The Amazing Wolf Boy

by Roxanne Smolen

  “As it happens, I just got in a pair. They’re practically brand new.” He rummaged around his inventory. “Here they are.”

  They were new. Still had the tags. They were also hideous—steel gray with a grid of pink lines forming inch-wide squares. Probably in style twenty years ago. “Where did you get these?”

  “Woman said her son outgrew them before his birthday party. I gave her a lamp and a plunger.”

  Right. Her son probably refused to wear them. “Got anything else?”

  “Not in extra tall.”

  A ball of panic bounced in my stomach. “Are you sure the mall is closed?”

  “Yep,” said Uncle Bob.

  I shut my eyes. Before I changed my mind, I changed my pants. Right there in the garage. The legs flared at the bottom, but they fit. “Yeah. These will work.”

  “Much better.” Uncle Bob nodded.

  I stuck out my hand to shake with Howard. “You saved my life.”

  He grinned. “A danger foreseen is half-avoided.”

  I nodded, pretty sure I knew what he meant.

  Feeling calmer, I climbed again into Uncle Bob’s truck. Everything was going to be all right. I was on time for dinner, and I was dressed like a clown. Brittany’s mom would have to take me as I was, right?

  My mouth went dry at that thought.

  As Uncle Bob wheeled through town, I tried to think of a conversation starter. I didn’t like us being mad at each other. “Are you spending the day with Rita?”

  “She’s gone,” he said.

  “What? Already?”

  “I told her to go. Between the problems with the pack and her saying I was too tough on you…” He blew out his breath.

  I looked at him and thought of how it would feel to be separated from Brittany. I didn’t think I could stand that. “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. In all the years we’ve been together, I never asked her to leave.”

  “Then why did you?”

  “You really don’t get it, do you?” He threw a glance my way. “These people are murderers. Brutal and unpredictable. You’ve made this a game for them. And they aren’t going to leave until the game is over.”

  “So,” I snapped, “you asked Rita to leave because you’re mad at me?”

  “I’m not angry,” he said. “I’m scared. I’m just trying to keep you both safe.”

  I folded my arms, scowling out the windshield. What did he think I was trying to do? I’d intended to save the whole town by facing down the killers. It’s not my fault it didn’t work.

  The truck rattled up Brittany’s long, pot-holed driveway. Brittany sat on the screened-in porch in one of the wicker chairs. She stood, smiling like she was relieved I’d shown up. I didn’t thank my uncle for the ride, just got out and walked toward the house, painfully aware of my too-tight shoes, my garage sale clown pants.

  He yelled out his window, “I’ll be back at six.”

  Brittany took my hand. “Is he still mad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, take a deep breath. You’re here, now.”

  “Yeah.” I listened to my uncle drive away.

  “You look nice,” she said.

  I cringed like she’d slapped me, expecting her to laugh. But when I looked into her eyes, I saw she wasn’t poking fun.

  I smiled. “You look nice, too.”

  “In this thing?”

  Stepping back, I took her in. She’d dyed her hair bubblegum pink, and it sat like a puffball on top of her head. She wore dangling earrings with Easter eggs at the ends and a lavender sundress I was sure her mother bought her. It was the first time I’d seen her bare shoulders. I wanted to kiss them. “Oh, yeah. Super nice.”

  “Come on.” She grinned. “I’ll introduce you to my mom.”

  We went into her house. The curtains in the living room were open for a change, letting in the afternoon sun and making the place cheerful. Rabbit pillows covered the couch, and Easter Bunny plaques hung on the walls. My favorite had the words Spring Has Sprung lettered on half a basket and plastic eggs bouncing on springs from inside.

  The coffee table held a large vase filled with several dozen tulips. Scattered around the vase were decorated eggs. I picked one up. It was painted to look like a blue rabbit with a doily for a skirt and a cotton ball tail.

  “A little much, eh?” Brittany said in a low voice.

  “Who made all these?”

  “It’s a family event. Under pain of death.” She pointed to one that looked like a chick with crossed eyes and pipe cleaner legs. “There’s one of mine.”

  “Really? Let me see.”

  “No.” She snatched it up before I could touch it, holding it behind her back. “You’ll laugh.”

  “No, I won’t.” I slipped my arms around her, trying to grab the egg.

  “Stop. I’m shy.”

  “You? Not a chance.”

  “You think you know me so well.”

  “I do,” I murmured.

  Her lips were a breath away. I caught them with my own. A tingle swept through me; my entire body stood on point.

  Someone cleared their throat loudly. I jerked, suddenly remembering where I was, what I was doing. The blue egg toppled from my fingers. It hit the edge of the table with a sickening crack. I winced, turning around.

  Brittany’s mother stood in the doorway wiping her hands on a dishtowel. She had chin-length brown hair and wrinkles around her eyes. An apron in the shape of a rabbit covered her dress. Its long ears fastened behind her neck.

  “You must be Cody.” She wiped her hands as if to keep them from wringing my neck.

  “Yes, ma’am.” My face went hot. I stepped away from Brittany, who was now on hands and knees trying to retrieve the fallen egg. “I like your decorations.”

  Wipe. Wipe.

  “Got it.” Brittany held up the egg. Its face was bashed in.

  “Um, sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be silly.” Brittany stood. “It’s good luck to eat the first one. Right, Mom?”

  “Welcome to our home,” her mother said. “Why don’t you two come into the kitchen? We can chat while I work.” She bustled away.

  Brittany smiled. “That went well.”

  I groaned. We walked together down the hallway. As we passed the stairs, her brother barreled down.

  “Is dinner ready yet?” he asked.

  “Bartley, is that you?” his mother called.

  I stared at him. No wonder he’d rather go by the name of Butt Crack.

  “Bartley, go to the garage and bring in another carton of Coke.”

  “But, Mom,” he said, blocking the kitchen doorway. “I’m trying to finish my homework.”

  “Glory be. You had all week to do it. Now, get a move on.”

  “Yeah. Move it, Butt Crack.” Brittany poked him.

  “Watch your language, young lady.” Her mother looked distracted. “What am I missing?”

  I followed Brittany into the steamy kitchen. My super senses perked at a barrage of aromas. I smelled maple-and-brown-sugar crusted ham in the oven and cinnamon applesauce simmering on the stove. “It smells really good in here, ma’am.”

  “Oh dear.” She leaned into their cavernous refrigerator. “Brittany, I forgot to have you snap the beans.”

  “I can do that,” I said. “Just let me wash my hands.” I headed toward the bathroom.

  With my super hearing, I heard her mother hiss, “How does he know where our bathrooms are? How many times has he been here? I thought you only saw him at school.”

  Brittany said, “Blame Grandpa. He had him in there fixing the sink.”

  “He did not.”

  “You always think the worst.”

  “I would just like to know what you’re doing while I’m at work.”

  I scrubbed and re-entered the kitchen, holding my hands up like a surgeon. Brittany lugged what looked like a ten-pound bag of green beans to the table. She wore a bunny apron similar to the one her mother had on. It look
ed cute on her.

  My smile faded as her mother held out an apron to me. “You should wear one of these as well, Cody. No sense in ruining your nice clothes.”

  “That’s all right, ma’am.”

  “I insist.”

  “Don’t be a baby.” Brittany took the apron, her eyes glinting like a mischievous fairy. “Bend down here.”

  She slipped the bunny’s ears over my head. Then she velcroed its long arms behind my back. Heat rushed up my neck.

  At the same time, Butt Crack came in from the garage. He burst out laughing, almost dropping the carton he held. “I don’t know, man. You must really like her.”

  “That’s enough,” his mother said. “Just for that, you can help them with the beans. You’ll have to wear one of my craft smocks.”

  So the three of us settled at the kitchen table—Brittany and I dressed like Easter Bunnies and Butt Crack wearing a smock with humongous red and purple flowers. We broke the ends off the beans, dropping the good part into a pot. I’d never snapped beans before, and I wanted to get it right to impress Brittany’s mother. But Brittany kept knocking my elbow and making me drop my bean. Butt Crack flicked stems at us. His fingernails were green.

  Brittany’s mother stood at the sink, her back to us, peeling potatoes. “Cody, I hear you live with Bob Nowak.”

  “Yes, ma’am. He’s my uncle.”

  “The Fix-It-Guy,” Butt Crack said in a deep voice.

  “Is that what you want to become?” his mother asked. “A handyman?”

  “Actually, I always figured I’d be a doctor. Like my parents.”

  “Oh.” She looked at me. “Have they passed on?”

  Might as well have, I thought. “They live in Massachusetts.”

  “Then why do you live down here?”

  “Getting personal, Mom,” Brittany said.

  “I don’t think it’s an unreasonable question,” she said.

  Brittany scowled and opened her mouth to answer. I overrode her. “My parents wanted me to have a different perspective of things, so they sent me to Uncle Bob. I’m glad they did.”

  I smiled at Brittany, and she took my hand. Butt Crack flicked a stem, binging her in the nose. She snatched the plastic bag and dumped the remaining green beans over his head. Their mother kept peeling as if their behavior was expected. It looked like a mountain of potatoes.

  “Anyone else coming for dinner?” I asked.

  “Just us.” Brittany scooped beans off the floor and tossed them at her brother.

  “Where’s Grandpa Earle?” I asked.

  “Taking a nap.”

  “I don’t nap,” Grandpa Earle bellowed as he came around the corner.

  I stood. “Happy Easter, sir.”

  He blinked at me, his eyes traveling slowly from the flared clown pants to the rabbit apron. “You got a bean on your shoulder.”

  I brushed myself off.

  “Never thanked you properly for the job you did on my sink,” he said.

  Brittany’s mother spun around. “You mean, h-he…”

  “Did a bang-up job.” He extended his hand, and I shook it. “My thanks is payment.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Well.” Her cheeks colored. “Cody, if you will bring those over, I’ll wash them. And Brittany, you need to punch down the dinner rolls so they can rise again. They’re right over there in the sunshine.”

  Brittany lifted a cloth, exposing globs of dough. I carried the pot to the sink, and then helped her brother pick up the mess on the floor.

  Before long, dinner was on the table. There was enough food for twenty-five people instead of just five—mounds of mashed potatoes, string beans with slivered mushrooms, buttered corn, warm applesauce, and of course, the ham.

  Grandpa Earle and Brittany’s mother sat on either end of the table. Brittany and I sat across from Butt Crack. I held Brittany’s chair for her as she settled in, more for her mom’s benefit than because I thought she needed help. I knew it was something old people liked.

  As I took my seat, I noticed the blue egg with the smashed-in face beside my plate. All hope of scoring points left me. I felt like it was a statement, like I had to pay for the stolen kiss.

  Brittany’s mother said, “Cody, will you do us the honor of saying grace?”

  My jaw dropped, and my mind went blank. Grace? Like a formal prayer? I didn’t know any. My parents were agnostic.

  A terrible silence fell over the room. The others bowed their heads. Waiting. My hands grew clammy. “Four score and seven years ago,” I said, “our fathers brought forth a new nation, um, in order to form a more perfect union—” No, wait! What was I doing? That was for Thanksgiving, wasn’t it? “Um, conceived under God and to the republic, with liberty and justice for all. Amen.”

  “Amen,” said Brittany.

  She and her brother dove for the bowls of food.

  Her mother said, “Thank you, Cody. That was quite…patriotic.”

  “Bah,” said Grandpa Earle. “There are no real patriots anymore. The government’s full of lies and conspiracies.”

  “Grandpa wears a skunk skin hat on the Fourth of July,” Brittany said.

  “Tell him about the flying saucer you saw last year, Grandpa,” Butt Crack said.

  “Bartley, no,” his mother said. “Not in front of guests.”

  “You can laugh.” Grandpa Earle waved his fork. “But I know what I saw. It was big and silver, and it tried to take over my mind.”

  “Grandpa was most insistent on that point,” Brittany said. “He bypassed the sheriff’s department and went straight to the press.”

  “Durned right,” he said. “And do you know what they had the gall to tell me it was? A runaway hot air balloon from the State Fair. In Tampa, for Pete’s sake.”

  “They probably believed what they were saying,” Butt Crack mumbled around a mouth full of potatoes. “Mind control, you know.”

  “Maybe so,” Grandpa Earle said. “Never thought of it like that.”

  “Cody, tell us what it’s like in Massachusetts,” Brittany’s mother said.

  “It’s nice,” I told her. “Big trees. Bigger hills. Traffic’s worse there. Everything seems to move at a faster pace.”

  “Do you miss living there? Your friends?”

  “The first week or two was hard. I had a lot of friends. I was president of the Science Club. Teacher’s pet. But I was in a rut. Taking the safe route. It’s exciting living here. Always something new to see.”

  “Good boy,” Grandpa Earle said between bites. “You’re never too old to see something new. I saw my first yeti this morning.”

  Brittany laughed. “Aren’t they supposed to be in the mountains?”

  “I know what I’m talking about. It was right outside the kitchen window. I came in for some water to take my rheumatism medicine, and I saw it.”

  “What did it look like?” Butt Crack asked. “Big and hairy?”

  “It was huge. Kind of like a dog, only not exactly.”

  Brittany dropped her fork. She looked at me.

  “A dog?” her mother said.

  “Like no dog I never seen. It was down on all fours, poking around the yard. Then at first light, it just rose up and stood there on its hind legs, manlike but shaggy. Then it shambled away. I looked for footprints, but there weren’t none. It’s so dry out there.”

  My stomach lurched, and all the good food I’d eaten turned sour. He’d seen a werewolf, not a yeti. Someone had been in the yard. I wanted to believe it was my uncle keeping watch while I was tossing in bed.

  But I knew it was one of the pack. Maybe they’d split up, looking for me. Only I hadn’t shifted. Why did I have to be so stubborn? If I’d become a wolf, I would have realized Brittany was in danger. I would have been there to protect her.

  “Maybe we should think about fencing in,” Brittany’s mother said. “I don’t like the thought of animals doing their business in our yard.”

  “If it was as big as Gramps said
it was,” said Butt Crack, “it would probably break through a fence.”

  “Then we’ll electrify it,” she said.

  “Excellent idea,” I said. “You should get an extra tall one. My uncle and I can put it up.” I glanced at Brittany for confirmation and noticed she wasn’t eating.

  “Drumming up business for the Fix-It-Guy, eh?” Grandpa Earle laughed. “Good boy.”

  We got through dinner without further discussions of yeti and flying saucers.

  I leaned back from the table. “Everything was delicious, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, Cody. I’ll put a plate together so you can take some home to your uncle. And don’t forget. We have rabbit holes.”

  Butt Crack and Grandpa Earle stood at the same time and began clearing the table. It seemed to be a ritual. I wondered if I should join the men folk. But Brittany tugged my hand, practically dragging me from the room.

  “We’ll be on the front porch,” she told her mother.

  “Rabbit holes?” I asked as we passed through the living room.

  “Our traditional Easter dessert. Mother loves crafts.” She stopped to look at me. “Was that you Grandpa saw in the yard this morning?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t shift last night. But I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Maybe Uncle Bob stopped by to keep an eye on you.”

  “Maybe.” She didn’t sound convinced.

  We stepped out onto the porch. I tried to think of a way to change the subject when my blood went cold. At the end of the long driveway, I saw a shiny black Mustang. Leaning against the hood was the pack leader.

  Brittany gasped. “Oh, no.”

  I wanted to run back into the house and lock the door—but I couldn’t show weakness in front of her.

  “Stay here,” I said.

  I walked as if my legs were numb, as if I were in a dream. The driveway stretched longer with each step. The pack leader crossed his arms, watching me with a smirk.

  Don’t let him sense how scared you are.

  “There’s the little pup,” he said.

  I stopped about ten feet away. “I see you got another car.”

  “There’s always another car.”

  I paused. Thief. “What do you want?”

  “You didn’t come out to play last night. I wanted to see if you were okay.”

  “You watching the house?”