Midnight Howl (3 page)

The next morning, I woke up early and lay in bed, trying to remain calm. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, staring at the ceiling. It was my first day at Wolf Valley Middle School, and I was scared to death. What if everyone hated me?

It’s only for three months, I told myself.

Three months sounded a
lot
longer now than it had when I agreed to this trip.

At least I have Jack,
I thought finally, and that helped me sit up. Having one friend already was going to be a lifesaver. If it weren’t for him, I might have tried to convince my mom to let me stay in bed all day.

It was funny how in just one evening I’d gone from being totally freaked out by the idea of living
with a boy to being happy that he was my friend. Jack was nice: relaxed and funny and easy to be around. Cute, too. But I shook that thought off — crushing on a boy I was living with would be way too complicated.

I pulled myself together. I was Marisol Perez! I was
fearless
!

Sort of fearless.

I hopped out of bed and headed for the shower. My personal shower, which was a huge perk after sharing a bathroom with my mom my whole life. Turns out one of the biggest benefits of staying at an off-season bed-and-breakfast is that there are plenty of bedrooms to choose from, all with their own bathrooms. My room looked like a fancy hotel room: flowery bedspread and wallpaper, matching lamps on either side of the double bed, and a little desk with brochures and books about the area:
The Birds of Western Montana, Hiking the Glaciers,
and
The Wolves of Wolf Valley.
The decor was definitely
not
what I would have chosen, but it was comfortable and all mine.

Half an hour later, I was clean, my hair looked good, I was wearing lip gloss (the only makeup my mom will let me use), and I had on jeans and a blue
sweater. I was as ready as I’d ever be. I tried to text Tasha so she could wish me good luck, but my cell phone didn’t have a signal.

When I got to the kitchen, Jack and Hailey were sitting at the table, eating cereal, while my mom and Molly drank coffee. I slid into my seat on the other side of the table and gave them a shaky smile.

“It’s weird that I’m starting school almost a month late, right?” I asked nervously.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jack said through a mouthful of cereal. He swallowed and spoke more clearly. “By now, everybody’s sick of seeing all the same people every day. They’ll be thrilled to have someone new around. You’ll be a total celebrity.”

Hailey’s hair was tied back in a braid, making her look more approachable than she had the day before. To my complete shock, she smiled at me and said in a soft voice, “It’ll be fine, really.”

Maybe she’s just shy,
I thought, and smiled back at her. “Yeah,” I agreed. “And after all, what do I care what people here think of me anyway?” Like I had been telling myself, I wasn’t going to be here long enough for it to really matter.

Hailey’s smile snapped shut and she got up from the table. “We need to catch the bus,” she said
flatly. She didn’t look at me as she kissed her mother good-bye.

“What’d I say?” I whispered to Jack as we followed her out the door.

“Don’t worry about it,” he whispered back. “Hailey’s moody. She likes animals more than she likes people.” While we waited for the bus at the end of the drive, Jack stood with his sister, murmuring to her in a low voice. She glanced over at me, and I stepped back and looked away, trying to give them some privacy, since they were obviously talking about me.

By the time the big yellow school bus pulled up, I was so uncomfortable that I was actually relieved to see it.

That is, until I got up the bus stairs and saw a bunch of strange faces staring at me.
Fearless,
I thought, and tried to look nonchalant as I hurried into the empty seat behind the driver. I thought Jack might sit next to me, but he went past me to sit with some guys at the back of the bus. Hailey gave me a brief, reluctant smile but walked past me, too, to sit alone a couple of seats farther back.

I didn’t know what my friendship possibilities were going to be like at school, but apparently I
wasn’t all that popular with the people I was living with.

My school in Austin is modern: one story, full of windows and bright colors. Here, the school was tall, brick, and old-fashioned looking, with steps up to the front and two front doors, one that said GIRLS over it and another saying BOYS. I grabbed Hailey’s arm as she tried to walk past me.

She jumped like I’d really startled her. “What?” she asked.

“Just tell me,” I said. “Do I have to go in the one that says
GIRLS
? Or doesn’t it matter?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hailey said. She looked at her feet and added in a soft voice, “Come on, I’ll show you to the office.”

After I picked up my schedule, the rest of the morning was a blur. The school was bigger than I’d expected; kids were bused in from all over the county. I kept getting turned around in the halls. Jack was in my homeroom and English classes, and introduced me to a bunch of people whose names I forgot right away. Hailey was in my math class and
gave me a brief wave from across the room, then sat and drew in her notebook for the entire period.

During study hall, I sat alone at a round table in the library. All around me, kids were whispering, sharing books, and laughing quietly. I felt gigantically out of place. I watched a girl with a long, honey-colored braid fold a note into an origami flower and hand it to her friend, and I wanted to cry.

“Ten minutes only on the computers, people,” the teacher said, clapping her hands to get attention. “Give someone else a turn.”

I jumped up fast, almost knocking my backpack off the table, and grabbed one of the newly vacated computers.

Logging on to my e-mail, I saw I had a bunch of messages from my friends back home. There were e-mails from Tasha, Ashley, and Erica, whom I ate lunch with, and from Kayla in my math class. They all said mostly the same things:
miss u, luv u, hope you’re having fun.
And there were bits of gossip: who had a crush on whom, who had gotten into trouble with her parents, and who said what to a teacher.

Reading them made me feel stronger. So what if I
didn’t have friends here? I had friends back in my real life.

And if people liked me back in Austin, probably somebody would like me in Wolf Valley, too.

I e-mailed Tasha back quickly, because my ten minutes were almost up:

E-mailing Tasha cheered me up, but by lunchtime I was lonely again. It was
hard
being the new kid. Nobody had been mean to me — everyone was pretty friendly — but they all knew one another and were wrapped up in their own friendships. After politely saying hello, people pretty much ignored me. I missed Tasha and my other friends. And I
missed just already knowing people instead of having to meet everyone for the first time.

Lunch is scary when you have no friends, because there are no assigned seats in the cafeteria. And if no one talks to you, you can’t just listen to the teacher, because there is no teacher.

Back home, we could eat outside on the school grounds, but at Wolf Valley everyone ate in the cafeteria. I pulled my shoulders back and stood up straight before walking in, repeating
fearless
to myself, but not really believing it.

At first, the cafeteria seemed like one big buzz of strangers’ conversations and tons of seats, all filled. I almost turned around and walked right back out.

Then I saw a girl smiling at me, waving and pointing at an empty seat at her table. She looked familiar — she was one of the people Jack had introduced me to (thank you, Jack!) — but I had no idea what her name was. She was athletic-looking, with dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail and a big smile.

“Hey!” she said. “Marisol, right? Come sit with us.”

“Thanks,” I said. I sat down, and there was a little silence as I looked at her and her friends and they
looked at me. One of her friends had short, curly red hair and big blue eyes. The other one was the girl from the library who had twisted a note into a flower. She had long hair. “I’m really sorry,” I said. “I’ve met two of you before, but I can’t remember either of your names. This whole day has been a total blur.” They all smiled.

“I’m Amber,” said the athletic-looking girl, “and this is Bonnie.” The redheaded girl smiled and gave me a little wave. “And this is Lily,” Amber said. The long-haired girl nodded.

“I’m sure it’s been a really long morning,” Bonnie said as she bounced in her seat enthusiastically. “Is starting so late and not knowing anybody
killing
you? We felt sorry for you and thought you looked like you needed somewhere to sit.”

“Bonnie!” said Amber, but she was laughing, too. “Don’t tell her that.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Bonnie said anxiously. “I didn’t, did I?”

“Of course not,” I said. I got out my brown paper bag and started unpacking my lunch. Peanut butter sandwich, tangerine, and cookies. The other girls all had cafeteria trays with burgers on them.

Bonnie giggled. “Only weird people, or people
with serious food issues, pack their lunch here. The cafeteria food isn’t
that
bad.”

“Bonnie!”
Amber said again. I could tell she was the bossy one. Lily just sat and watched us eat.

“Sorry again,” Bonnie said. “I wasn’t saying you’re a weirdo, I was just saying you should know what people do here.”

“Um.” I looked at my sandwich. Did people really think you were weird if you didn’t eat the cafeteria lunch? Did I care? “I’m a vegetarian, so I kind of have to bring my lunch.”

“Oh!” Bonnie said. “My dad would kill me if I stopped eating meat. We raise cattle.”

Amber smiled at me. “I like veggies. Lily’s a total carnivore, though.”

Lily nodded seriously. “I like meat a lot.”

“That’s fine with me,” I said. “I mean, I don’t mind other people eating it, it’s just sort of not my thing.”

They let the subject drop, and we talked about other stuff: Austin, and what kids did for fun in Wolf Valley, and TV shows, and people I didn’t know yet but would know a lot of gossip about when I finally met them.

“And of course, you’re totally lucky to live with Jack McManus,” Bonnie said. “He is such a cutie. I
actually joined the cooking club to admire him, which is a joke because I can hardly boil water.”

“Mmm,” I said noncommittally. “Jack’s nice. Are you all in the cooking club?”

“Just Bonnie,” said Amber. “I don’t have time for other clubs, with student government — which is a very serious deal here — and the field hockey and volleyball teams. And Lily’s into science. She’s in the astronomy and ecology clubs.”

“Really?”
I practically shouted. Lily blinked at me. “I’m dying to join the astronomy club! I was so excited to hear there is one.”

“Oh,” Lily said. She thought it over and gave me a slow smile. “There’s a meeting right after school today. We meet every Monday. You should come.”

By the time the bell rang, I was feeling much better than when I had walked into the cafeteria. I had three potential friends, I was going to join a club, and I had conquered the terrors of a new school’s lunch period. Once again, I felt fearless.

After school, I called my mom from the pay phone by the office; my cell didn’t work at school either. Looking at the mountains surrounding the town, I figured I might as well give up trying to use my phone in Wolf Valley. When I asked my mom about staying for astronomy club, she hesitated.

“Marisol, I’m glad you found something you enjoy at school already, but I haven’t rented a car yet. Molly and Mike are being really generous letting us stay here. I don’t think we should ask them to make special trips to drive you around.”

Luckily, I had talked to Jack in social studies that afternoon, and he’d told me that he was staying for cooking club. Not only would he also need a late ride home, there was actually an activities bus that
would drop us off. So I could tell my mom that no one was going to have to make a special trip for me. Once she stopped worrying that I was going to be a bad guest, she was really excited that Wolf Valley had an astronomy club.

“See?” she said. “I knew this was going to be a great semester!”

“Whatever, Mom,” I said, laughing. “It’s only been one day.” But I was happy.

I felt shy again when I found Room 204, where the astronomy club meeting was being held. There were about fifteen kids milling around, and the only one I recognized was Lily. She was sitting at a desk, flipping through a notebook. There was a teacher at the back of the room, but he had his head down and looked like he was correcting papers, not getting ready to start the meeting.

“New
girl,” said a boy standing near the door. He looked me up and down. “Come on in.” He bared his teeth at me, showing me his braces and a chunk of green stuff caught in them. “We’re ready for some
new
blood.” He put his arm over the lower half of his face and did a vampire impression. “Wah-ha-ha-ha.”

Lily looked up. “Shut up, Anderson,” she said, and smiled at me. “Hi, Marisol. Come sit with me.”

The boy with the braces mimicked her.
“Shut up, Anderson, shut up, Anderson.
When is Anderson going to feel the love?” But he stopped bothering me.

I sat down at the desk next to Lily’s. “Thanks,” I said, relieved.

“No problem,” she replied with a smile. “We’re just about ready to get started. I’m the president, so let me tell you about the meetings.”

I glanced at the teacher at the back of the room. “Oh,” said Lily. “Mr. Samuels just shows up because we need a club sponsor. He’s not that interested in astronomy. We really run the club ourselves.

“So …” She slapped a piece of paper down on the desk in front of me. Looking down, I saw a list that read:

“These are some ideas for topics,” Lily said. “Every week someone gives a presentation. If there’s something else you want to talk about that’s not on the list, that’s okay, too. Um, unless it’s not about astronomy. Somebody wanted to give a presentation on star signs and romance one time, which wasn’t really the same thing.”

She giggled a little as she put down another piece of paper, which had another neat list of topics, each with a person’s name next to it. I saw that today someone named Becka Thompson was giving a presentation on black holes.

“Wow,” I said. “You’re really organized.” I was surprised: Lily had been quiet at lunch and seemed like she took her time at everything, even smiling. I hadn’t thought of her as a take-charge kind of person. The science club I was in back in Austin was totally run by the teacher, not the students.

As Lily straightened the papers, I noticed a small golden-brown birthmark on her arm in the shape of a crescent moon. It was unusual, and sort of pretty. The moon shape was so perfect for the president of the astronomy club that I almost said something like “Hey, with a moon birthmark you’ll never have to get a tattoo.” Luckily, I bit it back at the last
minute. She might not think it was funny, and the last thing I needed was someone else here thinking I was weird (clearly Hailey already did).

“I’ll do comets,” I told her. “But give me a few weeks.” I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of talking in front of a bunch of strangers, but I would worry about that later.

She wrote me down for a date in November, then stood up and looked around. “Guys?” she said. Everyone stopped talking and turned to her. “Becka?” she called out. “You’re up! Becka’s talking about black holes, everybody.”

A skinny girl with messy black curls went to the front of the room and shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Um,” she said. “Well, black holes are places with such strong gravity that nothing can escape, not even light.”

She went on, and, as she talked, she relaxed and spoke more easily. She knew a lot about her topic, and had even brought illustrations from the Hubble Space Telescope website.

The amazing thing was how interested everyone was. No one was whispering, or napping, or passing notes. They were listening and raising their hands to ask questions. Back home, kids at a science club
meeting would have been mostly interested, but someone probably would have been zoning out, and someone else would have been passing notes. It wasn’t always easy to pay attention after a long day of school.

Because my dad and I studied it together, astronomy was really special to me, even back when I was a little kid. My friends in science club back home
liked
science, and a lot of them were
interested
in astronomy, but not like I was.

I felt a thrill of delight. Here in Montana, I had fallen into some kind of alternate universe, where everyone liked science just as much as I did.

When Becka finished talking, we applauded, and Lily got up. “That was awesome,” she said. “Thanks, Becka. Next week, Tyler’s talking about exoplanets. Yay!” She gathered up some of the papers on her desk. “Okay, moving on to announcements. As you know, our trip to Glacier National Park is two weeks from Friday. If friends want to join us, that’s great. It’s lots of fun, and the more people who go, the cheaper the trip is for everyone. There’s a full moon tonight, so it should be waxing gibbous and almost full again then. If it’s not raining, that’ll be nice.”

Now that we were talking about a field trip instead of black holes, Mr. Samuels got to his feet. “If you haven’t gotten a permission slip, see me,” he said sternly. “No one can attend the field trip without a signed form from their parents. And remember — only students who attend this school can join us on the field trip. No friends from outside.” Everyone started getting their stuff together, and I hurried over to Mr. Samuels to get a permission slip. When I finished talking to him, I found Lily waiting for me.

“So, what’d you think?” she said.

“It was great,” I answered enthusiastically. “I can tell I’m going to have to find out a lot about comets if I’m going to talk without totally embarrassing myself, though.”

“Are you taking the activities bus?” Lily asked as she picked up her pink backpack.

“Yup,” I said. “Are you?”

She nodded. “We’d better hurry to catch it.”

I felt ridiculously pleased with myself: At the beginning of the day, I hadn’t known anyone but Jack and Hailey, and now I was walking down the hall with a potential friend after a club meeting, just as if I’d been at this school forever.

“Tell me about the camping trip,” I said.

“It’s awesome,” Lily replied, her eyes sparkling. “We take a ton of kids for a weekend in Glacier National Park. We bring telescopes and look at constellations, the moon, Jupiter, Venus — everything that’s visible. Last year, we also read myths about the moon and stars. A bunch of teachers chaperone, and we roast marshmallows and do the whole campout thing. I’m pretty sure Jack and his friends are already signed up, and so are Amber and Bonnie. You should totally come.”

“I definitely will,” I said. “I mean, assuming my mom lets me, but I don’t know why she wouldn’t.”

The skinny boy with the braces who’d been all “new girl, new girl” caught up and walked with us. “I can’t
wait
for the trip,” he said. “I’ve got a ghost story I’ve been working on. It’s going to have the sixth graders running home to their mommies.”

Lily sighed. “Anderson, do you mind? We’re having a conversation here.” I couldn’t believe it, but he actually stopped talking. She turned to me. “Do you have a telescope? We try to bring as many as we can so everybody gets to use them.”

“Yeah, I’ve got one. I’ll be glad to bring it on the trip,” I said. I had lugged it along as a carry-on on
the plane, even though my mom thought I should leave it at home. “I didn’t realize there was a full moon tonight until you said so. Maybe I’ll set up the telescope outside. I haven’t gotten a chance to use it here yet, and the stars are way more visible than at home.”

Lily frowned. “Oh … it’s not really the best idea to go out alone at night right around Wolf Valley. Especially during a full moon.”

I stopped walking. “How come?”

Anderson started to laugh and lurched toward me with his hands crooked into claws. “Because of the
werewolves,”
he said menacingly.