This Is Not a Werewolf Story

by Sandra Evans

  Out of the blue, Mary Anne starts talking.

  “Some individuals are uncivilized. They do not understand the most basic elements of the social contract,” she says to her notebook.

  I’m pretty sure Mary Anne is just thinking out loud until she says, “I can’t believe you told everyone his secret.”

  It’s like she ripped the last of a hangnail off. It stings. I didn’t, I almost say, but I can tell she’s not in a listening mood.

  “He’s broken,” she says. “He looks up to you.”

  I shake my head, because I don’t know what she’s talking about.

  “Vincent doesn’t know who he is or where he fits in. That’s why he lies so much. He’s hoping if he tells enough stories about himself, he’ll finally tell one that’s true.”

  She wants me to feel sorry for Vincent?

  “You’re not like everyone else. You know who you are. You’re the strong one,” she says.

  My throat hurts. How can she be disappointed in me when she doesn’t even know what happened? I didn’t tell.

  “And then you go and hit him? There’s an expression. Noblesse oblige. It means that the stronger you are, the greater your obligation to take care of the weak.”

  She’s wrong about most of it, but she’s right about that. I hate her.

  I hear a car honk. Just leave, Mary Anne. I need to talk with the dean.

  The car horn honks again, louder and longer this time.

  Mary Anne shoves her notebook into her bag and zips it up so quick that she catches the corner of her skirt in the zipper. She looks at the door and tries to undo the zipper. I hear the fabric rip.

  A week ago I would have felt sorry for Mary Anne for having parents who can make their car horn sound like they’re irritated with her when they haven’t even seen her in a week. I would have felt sad to see her rush around and act nervous for making them wait for her for two minutes when she’s been waiting for them for an hour.

  You’re just a kid like the rest of us, Mary Anne. You’ve got to love them too, no matter what they do to you.

  I don’t feel sorry for her today.

  I hear a car pull into the driveway. The front door slams. Mary Anne must have forgotten something. But it’s Sparrow.

  “I forgot!” he yells, even though he’s standing in front of me. “I forgot and then I remembered. Here. Dean Swift couldn’t find you. He says this is yours. He says it fell out of your box.”

  He hands me a card. Then he hugs me and runs out the door.

  I look at it. I smile.

  Skagit Oatmeal.

  She must have been running out of cards. It’s the longest recipe of them all and the craziest. Is haggis part of a healthy breakfast? And the seventh ingredient isn’t food at all, it’s just a number. 1750 what? Oat flakes?

  But this is what it says: Born in 1750. Preys on white ones. Their flesh makes him immortal. His power is your name.

  It’s the last piece. And the picture the puzzle makes is a nightmare so bad, nobody’s ever had it yet.

  Ms. Tern was right. Tuffman is the spirit-animal hunter. Tuffman’s the guy in her photo.

  And the dean was right too, even if he meant to be sarcastic. Tuffman is ageless.

  But neither of them could ever guess the secret my mom knew: that the hunter is one of our kind, and that he’s ageless because he eats us.

  Only one thing makes me feel better. It’s awful, but it makes me feel better. He gets power over you by repeating your name. That’s why I kept telling him stuff—whenever he’d say my name, I’d turn into his slave.

  I jump up. My thoughts are zinging around in my head like a BB shot in a metal room.

  What was it Tuffman said at the end?

  Your mom wasn’t white when I knew her. My ears bend back. He tracked her here to kill her so she wouldn’t tell his secret. And now that he knows she’s a spirit animal, he wants to eat her too. And I thought Vincent was a bad egg.

  My skin creeps when I think of how he smiled at me when he shut my door. Like he had something up his sleeve.

  I look at the clock. Sunset in ten minutes. It’s time to go. I can’t mess up the recipe this week of all weeks.

  Dean Swift is standing at the door when I get to it. He’s looking at me funny.

  “How’s the old noggin, Raul?” the dean asks. “Could I drive you down to meet your dad this week and tell him how sick you’ve been?”

  I stand there with my hand on the doorknob, shaking my head. The clock is ticking, the sun is setting, the magic is happening. I don’t have time to talk about it.

  I’m not a dandelion. Tuffman can’t puff me away.

  Mary Anne got one thing right. I am the strong one.

  Dean Swift puts a hand on my forehead. He’s been doing it all week, checking if I have a fever. His skin smells like fire.

  “Don’t you need your bag?” he asks. We both look back to the parlor where my duffel bag is still on the floor.

  “Did you light the lens?” I ask instead.

  He looks startled. He nods slowly.

  “Good,” I say. “I’m gonna need it.”

  As I walk out the door, I turn around. The dean is standing in the foyer watching me. His face is gray and old and he looks so worried. I know if he could help me, he would.

  “Thank you,” I say. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “I can only help you if you ask me,” he says. “It’s the way.”

  He says it sadly, like he’d give anything to save me. I’m tempted. But I don’t have the time. I need to get to the lighthouse as quick as I can, and we’ve been over this, haven’t we? When it comes to running, Dean Swift does not live up to his name.

  “Just keep the light on,” I say. “I’ve got it all taken care of.”

  Then I’m out the door and I’m running as hard as I can. My ears are stretching and my teeth are pulling and I can feel my body changing as I race. Every part of me is alive and alert and listening and sniffing for the cougar.

  There’s no time to talk.

  Chapter 25

  SOMETIMES THE GLASS IS HALF FULL BUT THE OVEN IS EMPTY

  In the meadow the light blasts through me.

  I stand in it so long my skin pulses. Then I walk into the lighthouse.

  I step over the threshold with four legs. I’m a wolf with a purpose. I’m a wolf that means business.

  I’m ready for whatever Tuffman has cooked up.

  All weekend I watch and listen. I lead White Wolf to the lake, just outside the protection of White Deer Woods. But I never catch a whiff of the cougar or the man who wears its skin. We hunt and eat and sleep, but all I want is my chance to fight the cougar.

  White Wolf makes me leave on Sunday morning. She nips and nudges me. I want to stay. How will I protect her if I’m not here? Two wolves together can defeat a cougar, right? But one alone cannot. My tail drags as I cross the meadow.

  I wish we could speak to each other with words. Stay in White Deer Woods, I want to say. The woods magic will protect you.

  There’s a scent on the doorstep of the lighthouse. It makes me cold. I see them in my mind before their names come to me. A boy with hair the color of a raven’s feathers and a man with a scrape on his cheek that could have been made by a hook stuck in a wall or by a bullet grazing his skin.

  At first all I feel is fear. I race back to the edge of the woods to warn her. But White Wolf is gone. Will she be safe? Is this a trap? I stare into the woods. I listen. I sniff. Nothing moves. The cedar fronds sift the sharp gray light that falls across the green grass. The woods are still.

  From a distance I watch the lighthouse. I am gray like the light, and I stay in the shadows of the trees as I walk the woods around the building. There’s no sign of a boy or a man or the gun he might carry.

  I nudge the lighthouse door open. I stop. I listen. But all I hear are wings above in the broken lantern room.

  They’ve come and gone.

  Vincent told Tuffman about my lighthouse. Wha
t will this do to the magic?

  I put my nose to the ground and sniff. The scent trail leads from the door to the oven. The oven door is open. My clothes are gone.

  In my wolf’s mind’s eye I see Tuffman’s laughing eyes and the last words he said to me. Change your clothes. Vincent didn’t just tell him about the lighthouse. He told him everything he knew, and that was all Tuffman needed.

  At first I’m stunned, like when someone hits you in the back of a head with a rock. It’s that solid kind of ache like when a bone breaks—sharp and hurting the same amount of bad everywhere.

  Then I wonder. Was Vincent laughing when he reached into the oven? Did he wear his zombie mask? If I open one of the kitchen cupboards, will golf balls come dropping out?

  Does Vincent know this isn’t a prank? This isn’t stealing or lying. This is a kind of killing. He’s stolen the boy in me, and forced me to stay a wolf forever.

  It takes the air out of my lungs.

  Has someone ever punched you or kicked you? It hurts, right? But what’s worse is the way you feel ashamed, like you let it happen, like you had it coming, and now everyone can see how you are stupid and worthless and weak.

  What will Dean Swift think? What will Sparrow think?

  I know what it’s like to lose someone. I don’t want them to feel that way.

  Bam goes my heart. Will they call my dad? He doesn’t need to feel any sadder than he already does.

  Tuffman will think he’s won. He must be the one who trapped my mom, too. This way we can’t tell his secret. This way he can keep trying to kill us and nobody will know or care. Nobody goes to jail for shooting a wolf.

  And Vincent? If there’s one thing I know about Vincent, it’s that when he does something wrong, he’ll never admit it.

  Remember the fire? He started it.

  Remember the fishing pole? He broke it.

  Remember my clothes? He stole them.

  I stumble out of the lighthouse. I need White Wolf. I don’t want to be alone.

  But I am.

  Maybe she only comes on Fridays at sunset. Maybe the magic only works at the moment I change.

  I sit down in front of the lighthouse and put my nose on my paws. I feel the lump in my throat and I wait for the tears to come. But wolves don’t cry. After a minute I swing my head up high and stretch my neck. I howl my sadness to the great gray sky.

  When I stop howling, the woods fall silent. I think every bird feels my loneliness beneath its red or brown or blue feathers. The rabbits and the foxes, the voles and the moles, the frogs and the snakes, they all burrow down deep into the earth at the sound of my sorrow.

  And then I hear a crack at the edge of the cedars.

  When I look, I see White Wolf loping toward me. I stand, my tail wagging with a joy so great only a tail can truly tell it.

  Together we return to the woods.

  We don’t do much that day. We listen. I hear cars on the road below. The parents are bringing everyone back.

  It may sound strange to be grateful for anything when you’ve just found out your best friend has stolen your life and that you’ll never again eat with a fork or play pinball or baseball or wear shoes or read a book or watch a cartoon or fly a kite or use a straw to drink a soda.

  But I’m grateful White Wolf returned when she heard my call. I’m grateful to find out that the magic doesn’t happen just when I change. It’s always there.

  Chapter 26

  HUNTED

  Most of the time, I try not to think. I feel the sun in my fur. I chase a rabbit.

  When I do think, I worry about what they told my dad.

  The sun rises, and we stay under our ledge because we can hear the men and women and children searching. Most days I try to sleep through it.

  The cougar is always a shiver of anger running along my spine. When the sun sets, sometimes we hear the cougar yowling. White Wolf keeps moving us deeper into White Deer Woods, sidling between shaggy cedars and widespread oaks and flowering chestnuts.

  Trees have their own magic, I learn. The faces I once saw in their trunks—a wolf sees them too. But a wolf hears them sigh and sing, remember and regret, whisper and worry as well. It’s all alive out here. Once you know what to look for, you see everything.

  One morning I’m padding along so softly on a thick layer of pine needles that I startle a snake coiled on a rock, where the sun streaming down through the branches strikes it and heats it. I stop and raise one paw. Gollum. Her tongue flickers out toward me. When she looks at me, I think for a second that I can see the shadow of a girl’s head floating just above her. Whoever said a wolf has no imagination? Quick as can be, she uncoils and slips into a crevice in the rock.

  A warm feeling spreads through me. I’m happy to see this old friend.

  The days grow long and the nights grow short. It must be almost summer.

  After a while there are no more searches.

  The 5K race comes. I hear the gun shot that starts it.

  Did Tuffman get his rifle back? I hope when he comes, he comes as a cougar. There’s no fair fight between wolves and guns.

  The wind carries the scent of the runners to us as they follow the road that leads down to Highway 20 all the way around White Deer Woods to the ranger station. This is the first year I don’t run it, and the only year that I could win it. If I raced in my wolf shape, that is. Ha-ha. A little dark wolf humor there.

  Is Vincent sorry?

  At first that’s all I want. I want for him to be sorry. I want him to be terrified at what he’s done. He’s killed half of me. Doesn’t he understand?

  Many times, more than a wolf can count, I return to the lighthouse. Dean Swift keeps his word. The light of the lens is flooding a corner of the meadow every night I find myself there. I let it pulse through me until I feel too big to fit my skin.

  White Wolf lets me come alone, to say good-bye to the part of me I have lost. I slink in slow, cautious. I stick my nose into the oven. It’s always empty. Each time it surprises me. Each time it hurts.

  After a while I just want Vincent to be terrified. He’d better not ride his bike too deep into the woods. A flick of my paw and he’d be over the cliff, swimming with the seals.

  One evening the cougar attacks as I leave the lighthouse. He springs at me from a screen of fern and crushed bleeding hearts.

  All I see from the corner of my eye is a flash of teeth and a red mouth coming at my throat. But I’ve stood in the light so many times. I’m quick. I dart away and he gets nothing but a mouthful of air.

  I turn back and growl. The cougar jumps up onto a rotting stump of cedar.

  Go ahead. Take the higher ground. It won’t save you.

  I’ve been waiting for this moment. All my anger—at Vincent, at Tuffman the man and Tuffman the cougar—surges through me.

  As I gather my strength to charge, White Wolf streaks from the cedars, barking short and vicious barks. She’s trying to protect me. Even she doesn’t know what the light has done to me.

  The cougar pounces. His claws dig into her back, his mouth gapes, and his teeth plunge toward her neck.

  I leap at him, knocking him off balance. He twists and tumbles and just barely finds his feet. He hisses and turns to face us. White Wolf and I crouch. We advance, he retreats. We back him across the meadow and into the woods. White Wolf and I keep moving forward, our heads low. When the path narrows, White Wolf tries to push ahead of me, but I won’t let her. Side by side, that’s how it’s gonna be this time.

  You see, cougar, alone you can hurt us. Together we are strong.

  Along the right cheek of the cougar is a hairless pink scar. The sight of it infuriates me, and I lunge at him.

  I hear White Wolf warn me. My teeth pierce his skin, and I taste blood.

  That’s for the scrape in White Wolf’s side, I rumble.

  I shake my head as I bite down harder, ripping his hide. That’s for Bobo’s leg.

  His huge paw comes up, claws stretched, and he bats me awa
y.

  The blow knocks me off balance. I stagger and fall against White Wolf. Before I can get back up, he’s racing off ahead of us through the woods. We give chase, but everyone knows you can’t catch a cougar. When we stop running, we are miles from the moon-dappled forest floor. Small lights illuminate the cement walls and rusty ladders of Fort Casey. The cougar has fled to his den.

  A burning pain hits my haunch. Did I get shot? I didn’t hear the rifle. But maybe the cougar led us here so Tuffman could shoot us.

  I look at White Wolf. Help, I want to say.

  She’s dragging herself toward me, making sounds that mean I’m coming. I’ll help you. Then her eyes cloud over and close.

  Oh no, she got hit too. Oh no. Maybe we’re dying. My head is dizzy and my haunch stings like something—a bullet? a thin sharp stick?—is stuck into me.

  Then I see a ranger. I recognize the uniform. I stumble and fall to the ground beside White Wolf, trying to cover her with my body.

  The man leans over me. His face is so kind and familiar. I feel safe.

  “We got you, boy,” the ranger says.

  I can feel sleep pushing my eyes shut, but I struggle to stay awake. Who is he? What has he done to me?

  “That’s only a little tranquilizer shot,” he says, stroking my side. “You two will be all right in the morning. We’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

  It’s the most peaceful thought I’ve ever had. I was lost and now I’ve been found.

  More voices join in. “Did you get the cougar?” one asks.

  “No, but we got the wolves,” says my man. “We can tag these two and release them up north.” I’m glad he keeps talking. His voice is so familiar. I’ve been wanting to hear it for so long.

  I can feel him looking me over; his fingers are deep in my coat. “I wonder what brought them all the way over here tonight. You think they got in a tangle with that cougar?”

  Whoever he is, the clearest thought-in-words I’ve had in a long time comes to me as the strength in my wolf body fades. I need to show him who I am. It’s the Raul me saying this. I fight the numbness that makes every muscle in my body feel like hot chocolate.