Pack of Dorks (15 page)

“What’s it to you?”

Sam’s mom said something in his ear. It sounded like a whisper yell. I caught the words “incredibly rude.” Then she straightened up and asked Grandma if she wanted a cup of coffee.

Grandma shifted Molly to her shoulder and squeezed my shoulder. “Sounds great,” she said, even though I know she hates coffee. She drinks about a dozen diet colas a day, but says coffee tastes like spit mixed with dirt.

Before they even left the room, I crossed my arms and said, “I thought we were friends.”

Sam shrugged.

I stomped my foot. (Mom says I need to work on disguising my frustration. But I think frustration should be obvious.)

Sam looked at his sneakers. “I started gymnastics when I was five, okay? It isn’t really a secret. Don’t you remember second grade?”

“Parts of it,” I mumbled. I got a twisty feeling in my knees. I know a lot of people feel nervous in their stomachs, but for me it’s my knees. It feels like someone’s twisting and pushing on them at the same time and at any moment they might refuse to hold me upright. “Second grade was two years ago.”

Sam gave a small smile. “Show and share? First week of school? I brought this in.” He walked over to the mantle and pointed at one of the larger trophies. “Amanda said, ‘I thought only girls could be in gymnastics.’ Tom and Henry laughed right in front of the Miss Granger. She told them to be quiet—”

“But in an I-think-it’s-funny-too way,” I remembered. “And then everyone laughed.”

Sam nodded and swallowed hard. His smile shook and then left his face. “They kept drawing pictures of me in a leotard and putting them in my backpack. They followed me around the playground asking me to do cartwheels.”

He sighed and shrugged. “Mom wouldn’t let me quit gymnastics. I was so mad at her about it at first, but the truth is, I really like it.” His chin jerked up and he looked at me like he thought I might laugh. “And I’m good at it.”

“I can tell. These pictures—you look amazing,” I said.

Sam smiled again, a little stronger this time. “I have practice every morning before school and again after school. You could come by class sometime if you want.”

I smiled back. “Sure, I’d like that,” I said. “And maybe you could come to karate. I take karate now.”

Sam laughed and pointed at my uniform. “I figured those weren’t PJs.”

“Are you coming to school on Monday?”

Sam shrugged. “Dad says I can’t keep pretending to get sick every day, but I’m not pretending. Thinking about going back there, seeing them after what they did, it makes me want to throw up.”

“I know what you mean.” I told Sam about the sausage skirt splitting in class. But somehow, when he laughed as I told him about my ripping skirt, it made me laugh, too. “Want to meet outside the gym and walk to class together?”

“Two losers joining forces?” he laughed.

“Yeah,” I said, liking the idea. “We’ll be our own pack.”

“Pack of scapegoats,” Sam added.

“More like pack of dorks, but whatever,” I said. And then I told him about April’s Aunt Shelley and her wolf sanctuary. Almost like they were listening in, Grandma and Mrs. Righter came back into the living room just when I finished.

“I’ll take you guys there this weekend, if you want,” Mrs. Righter said. “It’s the only time Sam doesn’t have a tournament for the next couple weeks.” All right, they were definitely listening in.

As we walked back to her car, Grandma put her heavy hand on my shoulder again. “I’m proud of you, toots.”

Chapter Twelve

The wolf sanctuary was about two hours away, according to Mrs. Righter’s GPS.

For the first hour, Sam and I talked nonstop, mainly about gymnastics and karate. Since Sam doesn’t have any brothers and sisters, he asked a lot of questions about Molly.

“Maybe you should get a little brother or sister?” I suggested, but Sam said he didn’t think his mom and dad were up to it.

Mrs. Righter didn’t ask any questions or interrupt, but I could see from the way her eyes kept catching ours in the rearview mirror that she was listening to us.

Soon we turned off the highway and headed down a tree-lined road. After a half-hour more, the road stopped being paved and the SUV lurched over rocks and dirt. The only thing I could see out the window was forest. Every few miles, a small wooden sign appeared, printed with A
BLE
W
OLF
S
ANCTUARY
A
HEAD
.

Our talking sort of trickled away as the road narrowed more and more. Mrs. Righter’s mouth turned into a straight white line, just like Sam’s. Her eyes darted from the GPS to the woods around us. It occurred to me that wolves might not be her favorite animal.

“You know, wolf attacks are super rare,” I said a little too loudly.

“The last one was in 2010, when a woman in Alaska was found half-eaten and there were wolf tracks were all around her,” said Sam, barely looking up from one of The Goblin’s wolf books. I poked him with my elbow. “What?” he whispered.

I rolled my eyes. “But, usually, they’re super scared of people.”

“Yeah,” agreed Sam, looking back at his book. “Most of the time they only bite and mutilate, not kill. It’s like a warning, I guess. The only other fatal attack in the last decade was at a Russian zoo, when two eight year olds got too close to the wolves. Seems like they only really go after kids and women.”

“Sam!” I hissed.

I noticed that Mrs. Righter’s eyes got super wide and she tapped the brakes.

I spied a huge ten-foot-tall metal fence behind the curve of the road. I knew from checking out details about the sanctuary online that the fence also went several feet into the ground. Wolves are good diggers as well as jumpers.

“We’re here!” I cheered as soon as I saw the fence gate. I popped out of the car before it was in park, just in case Mrs. Righter decided to turn around. A small speaker was by the gate. I pressed the button and after the ding announced, “Lucy Williams, Sam Righter, and Mrs. Righter, here to see April Chester’s Aunt Shelley. Niner-niner. Over and out.”

Sam sighed through his nose. “You are such a dork,” he said. He pushed me with his shoulder so I knew he didn’t mean it in a mean way.

The speaker crackled: “I’ll be right there. Hang tight.” The voice was growly and harsh, not at all like April’s chirping.

While we waited, I stared through the fence to try and spot a wolf pack. But all I saw was a dirt path winding through sparse woods. Farther back I could make out more fences. We had read that packs will defend their territory from other packs, and I saw online that Able Wolf Sanctuary separated its packs with fences. I strained my ears to hear a wolf howl or a bark or something. But aside from a crow’s squawking, it was silent. A little too silent, if you ask me. Mrs. Righter was clutching her car keys with white knuckles and eyeing her car. If Aunt Shelley didn’t get here soon, we’d be back on the road.

Luckily, a dirty golf cart lurched down the path just then and the person I guessed to be April’s Axunt Shelley clamored out.

I was expecting her to be strange, based on what April had said about her. But I was thinking she’d be odd like April is odd. But Aunt Shelley was pretty much April’s complete opposite. Aunt Shelley was huge, and not in a likes-her-Snickers-bars sort of way. She was massive like a football player, with wide shoulders and a thick tanned neck. She wore khaki shorts, and her legs also were brown and bulky with muscles. She wore a dirt-smudged hat with A
BLE
W
OLF
S
ANCTUARY
printed on it, and her hair was pulled back in a knot at the base of her neck. Strands frayed out from the knot and lay damply plastered to her neck. Her eyes were a dark squinty brown and her mouth a slash across her freckled face. She had the sort of tan that always makes Mom, who is a bit obsessive with the sunscreen, shake her head. She sort of looked like she was made of leather. I thought of scrawny April with her frizzy hair, pale skinny body, and sing-songy voice and wondered if Aunt Shelley had been adopted.

All three of us—Mrs. Righter, Sam, and I—stepped back as the gate was pulled open.

“What are you waiting for?” Aunt Shelley asked. “Come on in. None of the big bad wolves will get you.” Her voice was gruff, but when she smiled, I saw how she could be April’s aunt. They both have smiles that split their faces.

Sam and I dashed through the gate and climbed onto the back seat of the golf cart. Mrs. Righter paused for a second but finally followed us.

Aunt Shelley locked the gate, yanked on it twice to be sure (or to further freak out Sam’s mom, I’m not sure which), and climbed back behind the wheel of the golf cart.

“So,” she said, “you want to learn about wolves?”

“It’s for a school report,” Sam said. Her eyes got even squintier. “But we also really like them a lot,” he added.

“Yeah,” I said. “They’re awesome.” She didn’t say anything. “Really awesome.”

She turned the key in the ignition. Mrs. Righter’s hand shot out and grabbed Aunt Shelley’s forearm. “So, um, April’s Aunt Shelley. Can you tell us a little bit about the sanctuary before we go farther in? Like, um, how many wolves do you have here? And how strong are the fences? Have you tested the wolves for rabies? That sort of thing.”

Aunt Shelley sat back in her seat. “Owners will give you all the details,” she said. I got the feeling she didn’t like speaking too much. She glanced over at Mrs. Righter’s wide eyes and seemed to work up a few words. “Able Sanctuary has ten wolves. They’re separated into four packs. Or at least, with any luck, they will be by the end of today. Two of the wolves are going to be paired to see if they get along.”

“Can we watch that?” I asked.

Aunt Shelley shrugged. “Depends.”

“On what?” Sam asked.

She sighed again, long and slow like just living was work. “How it goes,” she finally answered.

I imagined April visiting her and had to think April probably loved it. Here was someone who would let her talk as much as she wanted.

“Like I said, the owners will give you the rundown on the facts about the place,” Aunt Shelley said as she shifted into drive and punched the gas. Sam and I grabbed onto the seat in front of us to keep from getting whipped out of the open sides.

“Aunt Shelley?” I asked.

“What?” she answered.

I had meant to ask her what we were supposed to call her, but since she answered to Aunt Shelley pretty quickly, I just muttered “nothing” and held on tight.

We drove past a bunch of fenced-off acres along the dirt road to a building. It was shaped in a circle, with windows on all sides, like buildings people thought everyone would have by the year 2000 way back in the ’80s or something. Aunt Shelley pulled into a parking spot between another golf cart and a faded red pick-up truck. Outside the building was a rack of pamphlets with the name of the sanctuary printed across the top and a picture of a gray wolf howling.

Almost the same time I spotted the picture, I heard a howl. In all the books we read, authors were always going on and on about howls—how the first time they heard one it was something they’d never forget; how it chilled them to the bone; and how within seconds the whole air was overtaken with howls as other wolves joined in. Some said it was the happiest noise they ever heard; others said it was like hearing something from another world. I couldn’t imagine how impressive it could be. I mean, our neighbor has a dog he keeps fenced in his back yard and the mutt howls all day long. It isn’t pretty. It’s annoying. Super annoying.

But when I heard this howl, I think I finally understood what the authors meant. This wasn’t a sound from a backyard dog. It was much, much different. And it wasn’t at all happy. It was sad and long and made gooseflesh pimple across my arms. Aunt Shelley stopped mid-stride and cocked her head to the side while she listened.

“Hang on, Sascha,” she murmured. “Almost time.”

When the howl finally ended, the silence seemed loud, if that’s even possible. Not a single chirping bird or rustle of wind or any usual outside noise. Just silence.

“Aren’t other wolves supposed to join in when one howls?” Sam asked.

Aunt Shelley, her voice much softer than before, said, “Not when the wolf is mourning.” She picked up her step and swung open the door to the center. “Then they just listen.” The heavy door almost closed on Mrs. Righter, who I could tell wasn’t used to people not holding doors for her, but Aunt Shelley never slowed or noticed.