This Is Not a Werewolf Story (9 page)

Vincent jumps from the bottom step into his mother's arms. She's crying. That's how happy she is to see him, and they've only been apart one day.

It only makes me a little sad before I remember to be happy for him.

“Look!” Mary Anne is next to me, pointing at the sky.

The crows are wheeling and tumbling, blackening
the sky with their wings, swooping over the Harley. The hair on my arms stands straight up.

“His name is Vincent, isn't it?” she asks.

I nod.

“What an amazing coincidence!” she says. “St. Vincent of Saragossa, renowned for his eloquence, is the patron saint of ravens. After he was martyred by Roman soldiers, ravens guarded his body from marauding animals. To this day the site of his tomb is famous for the multitude of ravens that flock there. And here we have these crows, such close relatives of the raven, offering a fitting farewell to our own Vincent.”

Vincent and his mom roar away.

My mouth is dry. The coincidence isn't amazing—it's magical. Mary Anne's story happened a really long time ago. But White Deer called Vincent “raven” just a few hours ago. Is the woods magic everywhere and in all times?

She pats my arm to get my attention. “Your name means ‘wolf' in Old Norse. Did you know that?”

I shake my head. My stomach wobbles like a rock rolling down a hill. No, I didn't know names were part of the woods magic. Do our names call the animal? Or are we named for the animal we call?

“I guess we don't really want a pack of wolves escorting you off school grounds, though, do we?” she says.

I grin. She's funnier than she thinks. Running off
with a pack of wolves for the weekend isn't as bad as it sounds.

Mary Anne's parents pull up in the circle driveway and honk their horn. She gives me a little wave and runs down the steps. I watch her leave. The trunk pops open. She sets her bag in and slams the trunk.

Her parents drive away.

I'm serious. They go almost all the way around the circle before they jam on their brakes so hard the back of the car rocks up. Mary Anne walks very, very slowly to the car. Even from the window I can see that her face is bright pink.
You shouldn't be embarrassed,
I want to shout.
They should be.

Mean Jack brushes by me. “See you later, weirdo,” he says.

I just grin. Because as he walks away I see something black and shiny, long and reptilian, wiggling out of the half-closed zipper of his bulging overnight bag.

That's gonna be a real fun car ride, isn't it?

One by one all the kids get picked up. And then it's me and Dean Swift standing in the room we call the parlor, looking at the empty driveway.

“Can I drop you off at the bottom of the hill?” The dean asks me the same question he asks me every Friday afternoon.

I shake my head. I don't want Dean Swift anywhere around when my dad picks me up, because my dad
stopped coming to pick me up a year ago and nobody knows it but me and him.

Here's how it happened, or like they say in the cop shows, here's how it went down.

At first my dad came every weekend for a long time. We took the Mukilteo ferry and drove to his apartment in Seattle. Saturday mornings we had breakfast at the Sound View Café in the Pike Place Market. He had an omelet and I had a bagel with cream cheese and lox. Lunch was a meat bun from the hum bao stand. Dinner was a can of soup in front of the TV. Sundays we ate at the French bakery. He had coffee and a little loaf of bread. I had three cream puffs, an éclair, and orange juice. That gave me a stomachache that lasted until we got in the car and drove to the ferry to go back to school.

Usually at the ferry we'd run into one of my classmates.

“Would you mind driving Raul in?” my dad would ask. He'd shove his hands in his pockets and look at the ground like he was doing something wrong but couldn't help it.

I don't know if I had fun with my dad or not on those weekends. But I was glad to be with him. And I hated leaving him. I knew that when I was with him he thought about my mom more, but when I wasn't with him, he missed her more.

Then one weekend about a year ago he didn't show up. We waited. It got dark. The dean went to his office and made a call.

“Your dad's car broke down on the way to the ferry, so I'm afraid he won't be able to make it,” he said when he came back into the parlor.

I cried, right there sitting on the blue sofa.

The dean sat next to me.

When I could get the words out, I asked, “If my dad can't come, then will my mom?” I don't know why I asked that. I hadn't seen her in years.

Dean Swift swallowed and shook his head.

“Is she dead?” I asked. It was the first time I asked that question out loud. Nobody ever talked to me about her.

Dean Swift's mouth made a long line. “No,” he said. “She's not dead. There is no evidence to indicate that. But she's not here. I'm sure that she would be if she could.”

He looked right into my eyes. “I don't know where she is. Nobody does.”

I don't know why, exactly, but that made me feel better. Sad still, but better. I was glad I had asked that question. And I was glad that he didn't lie to me. Another point for the dean.

The next weekend my dad showed up. He had presents for me and a bottle of wine for the dean.

Then it happened again. All the kids were gone. The sun went down. The night came. The dean called. That time I waited to cry until I got to my bedroom. I cried until the muscles in my throat hurt and my nose was stuffed up and I felt like I had a really bad cold.

The third time it happened, I was mad.

And what was the dean supposed to do with me? See, normally he shuts the place up for the weekend and sends the staff home. He lives in Coupeville, a tiny town a few miles from the school. But if I was stuck at school, then so was he. “I can't leave you here all alone, now, can I?” he said to me with a big laugh the first time, like it was no big deal. We ate beans straight from the can and made sardine and peanut butter sandwiches. I think he had as much fun as I did. But the second and the third weekends? He was missing his family too.

So then Dean Swift took me home with him. He lives in a house painted pink. Victorian style is what he calls it. His wife called me poor little runt the whole time. I did not like her, and, strange thing is, I don't think the dean does either. But he has three teenage daughters. I'm going to marry one of them one day—unless, of course, things work out with Mary Anne. But Mary Anne is a real long shot.

Dean Swift's youngest daughter, June, is a cheerleader, and that weekend she walked around everywhere
in her cheerleading uniform even though there wasn't a game. The skirt was very short and so was the top. The Dean kept walking up to her and tugging the skirt down. This made more of her tummy show, so then he'd put his head in his hands and walk away very sadly. I thought she looked like a movie star. She let me curl her hair with the curling iron. I only got a little burned.

May, the middle daughter, took me for a ride on her moped. “You don't need a helmet,” she said. “Like, that's totally for sissies.” That made the dean upset too, when he saw us come riding back with my hair all wild from the wind, but it was the best hour of my life.

Then April, the oldest, took me to the movies with her. The dean about exploded on Sunday morning when he found out which one we saw. I guess that movie was not for children. There were a lot of parts I didn't understand, but I really thought the party scene was funny. Maybe the actors and actresses should have had on more clothes.

One thing I know is that when I get my license, I'll drive like May taught me—speed up into the corners and turn your headlights off when you're going down hills on country roads at night. The goal, she told me, is to leave part of your tires on the road. Burning out, she called it.
Totally
an adrenaline rush, she said.

Anyway. The dean apologized to me all the way
back to the school Sunday afternoon. It was the greatest weekend of my life, so I don't know what he was so sorry about, but I could tell I wouldn't be going home with him again. Which was too bad, since April told me she'd teach me how to use her rifle next time, and May said there was a beach party with a bonfire and she'd let me use her lighter and some gasoline to get the fire going.

The next Friday, when the dean took me into his office and said my dad couldn't make it because the car was at the garage, I had some hard thoughts.
They don't want to talk about the one thing that matters the most to me?
I thought.
Fine, then. I'm not talking about it anymore either.
I was done waiting for the grown-ups to decide what to do with me.

Later that afternoon I called the dean from the phone in the hallway of the top floor. I pretended to be my dad.

“Oliver,” I said, because that's the name the parents call him, “the car is running good. It can't make it up that big hill to the front door, though. Please have Raul wait for me at the bottom of the hill, by the turnoff from Highway Twenty.” Then I hung up.

I knew the dean would be easy to fool. I knew he'd be too tired to walk the two miles down the hill to the highway. Plus, people are happy to be tricked if they're getting what they really want from it. And the dean
really wanted to spend the weekend with his family.

So when the other kids were jumping into their cars to go home, I went to the dean and shook his hand and thanked him for watching out for me the last few weekends. “I think my dad has figured some things out,” I said, then swung my backpack over my shoulder and headed down that hill.

Really, I was the one who had figured it out. I decided right then and there, as my feet hit the asphalt and I looked up at the thin strip of blue sky above the tops of the cedars and pines that lined the road, I was on my own. One day I'd find my mom, and maybe one day my dad would come back with an excuse better than one the dean could think of. But until then, I'd take care of myself.

I had a plan. First, walk to the highway. From there, take the footpath Tuffman makes us run through the woods. Then wait near the lake, and when everyone was gone, climb up the madrona and into my room through my unlocked window.

As I walked down the hill, cars zoomed by me in both directions. Parents coming and going with their kids. The road twists and turns pretty good, and at some point I got worried the drivers might not see me. Becoming roadkill was not part of my plan.

So I cut into the woods sooner. There was no path. The dirt was squishy and dark and covered with pine
needles and cones. The woods smelled alive. I was happy to be me, to be there, to have a weekend to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.

Then my skin prickled. My ears stretched like they do when you're in bed alone in a pitch-black room and you hear a sound that only something alive could make. Something alive that's
not you
. I looked behind me and saw a flash of white fur. Maybe it was just a ray of sunlight streaming down through the cedars. I stuck my chin out. I squinted. Eyes stared back at me through the low, bending branches of the cedar.

Animal
eyes. I was so scared, my stomach tumbled and my mind lost every thought.

I stood very still. When I looked again, the eyes were gone but the branches were swaying. I started to step away. I sensed it watching me. I walked more quickly. I didn't know which direction to go to get out of the woods. I couldn't think.

I heard a snuffle and a hard crack.

I ran. I ran so hard my lungs burned. I ran so hard I didn't see where I was going.

Branches slapped my face, and blackberry brambles scraped my arms. Whatever it was, it was running on the other side of the trees beside me. I couldn't tell if there was one or more than one. I couldn't tell if it was chasing me or running with me. Was I part of a hunting pack or was I being hunted?

I ran until I ran out of island. One minute I was in the middle of cedars as tall as a mountain, and the next I wasn't. I was in a narrow meadow twenty feet from the cliff's edge.

I looked back a hundred times. Nothing followed me out from the cedars. My breath was so ragged and jagged, it scraped my throat and I tasted blood.

At the end of the little meadow the cliff dropped straight down to a pile of driftwood and then a strip of sand and then the blue, blue water of Puget Sound.

I started to shiver. It was almost dark. Sometimes all your choices seem bad. Was I going to spend the night on the edge of a cliff with a pack of animals watching from the trees, or run back into the forest and try to get home before whatever chased me here caught me?

If I went left, I was pretty sure I'd end up in sight of the school, but not within reach, because of the ravine.

I looked right. Farther down, the trees circled the meadow and came up to the cliff. I stared into the trees. There was a building nestled among them. I walked closer.

It was a lighthouse.

Nobody had been near it for years. Animals maybe, but no humans. The tower was as tall as the tallest trees around it, and its white paint was dappled with a pale green lichen on the landward side that helped hide it in the cedar fronds. At its base was a small cabin
with a red roof. Blackberry and huckleberry and ferns and waist-high fir trees surrounded it. I pushed back the ivy covering the door.

I heard the click of little paws scamper across the stone floor as I stepped inside. It was cold and dark and musty. The first thing I thought was how I'd show it to my dad next time he came. The next thing I thought was how stupid can a kid be.

I shut the door behind me and shoved an old wooden chest in front of it.

Something out there was watching me. I could feel its eyes.

As soon as I saw the stairs, I ran up them. The lighthouse light was gone. The windows were cracked and broken and missing, and the edge of the ceiling was packed with the mud nests of swallows. The wind smelled like cedar and salt and wet wood. It was the most magical place I had ever seen.