by Sandra Evans
How can it be a coincidence that Tuffman is bleeding in the same place where the cougar got hit?
The whole solidarity thing as we ran across the fort grounds—that was all just a big show, wasn’t it? He was trying to distract me and make it easier to hide shifting into his second skin. His cougar skin.
“Missed it, Nicky? Well, it takes skill to use a gun that big,” Tuffman says to Ms. Tern.
“Just because I didn’t slaughter the animal doesn’t mean I missed my shot,” Ms. Tern says. She grips the stock of the rifle.
I watch them argue. I crack my jaw. It makes me calm, to know the truth and to be certain of it. I’ll take care of Tuffman in the woods.
But then I think of Bobo. Fury pulses in me. Because what would the cougar have done to me and Sparrow if I hadn’t leaped onto that ladder?
It’s not human—the anger in me is all wolf. I see and hear like I do when I’m deep in the woods. My nose is full of scents, each one resting above or below another, like layers on a tall cake.
Everyone is moving away from the Blackout Tunnel, crossing the field and heading to the beach and the school. Tuffman’s at the back of the pack. He’s wiping his cheek with his bandana.
I sense how he feels—frustrated but safe. He’s tired and off his guard.
I move behind him slowly, tracking him. I stare at his back. The closer I get, the harder I sniff. I can smell his blood. I sniff deeper. I smell Bobo.
I found her teeth.
“Hey,” I call to him. “Thanks for helping.”
“And they say the kid never talks,” he says in his jokey way as he turns to face me.
If he knew me better, he’d know that I always say thank you.
“Put it there, pardner,” I say. I put my hand out.
He thinks I’m dumb as bricks. He reaches for my hand.
I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. Meet your nephew, the wolf.
I grip his hand tight in mine. With my left hand I pat him on the shoulder. I reach around a little to the back, where I can feel the shape of a bandage under his shirt. I sink my fingers into the wound. Bobo wants her teeth back.
He winces. His shoulder twists and drops down. I keep digging. He tries to yank his right hand out of mine. But I squeeze harder. I have my wolf strength in me.
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” I say to him.
I let go. I don’t want him to start screeching. Not yet.
I turn to walk away, but he reaches out and swipes at me.
When I look back, his face is pale with pain but he’s smiling. “Hey, pardner,” he manages to say. “I had that coming. No hard feelings, yeah?”
My ears bend back. I want to snarl, but my mouth only works that way when I’m a wolf.
“What?” I bark.
“You two were in my territory, like the dog was last night. Remember the other day at the lake?” he asks. “Me and Vincent were in your territory, right?”
It’s so strange to hear him say my secret out loud. He’s talking about it like it’s normal.
“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have destroyed us if we’d given you half the chance,” he says. “It’s in our nature, that’s all.” His voice is calm and matter-of-fact, like this is just some weird family trait like a knack for math or bad teeth.
But it’s true. I don’t know what I would have done to them. I look away.
“You’re strong, Raul,” he says.
I shrug, but I can’t help it—I feel proud. It’s funny. Tuffman’s the only one who could notice that about me. Nobody else sees what we can see.
“We need to work together, Raul,” he says. “We can help each other—keep normal people out of our territory so they don’t get hurt.”
It all starts to sink in. What I’ve been hiding, why I’ve been hiding it, and now here it is out in the open. Someone knows my secret. And he’s not afraid of me and he doesn’t hate me for it.
He smiles. “I mean, it’s not like we’re monsters.”
Mary Anne says I’m a loner because I want to be. But all this time, I’ve been a loner because I have to be.
He steps closer to me. “And, Raul, I can show you how to live forever.”
His eyes wrap around me. I can’t move.
Under the sharp March wind or above it is a puff of warmth. Spring. I sniff and smell the yellow stubs of sprouts and the white-green of rising bulbs and the cracking shells and cocoons of every insect and bird waking to life.
And I can’t look away from his gold eyes and the promise that I know somehow is not a lie.
“Both of you,” he says. “I can help her, too, Raul.”
I blink. Of course he can.
He reaches back and rubs his shoulder where I dug my fingers into him. His hand comes away covered in blood. He stretches it out to me. “Shake on it?”
I begin to raise my hand. With a swipe so quick I don’t even see it, his fingernail slices across my palm. I stare at the rising red line.
Blood brothers with Tuffman?
I drop my hand.
He steps closer. “Don’t chicken out on me, kid. Here’s the deal. A cat’s got nine lives. A wolf can too,” he says.
The words in my head are all in capital letters: DO YOU WANT NINE LIVES?
He made my mom the same promise.
I almost drop to all fours. I race to join Sparrow and the others.
The wind comes up off the water. The sky is whipped cream and blue. The grass along the cliffs is tall and golden. I smell salt and seaweed and driftwood.
Yeah, I want to live forever. But not with him.
I wipe my hand on my jeans. The cut isn’t very deep.
On the walk back to the school everyone surrounds me.
I tell myself to look calm. Dean Swift will give me the recipe box as soon as we get back. Until then, I’d best act like my brain isn’t bruised and my uncle isn’t a man-eating cougar who thinks he can live forever.
I say “Thank you” when Mean Jack says I make one heck of a capo. He wants to talk to me privately later about whether I’d consider taking the vow of omertà.
“Code of Silence, you wanna take that? Everyone knows you can keep your trap shut. But now you proved you got what it takes to be a made man,” he whispers.
Mark, swinging his weighted vest over his head, hollers to me, “I woulda Peed. My. Pants. I mean it.”
Little John grabs my hand. “Did you hear that joke? Is it wet on Uranus? Only it means the planet and it also means your butt. Right? You get it?”
When Sparrow takes my other hand, the pressure on the cut takes the sting away. He holds it like he’ll never let go.
All the grown-ups tell me I must be the bravest kid in the world. But I know what I did. What I did was lose my temper, scare a little kid who looks up to me, and put him in danger. That’s what I did. I acted as vicious as a wounded animal.
And I’ve still got to save my mom. Inside, the wolf rage dies down. The boy in me thinks. I might have messed up there, too. Maybe I shouldn’t have let Tuffman know I know. Maybe I shouldn’t have let him see how strong I am.
Who is he, really?
Cook Patsy comes over and calls me heroic. I look around to see if Mary Anne heard. It takes a while for me to spot her.
She’s at the back of the crowd. With Vincent. A little drop of jealousy rains in my heart. Then it sprinkles when she whispers something in Vincent’s ear. He smiles and nods like she said something reassuring.
Then it’s a downpour. Because when she loses her balance and moves away from him a little, I see that they are holding hands. He pulls her back so that she doesn’t fall.
It’s a hurricane in my heart.
Chapter 21
WHERE RAUL FINDS THE KEY TO HIS QUESTIONS, BUT THE ANSWERS ARE WRONG
On the steps of the school, Dean Swift and Ms. Tern stop me. Their eyes drill into me.
“Straight to bed for you,” the dean says.
I’m hot and sweaty. There�
�s an 88 percent chance I’m going to barf. I sit down hard on the bottom step.
“He’s knackered!” Ms. Tern says.
Dean Swift bends over me. Something small and metallic falls out of his pocket and lands on the step. A key. I point to it, but he has already stood up. His head is swiveling around, searching for help.
“We need a pair of strong arms to get you up to your bed,” Dean Swift says.
I barely hear him. My eyes focus on the little key. The top of it is in the shape of a lighthouse. The key to the turret. I set my hand over it. I need the recipe cards more than ever.
“Mr. Tuffman,” the dean shouts. “Mr. Tuffman, come here!”
While he’s shouting, I slip the key into my pocket.
I hear Ms. Tern scolding the dean. “You’re going to humiliate him. Really, Oliver, you haven’t got a clue, have you?”
I look up and see Tuffman heading toward us. That’s when I realize the dean wants Tuffman to carry me up to my bedroom.
Are you kidding me?
I jump up and take the steps two at a time. Dean Swift and Ms. Tern can hardly keep up with me. The sooner I get into bed, the sooner they’ll leave me alone. I have the key to the turret, and the answers to all of my questions are in that recipe box.
Dean Swift flips on the light in my room. “You will stay in bed until tomorrow morning. We can’t risk a relapse.”
He turns to leave, then stops in the doorway. The air feels heavy all of a sudden. He’s going to say something that maybe I don’t want to hear.
“We all make mistakes, Raul,” he says.
I nod. The scratch Tuffman gave me throbs. I’m glad it hurts, because I deserve it.
“It is through our failures—not in spite of them—that we triumph,” the dean says softly. “You disappointed me this morning. You made me very, very proud this afternoon.”
I swallow hard and look down.
“Pajamas!” he says as he turns out the light.
I put on my pajamas and listen to him and Ms. Tern bickering as they walk away. It’s funny, they act like old friends even though she’s new. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but I have a feeling it’s about her shooting the cougar. I think she calls him a twit. Did he just tell her to put a lid on it?
I listen until the hallway is quiet. I open my door and peek out.
A second later and I’ve unlocked the utility closet. I glide up the steps. The recipe box is on top of Dean Swift’s tape recorder. I grab it.
On the second step down the stairs I see the doorknob turn. For a split-second I’m so scared, I can’t move.
“You forgot to lock it?” It’s Ms. Tern.
“Never!” I hear the dean say as the door opens.
I turn around. I put the box back and dart under a small table pushed against the wall.
“You’re an absentminded old duffer,” Ms. Tern says as the steps creak and Dean Swift starts to puff-puff his way up them.
I pull a desk chair in under the table to hide myself better. I barely stop my scream. Coiled on the seat is Gollum. She lifts her head and looks at me. The back of my neck tingles. Then she drops to the floor and glides away.
“So you think this is why the cougar is here?” Ms. Tern asks.
They’re so far from the truth they can’t even see its tail end. The cougar is here for the wolf. I almost crawl out from under the table to tell them. But then I’d have a lot to explain. The key feels hot in my pajama pocket.
“It’s a theory,” says the dean.
“But it supports mine,” she says.
“I don’t see how.” Dean Swift sounds tired.
“Luke Ferrier has spent a lifetime hunting rare predators. What if you’re right? What if the Fresnel lens attracts them?”
There’s a long silence. Luke Ferrier. My brain scratches around. Where have I heard that name before?
“It doesn’t call them, exactly,” Dean Swift finally says. “It’s more complicated.”
My ears stretch, I’m listening so hard.
“It’s not a theory. It’s a hunch. Perhaps the light of this lens has the power to open a kind of doorway in the natural world between different states of being. I think White Deer Woods is one of those doorways. And maybe certain types of predators are attracted to that power threshold.”
I shiver. I’m hot and cold at the same time. The dean only has half the story. He’s wrong about why the cougar’s here, but he’s right about the door. White Deer told me my lighthouse in the woods was a place between places. That’s a good definition of a doorway, isn’t it?
But here’s what Dean Swift doesn’t know. The door the light opens isn’t White Deer Woods. When the light hit me last Friday on the edge of the cliff, it opened the door inside me—the door that separates wolf me from Raul me.
“What if you’re right?” Ms. Tern asks. “Let’s say that the light draws certain types of predators. What if Ferrier got wind of your experiments somehow, and decided to hunker down on this island and wait to see what your light would bring him?”
“If that were true, then the Fresnel lens would be like a baited trap!” Dean Swift sounds horrified.
“Precisely,” says Ms. Tern. “Forty years ago, the Penn Cove Massacre brought Ferrier two spirit animals in one felonious swoop. Why wouldn’t he return to the scene of his most successful crime? Especially if he thought that your light would lure his prey to him.”
It clicks. Luke Ferrier is the criminal mastermind she told us about in class.
“I’ve been fiddling with the light for years,” Dean Swift says. “Why would he show up now? It doesn’t add up.”
“It does, in fact, add up. This fall when you sent me the fundraiser flyer for your school and I saw the photo of your new coach, I knew it was him. The bio matches perfectly. I’ve been following Ferrier for years, always one step behind. Seven years ago the trail went cold. Interpol determined Ferrier must have died. I moved on to elephant poachers. But seven years ago—that’s just about the time Tuffman broke his back, isn’t it? It’s been one surgery after another for him since then. No wonder he hasn’t been in shape to hunt.”
Ms. Tern should stick to tossing shivs and reading novels. Tuffman isn’t Luke Ferrier and he isn’t here to hunt the cougar. He is the cougar.
Dean Swift isn’t buying it either. “How could our coach be your Luke Ferrier?”
“Look,” she says. “It’s a photo of Ferrier taken in August, 1970, just after the massacre.”
“That photo is over forty years old!”
“Stay on topic, Oliver. The resemblance is uncanny.”
“I am on topic. He looks thirty in that picture. Does Mr. Tuffman look like a seventy-five-year-old man? Or is he ageless? It’s not rocket science. It’s arithmetic.”
I hear Ms. Tern’s heels click angrily on the wood floor. “Didn’t you see him try to kill that snake? Tell me how many coaches at primary schools carry hunting knives about in the pockets of their tracksuits. And do you care to know how I came by that rifle? Tuffman—Ferrier—was out hunting cougar with it. The man is a predator. And take our little prodigy, our little Raul, with his big eyes and sharp teeth.”
What does she think I have to do with it?
And I don’t know if I like that description.
“Raul hates him. That boy has instinct. Today, in fact, I saw him shake Tuffman’s hand,” her voice slows.
I hold my breath. I didn’t know she was watching us. What did she see?
“I saw Tuffman’s knees buckle. As if Raul—the skinny thing—gripped his hand too hard. And when I walked by just after, your coach’s face was white with pain. Blood was seeping into his shirt where Raul had touched him.”
Dean Swift doesn’t say anything.
“Oliver?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“You do realize that Raul is one of our kind?”
My eyes get watery. So it wasn’t a dream the other night. She really did tell me her mother was an orca.
Her mother must have been one of the ones Ferrier filled with rocks or one of the white ones that disappeared. No wonder she hates him. My face is wet, and I turn my head to wipe it on my shirt. I think of White Wolf and how alone I would be if I lost her.
In the silence I can feel Gollum staring at me from some dark corner. I try not to sniffle. What kind are we?
You’d think it would make me happy to find out that it’s not just me, my mom, and Tuffman. Instead, I feel a little angry. I don’t know why. But shouldn’t they be trying to help me?
The dean just stands there with his hand resting on my mom’s recipe box. I can’t see his face. What is his second self ?
“It’s too early to know. It’ll be years before he’s called,” Dean Swift says. “And you must be mistaken. Our kind or not, a child his size could hardly have injured Mr. Tuffman.”
That was a low blow, dean. He’s a mole, I bet. Don’t they have eyes that can’t see?
“I’m telling you what I witnessed. And, if Ferrier is Tuffman, and Tuffman is Raul’s uncle, mightn’t the boy be in danger? Shouldn’t we warn him in some way?”
During the long silence that follows, I get nervous. My hands get damp and I can feel the blood beat in my throat. What are they going to do about me?
“We shouldn’t be talking about this,” the dean finally says. He smacks his desk with his hand. “Keep the woods in the woods, Nicolette. It’s the way we survive. We know each other there, and that’s enough. He’s far too young to be shifting anyway. And even if he were, I can only help him if he asks. I’m not allowed to intervene. And you can’t either. It’s the way.”
His words sink in. Finally something one of these two says makes sense. We know each other in the woods. We don’t talk about it. We keep our selves separate. That’s what my gut has been telling me to do all along. It’s how our kind has managed to survive, the dean is saying, and hearing him explain it gives me a feeling of peace. I understand the rules—the way—of my own kind instinctively. It’s why nobody can help me. I will figure it all out on my own.