Six Moon Summer (9 page)

He sat beside her on the log, slinging his arm over her shoulders in a comforting half hug. “Yeah. I do.” Rylie’s cheeks heated again. Becoming a werewolf couldn’t be too bad if it meant getting Seth to comfort her.

“There’s another full moon in a few days,” she said. “What do I do?”

“I think you should lay low. The werewolf is a person, so it might come looking for you.” She opened her mouth to speak, but Seth went on before she could. “I’m not trying to scare you. Just stay in big groups and don’t get in trouble. I’ll come help you out on the next moon.”

“Am I dangerous until then?” she asked.

He gave her a serious look. “Maybe.”

They made their way back to the lake. It was easy with Rylie’s sense of smell. Seth took her to Camp Silver Brook in the canoe, but this time, their trip was silent. Rylie stared up at the waxing sliver of moon in the sky.

Why had Rylie, of all people, been bitten? She was going to become a wolf at the end of summer, and she hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

She got out on the beach. Seth stayed in the canoe.

“I’ll see you on the full moon,” he said, passing the folder to her. His fingers brushed against hers. “Remember: lay low.”

She climbed her way back to camp and looked for Seth once she reached the office. Seth waited in the boat, and although it was too dark to see his face, she could tell he was watching her go.

Rylie got into bed and huddled under the sheets. She didn’t fall asleep.

It was a long time until morning.

For a few days, Rylie thought she might actually get away with her trip to the other side by following Seth’s orders. She stayed in her cabin when she could and passed the time by reading The Legends of Gray Mountain by flashlight.

Rylie stared at the words
insatiable hunger
. She shivered.

When she had to leave the cabin for activities, Rylie participated without arguing. She swam in the lake and went kayaking. She made bracelets, learned about edible flora, and took hikes. Amber still looked like she was afraid Rylie would explode, so they avoided each other. Louise was relieved.

“You’ve been doing great this week,” she said when Rylie was helping clean up after a campfire dinner. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

She gave the counselor a weak smile. It was hard to rebel when all she could think about was becoming furry on the next full moon.

Rylie tried to get through all of The Legends of Gray Mountain, but she found herself returning again and again to the pages depicting what would happen every moon. The final werewolf looked like a normal wolf, but bigger and deadlier.

Her fear wasn’t the worst part. No. The worst part was that she was almost excited.

She tried to banish the thought, just like she tried to ignore the meat on the buffet line, but it was hard without other distractions. Amber hadn’t picked on her much since the archery incident, and everyone else was avoiding her, too. Making hemp lanyards was hardly more interesting than The Legends.

If nothing else, reading made her free time pass quickly. She started reading it by the campfire’s flickering flames during her free time in the evening, too, brushing ash off the pages.

The next full moon.
Rylie curled her fingers to examine them. She couldn’t imagine claws bursting from the tips. It was ridiculous. Nightmarish.

But her symptoms were undeniable. One lunch, Rylie found herself hovering over the sandwich meat again, imagining the feel of it tearing between her teeth. They would have hamburger that night. She could smell it being ground in the kitchens even though they hadn’t started cooking yet.

“I’m a vegetarian,” she whispered to herself, like she had every day for the last couple of weeks. It sounded even feebler than before. Giving into eating red meat would
not
be laying low, especially after the scene she made over getting more vegetarian options.

Stubbornly selecting the tofu Louise had ordered and a bag of potato chips, Rylie took her lonely position at the end of a table. Nobody joined her, like usual. She didn’t mind anymore. She was too preoccupied to talk.

A hulking man strode into the mess hall. His eyes scanned the room and briefly fell on Rylie.

Jericho.

She sank lower on her bench and tried not to look guilty, stuffing her food into her mouth faster than before. But Jericho didn’t approach her table. Instead, he went to sit with Louise. If he told her that Rylie had been on the boy’s side of the lake, then no amount of hiding would save her. She would be sent home.

Rylie tried to ignore the counselors as she finished her meal. As soon as she was done, she dumped her tray on the line and hurried outside.

“Rylie!” Cassidy ran to meet her. She was wearing a torn pair of jeans and a black shirt again, defying the summer heat. “Are you done with lunch already?

“Yeah,” she said, glancing over her shoulder into the mess hall. Jericho and Louise were gone.

“You want to hang out? I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Uh, no. Not right now, Cassidy,” Rylie said. “Sorry, I have to get going.”

“Why?” She stepped in front of Rylie’s path to keep her from leaving. “I have some wicked new drawings to show you.”

Jericho and Louise emerged from the back side of the building, strolling toward the offices. Ignoring her better instincts, which told her to go back to her cabin and avoid Jericho, she edged around Cassidy.

“Sorry. Maybe later.”

The counselors paused to talk on the trail, and Rylie ducked behind a nearby tree to listen.

“Trouble on the other side, huh?” Louise asked cheerfully. “I always thought the boys were better behaved than any of the girls.”

Jericho folded his arms and glowered. He was a shadow in the sunshine. “Maybe there was a girl being a bad influence on one of the boys.”

“Did you see a girl over there?”

“I saw two kids out together, but it was dark. I couldn’t identify them. Even so, I have reason to suspect one of them was a camper from your side of the lake.”

“That’s a problem,” Louise said.

“Yes. Why would a girl cross over?”

She laughed. “Oh, probably the usual reasons. It seems like we catch a few couples in the act every year. Remember those two last year? Every single Tuesday night! It never amounted to any real trouble. They’re just doing what teenagers do.”

“It could become more trouble than we suspect,” Jericho said. His voice was a low, dangerous purr. “Someone also broke into the counselor’s cabin.”

“Who do you think it was?” Louise asked. Rylie held her breath, peeking around the tree again. Jericho’s back was to her. She couldn’t make out his expression.

“I don’t have enough evidence to make accusations. But if you find one of your girls
has
been getting out, I want to know about it.”

Rylie grimaced. That sounded ominous.

“There’s a couple problem campers this year, but I can’t imagine them stealing anything,” Louise said. “Are you sure it’s that serious?”

“Oh yes.”

She sighed. “All right. I’ll let you know if I discover anything.”

“Thank you, Louise,” Jericho said.

They walked away. Rylie didn’t follow—she had heard enough. Jericho knew she had been on the boy’s side; he just didn’t have enough “evidence.” She didn’t like to think how he was going to prove it, but she knew it was more important than ever to be on her best behavior.

At the beginning of the summer, Rylie would have chopped off her foot to be sent home. Now, over a month later, it was the last thing she wanted. The thought of changing into a werewolf at her dad’s house made her sick. Going home wasn’t an option. Not anymore.

There was a big campfire after dinner that weekend at the amphitheater. The fire pit in the middle of Silver Brook was filled with burning logs, and enough extra fuel was added to make the flames leap higher than the tallest benches. It was too hot to sit in the bottom row. Rylie took her seat in the shadows at the back to wait for announcements.

Cassidy sat beside her.

“How are you doing?” she asked, offering Rylie a chocolate bar from the s’mores ingredients stash by the fire.

Rylie reached out to take it, but her fingers were trembling violently. Instead, she sat on her hands. “I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“You’ve been acting weird,” Cassidy said. “That’s my job.” She laughed, and Rylie figured she was supposed to laugh too. She mimicked the sound. It came out sounding forced and awkward.

“I guess I’m homesick,” she lied.

“Getting any mail from your folks?”

“Sometimes.” Rylie hadn’t gotten anything since her mom sent her new clothing, but that was probably because they were too busy with divorce proceedings to write.

“I’m not.” Cassidy unwrapped the chocolate bar and snapped a piece off in her mouth, chewing it on one side so her cheek bulged. “They hate me.”

Rylie finally took a square of chocolate and let it dissolve on her tongue, watching the campfire. She couldn’t think of anything nice to say to Cassidy about her family, so instead, she asked, “What about those drawings you wanted to show me before?”

Cassidy pushed up her sleeve to bare her wrist. The old ink was fading, but fresh line art ran from the inside of her elbow to the palm of her hand. A shaggy wolf bared his teeth as though chewing on the veins beneath the skin.

Rylie stared at it for too long. It almost looked alive. “That’s a really good illustration,” she said. Her voice was dead.

The director finally stepped in front of the fire to speak. Grateful for the distraction, Rylie pretended to be absorbed in the speech and ignored Cassidy. She didn’t hear a single word.

Instead, she stared up at the sky.

The moon was almost full.

Rylie woke up on the morning of the full moon with a note stuck to her loft window. Seth’s sharp handwriting was on the outside:
Rylie
. Her heart sped a little. Seth had been there last night while she slept. The thought made her blush.

She pulled it from the window pane and unfolded it.

Rylie chewed her bottom lip as she considered his instructions.
After curfew.
It wouldn’t be a problem, as far as the transformation went—The Legends of Gray Mountain indicated that the changes usually began around midnight in the early moons. But sneaking out of the cabin was getting riskier and riskier.

Of course, she couldn’t change within the cabin, either. Rylie read the note one more time, then tucked it in the back of her journal.

On impulse, she tore a blank page out of the back and scribbled her own note.
I’ll be there by ten
. She stuck it in the window. The note was missing by the time she returned from lunch.

She felt normal during the day. Normal enough that she almost doubted any of it was real. It would be easier to think it was all fantasy—werewolves weren’t real, she couldn’t become an animal, and there was no reason to fear the changing moods of the moon. But Rylie could deny her gold-flecked eyes or the near invisible scar on her chest no more than she could deny her suddenly overpowering sense of smell.

Rylie sleep-walked through her day in a haze, desperately wishing the sun wouldn’t go down and the moon wouldn’t rise. But they did. It grew darker and darker, and she grew more anxious.