“Bands play sometimes,” he told me. “They have poetry readings too. Everyone here is trying to be a beatnik.”
I didn’t know much about beatniks, except it was a movement that came before the hippie movement, and my mom sometimes mentioned it.
“Are you?” I asked Enzo.
“I’m not trying to be anything.”
Our pizza showed up, and I attempted to eat some, even though I was too excited to be hungry. How could I think of eating when I’d finally found an ally? Enzo finished a slice, took a long drink of beer, and then got down to business.
“So, you’re the werewolf expert. How does all of this work?”
“Well, I’m not exactly sure. Werewolf lore isn’t consistent. It’s not like becoming a vampire. There are werewolf legends from all over the world, and none of them match up exactly.”
Once I started talking, words poured out of my mouth. I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted someone to ask about werewolves and actually listen to my response. “In some legends, a werewolf is created when a person is bitten and the wolf virus, or whatever you want to call it, gets into their blood. In other legends, someone chooses to become a werewolf, and there’s a whole ceremony and ritual. Magic, I guess. The last way is that someone is just born a werewolf. That’s what makes the most sense for Lizzie.”
“So she’s always been a werewolf?” Enzo asked, frowning.
I talked fast, before his skepticism could take over. “Yeah, but she probably hadn’t turned yet. Think of puberty. You reach a certain age or a certain point in your life, and it’s just your time. Imagine that Lizzie goes her entire life not knowing much about werewolves, but sometimes, she has intense cravings for red meat, or she always has tons of energy on the full moon. And as she gets older, things get stranger and stranger. She has weird dreams. She hates being inside. Her sense of smell becomes much more developed. Then there’s some significant day, like her twenty-first birthday, and all of the stuff she’s been feeling gets overwhelming. She has this sense that something isn’t right. It’s as if her body isn’t the body she’s supposed to be in. And one night, she suddenly understands what it all means, what she’s supposed to do. So she goes into the woods.”
Enzo’s elbows were on the table, and he leaned forward, hanging on every word I said. It made me feel more alive than I had in a long time.
“You really think that’s what happened?”
I nodded.
I went back to eating my pizza and gave Enzo time to think. He pulled out his zippo lighter and absently flicked it open and shut. I watched his hands, mesmerized. His fingers were long. Emily would have said he’d make a good piano player. The sleeve of his sweater pulled up slightly, and I could see a tattoo on the inside of his wrist.
“What’s your tattoo say?”
Enzo pushed up the other sleeve and held out both arms for me to see, the pale insides of his wrists exposed. “Anima and animus. It represents the dual nature in all of us.”
“Lizzie must love that.”
“She does, actually.”
I wanted to ask if he had any more tattoos but figured I shouldn’t change the topic. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me something.”
“I don’t know anything about werewolves.”
“But you know Lizzie. Start with Wolf Creek. She was the one who wanted to camp there, right?”
Enzo nodded. “She loves that place. Said she used to look for wolves there when she was a kid.”
“She loves wolves.”
“She likes them a lot. But she’s not fanatical about them or anything.”
“Fanatical enough to wear a wolf talisman.”
Enzo laughed. “Talisman? That’s a little melodramatic. It’s a necklace.”
“With a wolf tooth.”
“It has to do with some Indian tribe around here, I think.”
I started to feel a little defeated. “There must be something else.”
Like hadn’t he noticed that Lizzie’s legs were unnaturally hairy? Maybe he’d heard a howl or two?
Enzo’s gaze was back on his lighter. He brought the flame to life and extinguished it. Finally, he set the zippo down decisively. “There’s this shitty petting zoo, like, half an hour from here. You know where I mean?”
I nodded.
“Well, they have all these animals you can touch, you know, pigs and goats and whatever. And in the back, there are some big animals in cages.”
“Wolves,” I said. I leaned forward too, anxiously waiting.
“Yeah. They have a couple wolves. Lizzie wanted to see them, so we drive out there and pay fifteen bucks a person to get in. Lizzie goes straight to the wolf cage and kneels down in the dirt. Wolves are nocturnal though. They’re asleep in this den structure, and we can’t even see them.”
My heart was pounding, and a chill ran down my spine, but not the kind of chill like when you’re cold or scared. The kind you get when you realize you’re about to hear something incredibly important.
“So Lizzie’s kneeling there, and she whistles. And just like that, one of the wolves comes out of the den. She called it, and it came. It walks right up to her, and they stare at each other. The wolf is this massive gray animal. It towers over Lizzie, just watching her. A minute later, it turns and goes back to the den, and Lizzie finds some guy who works there and tells him the brown wolf is sick. The zookeeper guy goes and checks it out, and sure enough, the brown wolf is sick.”
“The gray wolf told her!”
“That’s what it seemed like, yeah. Like they were communicating. I asked her what the hell had happened there, but she never said. We didn’t talk about it again.”
I picked a piece of pineapple off the pizza and chewed slowly, taking in Enzo’s story.
“If she’s a werewolf, why didn’t she just change into a wolf and come back after the full moon?” Enzo asked quietly.
I wondered the same thing.
“I don’t know. In most werewolf legends, the person can change at will. They’re at their strongest during the full moon, but they don’t need its power. In other legends, werewolves are forced to change on the full moon whether they want to or not. But the rest of the time, they can shift when they choose. So maybe Lizzie hasn’t been back in human form since the night she disappeared.”
“You really believe all this, kid?” Enzo asked.
That was maybe, probably, a really good question.
“Yes,” I said. And if Enzo noticed my hesitation, he was nice enough to not call me on it.
I met his gaze, and we stared at each other for a long moment before he said, “So, what do we do?”
“I told you—we find her. And help her figure out how to, you know, balance her two forms. You can have your girlfriend back.”
“And what do you get out of it?”
I shrugged. “Knowing for sure.”
“Knowing what happened to Lizzie?”
“Knowing there’s more to the world than what we see every day.”
Enzo nodded. Maybe he wanted the same thing.
Chapter 14
The Hunt Begins
Things in my house had been tense since the caravan arrived. My dad constantly made passive-aggressive comments about the hippies, and I didn’t bother with the passive part. My mom was annoyed at both of us for not embracing—or at the very least accepting—Sundog and his followers.
Rush was the only one who was indifferent to the caravan drama. He’d gotten a job as assistant coach of the peewee football league, and he seemed happier in general since then. He was also keeping weird hours and wasn’t saying where he was spending time, which pretty much meant he had a new girlfriend.
I couldn’t ignore the caravan as easily. I couldn’t even eat breakfast without seeing their camp out the back window. I wished all their tents would blow away. I wished th
e government would place a ban on tie-dye and unwashed hair. I wished their pot would turn into oregano.
“When I first met your mother, I thought all of this was charming,” my dad said on Saturday morning when we were alone in the kitchen together. “She seemed so free.”
Through the curtains, we could see the dreadlocked girl named Calliope playing guitar with Timothy Leary curled up at her feet. Someone had put a tie-dyed bandana around the dog’s neck.
“Free of what? Besides responsibility, I mean.”
My dad gave me a look. “You’re one to talk, kiddo.”
I ignored the comment. How could I take on more responsibility when all my efforts were concentrated on just surviving high school?
“Is that why you fell in love with Mom?” I asked. “Because she seemed free?”
“In a way. I loved that she saw the world in a way no one else did. Does that make sense?”
It did.
“Before I met your mom, I spent every second doing the right thing. What people told me was the right thing anyway. I studied, played sports, applied to the right schools. I was exactly what I was expected to be.”
“And Mom changed you?”
“I like to think we changed each other.”
Outside, one of the older men walked up to Calliope and offered her a joint. She stopped playing guitar long enough to accept it.
“Someone’s going to call the police.” My dad sighed. “You can smell marijuana from the street.”
The guitar started again. Timothy Leary raised her head lazily. I wondered if she was high too.
“Do you know what a sundog is?” my dad asked.
“Besides the guy in our backyard?”
“When your mom told me about him, I thought I’d impress her by telling her the definition of sundog.”
“What is it?”
My dad leaned forward eagerly, with a professorly look. “It’s a weather phenomenon that creates the illusion of multiple suns in the sky. The Greeks and Romans first wrote about it, but the most notable sundog in history occurred on the day Edward IV won the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross. Later, he made it his badge.”
I should have known it had something to do with medieval history.
“Edward believed the three suns in the sky represented the three sons of York.”
“Wow. Mom must have been captivated.”
My dad laughed. “She said thanks for the history lesson, but she was more interested in what she could learn from the living.”
“Do you blame her?”
“I suppose I don’t.”
It wasn’t a very cute “how we met” story. But that’s how things go in real life. And it worked out OK for them, because twentysomething years later, they still acted like they were in love.
“Speaking of college,” my dad said, though we hadn’t really been, “have you looked through the catalog at all?”
I looked out the window to avoid his gaze. “What catalog?”
“The one I put on your desk.”
“I didn’t see it,” I said, though what I meant was that I had seen it, then stuffed it into a drawer where I could pretend it didn’t exist.
“I’m not trying to pressure you,” my dad said.
But that was exactly what he was doing.
The problem was, I had no clue what I wanted to study in college. It was unfair that you had to decide how to spend your life before you’d been out in the world and seen what the options were. Not to mention my dreams weren’t exactly viable. I doubted college offered courses on how to be an adventurer.
Even if I choose a path that seemed interesting and exciting, what if college turned out to be the same as high school, only with slightly more interesting classes? Then I’d graduate, start my career, and it would turn out to be a disappointment, just like everything else. Nothing is ever as exciting as you imagine it’s going to be.
If I reached that point, and I was disappointed with just about everything, then what could I look forward to anymore? And if I had nothing to look forward to, what was the point of living at all?
“There’s no need to get upset,” my dad said.
“I’m not upset.”
“Then why won’t you talk about this?”
I figured I owed him some honesty. It wasn’t his fault I dreaded the upcoming years. “I guess I’m afraid of making the wrong choice.”
“I understand how scary that can be. But you can’t let it stop you from making any choice.”
Sure I could.
I watched out the window as members of the caravan assembled for their morning prayer circle or whatever it was. I wondered if they really believed all the stuff they talked about. I wondered if they were happy.
Then I told myself to stop wondering and stop stressing about the future. Wasn’t my mom the one always saying to live in the now?
Now I had more important things to think about than college courses and how much I’d hate my eventual job. I had a werewolf to find.
The future could wait.
“We can talk more later, OK?” I said, standing up. “I have to be somewhere.”
“Where?” my dad asked, like he couldn’t fathom anything more pressing than our conversation.
“I’m going hiking.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Alone?”
“With a friend,” I said.
“Emily hikes?”
And mess up her penny loafers? Yeah, right.
Instead of answering, I hugged my dad and told him good-bye. I was out the door before he could ask any more questions.
• • •
I got to Wolf Creek earlier than Enzo. I guess it wasn’t surprising since I drove and he took the bus, which was probably late and maybe even broken down somewhere since that’s what all the buses in our area seemed to do.
I walked around the campsite, looking for signs that Lizzie had visited in the last few days. There were no paw prints or tufts of fur or whatever else a wolf might leave behind.
For a second, I freaked out that the police would show up and want to know what I was doing at the site of Lizzie Lovett’s disappearance. I, of course, would get all weird and mumble something incoherent, because I was too embarrassed to tell them I was looking for evidence that she was a werewolf, and that would make them think I was suspicious and had maybe, probably, murdered her, so then I’d get locked up in jail.
To shake off my worries, I sat down on the flat rock and pulled The Howling out of my bag. I tried to concentrate on the words on the page, but the woods were too quiet. Being there alone made me uncomfortable. What if wolf-Lizzie was in the trees watching me, waiting for the right opportunity to pounce?
“What are you reading?”
I startled.
Enzo wore a beat-up leather jacket to protect him from the chill in the air. It was finally starting to feel like fall.
“Research,” I said, holding out the book so he could see the cover.
“I saw that movie when I was a kid. Didn’t even know it was a book.”
“They’re kind of drastically different.”
Enzo sat down on the rock next to me and started rolling a cigarette. “So, what’s the plan?”
“I guess just walk through the woods and see if we spot anything.”
“Do you know how many people have been through these woods recently?”
“They were looking for a girl, not a wolf. They could have missed the signs. I picked out the areas where we’ll probably have the best luck.”
I pulled out a map, and Enzo examined the sections I’d highlighted. A breeze rustled the leaves on the trees. Birds and bugs gave us their own soundtrack. It felt like I was in the place I was meant to be, doing exactly what I was meant to do. Enzo and I were on the edge of an important discovery.
Lizzie Lovett went into the woods and never came out. But I would. I would come back with all her secrets.
• • •
The trees were dense past the clearing. It would be easy for someone to get lost. To disappear. The ground cover was so thick that it was hard to look for wolf tracks. Occasionally, I stopped to push some aside and hoped I hadn’t stuck my hands in poison ivy. Mostly, I just watched for tamped-down areas where a wild animal might have stopped to rest.
“Can I ask you a question?” I asked Enzo.
“Go for it.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“About what?”
“The first night we came here, you acted like I was crazy. So what changed your mind?”
Enzo took so long to answer that I started to think he wasn’t going to.
“When I was a teenager, I had this fascination with weird stories,” he said. “Mysteries, I guess. I’d cut out articles from magazines and newspapers and paste them into this notebook.”
“What kind of articles?”
“Oh, you know. Alien abductions. Parallel dimensions. People who remembered past lives. Anything bizarre.”
“Anything that couldn’t be explained,” I said eagerly.
“Yeah. Every few months, I’d flip through the old stories and try to find out if any of them had been solved. They never were. Remember what you said the other night? About wanting to know there’s something more to the world? I think that’s why I did it.”
“Do you still have it?”
“The notebook? No. I got rid of it a long time ago. But your werewolf theory got me thinking about it again. Made me wonder when I’d become so logical.”
A weird, fluttery feeling filled my chest. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard someone mirror my own thoughts and feelings so closely. Not since I was little. I wanted to stop and tell Enzo he was totally awesome, that I wished we’d known each other when we were younger. I would have helped him fill his notebook with mysteries. Instead, I said, “So, what was your favorite weird story?”
“The creepiest one was about these hikers in Russia in the 1950s. You know it?”
“No, tell me.”
We were in the perfect place for scary stories. The trees blocked out the sunlight, casting sinister shadows on the ground. I had to keep my eyes on my feet so I wouldn’t stumble. I could have walked right up to a monster or serial killer and not realized until it was too late.
The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett Page 10
