“Ferocious,” I said.
“I’m so sorry, young man. I’ve never seen him act like this.”
“No harm done.”
“You must be Cody. I’ve heard so much about you. I’m Edna Binkley. That’s my husband, George, on the porch. He’s confined to a wheelchair. Stroke, you know.”
I blinked. “How do you know my name?”
“The whole town was abuzz about you. But now they’re all talking about that mauling instead.”
“Really? I haven’t heard about a mauling.”
“Gruesome,” she said with obvious enjoyment. “A woman’s body was found down North Road ripped to shreds. Some sort of animal attack. The authorities figure she’d been dead at least two days. Poor thing.”
She continued talking, but a sound buzzed in my head and covered her words. I was a wolf two days ago. Had I murdered a woman? I didn’t think I hurt anyone. Yet both times I became a wolf, I fell asleep. What if I hadn’t slept? What if I blacked out instead?
“So you see why the safari is under investigation,” Mrs. Binkley said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I murmured. I felt like I might puke right there in the street. “Well, I better go.”
“All right, dear.” She smiled, and her little dog glared knowingly in her arms. “Bye, now.”
I made it back to my uncle’s house and left the bike in the yard. I stumbled up the porch steps. How could this be happening? How could I go in just a few days from a normal kid to a monster that killed people?
Once in my room, I fell onto the bed. My head spun. I went over the night I turned into a wolf. I’d made it to the tree line, and I remembered I howled at the moon. Then nothing.
Except during that nothing, I apparently mauled a woman to death.
I considered going to the authorities. But what would I tell them? They thought a wild animal was involved, not a kid. They’d probably laugh. Give Mrs. Binkley something more to gossip about.
My parents must have known this would happen. That’s why they got rid of me. I couldn’t go home. I had to live a life of secrecy. I had to stay away from other people.
The thought brought an image of Brittany with her spiky hair and perfect smile. I felt like she’d just broken up with me. Like I’d lost her—which is crazy because I never had her in the first place.
A thought came to me—wolves mate for life.
“She’s not my mate,” I told the ceiling.
Somehow, I didn’t believe it.
My cell rang. I fished it out of my pocket. It wasn’t my parents. It was Mickey. I stared at the phone, wanting so much to answer, wanting so much to hear my best friend’s voice.
But I couldn’t. I had to make a clean break. I turned off the phone.
After a while, my uncle came home. I walked out to greet him. He carried a sack full of hamburgers.
I stood in the kitchen doorway ready to go into my usual spiel of how red meat was bad for you and I never ate it. A throwback from having doctors as parents. But it smelled good, and I was hungry. I figured just this once wouldn’t hurt.
Hunkered down at the table, I dug in.
My uncle chuckled and took a couple burgers for himself. “How was your day?”
“Fine,” I said between mouthfuls. “Anne says hi.”
He nodded. “I made a few calls and found out we can’t register you for school until January fourth.”
“About that, I was thinking I would drop out of school. I’m old enough. I could work for you, learn how to be a Fix-It Guy.”
“Your parents wouldn’t thank me.” He smiled. “We’ll enroll you as planned. And I expect good grades. You probably already know more than most of those kids.”
“That isn’t the problem,” I blurted, and wished I hadn’t. I could never tell him what the problem was. I floundered around for a change in subject. “I met Mrs. Binkley today.”
“Nice lady.”
“Her dog hates me.”
“Roscoe? Just give him a good growl. Establish dominance.”
“She told me there’d been a mauling down on North Road. A woman.”
“I heard.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Do you think a lion escaped from the safari?” I asked, still hoping, still grasping for alternate explanations.
“No. That wasn’t it.”
“But what if—”
“Damn it, Cody. Forget about it. It has nothing to do with you.” His eyes flashed. There was something feral in them.
I sat back. That was the first time Uncle Bob raised his voice to me. He was hiding something, I was sure of it. He knew something about the murder. I wondered what.
FIVE
I spent the next week at Uncle Bob’s side learning to fix things. He seemed glad for the company. I was nervous and jumpy, expecting Sheriff Brad to connect me to the mauling. I wasn’t afraid of punishment. If I killed someone, I deserved to be jailed. But I didn’t want Brittany to find out, didn’t want her to think I was a monster.
So I filled my days with physical labor. We put up a split-log fence, patched the roof of a barn, and blacktopped a driveway. The sun was bright, and I learned to wear a hat. I met my neighbors, and made an effort to remember all their names. Something my dad taught me. They were friendly in return.
In the evenings, my uncle and I would eat at the café, and then we would go home and play gin rummy by porch light. It kept me busy and exhausted. But at every free moment, I thought of Brittany and the way she smiled at me.
That Friday, the dreaded day of school registration arrived. Uncle Bob drove me to Seminole Bluffs. The school had an expansive concrete courtyard with small holes cut in it for trees to grow through. The only grassy area I saw was a football field. Home of the Hawks.
We walked to the office. My uncle carried a FedEx envelope with my birth certificate, medical records, and some papers my parents’ lawyer drew up. I felt sweat gather on the back of my neck and wondered if I should have gotten a haircut. Maybe they didn’t care about things like that in public schools.
A woman greeted us at the counter. She wore a sweater draped over her shoulders as if she were cold and a pair of glasses on the end of her nose.
“I’m Bob Nowak,” Uncle Bob said. “I called earlier about enrolling my nephew, Cody Forester.”
She accepted the envelope and then looked at me, her eyes crinkling above her reading glasses. “Hello, Cody. We expected you. We’ve got your transcripts right here.”
“That was quick.” I felt like my old school had been eager to get rid of me.
“We need this to complete the registration.” She slid a four-part form to my uncle.
While he filled in the blanks, a man stepped behind us.
He loomed over me. “Cody Forester? I’m Mister Overhill, the Vice Principal. May I see you in my office for a moment?”
With a frown, I stepped into a room filled with photos and diplomas. Mr. Overhill closed the door. “Have a seat.”
As I looked for a chair, I wondered what was up. If he wanted to give me a standard welcome speech, he would have done it in the lobby.
He sat behind a desk and folded his hands. “Why are you here?”
I looked at him. I wanted to ask the same thing.
“You come from a rather prestigious school,” he said. “You got good grades. Until last year. Can you tell me why your grades dropped?”
I gulped. I knew very well why my grades had fallen. I’d missed school because of the fevers.
As if a light went on, I realized that my unexplained fevers had something to do with my becoming a werewolf. Maybe wolf-ism was like a virus warping my genetic code. My body tried and failed to fight it off. I wasn’t about to explain that to Mr. Overhill. I fudged for a suitable excuse.
He took my silence as an answer. “We don’t abide drug use here at the Bluffs. I can refer you to several county programs if you admit to a problem.”
“I don’t have a problem.”
“I see. Well, you obviously have some sort of problem. Moving from a private to a public school. Moving to Florida by yourself. So I ask again. Why are you here?”
I glared. I rarely talk back to an adult. It doesn’t get you anywhere. But it was all I could do to keep my words level. “I’m at this school because this is where my uncle lives. The reason I moved to Florida is private.”
His eyes narrowed. “We don’t like troublemakers at the Bluffs.”
I wondered if he’d been talking to Sheriff Brad. I stood. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
He walked around his desk and opened the door. I stepped into the cool lobby.
“Get a haircut,” he murmured as I passed.
At that moment, I knew they’d have to tie me to a chair before I’d cut my hair.
Uncle Bob looked up at the shuffle of my feet. “A couple of questions. Your birth date is October thirtieth, 1991. Right?”
The question didn’t surprise me. He never sent a card. “Right.”
“And you were born in Massachusetts?”
“D.C.”
“Ah.” He scribbled on the form. “That should do it.”
“You’re all set, Mister Nowak,” said the woman with the crinkling eyes. “Cody, we’ll see you bright and early Monday morning. Stop by here, and I’ll give you your schedule.”
“Thank you,” I said, already walking away. I had to get out of the building.
My uncle hustled to catch me. “Nice school. Practically brand new.”
“I don’t like it,” I said. “I don’t want to be here.”
“You haven’t tried.” He blew out his breath and squinted as we stepped into the sunlight. “Let’s give it until summer. If you still can’t stand it, we’ll try something else. Get you a tutor, maybe. But I can’t let you quit. Your mother would kill me.”
Then my mother shouldn’t have kicked me out of the house, I thought, blaming her for the first time.
We drove home in silence. I memorized the route. I figured it would take close to an hour to cover the distance by bike. We pulled up the driveway. A large box sat on the porch.
Uncle Bob frowned. He cut the engine and came around the truck. Then he looked at me and grinned. “Dude. You got a Dell.”
“A computer?” My jaw dropped. “They left a computer on the porch?”
He shrugged. “No one bothered it. Here, let me help you.”
He held the door as I carried the box into the house. I felt excited, but a little disappointed, too. I’d hoped my parents would send me my old computer. It was a gaming machine, a real screamer. My friends dubbed it The Heart-Stopper.
I dumped the package on my bed and sat beside it, missing my friends. I wondered what kind of rumors they would spread when I didn’t return to school. Kids were brutal. Mickey would be on my side. But after a while, even he would forget me.
I tore open the cardboard to find a laptop. Sleek and thin. Top of the line. I pulled out the spec sheet and ran my finger down the list. It had Wi-Fi, of course, but also a cellular card, which meant I could get online from almost anywhere.
The manual said I could surf a hundred hours a week and pick up a thousand emails without going over my cap. So the first thing I did after configuring the access software was check my email.
I had seventy-five messages waiting, all from my friends. They wanted to know if I’d made out with any French girls, when I was coming home, and why I hadn’t answered my mail. I didn’t know what to tell them, didn’t want to say where I was and why.
As if my fingers were made of lead, I deleted the emails one by one. Each click felt like the fall of an ax.
“How’s it going?” Uncle Bob asked from the doorway.
“Fine.”
“What do you say we go out for dinner and celebrate your enrollment in school?”
I glanced at my watch. I hadn’t realized it was so late. “All right,” I said and left the laptop to charge.
We drove into town. My uncle jabbered on about how he never had a computer and maybe I could give him a few pointers, and about how he saw a nice book bag at Howard’s but he held out for one that had Scooby Doo printed on it. I stared out the window and let his words wash over me.
I got a new computer. That should constitute a good day. But I didn’t think I could get more depressed.
That is, until Monday, the day I had to go to school.
* * * *
The alarm on my watch woke me before dawn that Monday. I rushed to the kitchen for breakfast, and was surprised to find my uncle at the table with a cup of coffee and a newspaper.
“You’re up early,” I said.
He sipped and smacked his lips. “Good morning to you, too. What time do you need to be at school?”
I pulled a jug of chocolate milk out of the refrigerator. “First class is at seven thirty, but I have to get there early to pick up my schedule.”
“I’m headed in that direction. I’d be happy to give you a ride. That is, if you can stand to be seen with a parental figure.”
“That would be great,” I said, relief washing through me. I didn’t relish arriving at school sweaty and exhausted from riding my bike fourteen miles. “Can you pick me up again at three?”
“Not a problem.”
“Thanks.” I opened the cupboard. A bright green face and black eyes peered out. I jumped back. “There’s a lizard in my bowl.”
“Wave your hand at him. He’ll move.”
I snatched a dishtowel and flicked it at the creature. It settled deeper beneath the rim. I danced back and forth as I snapped the towel, careful not to get too close. I didn’t want it to jump on me.
My uncle set down his cup. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to get it out of there. The thing must be a foot long. It’s not like those little black ones.”
Uncle Bob folded his newspaper and got to his feet. “Aw, it’s a baby.” He placed the newspaper on top of the bowl and carried the lizard to the open window. “They’re great to have around. A natural pesticide.”
I wondered which I would rather have in the house—lizards or bugs. I grabbed a clean bowl and sat down with a box of cereal.
“We have all kinds of lizards around here. You’ll get used to them.” Uncle Bob returned to the table with his newspaper. “The ones I don’t like to tangle with are those spiny tail iguanas. They’re tan, about five feet long. Look like a dinosaur.”
“I feel like I’m on the set of Animal Planet.”
He laughed. “Any rural area has wildlife. That’s why I moved here.”
“Do you ever close that window?”
“Never. I want a way to get inside in case I can’t open the door.”
I couldn’t imagine when that would be. He never locked the house.
I finished breakfast, and he drove me to school. We got there before the buses, so I had time to scout the campus before it got crowded. I found a place to leave my bike if I rode in by myself. I saw the student parking lot, and stared at it a moment in longing and disappointment. My father hinted he might buy me a car this year. The only way I’d get one now was if I got a job and bought it myself.
As I passed the lot, I smelled cigarettes. Three guys with physiques like gorillas stood together, smoking. I knew better than to make eye contact. Their kind meant trouble for regular guys like me. I’d been pushed around plenty of times. Being the president of the Science Club made me somewhat of a geek.
So I knew not to antagonize gorillas. But before I could look away, I noticed the car next to them. It was a lime green Beetle. Brittany’s car.
I froze in place, my heart racing. Brittany went to school here. Maybe I would bump into her in the hall. Would she remember me?
“Hey, jerk. Who do you think you’re staring at?”
I registered the words as background noise. I imagined myself walking into class to find Brittany there, her hair black and shiny, an empty desk beside her.
“He’s lost,” another said. “Aren’t you, new kid?”
“Is that right?” said the one creasing my shirt. “You lost? Do you want me to call your mommy for you?”
That just hit me wrong. All my anger about my parents and my unjust banishment welled up in me. I didn’t want trouble. Heck, I didn’t want to be there at all. And I didn’t appreciate having it thrown in my face.
Usually I keep my head down and try to talk my way out of trouble. This time I looked up. Just looked. After a moment, the gorilla’s gaze wavered. His grip on my shirt slackened.
“Keep your eyes to yourself,” he muttered, and banged into my shoulder as he and his cronies walked away.
After they left, I felt both glad the exchange hadn’t escalated and sorry he hadn’t taken a poke at me. I’d never been in a fistfight, but with my increasing bad mood, I wondered what it would be like.
The school office was mass confusion. Voices vied for attention as students jostled for a place in line. I regretted not coming sooner. But the woman I’d met before caught my eye and motioned me to the side. She still wore reading glasses on the end of her nose. “Good morning, Cody,” she said.
“Morning. What’s going on?”
“Everyone complains about their schedule.” She flipped her hand as if dismissing the chaos. “This is for you. Your first class is trigonometry.”
I looked at the slip of paper she handed me. I had already finished trig one and was due to start trig two, but I didn’t tell her that.
“I put you in Lunch B, which is at twelve thirty. I hope that isn’t too late. As requested, your electives are Shop and Physical Education.”
“PE?” I recoiled. I hadn’t suffered through PE since I was in grade school. “I didn’t ask for that.”
“Why, yes.” Her smile lines creased. “It was on the form your uncle filled out.”
Of course. I pinched the bridge of my nose, practically hearing him say what kid doesn’t like Phys Ed. “All right. Thank you.”
The Amazing Wolf Boy Page 4
