Never Cry Werewolf

by Heather Davis

  Mr. Winters gave a courtesy clap. “Next is a presentation of Beauty and the Beast.”

  The stage lights came up, revealing the painted background. Again I was struck by the vivid colors and impressionistic style of Austin’s artwork. So was the audience, because a hush came over the crowd.

  Price strutted onstage. He’d fashioned a beast headdress out of a brown fleece vest, and his face was painted with whiskers and a dark nose. A buzz went through the audience. Although the costume bordered on ridiculous, it was almost cute. “Who’s there?” he called.

  Ariel entered from stage left, in a red skirt and peasant top and carrying a basket. “It’s Belle. Your guest. Where are you hiding?”

  “Don’t come any closer!” Price said with a growl. “You needn’t see me to appreciate the riches of my castle.” He crouched down as if to hide.

  “That’s ridiculous. Show yourself. My father said you are a beast, but…he must be…exaggerating big-time.”

  Price gave Ariel a funny look, and I realized she’d forgotten her lines. Price stepped out of the shadows and into the spotlight.

  Ariel gasped. “You are not a man at all. You are a hairy beast!”

  “It’s true. I am a hairy beast. I’m cursed. I must be this way until I find true love,” Price said.

  There were a few giggles from the crowd.

  Price’s eyes narrowed. “You must stay here for a fortnight. Only then will you be free to return to your family. I know I’m not like the other men who have sought your hand, but maybe you will come to love me in time.” Price sounded so sincere, the audience stopped laughing.

  “How can that be?” Ariel said, starting to remember her real lines. “You frighten me. I will never love you.”

  I winced. The Beauty and the Beast thing had been a really bad idea. Austin had been right to skip the play. The last thing he needed was a reminder of how different he was. But I wasn’t a Belle, was I? I mean, I wasn’t chicken to be around Austin. I cared about him no matter what form he took. Right?

  The second the scene was over, I jetted out of there. I had to find him. I wanted to be with him, to make the most of whatever time we had left—or to make a last-ditch effort to get that serum. I didn’t want to be at camp without him. And I was pretty sure it wasn’t called jumping in after someone when you already had two feet in the pool.

  The nearly full moon hung over Camp Crescent like a spotlight, giving everything a silvery blue glow and casting deep, dark shadows. Light and dark, they went together, even when it came to slightly creepy-looking trees. And maybe that’s how people are, too. Only sometimes the shadows seem too deep for the light to overcome.

  After searching the cabin trail, the volleyball courts, and the back alley of the kitchen, I found Austin sitting under a tree near the infirmary.

  He looked up as I came down the path. “How were the amateur theatrics?”

  I gave him a smile. “Beastly.”

  He reached up and pulled me down to sit next to him. “Forgive my rudeness,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make you suffer through Talent Night alone. I decided to give Winters’s office one last look.”

  I leaned against the tree trunk and threaded my fingers through the grass around me. “You didn’t miss much. Honestly, without the singing candelabra, the play’s not so hot.”

  He didn’t laugh at my lame joke.

  “No luck with Mr. Winters’s office, huh?” I asked.

  He shook his head and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his black sweatshirt. “It’s clear I can’t stay here.” Pain edged his voice. “I have to go.”

  “I don’t want you to leave,” I said softly.

  “Why?”

  “You’re going to make me say it?”

  “By all means,” he said, a little sparkle in his brown eyes.

  “I kind of, you know…like you.”

  “I’m fond of you, too,” he said. He moved closer to me, the centimeters between us dissolving into millimeters, until he was…

  Tingling with fear, I pulled back, my lips almost warm from the near kiss.

  Austin frowned. “I won’t bite you. Trust me.”

  That hit me with extra force. I wanted to kiss him, but I couldn’t. Austin was dangerous—and not just in the wild animal category. If I allowed him to like me, to kiss me, who knows what stupid thing I’d do for him? What risk I’d take that would get me in further trouble, when all I needed to do was do my time at Camp Crescent. And stay out of trouble. And I was hardly hanging on to that plan with all these trips into the dark. It wasn’t good.

  “I do trust you,” I said, moving my face into the shadows so he wouldn’t see the lie in my expression.

  “That’s complete rubbish,” Austin said. “I’ve trusted you with my life, my secret. Why won’t you trust me?” His gaze firmly fastened to mine, and I felt that weakness in me rise again. The weakness for boys with charming smiles who loved to accompany me down the wrong path while pretending it was the right one.

  “I’ve had too many of these ‘trust me’ talks lately in my life,” I said. “I don’t trust you. I don’t trust anybody. I don’t even trust myself.” Ooh, that was weird to say aloud. I wondered where that’d come from, but somehow I knew deep down it was so true.

  “Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. That’s what life is. It’s a series of leaps.”

  “I’m not afraid of those.”

  “But you’re afraid of me. You’re afraid to kiss me.” He reached for my hand. “Life is too short to be afraid to trust people who care about you.”

  I was afraid. Jillian Montrose was still in the back of my mind. Had Austin told me the whole truth? There was no way for me to know.

  Confusion and warmth seemed to radiate throughout my body as he wrapped his arms around me, drawing me closer. I rested my head on his shoulder, taking in the spicy scent of his soap and skin. He still smelled almost like marshmallows. I was pretty sure no killer smelled like that. I sighed into his neck.

  “Now if you were a bloody vampire, it’d be all over for me,” he whispered, kissing the top of my head.

  I sighed and pressed my lips against his skin, feeling his pulse beating beneath. My mouth tingled with warmth. I wanted to kiss him, but that would be…

  “Not a good idea,” I said, pulling away from Austin. “This is a bad, bad idea.”

  “Don’t run from me. I don’t want our last night together to end like this.”

  “It doesn’t have to be our last night.”

  Austin’s voice softened. “It’s the only thing I can do to protect everyone and myself. I’ll be perfectly at home in the forest. It’s the best place for me.”

  “But…” I almost said, What about me? Really. I actually thought about myself and how it was going to feel to have Austin permanently gone.

  He seemed to sense it because he said, “You could walk me to the fence tomorrow after lunch, when we’re supposed to be in arts and crafts. The other night I found a hole big enough to fit through. It’s a last resort, but I’m afraid I have to take it.”

  “You realize I can’t save you again. If you’re lost in the woods this time you’re on your own.”

  “You hardly saved me last time,” he said with a smile. “Don’t worry, I nicked a map from Charles. Had it hidden in his pillowcase. I’ll change at night, but I can recover and hike during the day. By the time I reach the nearest town, the full-moon phase will be over, and I’ll be a regular bloke again.”

  “What if they go looking for you?”

  “Oh, I’m sure they will, but you know how they try to keep things hush-hush around here. It’ll be Winters and Sven at the most, hardly a threat. I’ll smell them coming for me and hike in a different direction.”

  “When you get to a town? Then what?” I asked, that empty feeling starting again.

  “At the town I make a collect call to the chemist in London, have him wire me money and FedEx my serum while I hang out in the local hotel.”

&
nbsp; It sounded like a terrible plan. He was running. From camp. From me. I could feel tears brewing. “I’ve gotta go.”

  “Shelby,” Austin said, reaching for my hand again. “If things were different, if I could stay…”

  “I know. Life sucks,” I said coolly.

  “Don’t forget to meet me tomorrow,” Austin whispered.

  “Yeah.” I stood up and walked down the path alone. Alone wasn’t anything new to me. And I knew it wasn’t anything new to Austin, either.

  I just didn’t expect it to hurt so bad.

  TWELVE

  When I got to girls’ group the next morning, most of the girls were already there and Dr. Wanda was riffling through papers at her makeshift desk in the corner, no doubt preparing to lead another scintillating discussion.

  Ariel patted the seat next to her. “You missed breakfast,” she said.

  “Felt sick when I woke up,” I explained. I left out the part about not wanting to get out of bed, not wanting this day to start because it was my last day with Austin. Actually, last morning with him, since he’d be bailing after lunch. Who knew if I’d ever see him again? Once he was loose in the woods, he was out of my life, probably forever. That made me incredibly sad.

  “Today we’ll be writing letters home to express everything we’re learning here at camp. I want you to choose the person you communicate the least with in your family to receive the letter.”

  Groans sounded around the circle.

  Dr. Wanda held up a hand like she was warding off the negative comments. “I want you to write the letter as if you would die tomorrow. Tell that person everything you’ve always wanted to say.”

  I raised my hand. “How’re we supposed to pick the person?”

  “You pick the person you can’t talk to,” Jenna said, breaking it down as if she’d done it a hundred times at a hundred other brat camps. “The one who really needs to hear you.”

  “Okay, so what if you don’t talk to anyone in your family?” Ariel said.

  Dr. Wanda let out an exasperated sigh. “Choose a family member with whom you’d like to communicate better.”

  I raised my hand again and said, “What if you—”

  “Just pick someone!” Dr. Wanda said, completely losing her cool. “I’m sorry,” she added after noticing our shocked faces. “This week at camp is always tough. Does anyone want to talk about their feelings?”

  “I felt hurt when you screamed at us,” Sue, a big girl, said.

  Dr. Wanda frowned. “No, I mean—”

  “I felt betrayed,” said Callie, the thin blond girl from my cabin.

  “You really did hurt my feelings,” Sue complained.

  Dr. Wanda ran a hand through her frizzy black bangs, trying to smooth them, when it was obvious only some leave-in conditioner would have any kind of positive effect. “Girls, I’m proud that you’re developing the emotional vocabulary we’ve been working on.” She took a breath. “Shall we concentrate on writing those letters now?”

  Everyone shut up after that and got to work, writing on the sheets of cheap notebook paper Wanda passed out.

  “Who should I write to?” I whispered to Ariel.

  “How should I know?” she whispered back.

  “Shh!” said Jenna, tears rolling down her skinny cheeks. “I’m trying to write here.”

  I gaped at her. She’d gone from zero to sobbing in, like, two minutes. Okay…

  “Who are you writing to?” I said, leaning Ariel’s way again.

  “My mother,” she said. “She lives on Park Avenue with her new boyfriend, Kip Kensington. He’s that dweeb from that stupid game show. Makes Alex Trebek look studly,” she added with a shrug. “Just pick your mom. It’ll be easy.”

  Since my conversation with Austin the other night, I actually had been thinking about my mom. Take away all the therapy junk and werewolf issues, and this camp would have been somewhere my mom would have loved. Even when she’d been really sick from chemo, Mom used to have Dad help her to the bench in our backyard garden so she could watch the sunset. She really dug nature stuff.

  “You okay?” Ariel was staring at me because obviously I’d zoned out thinking about Mom.

  “Yeah, um, the thing is…my mom’s dead,” I said quietly, so only Ariel could hear.

  It felt weird to tell her that. I totally expected to see pity in her eyes, but when Ariel looked at me there was only kindness.

  “That sucks,” she said. “That really, really sucks.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You should’ve told me. I mean, all that stuff I said about Austin’s mother,” she said gently. “If I’d known…”

  I managed a little smile because I didn’t want her feeling like crap or anything. “It’s okay. Really.”

  Ariel nodded, then glanced down at her paper. “So, um, what about your stepmother?”

  “Ugh. Priscilla, a.k.a. Honey Bun.”

  “Write to her. Look.” She pointed at Dr. Wanda, slowly moving from girl to girl around the circle toward us. “Just choose someone.”

  “Okay, okay.” Right then I wrote the date on the top of my paper and then doodled in the margins, pretending to write, but really I thought about how I was so relieved Ariel didn’t make a big deal out of my mom. For some reason it felt good that she knew. And that Austin knew. Neither one had drowned me in pity.

  “You could still write to your mom,” Ariel said, looking up from her half-completed page. “That would be kinda cool, you know?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said. Then I saw how she was totally right. Writing to my mom, even though she’d never be able to read the letter, would be way better than writing to Priscilla, the one person I never spoke to at home.

  Then again…

  I paused, chewing the eraser on the end of the pencil. That stuff about Priscilla was totally wrong; I was pretty much forced to talk to her a lot. She was the one who criticized my outfits in the morning, demanded to see my homework, screamed at me to get off my cell phone and to come down to eat my so-called dinner.

  But Dad? It was almost funny how far away he felt most of the time. If he wasn’t working late at his lab, he was snoring in the family room in front of Discovery Channel specials (mostly on snakes, ugh!). He barely noticed if I got my hair cut, tried to sneak another piercing, or was wearing green nail polish in honor of Saint Paddy’s Day.

  Mom may have died, but Dad was the real missing person in my life.

  Suddenly, the pencil seemed smaller in my hand, or else I was gripping it really tight. I didn’t know that I’d ever give him this letter, but I started with the words “Dear Dad.”

  When Dr. Wanda called out it was time for lunch, I glanced down and my eyes almost bugged out of my head. I’d filled two pages. Two pages of all the things I’d wanted to tell him, the things I thought he should have done, the things I wished he’d asked me. I wasn’t telling this to anybody he paid to talk to me—I was telling him.

  Dr. Wanda patted me on the shoulder as I set down my pen. “It feels good to get it all out, doesn’t it?”

  I didn’t want her to think she’d actually done something that’d kinda helped, but I had to nod. It did feel good. Well, weird but good. It was, like, for once I was talking and no one was interrupting me or asking stupid questions. Me writing it all down was like my dad was listening to me. Maybe if we had tried harder to talk to each other since Mom died, I wouldn’t have had so much to write. Seriously. Maybe I wouldn’t have even been there in that stupid camp in the first place.

  “Do you want me to mail that for you?” asked Dr. Wanda.

  I shook my head. “Um, I’ll hang on to it,” I said, folding the letter into a tiny square.

  “That’s perfectly fine.” Dr. Wanda gave me a warm smile and walked back to her desk with a stack of notes to mail.

  Ariel told me one time that her mom admitted something important in a mother-daughter therapy session: Adults don’t always get everything right. So my question is, if they aren’t always right, t
hen how can we be the ones who’re getting everything wrong?

  Maybe both sides make choices that don’t turn out to be the smartest. But if you’re afraid to make mistakes, you can’t learn, right? Maybe that was where I had something my dad didn’t. I’d taken some risks, and I’d definitely messed up. I was kind of fearless in that department. At least I had been until I got to camp. There were consequences here—like Red Canyon—that totally sucked.

  Of course, there had been consequences at home, but I’d ignored them. I hadn’t taken them seriously. I’d broken rules just because. And I was starting to think that wasn’t being fearless, it was being stupid. I mean, what had been the point of any of it? To get my dad’s attention? To show Priscilla I wasn’t afraid of her, when obviously she didn’t care what I thought? What a waste of time.

  I shoved the letter into my pocket and walked out of the classroom into the glaring light of the summer day. I wasn’t sure I’d ever mail that note to Dad, but I felt like something in me had changed.

  Just after lunch, it was time to say good-bye to Austin and get back to living my normally scheduled werewolf-free life, so I took the path toward the cabins like I was going back to get something before arts and crafts. Halfway there, I veered off onto the smaller trail, which led to where I was supposed to meet Austin. The trail wound through evergreens, and in the distance to my right, I could see the outline of some of the cabins. I breathed in the piney scent no floor cleaner could ever copy along with the warm earthy smell of things growing. Summer smelled so good, even at brat camp.

  It was warm, so I slipped off my red zip sweatshirt and tied it around my waist. As I moved farther into the woods, the trail cut to the left through ferns, huckleberry bushes, and dense rows of scrubby firs. I battled through the vegetation, my bare legs taking a fair share of scratches. At last the path got really narrow, like an animal had made it. Standing in a clearing twenty yards ahead was Austin.

  “Brilliant,” he said, smiling widely. His amber brown eyes always looked amazing, but today they reflected bits of the green forest around us. I took a mental picture in case I never saw him again.