws. Why did Vincent hit me in the first place? I didn’t give him that slingshot so that he could use it to hurt animals.

  Before the sun reaches the middle of the sky, I get up and follow White Wolf back to the lighthouse. We’re not the usual dynamic duo. I feel dizzy. There’s blood in White Wolf’s fur. I sniff it. It’s the old wound. Running so hard must have reopened it a little. If the bunnies and deer have come up with any revenge fantasies, this would definitely be the time for them to act on them. They could pelt us with pinecones and green berries and we’d go belly up.

  I’m worried when I walk into the lighthouse. But if White Wolf stays near the ledge, she’ll have plenty of food. And just because I’m not with her doesn’t mean I won’t be hunting cougar.

  This week I won’t get distracted. This week I’ll remember what matters.

  It takes me a long time to shift. I keep losing track of what I’m doing. I manage to walk out of the lighthouse fully dressed. I find out later my underwear’s on inside out and my T-shirt is on backward, but at least I zipped my jeans. By the time I get to the school, I’m out of breath and dizzy. My head aches. My right shoulder burns.

  Bobo meets me on the front steps. She jumps up and rests her paws on my chest.

  Oh no. How could I forget her stinky stick? I gently help her down to all fours. She gets herself into a pickle like that sometimes where she has just enough strength to get up but not enough to get back down. Old hips, young heart.

  I’m sorry, I whisper as I scratch just under her left ear. She licks my hand and then my cheek. Forgiven. It’s simple between animals.

  I see Mary Anne’s suitcase in the foyer when I come in. She beat me again.

  I walk into the TV room. I need to sit a second before I can make it up to my room.

  Mary Anne takes one look at me and sets her book down.

  “Dean Swift,” she calls, running up the stairs before I can stop her.

  I stand there and stare at her book for a long time. My brain can’t turn the letters of the title into words. Finally I get it. The History of Paris.

  The two of them come down half a minute later. I’m still staring at the book. It makes me feel less dizzy. Dean Swift’s face is bright red from the dash down the stairs, and I can see that whatever Mary Anne told him has got him worried.

  “See?” she says, pointing.

  I look around. But she’s pointing at me.

  Dean Swift comes up and puts his face very close to mine.

  “What have we got here?” he says softly. He touches my chin gently with his fingers and lightly turns my head one way and then the other. The pain in my head makes my knees buckle. Dean Swift catches me around the waist and settles me into a chair.

  He kneels in front of me. “Mary Anne, bring me the flashlight from my top desk drawer.”

  She races back upstairs.

  Before I can stop myself, I lean over the arm of the chair and throw up into a wastebasket.

  Dean Swift pats my back. He hands me a tissue.

  “Nice aim,” he says, like it’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

  “Turn out the lights,” he calls as Mary Anne comes back down the stairs.

  “Now look into the flashlight when I hold it up to your eyes.”

  I do what he says, even though the bright light aches.

  The dean whistles low. “Concussed, my boy. You have been concussed. How did this happen?”

  “I was climbing a tree,” I begin. “To get my kite. And I fell.” I have to stop a lot because I’m making it up as I go. “Right on my back,” I add. “And there was a big rock. I fell backward onto a big sharp rock.” I pause. It throbs where Vincent tagged me with that rock. I better cover all my bases. “Two rocks. My shoulder landed on one.”

  I see Dean Swift glance at the phone by the front door.

  “My dad knows,” I say quickly. “He was there when it happened. We were having a picnic lunch at Fort Casey before he dropped me off. I told him I was fine. He said to tell you if I felt worse.”

  Dean Swift’s jaw tightens. He can’t believe my dad could be so heartless.

  But I’m not done. “And you can’t call him because he’s flying to Paris tonight,” I say quickly. Why did I say Paris, of all places?

  “It must be that international conference for wildlife biologists,” Dean Swift says, stroking his chin. “He’s published some interesting work lately, your father.”

  I blink. Bingo. That was the lie to tell.

  “I’ll have to watch you carefully,” he says. “If you’re not better by this time tomorrow then I’ll have to get ahold of him.”

  I sink back in the chair. I am now an official specimen in Dean Swift’s curiosity cabinet. I will be observed. Conclusions will be drawn. I’m too sick to care.

  Bring on the science. The magic’s killing me.

  “Stay with him while I call the doctor,” he says to Mary Anne. “Don’t let him fall asleep.”

  They only call the doctor when a kid is really sick. Is he going to give me a shot? Will they have to operate?

  I touch the soft, sad, painful spot on the back of my head. When I pull my fingers away they are wet and red.

  Mary Anne makes a little noise. Her eyebrows crinkle. She sees it too.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. I can tell she is forcing herself to sound calm. “You’ll be fine. Head injuries tend to bleed a lot. It’s to be expected.”

  She takes some tissues from a box on the end table. “You should apply a little pressure. The doc will be here soon.” As she stretches the tissues toward me, I can see her hand shaking.

  I sit back in the chair. I close my eyes so that Mary Anne doesn’t have to work so hard to pretend like she’s not worried about me.

  After a second she grabs my hand and squeezes it. “You have to stay awake. Okay?” She doesn’t let go. “I’d read you my novel, but my dad says it puts him to sleep. Best cure for insomnia ever. Those were his exact words.”

  She frowns and then smiles real quick, like her dad’s dumb, mean joke is actually funny.

  Anger surges up in me. My skin burns. Wolf rage. Hey, Mary Anne’s dad, I’ve got an even better cure for insomnia. A nocturnal visit from a wolf. You’ll never wake up again.

  I exhale slowly. I better calm down. I’m in boy world again.

  I listen to her voice. I feel her press gently on my hand whenever I close my eyes. If all it takes to get Mary Anne to hold my hand is a rock smashing into my head, then bring on the meteor showers.

  Because this is love.

  The doctor is very jolly for a guy who spends his day jabbing people with needles. He explains what a concussion is.

  “Your brain has been bruised,” he says with a big smile. “Exactly like a melon that has been dropped on the ground. If your brain really were a melon, I’d suggest that you eat it up quick before it spoils, but since you’re a boy, I suggest that you stay in bed for a few days and don’t go doing those boy things that bruised your melon in the first place.”

  He’s very pleased with his explanation, but I’m not. Eating my bruised melon brains? Where’s that wastebasket again? And he prescribes bed rest. That’s it. Not so twenty-first century. I wonder what he’d recommend for a sore throat. Leeches?

  Chapter 18

  WHERE THE HEARTACHE BEGINS

  In the middle of the night I sit straight up in bed. I’m wide awake.

 
I remember the feel of the scar on Tuffman’s back, the way he clawed me when I touched it. My mother did that to him, a long time ago. I remember the marks on the back of his neck that Mean Jack pointed out. White Wolf gave him those, I bet, when the cougar scraped her.

  What else did she write on those cards?

  I can’t find my flashlight, so I flip on the bedroom light. I dig under my bed until I find the recipe box. As I’m pulling it out, my lighthouse books topple over and spill onto the floor.

  Someone taps on the door. I stop scrabbling.

  The tap turns into a rap. I am so quiet I stop breathing. My face feels like it’s on fire. I’m not about to lose her after all these years just because you’re chicken. That’s what Tuffman said to Vincent.

  Tuffman knows my mom is White Wolf. He’s been hunting for her.

  The door handle turns.

  And he knows what I am too. He’s come to finish what he started on the table by the lake.

  “Raul?” Dean Swift peeks in.

  I’m so relieved, I almost start to cry. I’m on my bed, the open box in one hand, the recipe for meringues in the other, my secret stash of books scattered out onto the floor.

  “Oh, my child,” Dean Swift says when he gets a look at me and my sad, scared eyes. “You must sleep. Give me that.”

  I shake my head.

  “You cannot read when you have a concussion.” He takes the box from me gently. “I’ll keep it safe,” he says. But when he looks at it, his whole face sinks with sadness. He hands it back. “How can I take this from you? Please promise not to read them tonight.”

  I sniffle. I wipe my nose with the back of my hand. “Dean Swift,” I whisper. “Tell me about the Fresnel lens.”

  Because I can’t just ask him how to get rid of the cougar, can I?

  The dean’s spine straightens. I can feel him move away from me the tiniest bit. He looks at the wall that separates my room from the stairs to the turret. Then he looks at me. He looks at my books on the floor.

  “Something tells me you know as much as I,” he says.

  “Please,” I say.

  I must look pretty pathetic with my face all wet and my head all banged up and my mom’s recipe box on the pillow next to me like some kind of metallic, sharp-edged teddy bear.

  He perches on the bed. “If you close your eyes,” he says, “I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  I tuck the box under my pillow and keep my hand on it. I close my eyes. I listen.

  “My family has been the keeper of the Fresnel lens for three generations. This is how it began. Long ago there lived a French engineer named Augustin Fresnel, who believed that light traveled in waves. Most scientists mocked him. But Fresnel used mathematical equations to prove his theory. And then he applied everything he knew about light to design brighter lighthouse lenses. His innovations have saved countless lives from shipwrecks. After Fresnel died, his brother found that he had been working on a formula for a lens so powerful it could transform the energy of light and focus its life-giving properties. Fresnel’s theories about what the lens could do were so unbelievable that his brother kept it secret. He didn’t want to destroy the reputation Fresnel had fought so hard to earn. But my great-great-grandfather, Admiral Swift, got ahold of that formula.” Dean Swift chuckles. “I’ll tell you that story when you’re older.”

  I hate it when they say that. Tell me the whole story, you old baboon, I want to shout. But I don’t. Obviously.

  “When Admiral Swift settled on the island, he had a lighthouse built in White Deer Woods, and he used Fresnel’s secret formula to make the lens. For years he secretly studied the lens, and his first experiments apparently proved Fresnel’s wildest theories. Admiral Swift began to tell people he had discovered something that would change human life forever. He invited famous scientists to come to a conference to study his claims. In those days it took years to organize such an event. In the meantime, a treaty was signed by the settlers that granted the return of White Deer Woods to the care of the local tribes, for whom the land was sacred. All the buildings that had been constructed in White Deer Woods, including Red Bluff Lighthouse, were torn down. Admiral Swift had helped to write the treaty. His wife, my great-great-grandmother, belonged to the Kwakiutl tribe. With the last of his seafaring fortune, he built this school to house the lens and provide a place for scientists to live and study it.”

  Dean Swift stops talking. The bed creaks as he stands.

  “More,” I say. The word is thick on my tongue.

  The dean sighs and sits back down. “What happened next, nobody could have predicted. When the lens was moved to the school, it never worked properly again. Every experiment failed. It looked as though my great-great-grandfather had been losing his mind for quite some time. He became a joke—literally. Whenever a scientist formulated a particularly unlikely theory, others would tease, Go measure your lens again, Admiral Swift. He died a broken man. I never knew him. I wish I had. I don’t think he was crazy. In fact, I know he was not. Because one day when I was a young man, I was in the woods and something happened. It made me wonder if Admiral Swift’s first experiments had as much to do with White Deer Woods and its light phenomena as they did with Fresnel’s special lens. I devoted my life to the study of bioluminescence, never quite knowing exactly what I was looking for. And then, not long ago, I was in the kitchen with Cook Patsy, selecting items to donate to charity. And do you know what I found folded up among the cookbooks?”

  Sleep smothers me. I answer, but the words don’t make sense. “A cougar?”

  He stands up softly, his knees popping. He whispers, “Fresnel’s secret formula.”

  The last thing I see before sleep crushes me is Dean Swift stretching his spine, his elbows pushed back. In profile he looks like a hawk launching himself from a branch.

  I spend the night trying to wake up. I need to read the cards. My hand won’t listen. It won’t turn on the light, it won’t open the box. My body is weighed down, stuck in the bed, but my mind wanders everywhere. Dean Swift has fixed the lens. Remember? He found Fresnel’s measurements. The lens has a secret power. It has to do with the cougar. The cougar has to do with White Wolf.

  The light behind my window shade is gray. Morning. My mouth is dry. My skin burns. The first thing I see when my eyes finally agree to open is the recipe box sticking out from under my pillow. I reach for it, but push it off the bed instead.

  Dean Swift must hear the clang of the box as it hits the floor. He comes in and touches my forehead. His hand is ice cold.

  “The cards,” I whisper to him. “The whole story of my mom is written on them. She knows a secret, and I do too.”

  A drop of water falls on my cheek.

  I look up. The dean’s face is wet with tears.

  “I’m going to put this in a safe place,” he says, picking up the box. “I’m sorry. But we have to keep you calm.”

  “Please, please turn off the light,” I beg. “For my mom.”

  He flips the switch as he leaves. But that’s not the light I meant.

  I fall asleep again. When I wake up the doctor is back. The doctor never comes twice. He says I have a fever. He says the wound in my head is infected and gives me pills. I have to take two of them three times a day. Each pill is the size of the rock that Vincent hit me with.

  At the door I hear the doctor whisper to Dean Swift, “Don’t be surprised by his fever talk. Children often say very strange things with a temperature running that high.”

  “He misses his mother,” says Dean Swift, and the words sound full of tears.

  “Don’t we all?” the doctor says kindly. “Keep him hydrated.”

  The door closes.

  Where are my cards?

  All day people come in and check on me. Ms. Tern reads to me. Her voice is so sweet and she smells so nice that I can’t tell her that her stories are like big boots stomping on my heart. She puts her hand on my forehead and smiles at me softly. “We’ll have you sorted out in no t
ime,” she says. Dean Swift comes in and checks my pulse a lot. Really he’s just holding my hand, but we both pretend he’s checking my pulse.

  The next morning I feel better, but they won’t let me get up.

  Cook Patsy brings me a diary. When she sees me look worried because a diary is such a girl thing, she says, “You can live by those boy-girl rules everyone makes up for you, or you can make up your own. Your choice.”

  I put the diary under my pillow.

  Mary Anne is in charge of bringing me soup and hot chocolate. I drink so much, I have to pee every half hour. But it keeps her coming back all day long.

  Once I think I hear Sparrow breathing outside my door.

  Later that night Mary Anne brings Vincent.

  I’m afraid to look at him at first. Has he figured out that I’m the wolf he hit with a rock in the woods? Remembering what he did makes me want to lunge at him and take him to the floor. My chin juts forward. My muscles clench.

  But Vincent just perches on the edge of my bed and shakes my hand.

  “Are you better?” he asks. “Are you going crazy in here all by yourself?” He looks so worried for me.

  I nod, Yes to both questions. I’m better and I’m crazier.

  A shiver runs over me. It scares me, how angry I just got. A door in my mind opens. The thought behind it terrifies me. What would have happened if Vincent had tripped when wolf me was chasing him?

  I shut that door quick.

  I realize Mary Anne is talking to Vincent about me. “No, he’s not like us, Vincent. He’s happiest alone. He’s an artist. A scientist. An observer.”

  I can tell by the expression on her face that she thinks she’s complimenting me. But the way she says “us” makes me feel like something scientists found in the deepest trench of the Atlantic ocean—pale, squishy, and one of a kind.

  I’m a loner, but that doesn’t mean I like being alone.

  I’d tell her that, but I’m not sure she notices I’m alive right now. The way he’s sitting on the bed and she’s standing just inside the door makes it so that they’re facing each other. I’m lying here behind Vincent like some unrolled sleeping bag.