by Sandra Evans
Of course I always give her a smile, but today I give her a word, too. Because today she hands me a mini flashlight she found in the bottom of a box of my favorite cereal.
“Thanks!” I say, because I was not raised by wolves. That means I have good manners.
“For your nighttime, after-Lights-Out, reading emergencies,” she says.
I click it on and off. It’s red. Very small but powerful. And LED so the bulb will never die. I wonder how she knows about my midnight reading emergencies.
I smile at her again and slip the flashlight into my pocket. Sometimes I think Cook Patsy is looking out for me a little, the way I look out for Sparrow. It makes my throat tight, like I might cry, except it would be stupid to cry because someone is nice to you, wouldn’t it?
Dean Swift is showing the new kid and his mom around the dining hall.
“Now,” he says in the voice he uses for the parents, “boys and girls are together during mealtimes and some of our advanced classes. Our youngest residents, the Cubs, sit closest to the food service area. The older girls—the Wolverines—sit at the round tables, and the older boys—the Pack—sit at the picnic tables.”
The new kid stares at the floor, driving the toe of his shoe into a crack in the linoleum. Every time I hear him sniff up his tears, I look over to make sure Mean Jack and his wake of buzzards keep their yaps shut.
Mean Jack catches my eye once and that’s all it takes for him to get the message. I was grateful to Jack for a split second after Tuffman yelled at me. But now everything’s back to normal. In my age group there’s the boys in the Pack and then there’s me.
I walk to my usual stool at the counter. The counter is at the far end of the cafeteria, set against a window that takes up the entire wall. I sit with my back to the room, looking out at Admiralty Inlet. All I can see is sky and water, and today they are the same color.
Dean Swift, Pretty Lady, and the new kid come over and stand behind me.
My stomach feels hollow. Will Dean Swift introduce me? I wish he hadn’t said anything about me helping. It’s not really doing the guy a favor, is it? Here, new kid, here’s the boy who’s been here the longest and who fits in the least. Why don’t we have him show you around?
In the end the kid will join the Pack. They’ll tease him. Mean Jack’ll take a little of his allowance every week and all of his brownie on Mondays. But if he puts up with it and doesn’t snitch, then Mean Jack’ll call him a stand-up guy and that’ll be that. Once you’re in with the Pack, you’re never out.
The stool next to me scrapes, and Mary Anne sits down. Now my stomach feels like a trampoline with thirty kangaroos on it.
Mary Anne’s a shifter, that’s what I call her. Not in the way I am, though. She shifts between groups of people. Everyone listens to her. Everyone likes her.
Everyone. Including me. Most of all.
She has long hair that hangs in curls that look like the tops of small waves right before they break on the sand. If I carved a mermaid, I’d make it look like her. Blech. Mary Anne makes me as sappy as a pine tree. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will. One day you’ll look up and see someone who makes your heart feel like hot pudding and your mouth feel like the Sahara Desert.
Right now her face is pale. “We didn’t find the snake,” she says.
Prison break. Gollum at large. Mildly venomous snake on the lam. The words run through my mind, but I don’t say any of them. I just nod.
“And who sits here?” I hear the new kid’s mom ask.
I look back out the window. Straight ahead. Please don’t introduce me now. Please. Not in front of Mary Anne.
“Children of all ages sit here; it’s a question of temperament.”
What he means is that the weirdos sit here. We’re the ones who look at the water.
Most mornings it’s silver and blue like the moonlight that has just said good-bye to it.
We don’t mind being called weirdos. Nobody says it mean, except Tuffman. Everyone calls us that, even Dean Swift, who a second later, says, “Freedom from constant adult supervision, the bane of the modern child’s existence! That is the soul balm we offer these broken winged babes: personal liberty, independence, the wonders of the forest. Because our property extends into White Deer Woods, students can fish and explore as much as they like, which makes even the weirdos here at the counter happy.”
The new kid’s mom gasps. “The last thing any child needs is to be labeled a weirdo,” she says. Her voice is so sharp it hurts my ears. “This is precisely the kind of bullying we dealt with in the public schools.”
From the corner of my eye I see the new kid shake his head. For a second I hate him. I’d give my teeth—all of them—to hear my mom chew someone out for me.
I hear the dean gulp. I wait for one of his lies. They are always so unbelievable that whoever he’s lying to usually feels sorry for him and pretends to believe him. It’s what I used to do whenever he’d try to explain to me why my dad wasn’t coming to get me for the weekend.
“I didn’t say ‘weirdos,’ ” Dean Swift finally says.
I give him points for using a very hurt voice. Nice touch, Dean.
“I said ‘Werewolves’ because that is what the students who sit here call themselves. They are wandering wonderers and wondering wanderers with a future in the sciences.”
Mary Anne covers her giggle with her hand. I don’t think it’s funny, though. The dean can call me pretty much anything he likes, just not that. I’m no werewolf.
Dean Swift walks toward the back of the dining hall. “I’d like to show you the kitchen, where our residents help with meal preparation.”
“Come on, Mom.” The new kid turns to follow the dean.
Pretty Lady steps toward the window. She looks like she’s about to cry. My mom would have hated leaving me here too.
I don’t want this lady to think it’s true.
I’m not a werewolf. I’ve read about them. Werewolves are humans who got cursed. I’m not cursed. They have unibrows, and if you cut their skin you’ll see fur, not blood. Two fingertips fit between my eyebrows. I bleed. Werewolves attack people in the woods and eat them. I wouldn’t do that. Not even to Tuffman, and not just because he’d taste like old cheese and toe jam. Werewolves run with two feet and one hand and push their other hand back like a tail. That’s just awkward.
So I turn around on my stool and shake my head at Pretty Lady. I mouth the words to her, “I am not a werewolf.” I am not a monster.
She swallows and walks away fast, pretending like she’s afraid of getting left behind and not afraid of me.
Mary Anne lets out the laugh she’s been holding back. “You petrified her. She’s abandoning her child here and she has the gall to take Dean Swift to task over a word.” She makes a humph sound and lifts an eyebrow. “You sure can make your eyes look scary.”
My cheeks feel hot. I don’t understand 95 percent of what Mary Anne says on any given day, but I think that was a compliment. You have scary eyes—the nicest thing a girl has ever said to me. Pathetic. But I’ll take it. Beggars can’t be choosers, right? Another one from my dad.
I shift around on my stool so Mary Anne doesn’t see me blush.
My spine tingles. Gollum’s in here. Don’t ask me how I know it, but I know it. Mary Anne would like me even better if I put that snake back in its cage. Word would get to the new kid too. Yeah, they’d say, the kid over there with the shaggy hair. He caught a loose snake and saved the day. I scan the dining room.
Sparrow is at the Cubs’ table. When he catches my eye, he lifts something up in the air.
“Raul!” he shouts across the room. “Dean Swift says I can keep the bone!”
I give him a thumbs-up.
Mary Anne smiles. I feel proud. I’m glad she can see that the little kids like me, at least.
“Tell them,” Sparrow hollers. He waggles his hand at the boys sitting with him. “They don’t believe me. Tell them it’s a monster that eats PE teachers.
Tell them how all I found was some tennis shoes and a whistle,” he says. “And a bone.”
“A human bone?” Little John tilts his head and looks from me to Sparrow.
Sparrows nods solemnly but says, “No. Dean Swift says it was a dog bone.”
Sparrow doesn’t lie. He embellishes. “And, it is very stinky in that tunnel. Like the cat box at my granma’s house.” He crinkles his nose. “Ask Raul. He was there. He said it smells like Mr. Tuffman’s breath.”
The Cubs love it. They laugh and laugh.
Little John points at me. “You should talk more. You’re funny.”
Mary Anne has been following the whole crazy conversation. “Yeah,” she says. “You should talk more.”
I’m so happy, I can’t even smile. Mary Anne wants more words from me. Mary Anne.
But then I freeze. I feel someone looking at me. And I know who it is before I even see him. When I check, he’s staring at me. Mr. Tuffman.
Maybe he didn’t hear?
His jaw moves. His eyes are small. He didn’t miss a word. And Mr. Tuffman doesn’t want any more of them.
He starts walking toward me. Silence ripples across the room as everyone realizes that Mr. Tuffman heard what Sparrow said I said.
I’m so scared I forget how to breathe. Coming from a kid who never talks, my ideas are getting me in trouble a lot today.
At just that moment Dean Swift pushes open the swinging doors that lead from the kitchen. New kid and Pretty Lady are close behind.
I glance over at Tuffman. His eyes get even smaller, but he stops dead in his tracks.
“Ah. Yes. This is our PE teacher,” Dean Swift says.
The new kid looks left and right and everywhere but at Tuffman.
But Pretty Lady puts her hand out to shake Mr. Tuffman’s. “I’m so sorry about earlier,” she says. “I hope you didn’t get hurt when you fell.” She stares at his hair the whole time she’s talking.
Tuffman’s neck gets red, and then it spreads up his face in blotches.
I almost feel bad for him. Nobody wants a pretty lady to have seen his hair sitting on a huckleberry bush without his head in it.
“Mr. Tuffman was in the Olympics,” Dean Swift says. “It still amazes me that an athlete of his caliber would forsake fame and fortune to join us here at the corner of nowhere and never-never land.”
Dean Swift is starstruck. When he looks at Mr. Tuffman, all he sees is the Olympian.
Mr. Tuffman stands taller. His chest puffs out. He holds on to Pretty Lady’s hand and smiles down at her. But she keeps squinting at his mangled toupee. Her mouth drops open and her eyes get bigger.
Is she really that rude?
My eyes follow hers. What I see is awful. I’m so surprised, I can’t remember the word, so I point. Mr. Tuffman sees me. He thinks I’m pointing at his toupee. He shifts like he’s about to pounce on me. He’s going to kill me and he doesn’t care who sees it.
“Snake!” Sparrow shouts.
That’s the word I was looking for.
Everyone looks up and screams.
Gollum dangles from one of the hanging lights, stretching down toward Tuffman’s head.
Tuffman screeches. The sound is so sharp my knees buckle. My skin pricks. Woods magic. It starts to happen again.
Gollum lands on his shoulder and skitters to the floor. She’s a long black streak, but Tuffman’s quick. He sprints after Gollum. Everyone stops screaming. Tuffman to the rescue.
Then, at the exact same moment, we all notice the hunting knife in Tuffman’s hand. It’s huge. Everyone starts screaming again.
“No,” Dean Swift shouts. “Don’t kill her! She’s not that venomous.”
Tuffman doesn’t hear. Gollum darts under chairs and tables, racing for the door.
“Don’t kill her!” Sparrow shouts. “She’s our baby, remember?”
The door to the dining hall bangs open. The reading teacher, Ms. Tern, walks in with her head down and an open book in her hand. Gale-force winds couldn’t make that lady pull her head out of a book. Gollum heads in her direction. Tuffman is in pursuit.
“Watch out, Nicolette!” Dean Swift yells.
Ms. Tern looks up just as Gollum slides past her foot into the hallway and freedom, just as Mr. Tuffman lunges and raises the knife.
We all shout. I like Ms. Tern and her mouse-colored hair and her soap-bubble yells and her reading and walking. I don’t want to see her get hurt. But I can’t look away.
Ms. Tern drops her book. Her left hand flies into the air and catches Mr. Tuffman’s right arm by the wrist. The knife clatters onto the floor. What a grip!
With her other hand she punches him in the gut so hard that he grunts and falls to his knees.
The room is so quiet I hear Gollum slither down a vent in the hallway. Tuffman gets back on his feet. He stands there, a little bent at the waist, rubbing his wrist, staring at Ms. Tern.
Ms. Tern shoves her glasses up higher on her nose. “Crikey. Are you very hurt?” she asks. Her British accent makes each word trip to the next.
She looks out at all of us and explains sadly, “I only just finished reading a self-defense manual. I’m afraid I took rather careful notes.”
She picks up her book and walks toward the kitchen, her nose down, her fingers flipping pages as she looks for her lost place.
And then, as she walks by me, it happens. Ms. Tern smiles.
I don’t think it’s the book. I can see the title. Fifty Unsolved Crimes Against Endangered Species. Not exactly the kind of reading that’s gonna crack you up.
Ms. Tern is smiling because she knocked Tuffman to his knees.
The bell rings for class. I bend down to grab my backpack. I glance to see if anyone’s looking at me.
Then I smile too.
Chapter 4
WHERE RAUL LEARNS THE WRONG WAY TO WRESTLE
Nobody can stop talking about Ms. Tern and Mr. Tuffman. Has he been packing a six-inch blade all along? Can you really get a death grip and a right hook out of a how-to book? Who knew her first name was Nicolette?
Then, as we’re all heading to class, Little John finds some gross stuff on the bathroom floor under the ceiling fan. He comes running out in the hall saying that Gollum got herself killed.
Sparrow starts to sob. “It’s all your fault!” he screams at Mean Jack. “Your! Fault!”
“I didn’t want that snake to get whacked,” Mean Jack says, and he looks sad, like he means it.
“Look,” Mary Anne whispers in my ear. “Even mobsters experience remorse.”
I smile like a fool.
Mary Anne and the girls gather in the hall while the boys pile into the bathroom. We make a circle around the mess on the floor. It doesn’t look like dead snake to me. I’m not going to write what I think it is because I don’t want this book to be banned.
I touch Sparrow’s arm and shake my head.
It’s not enough. The tears stream down. I hug him.
“It’s not her,” I whisper. “I promise.”
Here’s the thing. When you don’t talk much, sometimes your words really matter. Sparrow wipes the backs of his hands over his eyes.
“Little John,” he says in a scolding voice, “that does not smell like snake guts.”
Everyone backs away slowly.
Whack. Another one down. It’s Whack-A-Mole at school today. One creepy smiling critter of a problem after another.
But my feet have little puffs of air under them. Mary Anne noticed me. She likes my scary eyes. She laughed at my joke. She wants me to talk.
I’m a fool for Mary Anne. I grin like one until I get to my first class.
My first class is PE, so I stop grinning pretty quick. This could be bad. Mr. Tuffman and I have already spent a lot of time together this morning. And he did not enjoy my company.
The new kid is sitting on the bottom bench of the bleachers. He has a brochure about the school in his hand. The dean must have dumped him here while his mom fills out paperwork.
/> I gotta question the Dean’s judgment here. First row seats to the Tuffman Torture Hour are not going to make this kid any happier about living here. Just further proof that when it comes to Tuffman, the dean only sees the word “Olympian.” Not “soulless psychopath,” like the rest of us.
First Tuffman makes us run lines until half the class throws up. There’s actually a trough under the bleachers for that.
His bad mood seems worse when he’s near me. He runs next to me, calling me a wuss and a wimp. Those are his usual insults, and I don’t like it, but it’s not personal.
“Sneak,” he hisses at me when I touch the half court line.
Sneak? Now that’s personal. I don’t understand it, but I know it’s personal.
I look back at the bleachers. I catch the new kid looking away. He must have been watching me and Tuffman.
“You takin’ heat from some crumb, Coach?” Mean Jack asks all of a sudden in his big voice.
Tuffman cocks his head. We all stop running and stand there, gasping for breath, grateful for Mean Jack’s special skill at distracting teachers.
“You got some serious injuries there on your neck, sir. Want me to settle the score?” Mean Jack punches his fist into his palm.
Tuffman rubs his neck. When he pulls his hand away, I see what Mean Jack saw. Huge puncture wounds barely scabbed over. They look like what would happen if a wolf decided to see how good you’d taste for lunch.
My neck juts forward. I can’t look away from those bite marks. I feel weird—like those injuries have something to do with me. I can’t explain it. But I feel like I’m involved. Woods magic. I try to push the feeling down. It just gets me in trouble.
I am staring too hard. Tuffman senses it.
“Get a good enough look, weirdo?” he asks.
I stare back at him longer than I should. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because of what he said about my mom in front of Mary Anne and Mean Jack. Maybe it’s because he made Sparrow cry. Maybe it’s because he ran at Gollum with a knife.
Whatever it is, I’m in that kind of mood. The kind of mood where I don’t look away.
