Never Cry Werewolf (20 page)

Priscilla answered with her typical breathless, “Hell-ooohh?”

I said, “Hello? Uh-huh. Yeah.” I pretended to talk, waving Winters toward the exit. Then I smiled at him till he went out into the hall and closed the door nearly all the way.

Meanwhile, Priscilla was all “Who is this? I’m going to look you up on caller ID. Is this one of Shelby’s friends? She’s at camp.”

I held the phone tighter. “It’s me.”

Priscilla paused. “Shelby? Is that you?”

Mr. Winters ducked his head around the door. “Everything all right?” he mouthed.

“Great,” I said, sending him a forced smile.

“Shelby! Where are you? We’ve been so worried!” Priscilla babbled.

Whoa—it actually sounded like she was happy to hear from me. It was too weird and I couldn’t deal, so I set the phone down. I had work to do, anyway.

“Uh-huh. Yeah. I know. Everything’s fine,” I said in a loud voice so Winters would think I was actually talking to and listening to Honey Bun.

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I tried all the drawers of Winters’s desk and went to the small closet at the back of the room.

Inside was a large box, like the kind of footlocker my dad had in the basement with all his old college stuff in it. Of course, Dad’s wasn’t padlocked like this one. So there had to be something good in there, right? But how to get in? I mean, obviously I had to break the lock. But that would make, like, a huge noise. Winters would come running, natch.

“Shelby? Shelby?” Priscilla’s voice shrieked from the phone.

“Yeah. Well, let me talk to him,” I said, still playing like I was talking on the phone. I was almost out of ideas, but then I spied a camp walkie-talkie on the desk. Bingo. I clicked it on.

“Sven? Come in, Sven,” I said, pinching my nose so I could imitate Cynthia Crumb’s voice.

“Ya, dat’s me,” he came back.

“There’s a golf cart crash at the front gate! Get Winters right away!” I clicked off the walkie-talkie and set it on the desk. “Uh-huh?” I said, picking up the telephone where Priscilla was squawking away in case Winters checked on me.

A second later, I heard Sven burst through the admin building’s doors and shout, “You come now! Fire!” at Mr. Winters.

“I’ll be back,” Mr. Winters said, poking his head around the corner. “Stay here!”

I nodded, imitating a teen totally engrossed in conversation. As soon as he was gone, I set the phone down again, then picked up the brass statue of an eagle on Mr. Winters’s desk. Grunting in effort, I dragged the footlocker from the closet.

What I was about to do would be the nail in my coffin at Camp Crescent. But saving Austin was more important. I took a deep breath and made my choice. After a brief apology to the eagle, I swung at the padlocked latch on the box.

Crash!
The head of the sculpture fell off and rolled under the desk, but the lock didn’t budge.

“Stupid bird,” I said, winding up for another swing.

Crash!
I slammed the birdie down, which bent the metal holding the lock sideways. “C’mon.” I bashed it with the bronze bird again. This time the padlock came loose.

I dropped the headless statue on the floor, narrowly missing my toes, and then pulled the latch and lock totally off the box. I knelt in front of the box like some kind of treasure hunter and opened it.

It was treasure, all right. Bags of chocolates, Doritos, glittery eye shadows, dirty magazines, and all kinds of other contraband filled the locker. Enough junk to supply, like, five 7-Elevens. There were also cell phones and, I recognized, my own PDA.

Nearly drunk with the smell of Hershey’s Kisses and fruity gummy worms, I dug around in the stuff until I found a plastic bag buried under a stack of manga comics. Holding it up to the light, I saw the clear vials Austin needed.
Yes!

I stuffed the plastic bag into the waistband of my shorts, along with my PDA. Then I threw the headless eagle into the footlocker. “Gotta go!” I yelled into the phone, then I hung up and ran. I only had minutes to get to Austin with the serum before they’d be back. Before they’d find out what I’d done.

“Help! Help! Flaming golf cart crash at the main gate!” I shouted as I burst into the infirmary.

“Oh, no!” The nurse grabbed a first-aid kit and then dashed out the door.

Austin moaned in his bed, turning over.

“Hey,” I said, touching his cheek.

His eyelashes fluttered, then opened. “Shelby?”

“Hi. I got it for you. Do you hear me?” I said, digging the vials out.

“You have the serum? How?” Austin murmured.

“Hurry, tell me what to do!”

“Here.” Austin opened his mouth wide.

I uncapped one of the tiny vials and poured the clear liquid down his throat.

He swallowed, then whispered, “Another, please.”

After a glance toward the door, I uncapped a new vial and poured it in his mouth. “They’ll be coming soon. I’ll hide the rest of your vials in the shoes and clothes Sven brought you, okay?”

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Austin nodded weakly. “Thanks,” he said with a wheezing breath. His eyes closed again, and I walked over to the pile of clothes.

“Oh, one more thing,” I said, looking up from stuffing his shoes with the vials. “I’m putting my PDA there, too. Keep it safe. Call someone who can help.”

His eyes opened again. “Shelby?”

I moved back over to his bedside to say good-bye.

He reached out for my hand and squeezed it weakly. “I won’t forget you. Ever.”

My heart did a funny lurch in my chest.

Guys say that kind of forever crap all the time, but this time I believed it. Even if Austin wasn’t exactly a regular guy, he still counted. In fact, he more than counted—he mattered.

Looking at him, with his damp bangs plastered to his forehead and his eyelashes quivering as he struggled to keep his eyes open, I realized how much I cared about him. In fact, I thought I could maybe love him in the right circumstances. If things were different.

I sucked in a breath, feeling sad all of a sudden, which was totally wrong—I was saving Austin and that meant I needed to be brave. “You need to get better, ’kay? Just rest,” I said in my most confident voice. “I have to go now.”

Austin’s amber eyes looked a little glassy. “Tell them it was my fault. I broke into the office, I pinched the serum. You can’t take the blame,” he said sternly.

“Yes I can. This time it’s all mine.” I kissed him on the forehead. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go eat some major worms.”

He gave me a funny look, because of course he didn’t know I was talking about the gummy-worm stash in Winters’s office.

Yeah. To distract them from what I’d actually taken, I was going to stuff myself silly.

And then turn myself in.

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M
ove it, move it,
M-OOO-VE IT
!” Sergeant Scabwell, his face red as a baboon’s butt, shouted in my ear for the, like, ninetieth time that mile. “SHELBY LOCKE! ARE YOU LISTENING?”

I swayed on my feet, the heat of the afternoon getting to me. The Utah desert is not kind to fair-skinned Midwest-to-Beverly Hills transplants. After ten days at Red Canyon Ranch, I was pretty darn sure hell did exist.

“LOCKE!” shouted Scabwell again.

I lurched forward but not fast enough for the girl behind me.

Her name was Randi, a skinny kleptomaniac whose bunk was next to mine, and she picked that moment to be a freaking bulldozer. “Go, Locke!” she said, pushing with her hands.

My morale, or whatever you want to call it, was so low that I hadn’t even complained about the T-shirt she’d stolen from my bag two days ago—but nobody pushes me.

“Hey!” I halted and whirled around, ready to rip her a new one.

Sergeant Scabwell popped up next to me again. “WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM, LOCKE?” This time, little spit drops flew at me, speckling my face. Eww.

“Nothing,” I said. “There is no problem.”

Scabwell stepped closer, his pudgy belly making a shadow over my toes. If the dude had actually been in the army, it’d been, like, forever ago. He stuck his red pockmarked face right in mine and said,

“Don’t you give me any sass, Locke. Drop and give me twenty!”

“Um…” I glanced down at the sand around my feet, where a scorpion skittered past a pile of jagged rocks and a shriveled-up snake skin.

“LET’S GO, PRINCESS! HERE! NOW!” the sergeant yelled.

All the girls in my platoon had stopped running and were staring at me with utter disgust. Like it was my fault stupid Randi had smashed into me. It wasn’t like the sergeant was making
them
do twenty.

But then Sergeant Scabwell blew his whistle and yelled, “Quit your gawking, Beta Platoon! Just for that, all of you lollygaggers can give me thirty!”

Grumbling, all the girls thudded to the ground and started the push-ups. Next to me, Vanessa, a heavyset black girl from Ohio, swore under her breath each time her belly hit the sand. By the time we were all done, nearly everyone was swearing at me and sweating. Like, ugly-guy sweating. Soaked T-shirts. Slimy hair. The works.

“LET’S GO, CUPCAKES!” the sergeant bellowed, smoothing the front of his green uniform.

“GET ON DOWN THE TRAIL—MOVE IT!”

We slogged across more sand dunes, until finally the camp came into view, small in the distance.

The huge green tents we bunked in stuck out among the Quonset buildings used for the dining hall—well,

“mess hall,” they called it—the administrative offices, and counselor quarters. Around all of it were miles and miles of desert surrounded by heavy-duty electric fencing that made Camp Crescent look like a bunny pen.

I totally couldn’t picture Ariel here. Poor thing had really told me the truth about this place. She probably did almost die of heat exhaustion. And she didn’t have this stupid rash on her arm to deal with, either. A scratch that never seemed to heal, so every time it came into contact with sand, sun, or yucky water—which was all the time—it seemed to get worse. Not the best souvenir from a trek through woods that, looking back, seemed magical.

This ugly desert had none of that magic. And it didn’t even have a moon I could look at because we were into that new moon phase, where it doesn’t shine for a while. The whole landscape after sundown was lit by giant spotlights from the watchtower at the front gate like we were some kind of criminals.

The platoon started down the hill toward camp, Scabwell singing out some kind of cadence like

“Sound off, one-two” and so on and on and on. I shuffled along with the rest of the inmates—I mean,
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campers—looking forward to the drinking fountain, a cool shower, and whatever horrible mess they’d call dinner.

Then Randi shoved me in the back again. “Look,” she said, pointing down to a Jeep speeding down the rough road leading to camp. “I hope it’s the mail. My grandma’s sending me a new pair of flip-flops.”

“What happened to the pink ones you stole from Vanessa?” I asked over my shoulder.

“Hah,” Randi grunted, falling back into place.

Some kids did get care packages, but I doubted there’d be anything for me. Mail had been pretty sparse, except for a postcard from Dad the other day. He’d got my letter—the one I’d written during that Dr. Wanda session. I’d asked Ariel to mail it for me, and she had. She was a good friend, and I’d barely had a chance to say good-bye. I hoped she’d stay in touch somehow.

Dad’s postcard hadn’t said much more than
We’ll talk when you get home
, but the
Love, Dad
he’d signed was a start, I guess.

I hadn’t heard a word from Austin. That hurt the most. I was sure he’d remember I was at Red Canyon and at least write me, but maybe he was still recovering. I didn’t want to think he’d forgotten all about me now that he had his serum.
Ack, just shut up and march, Shelby! Stop feeling sorry for
yourself!
Getting all depressed about stuff I couldn’t control wasn’t going to save me from the desert.

Picking up my marching pace, I glanced over my shoulder at Randi and Vanessa, whose faces were red and sweaty. They wanted to get back to mail and showers and wouldn’t think twice about stomping right over me if I fell.

We marched into camp, the kicked-up dust shimmering around us like brown mist. Another scenic afternoon at Red Canyon. Finally shuffling into Beta Platoon’s tent, most of us collapsed onto our cots.

Facedown on the ratty sleeping bag I’d been assigned, I was tempted to close my eyes, but if I wanted a shower, I’d best get my towel and shower shoes and get in line. But maybe one more minute in the rack.

Or two…

“Locke!” The sergeant’s crusty voice shattered the peace.

“Huh?” I rolled over. “What is it now?”

“It’s called a package, princess!” he snapped, flinging it at me and then clomping off down the row of cots.

A package? I plucked it from the foot of my sleeping bag. It was a small paper-covered box that had already been opened by Red Canyon’s office and then Scotch taped shut. Wait—the return address was Camp Crescent. Though I didn’t dare hope the package was from Austin, my heart beat a little quicker. I ran my hand over the brown paper, not wanting to open it yet, just enjoying the feel of real mail and savoring the anticipation.

“Well?” Randi was breathing down my neck. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

“Um, do you mind?” I said, hugging it to my chest.

Sighing dramatically, Randi snatched up the probably stolen copy of
People
magazine from her cot and stalked off.

I peeled back the tape and opened the box. Underneath the shredded newspaper that filled the top, I found a familiar-looking art project.