by Peter Moore
I get in bed and pull the curved Sol-Blok canopy over me and snap it shut. My cocoon. I’m going to close my eyes for just a few minutes.
I wake up and get out of bed. The Sol-Blok blinds have already automatically rolled down over my windows, and the room is black. Since the light sensors on the roof activate the blinds an hour before sunrise, it means I’ve slept for at least three hours. Fantastic. Now I’ll probably be up all day.
The only thing I have an appetite for at dinner is meat. Mom took one slice and ate half. She’s filling up on vegetables and glasses of the Sangre-Vin that Troy brought back from his last business trip to Europe. Supposedly they ferment the wine with a few drops of actual blood, not like the completely synthetic heme that’s added to California Sangre-Vins. Real Sangre-Vins are illegal in most countries, since it can be addictive if you drink too much. My guess is that Troy could get in some real trouble for bringing it back to the States.
I guess Troy’s nice enough, but when you get down to it, the guy is boring. I have a feeling he knows it, too, which is why he tries to use slang and stuff to convince us that he’s cool. Still, dull or not, when Mom met Troy, that was it. They got married, had Paige, and here we are. One big happy family.
Loretta comes in with her coat over her arm. She’s short and built like a little football player. She has a lot of facial and cranial bone damage and scars from too many rough times at the compound. Even so, she still sings while she works, and she always has a smile for me.
“Excellent dinner tonight, Loretta,” Troy says. “We should get you your own celebrity cooking show on TV. Like that Wulfghang Packe.”
“Oh, I don’t deserve a television show. I just know what you like.”
Paige looks up at her, grinning through a mouthful of Fettuccini Caprese. Loretta smiles back at her, probably not getting that Paige is being obnoxious.
“Actually,” Jessica says, “I was going to tell you that I don’t like basil anymore, so could you not put any in my food from now on?” She gives Loretta her fake smile, the same one she gives the wulf custodians at school.
“If there’s nothing else, I’ll be leaving now, ma’am,” Loretta says to Mom. She keeps her eyes lowered and holds her swollen-knuckled hands behind her back.
“That’s fine, Loretta. Oh, I have a blouse at the tailor’s. Could you pick it up next Wednesday morning before you leave?”
Loretta’s already crumpled brows move even closer together. Like a body echo, her shoulders hunch forward, too. “Oh, ma’am. I meant to tell you. I got new papers served. The A3-221-F compound is full. They want me to go to the new one, A6-004-F. I have to appear on Tuesday for processing.” She swallows hard.
Mom frowns. “Tuesday. Well, that’s not very convenient. I don’t know if Maggie will be able to cover for you.”
“I left a message for her already. I should speak to her later today.”
“Good thinking, Loretta. Please make sure it’s all arranged.”
“I will, ma’am.” She gives a little bow. “Have a good morning, everyone.” She smiles at us with her mouth closed. Even though Mom paid to have Loretta’s teeth fixed (which I always thought was more for Mom’s benefit than for Loretta’s) she still stays tight-lipped when she smiles. Habit, I guess.
Loretta goes through the Sol-Blok photoshield double doors. I picture her outside in the sunlight, waiting at the end of the driveway for her husband to pick her up in his old car. It must be tough for them to split up and go to different containment compounds. I don’t know if they keep males and females separated to stop aggressive males from killing the females, or to prevent unwanted mating.
Mom takes a sip of her Sangre-Vin, then spears a few string beans. “Did you want some heme, Dante?” She’s the only one in the world who insists on calling me by my given name, which I hate. Almost as much as I hate her telling me when to eat and drink.
My stomach tightens. “No, thanks.”
“You haven’t had anything to drink,” she says.
“Not thirsty.”
“Maybe you ought to check your crit,” Troy says.
“It’s fine. Anyway, I left my hemometer in my locker,” I lie.
“So use the one in the kitchen,” Mom says.
“Mom, no,” Jess says. “He always leaves it sticky.”
“I do not. You do. And when’s the last time you washed your hands? Who knows where they’ve—”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Mom says. “Just please go in and check your crit.”
I get up and resist the urge to throw my napkin at Jessica. Instead, I put it next to my plate and go into the kitchen. If I don’t use the hemometer and Mom checks the log, then she’ll ask why I lied about it, and I’ll get the “trust” lecture.
I take the monitor off the cradle, open the clip, and put my fingertip inside. The display blinks red; then numbers show up on the display, along with my heart rate.
Just like I thought.
“Hemoglobin is seven, crit is twenty-eight,” I say, sitting back down at the table. “I told you.”
Mom tilts her head a little and leans back in her chair. “Is something else bothering you?”
“No. I just didn’t feel that well today.”
She looks at Troy, then back at me. “That must be the third time this week. Do you need to go to the doctor?”
The more irritation I show, the more she’ll question me. I have to keep cool. “No, I’m good. Really.”
We eat in silence for a minute or two.
“That Loretta,” Mom says. “I’m seriously thinking about letting her go and getting a human maid. It would be much easier to have one person.”
“You realize you’ll have to pay a human about twice as much,” Troy says to her.
“I don’t care about the cost. We wouldn’t have to deal with the switchover every month.”
“Wait a minute,” I say. “Are you serious? You’re thinking about firing Loretta because she has to take off early one day this month to register at another compound?”
Mom turns to me, her eyes steady, her face calm. “It isn’t just about this incident, Dante. We have to go through this every month, and frankly, it’s inconvenient.”
“My guess is that she finds it pretty inconvenient, too,” I say.
“I say ditch her,” Jess chimes in. “No offense, but seriously. I can’t stand looking at all those facial ridges. And she has BO.” She doesn’t even look up from her food as she says this.
“Nice way to talk about Loretta,” I say.
“I’m just being honest,” Jess says. “What do you think, Paige?”
“I think she looks gross.” Paige twists her mouth and crosses her eyes.
I’m going to puke. “You have got to be kidding. Paige, Loretta’s been with us since you were a baby.”
“But her face is a nightmare,” Paige says. Obviously something she heard from Jessica.
“Mom, are you hearing this? Jessica is completely ruining her.”
Paige throws back her head and sings, “‘If your teeth have that hue, and they’re just a bit too blue, new improved Blue-Shoo’s the toothpaste for you!’” Just to annoy me.
“Paige, honey,” Troy says. “No commercials at the table, please.”
Mom is frowning at me. “Let’s not get overdramatic.”
How dumb am I, looking to Mom for help against Jessica? They’re practically best friends. Mom is even wearing Jessica’s Delicious Couture sweats. And Mom is the one who brought up the idea of firing Loretta in the first place.
Jessica shrugs. “Looks like I’m right.”
“You’re disgusting,” I say.
Jessica turns a slow gaze on me. “I’m disgusting? It’s my fault she smells like a wet dog half the time? She needs a stick of extra-strong Lupine Fresh. And her face is hideous. It’s not my fault she’s a wulf.”
“You’re half-wulf yourself! What makes you—”
“I’m not half-wulf. Not anymore.” She points her fork at me
and waves it up and down. “My treatments worked. You’re the only one here who’s half—”
Troy clears his throat. “Okay, easy now.”
I take a few breaths. I’m getting mad, but they’re all against me, at least about Loretta, so I have to pick my argument carefully. “Look. Mom. I get that it’s ‘inconvenient’ to deal with Loretta going to the compound. But it’s not fair to fire her just because she’s a wulf.”
Jessica’s laughing and shaking her head. “So, what? Now you’re a wulf-rights activist? Little Huey Seele? Since when do you care about wulves so much?”
“I’m not an activist and I’m not talking about wulf rights. I’m talking about Loretta, not some random wulf. She’s practically family.”
Jessica snorts and tosses her hair. “I’d kill myself if I was related to her.”
“Why not do it anyway?” I suggest.
Mom slaps her hand on the table. Her jewelry rattles. “That is a horrifying thing to say, Dante. What is wrong with you?” she hisses.
“What’s wrong with me? How about your daughter there, who’s acting like a complete b—”
“Easy, now,” Troy interrupts loudly. “Let’s not have a squabble. Let’s all just remain arctic.”
I look at him. He gives me a big smile. Maybe he didn’t mean any harm, but it just makes me madder. So now I take on an upper-crust British accent. “Yes, let’s do. We are not barbarians. And those nasty emotions are so…wulven.”
Mom hits the table again. “That’s enough out of you, Dante. I don’t care for that tone. And Troy did not bring up wulven issues. You did. You’re lashing out at everyone, behaving like a complete…bear. So I strongly suggest you put this attitude aside.”
She was going to say I was acting like a complete wulf. I know she was.
“Sorry, Troy,” I mumble.
“Ah, don’t worry about it, chilidog,” Troy says.
Mom shakes her head at me. She sits back in her chair and picks imaginary lint off her (or make that Jessica’s) hundred-dollar sweatpants.
I move the food around my plate for a minute or so. “May I be excused?”
“Please,” she says, adjusting her jewelry, which was perfectly straight already.
I take my plate and unused glass to the kitchen.
Upstairs in my room, I turn on the monitor and choose the display from camera two, which faces east. The sun is hitting the woods in the nature preserve behind our house.
I switch my computer on. Troy installed an Internet window that runs continuously, day and night. He says it’s important to be up on current events if you want to get anywhere in this world. I hate that he messes with my computer.
There’s a video of Congress in session, with a reporter speaking over the image.
“The Senate vote was split along vampyre-human-wulf partisan lines, in a landslide veto of the proposed National Lycanthrope Rights Hearing Committee—the third such veto this year. Senate Majority Leader Elinor Reid, a vampyre Neo-Republicrat from Texas, had this to say…”
The camera cuts to an attractive blond woman who looks about forty, but at 167, is actually the oldest member of Congress. “The bill is dead. We can finally stop wasting time and federal funds on this foolishness.” The picture switches to the reporter, a handsome vampyre, who says, “Wulf activist Huey Seele vows to take this issue to the U.S. Supreme Court. But with a vampyre-packed legislature, he’s unlikely to find any—”
I turn the sound off. I’m tired of hearing the same old wulf-rights stories, the constant fighting against a system that won’t change. I still have a headache.
Too bad for the wulves, but I’ve got problems of my own.
How cool is this? Mixed grade levels in Gym could have turned out to be a nightmare, with freshmen getting destroyed by the older kids. But that’s not what happened. Not to me, anyway. Somehow I got on the good side of the most popular kid in school.
Gunther Hoering’s a senior, and is basically the school’s biggest celebrity. He’s smart, he’s rich, and girls love him. He keeps his nearly white hair very short on the sides and back, and long, like way over his eyes, in the front. He’s constantly tossing it out of his face. I wouldn’t notice this kind of thing, except that all the girls talk about him and his hair and how cute he is. And if that’s not enough, he’s an athlete—a runner and an ATA-ranked tennis player. I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about him. He’s everything I’m not.
So it’s crazy that he would even acknowledge my existence, and even more unbelievable that he seems to like me, too. I was paired up with him for the Presidential Whatever test three weeks ago and held his feet down while he did sit-ups. Gunther was competing with a friend of his; they’d bet a hundred bucks on who could do more crunches in the the allotted time. So when the other kid passed seventy and Gunther was only up to fifty-five, I did the sensible thing: I started counting by twos. Mr. Carver didn’t believe the final number Gunther reported, which was twenty-four more than his friend, but I vouched for the count. Gunther won the hundred bucks, so here I am, listening to his commentary as each kid climbs the rope.
“Watch this, watch him slide down,” Gunther says, looking up and elbowing me. “That rope is the closest he’s ever been to true love.”
“Yeah, and good luck getting his underwear unstuck from his butt after that,” I say.
Gunther laughs. I’m like his court jester, which has benefits. One time in the locker room, he stopped another senior from snapping me with a wet towel. And last week, Gunther said hi to me while he was walking down the hall with his buddies. The best part was that Jessica happened to be nearby, and I thought she was going to drop dead from shock. She never acknowledges me at school, and I could tell she was trying to figure out how her uncool little brother got in Gunther Hoering’s good graces.
“What’s up with that kid?” Gunther asks. He nods at Craig Lewczyk, who was sitting by himself on the floor until Mr. Carver pointed at him to climb. He limps toward the rope.
“That’s Craig Lewczyk.”
“You know him?”
“Kind of. A little,” I say.
Actually, we used to play war games in the nature preserve behind my house when we were in elementary school. But after he turned twelve and registered, Craig went through the Change and started hanging out with wulf kids. He doesn’t talk much anymore, and he doesn’t talk to me at all.
Now Craig has lycanthropic arthritis. His joints are all messed up from the Change.
He struggles to get up the rope.
Gunther shakes his head. “Look at him. Why would they put a kid like that in our gym class?”
I shrug. It’s not like I owe Craig loyalty or anything. After all, he’s the one who cut me off. Maybe for him it’s like how cops have a hard time relating to civilians, because they don’t think regular people can understand what the job does to them.
I don’t feel anything for him except maybe pity as he works his way back down the rope. He didn’t even make it to the top.
“Mr. Hoering, you’re up,” Mr. Carver says.
Gunther leans over me. “Watch me rocket up this thing. I’ll be the fastest one in class. Guaranteed. And this’ll be for real. No counting by twos necessary.”
He gets up and walks to the rope, then turns to all of us watching. “Don’t blink, boys, or you’ll miss the fastest trip up the rope in school history.” Mr. Carver blows his whistle. Gunther throws up his arms and takes off. He has a good vertical jump and his hands grab on about ten feet from the floor. He entwines the rope around his feet and shimmies up like a snake. Before I know it, he’s at the top.
“Seventeen seconds,” Mr. Carver calls.
Gunther’s almost a blur as he slides down.
“Next,” Mr. Carver says.
That’s me. I get up and go to the rope. After Gunther’s lightning-fast climb, this is going to be embarrassing. Mr. Carver gives a short blast from the whistle, and I jump.
I pull myself up, trying to get the
rope around my feet, but I can’t get it hooked right. Better to forget about using my legs. I pull with my right arm, and it feels way too easy. Now left. Now right, and it’s like I weigh ten pounds.
Hand over hand, I move up the rope, my feet hanging loose. I bang my head on the ceiling of the gym.
I hear Mr. Carver shout, “Thirty seconds!”
Totally humiliating. I thought I was faster than that, maybe twenty-five. But thirty?
When I get to the bottom, Mr. Carver is staring at me, his ridged and scarred brow raised.
“Not even twenty-nine?” I say.
“What are you talking about? It was thirteen seconds.”
“Thirteen? I thought you said thirty.”
“Thirty? You flew up that rope. I never saw you move so quick. Nice job.” He claps me on the shoulder, a little wulf-to-wulf solidarity, which I don’t need or want.
Everyone’s shouting at Gunther Hoering. A lot of woohoos, some whistles. There are also a few comments, like: “Gunther, dusted,” and “Gunth, man, you just got blasted by a freshman. How bad do you suck?”
Thirteen seconds. Thirteen. That’s even faster than the wulf jocks.
I go back to my spot against the wall. Gunther is not smiling.
“That was fast,” he says.
“Yeah, I’m surprised.”
“Are you?” He turns away from me and watches the next kid climb. Getting beaten by a freshman does not make him happy. It’s probably best to leave it alone, so I stay quiet and wait for the bell to ring.
“Another weapon that Confederate soldiers used is believed to have been invented by General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson,” Mr. Morrison says.
I’m only half listening. I’m looking at Juliet Walker, trying to think of a casual way to talk to her.
“Danny? Are you with us?” Mr. Morrison asks, rapping his knuckles on my desk.
“Huh? Yes, I am. Stonewall Jackson.”
“Right. Stonewall Jackson is credited with inventing the ‘rebel yell,’ which makes sense, coming from a wulf. It has a primal, feral quality that makes the blood run cold. Jackson himself caused it to be introduced to the Union army. At the Battle of Manassas, he ordered his soldiers to ‘Charge, men, and yell like the furies!’ And then they attacked.”
