11
DIANA
I slid out from under the thick comforter, yanked jeans and a sweatshirt over my pajamas. I glanced at Stephanie, asleep in the next bed. Carrying my shoes, I tiptoed down the stairs past Mom and Norm’s closed door. In the kitchen, I grabbed the flashlight from the counter and went out onto the front porch.
Outside, the near-full moon shone like a silver coin in the dark sky. The mountain air felt unbelievably cold for July. I sat in one of the ancient rocking chairs to put my shoes on, but it squeaked. I lowered myself to the edge of the porch. I tied my shoes, then hurried, shivering in the clammy darkness, across the gravel parking lot toward the lodge.
I’d been so mad! So freaking mad! Almost like little sparks going off behind my eyes. Everything seemed sharp and bright and hard. And I felt a mean, hard dullness in the pit of my stomach.
A definite nine point seven five on the Moronic Mood-o-Meter. Dr. Shrink would be so proud that I stopped to figure that out, wouldn’t she?
The bad part wasn’t Norm yelling at me. It was that Mom hadn’t even stood up for me. For all of my life, it had been me and Mom against the world. Now everything felt hopeless, like Mom was never going to be on my side again. So, I was going to do this one thing. Then I was running away to Dad’s house in Florida. And never coming back.
As I headed toward the lodge, the wind in my face felt cold. A full moon slid from behind the clouds and lit up the high valley nestled in the pine-forested peaks. Moonlight hit the roofs of the barn and the cabins. It spilled like milk across the sloped grazing pastures, highlighting the white salt blocks that the cows and horses licked. I could swipe a bike from the front of the lodge and ride it almost the whole way to the wolves’ pen. I’d only have to climb on foot over a rock formation the last twenty yards or so.
I grabbed the handlebars of one of the bikes, and gravel crunched under the tires as I backed it out of the rack.
“Diana! Wait!”
I turned around and saw Stephanie, hurrying to close the thirty yards between us.
“What the heck are you doing?” Anger raced through me like the wick on a stick of dynamite.
“You can’t do this! You can’t! Please!” Stephanie had on only her pajamas and a pair of flip-flops. What an idiot. She was going to freeze. She grabbed another one of the bikes.
“You don’t even know what I’m doing!” I turned away. Pushed off. I couldn’t believe this. Maybe, if I rode fast enough, I could lose her.
Icy wind stung my cheeks as I raced downhill toward the ranch entrance and took a hard right, ignoring Stephanie’s shouts. But as I headed up the trail I’d found this afternoon, now lit with patches of bluish moonlight, I started having doubts. If Stephanie ended up lost and scared on the side of the mountain somewhere, guess who Mom and Norm would blame. Duh. I skidded to a stop. Straddled the bike. “What do you want?”
“Let me come with you.” Stephanie peddled up the trail, then dropped one foot to the ground. Her whole body shivered in the thin pajamas.
“You have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Yes, I do. You’re runnin’ away.”
“What do you care? Once I leave, you could have Mom and Norm all to yourself.”
Stephanie’s mouth dropped open, like this was all totally news to her. “What are you talkin’ about? Come on, let me come. I feel like I know how you feel about things.”
“You don’t even know me. We barely know each other at all.”
“Hey, I really felt sorry for you after Daddy yelled at you tonight. I mean, I knew what you were talkin’ about. I was on your side.”
I had one foot up on the bicycle pedal. Now I put it back down. “So what. That doesn’t change anything.”
“If you run away, where would you stay? What are you gonna eat? How are you gonna get around?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I started pushing my bike up the hill. “Before I go, I have something else to do first.”
“What?” Stephanie pushed her bike up behind me.
“None of your business.”
“If you don’t let me come, I’ll tell ‘em you sneaked out tonight.”
“Yeah, but so did you!”
“But I’m followin’ you, tryin’ to get you to come home.”
“Home. That’s a laugh.”
Suddenly a wolf howled. Another one joined in the singing, the two sad voices lacing their way through the treetops to the scattered stars.
I lifted my head and listened and caught a sudden glitter in Stephanie’s eyes.
“You’re gonna let the wolves go, aren’t you?” Stephanie whispered.
I waited a minute too long before saying, “What are you talking about?”
Stephanie pushed her bike up beside me. “You think Russell’s daddy mistreats them. I saw the way he yanked the chain.”
I met Stephanie’s gaze. Stephanie’s entire body shook with the cold, but somehow she kept steady eye contact.
“Well, I’m not waiting for you.”
“I’ll keep up.”
“And don’t get in my way.”
“I won’t.”
I started back up the hill. This might be a huge mistake. But what could I do? It was too late now. I couldn’t take Stephanie back. I stood up on the bike pedals as the path got steeper. Stephanie’s breath behind me was coming in high-pitched bursts. Man, she irritated me.
I thought back to the time I’d hung out with Russell back at the lodge. With animals, he was the way I’d always wanted to be. Like a magnet. The wolves trusted him, stood close to him, lay down at his feet. I hadn’t wanted to leave.
At one point I’d crouched very low on the ground and moved very slowly and, at last, Oginali allowed me to touch her head with the tips of my fingers.
Would you like to go free, girl? Would you?
One of the adults had asked Russell if Oginali and Waya ever tried to escape.
“Every day,” Russell had said.
The path got narrower. The straight trunks of pines closed in more tightly on either side. Not far away, an owl screeched. Something—probably a bat—flew too close to my head with an eerie, muted fluttering. I shivered.
And then, again, I heard the howls. Two voices, long and high and lonesome. I stopped. Glanced up at the moon, which was half hidden by a single gray cloud. Russell had said that wolves’ howling at the moon was a myth and that they hardly howled at all. He’d said sometimes people heard coyotes and thought they were wolves. But that sure seemed like it came from the direction of the wolf pen.
“Diana?” Stephanie’s voice behind me sounded scared. I ignored her.
The trail got so steep I had to walk the bike the last twenty yards to the foot of the rock face. Then I laid it on its side. I could see the gleam of the metal mesh fence just over the rock’s summit. My ears and the tip of my nose were so cold they hurt. I cupped my fingers over my mouth. Blew on them.
“I’m so cold.” Stephanie’s whining was driving me batty. Her teeth were chattering and I wanted to knock them out. She dropped her bike on the path. I found hand and footholds, pulled myself up to a narrow ledge on the rock face. Stephanie was never going to get a foothold wearing flip-flops.
“Just stay at the bottom,” I said. “If you try to climb you’ll fall.”
“No,” said Stephanie. “I want to come.”
I gritted my teeth. Let out a howl of frustration. Then, finally, I crouched on the ledge. “Put your right foot there, on that little place that sticks out.” She actually did it. “Now put your hand on that bump and pull up. Good. Okay, now take my hand.”
I reached down, clasped Stephanie’s cold fingers, and pulled. I felt my weight start to pitch forward. For a second I thought I was going to fall. I scrambled backward, pulling Stephanie halfway up, then sat down hard. I grabbed Stephanie’s wrists. “Can you get up now? Move your feet around and find somewhere to put your toes.”
Stephanie flailed with her legs. She finally found a plac
e for her foot, and scrambled, on her stomach, until she was lying halfway on the ledge. “I think my toes are bleeding,” she said. She wedged one knee up over the edge, pulled herself into a sitting position. “Omigosh, I can’t look down.”
“Then don’t.” I started up the narrow rocky path, reached upward. If I said another thing to her I might shake her teeth out. Hooked my fingers through the icy metal diamonds of the chain link fence. “Hold on to the fence,” I told Stephanie. “The electric part is only those wires on top.”
The blue moonlight caught the fence’s diamond-shaped pattern. A sound separated itself into a low growl.
“What’s that?” Stephanie’s voice held panic.
“The wolves, duh.”
Stephanie made a frightened sound. “Keep climbing,” I said. Using the bottom of the fence for handholds, we were able to climb sideways the rest of the way up the slope. The growling got louder.
I stood, finally on level ground, and scanned the darkness inside the pen. Would the wolves’ eyes glow in the dark, like a cat’s? Stephanie came up behind me, grabbed me by the elbow. She was shaking so much and standing so close that her knees were bumping my calves.
“Where are they? Can you see them?” The growling stopped.
I unpeeled Stephanie’s fingers from my elbow. “Not yet. Let’s walk around the edge and find the gate.” We started around the pen. There was a tree inside, and a few rocks, but none close to the fence. Russell had said the wolves could climb anything close to the fence and get out.
Stephanie pointed to a shadowed structure back in the woods about forty yards away. “Is that Mr. Morgan’s cabin?”
I looked through the woods at the darkened cabin. “Oh! Yeah, it must be.”
“We don’t want to wake him up.”
“Thanks, Sherlock.” No wonder she makes straight A’s.
“So, are you just going to open the gate, or what?”
“I don’t know. Russell said his dad had to put a couple of locks on there. I don’t know if I can get it open. He said once these scientists did this experiment to see who was smarter, a wolf or a dog. They left each one in a closed garage and left a garage door opener on the floor. After four hours, the German shepherd was asleep in the garage, waiting for someone to come let him out. Guess how long it took the wolf to figure out how to work the garage door opener.”
“I don’t know. An hour?”
“Try ninety seconds.”
“No, really? Did you make that up?”
“No, I swear, Russell said it was a real experiment. Wolves are smart.”
“That is amazing,” Stephanie said. She looked into the dark pen, more curious now.
I looked, too. Was something moving?
“What’s gonna happen when they get out?” Stephanie asked.
“I don’t know.” I wished she would quit asking stupid questions. “No one will ever see them again.”
“Won’t Russell and Maggie miss them?”
I stopped and stared at Stephanie, opened my mouth to answer, then closed it and kept walking. “He wanted me to do this. He’d do it himself if he could, I know it.”
“What if they attack us when they get out?”
“NO! They’ll just run away.”
“Are you sure?”
“No!” Halfway around the pen, we found the gate, which was secured with two combination locks and a length of thick chain. I yanked on them both. Neither gave. I glanced over at the cabin in the woods. Still dark.
The growling started up again. Two shadows melted out of the darkness. Oginali was flat on the ground and Waya sat nearly motionless, watching us. They could have been statues.
Then Waya stepped forward. Moonlight painted the tips of her fur a milky blue. Her eyes gleamed a translucent greenish-orange. The moment spun out slowly as I met her narrowed eyes. I knelt, curling my fingers through the fence.
“Hey, Waya. Hey, girl. It’s me, Diana,” I said to the darkness. “Come on over.” I stuck my hand through the enclosure.
“Diana! Are you crazy?”
“I don’t think they’ll bite me.” I held my hand still, remembering Waya’s nose touching it earlier tonight, and I held it out for Waya to sniff.
Waya took one step closer. Changed her mind and started to pace. Her ears, eyes, and nostrils seemed like a living computer, collecting information with lightning speed.
I started thinking out loud. “We could dig a hole under the fence. If we dug a small hole, maybe the wolves would even finish the job.”
“Wouldn’t we need a shovel?” Stephanie crossed her arms and clamped her hands under her armpits to warm them.
I glanced at the wolves. Waya was still pacing, kind of growling. Oginali slunk into the shadows.
“What about a log?” said Stephanie. “We could lean it up against the fence. They could walk up it.”
I stared at Stephanie. Could she have actually come up with a decent idea?
“Not bad. C’mon, help me look for a log.”
“Seriously?” Stephanie hesitantly followed me into the woods.
I scanned the dark ground with the narrow beam of the flashlight. I found one log, but it fell apart when I tried to move it.
“Diana, I’m so cold, I can’t feel my hands or feet,” Stephanie said. Whined is more like it.
“It was your idea to look for a log.”
After another minute of searching I found a skinny tree leaning at an angle. It had fallen and been caught by the branches of another tree. It had a narrow trunk, only about four inches across. I worried it wouldn’t be wide enough, but at least we could carry it.
I hoisted up the lower end. Propped it on my hip. “C’mon, lift the other end.”
“It might have splinters,” said Stephanie. “Or bugs.”
I glared at her.
Stephanie sighed. She put her hands on the trunk and quickly removed them. “There’s something slimy on there.”
“Stephanie!” I hissed. Then I don’t know why, I just started laughing.
Stephanie looked at me wide-eyed, then she started laughing, too. “Fine, I’m prissy, I admit it.” With that she took both palms and slapped them firmly on the trunk. “Okay, go.” She groaned and then staggered backward when she tried to lift the tree, but finally managed to get it balanced, and we worked our way out of the woods. We made a huge amount of noise, crashing through leaves, fighting branches, snapping sticks. I double-checked again to make sure the cabin was still dark. So far so good.
At last we got the trunk out onto the path. Panting and sweating now even in the cold, we lugged the tree back to the fence.
“We’re going to slide this log over the fence into the pen,” I said. “You have to help me, Stephanie.”
She didn’t say anything, and for a moment I worried she might turn around and run back to the cabin, but then she whispered, “Okay.”
I was surprised by a sudden surge of emotion starting in my chest and trying to work its way up and out, but I swallowed it down and said, “Okay, on my count, lift and slide it over.” I took a deep breath. “One, two, three, lift!”
We pushed the end of the log up, over the fence. I shoved. The end of the log slid past the fence top, its center passed over, and then the log tipped downward. Our side rose up out of reach like a seesaw. Now the log was moving on its own. It hit the ground with a dull scraping sound and remained solid, leaning against the fence.
“Whew.” I searched the pen for the wolves but all our noise must have scared them. They were nowhere in sight.
“Waya? Oginali? C’mere, girls, c’mon,” I said, kneeling. Nothing. I glanced over at Mr. Morgan’s cabin, still dark and silent. Found a rock about fifteen yards away from the fence and sat on it. My heart was pounding like a freight train, and I felt completely alive. I watched the moon-bright sky just above the spot where the log met the fence, the place I thought I might see the wolves’ silhouettes right before they jumped to freedom.
Stephanie sat down ne
xt to me. “So, you think they’ll jump?”
“If it was me, I would.”
We waited, beginning to notice the noisy woods around us. Wind rustled leaves, an owl hooted not far away, crickets made a racket, and every minute or so a frog burped.
“The stars are so much brighter here than at home.” Stephanie wrapped her arms around her knees to warm herself. “That was kind of cool what Maggie said today, about the Cherokees believing that the Milky Way was the Path of Souls.”
“I wasn’t listening,” I said. I did notice now, though, that here on the mountain the stars did seem nearer to the earth. And though I knew that outer space was freezing cold, the stars winked in what seemed to be a warm, comforting way.
Stephanie leaned her head back and scanned the blanket of stars above us. She pointed at a dense band arching across the heavens like a luminous cloud. “That must be the Milky Way. I wonder which constellation has the Dog Star and which is Antares, the one they called the Great Mother Wolf.”
“I don’t know,” I said, surprised that she’d remembered the names.
“Russell said that if the spirits don’t like you, your soul can get stuck there, in the Milky Way.”
“That’s a boatload of stuck souls,” I said. I wondered how many thousands of stars made up that swirling arch?
“Yeah,” said Stephanie. “Sometimes I feel stuck, because I’m, you know, so scared of stuff. I wish I was as brave as you are.”
I pretended the compliment didn’t matter, but I felt my arms prickling with pleasure in the dark. “Well, you’re brave with people,” I said. “I wish I could be more like that.”
“Well, Daddy always taught me to be kind, so I just try to do that, that’s all.” Stephanie said.
“You make it sound so easy.” My throat tightened. Stephanie had no idea how hard it was.
“Well, ridin’ is easy for you. So maybe being brave is doing stuff that’s hard for you.”
I couldn’t believe it. The ache in my throat was like a burn. I was about to cry. I couldn’t let Stephanie see. I turned away. Took deep breaths, thankful for the darkness and the cold.
Summer of the Wolves Page 6