This Is Not a Werewolf Story (25 page)

I barely hear him. My eyes focus on the little key. The top of it is in the shape of a lighthouse. The key to the turret. I set my hand over it. I need the recipe cards more than ever.

“Mr. Tuffman,” the dean shouts. “Mr. Tuffman, come here!”

While he's shouting, I slip the key into my pocket.

I hear Ms. Tern scolding the dean. “You're going to
humiliate
him. Really, Oliver, you haven't got a clue, have you?”

I look up and see Tuffman heading toward us. That's when I realize the dean wants Tuffman to carry me up to my bedroom.

Are you kidding me?

I jump up and take the steps two at a time. Dean Swift and Ms. Tern can hardly keep up with me. The sooner I get into bed, the sooner they'll leave me alone. I have the key to the turret, and the answers to all of my questions are in that recipe box.

Dean Swift flips on the light in my room. “You will stay in bed until tomorrow morning. We can't risk a relapse.”

He turns to leave, then stops in the doorway. The air feels heavy all of a sudden. He's going to say something that maybe I don't want to hear.

“We all make mistakes, Raul,” he says.

I nod. The scratch Tuffman gave me throbs. I'm glad it hurts, because I deserve it.

“It is through our failures—not in spite of them—that we triumph,” the dean says softly. “You disappointed me this morning. You made me very, very proud this afternoon.”

I swallow hard and look down.

“Pajamas!” he says as he turns out the light.

I put on my pajamas and listen to him and Ms. Tern bickering as they walk away. It's funny, they act like old friends even though she's new. I can't make out what they're saying, but I have a feeling it's about her shooting the cougar. I think she calls him a twit. Did he just tell her to put a lid on it?

I listen until the hallway is quiet. I open my door and peek out.

A second later and I've unlocked the utility closet. I glide up the steps. The recipe box is on top of Dean Swift's tape recorder. I grab it.

On the second step down the stairs I see the doorknob turn. For a split-second I'm so scared, I can't move.

“You forgot to lock it?” It's Ms. Tern.

“Never!” I hear the dean say as the door opens.

I turn around. I put the box back and dart under a small table pushed against the wall.

“You're an absentminded old duffer,” Ms. Tern says as the steps creak and Dean Swift starts to puff-puff his way up them.

I pull a desk chair in under the table to hide myself better. I barely stop my scream. Coiled on the seat is Gollum. She lifts her head and looks at me. The back of my neck tingles. Then she drops to the floor and glides away.

“So you think this is why the cougar is here?” Ms. Tern asks.

They're so far from the truth they can't even see its tail end. The cougar is here for the wolf. I almost crawl out from under the table to tell them. But then I'd have a lot to explain. The key feels hot in my pajama pocket.

“It's a theory,” says the dean.

“But it supports mine,” she says.

“I don't see how.” Dean Swift sounds tired.

“Luke Ferrier has spent a lifetime hunting rare predators. What if you're right? What if the Fresnel lens attracts them?”

There's a long silence.
Luke Ferrier
. My brain scratches around. Where have I heard that name before?

“It doesn't
call
them, exactly,” Dean Swift finally says. “It's more complicated.”

My ears stretch, I'm listening so hard.

“It's not a theory. It's a hunch. Perhaps the light of this lens has the power to open a kind of doorway in the natural world between different states of being. I think White Deer Woods is one of those doorways. And maybe certain types of predators are attracted to that power threshold.”

I shiver. I'm hot and cold at the same time. The dean only has half the story. He's wrong about why the cougar's here, but he's right about the door. White Deer told me my lighthouse in the woods was a place between
places. That's a good definition of a doorway, isn't it?

But here's what Dean Swift doesn't know. The door the light opens isn't White Deer Woods. When the light hit me last Friday on the edge of the cliff, it opened the door inside
me
—the door that separates wolf me from Raul me.

“What if you're right?” Ms. Tern asks. “Let's say that the light draws
certain types of predators.
What if Ferrier got wind of your experiments somehow, and decided to hunker down on this island and wait to see what your light would bring him?”

“If that were true, then the Fresnel lens would be like a baited trap!” Dean Swift sounds horrified.

“Precisely,” says Ms. Tern. “Forty years ago, the Penn Cove Massacre brought Ferrier two spirit animals in one felonious swoop. Why wouldn't he return to the scene of his most successful crime? Especially if he thought that your light would lure his prey to him.”

It clicks. Luke Ferrier is the criminal mastermind she told us about in class.

“I've been fiddling with the light for years,” Dean Swift says. “Why would he show up now? It doesn't add up.”

“It does, in fact, add up. This fall when you sent me the fundraiser flyer for your school and I saw the photo of your new coach, I knew it was him. The bio matches perfectly. I've been following Ferrier for years, always
one step behind. Seven years ago the trail went cold. Interpol determined Ferrier must have died. I moved on to elephant poachers. But seven years ago—that's just about the time Tuffman broke his back, isn't it? It's been one surgery after another for him since then. No wonder he hasn't been in shape to hunt.”

Ms. Tern should stick to tossing shivs and reading novels. Tuffman isn't Luke Ferrier and he isn't here to hunt the cougar. He
is
the cougar.

Dean Swift isn't buying it either. “How could
our
coach be
your
Luke Ferrier?”

“Look,” she says. “It's a photo of Ferrier taken in August, 1970, just after the massacre.”

“That photo is over forty years old!”

“Stay on topic, Oliver. The resemblance is uncanny.”

“I am on topic. He looks thirty in that picture. Does Mr. Tuffman look like a seventy-five-year-old man? Or is he ageless? It's not rocket science. It's arithmetic.”

I hear Ms. Tern's heels click angrily on the wood floor. “Didn't you see him try to kill that snake? Tell me how many coaches at primary schools carry hunting knives about in the pockets of their tracksuits. And do you care to know how I came by that rifle? Tuffman—
Ferrier
—was out hunting cougar with it. The man is a predator. And take our little prodigy, our little Raul, with his big eyes and sharp teeth.”

What does she think I have to do with it?

And I don't know if I like that description.

“Raul
hates
him. That boy has instinct. Today, in fact, I saw him shake Tuffman's hand,” her voice slows.

I hold my breath. I didn't know she was watching us. What did she see?

“I saw Tuffman's knees buckle. As if Raul—the skinny thing—gripped his hand too hard. And when I walked by just after, your coach's face was white with pain. Blood was seeping into his shirt where Raul had touched him.”

Dean Swift doesn't say anything.

“Oliver?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“You do realize that Raul is one of our kind?”

My eyes get watery. So it wasn't a dream the other night. She really did tell me her mother was an orca.

Her mother must have been one of the ones Ferrier filled with rocks or one of the white ones that disappeared. No wonder she hates him. My face is wet, and I turn my head to wipe it on my shirt. I think of White Wolf and how alone I would be if I lost her.

In the silence I can feel Gollum staring at me from some dark corner. I try not to sniffle. What kind
are
we?

You'd think it would make me happy to find out that it's not just me, my mom, and Tuffman. Instead, I feel a little angry. I don't know why. But shouldn't they be trying to help me?

The dean just stands there with his hand resting on
my mom's recipe box. I can't see his face. What is his second self ?

“It's too early to know. It'll be years before he's called,” Dean Swift says. “And you must be mistaken. Our kind or not, a child his size could hardly have injured Mr. Tuffman.”

That was a low blow, dean. He's a mole, I bet. Don't they have eyes that can't see?

“I'm telling you what I witnessed. And, if Ferrier is Tuffman, and Tuffman is Raul's uncle, mightn't the boy be in danger? Shouldn't we warn him in some way?”

During the long silence that follows, I get nervous. My hands get damp and I can feel the blood beat in my throat. What are they going to do about me?

“We shouldn't be talking about this,” the dean finally says. He smacks his desk with his hand. “Keep the woods in the woods, Nicolette. It's the way we survive. We know each other there, and that's enough. He's far too young to be shifting anyway. And even if he were, I can only help him if he asks. I'm not allowed to intervene. And you can't either. It's the way.”

His words sink in. Finally something one of these two says makes sense. We know each other in the woods. We don't talk about it. We keep our selves separate. That's what my gut has been telling me to do all along. It's how our kind has managed to survive, the dean is saying, and hearing him explain it gives
me a feeling of peace. I understand the rules—the way—of my own kind instinctively. It's why nobody can help me. I will figure it all out on my own.

“It's time we organize ourselves, Oliver,” Ms. Tern says so softly I almost can't hear her. “It's time we make new ways. We must defend the wild.”

“Silence is our only defense. The old way is the only way,” Dean Swift says.

They're both quiet for so long my feet fall asleep.

“Turn off the light,” Ms. Tern finally says. “Until we know what it does.”

“How can I know, if I turn it off? Show me more than an old photo and a cold trail. Until then, I'll believe the most rational version of events. Ferrier is a very old man or a dead one. His days of destruction have ended. And Coach Tuffman is an Olympian who has boxed up his medals in order to forge a relationship with his long-lost nephew.”

“There's no talking sense to you.” Ms. Tern stomps down the stairs.

Dean Swift tinkers around at his desk for a while.

“Gollum,” he whispers. The snake slithers across the floor, and he lifts her onto his desk. “Guard the light,” he says with a little smile in his voice.

Then he takes the stairs slowly, his knees creaking as loudly as the steps. At the door I hear him mutter, “Now I must find that key.”

I take the stairs quick, two at a time. I want out of there before the dean decides to come back and look for the key. The second after I slip under my covers, I hear a tap at the door.

Vincent walks in with my dinner. I smile like I'm happy to see him, but I'm not.

I want to be alone, so I can think about every crazy thing I just overheard. I want the story and all its pieces out in front of me.

And I kind of want to cry, because I just realized that I left the recipe card box in the turret.

Vincent sets the tray on my desk under the window. It smells good. Fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Gravy—the good kind, homemade. And green beans with salt and basil. My stomach grumbles and moans and shouts and screams.

It's funny how good food can make you feel better.

Vincent sits down. He seems to have forgotten my dinner.

“Please promise you won't tell anyone what a loser I was.”

“I won't tell,” I say. Didn't we go over this already? I look at the food.

“Promise? I don't want them to call me chicken like they did at my last school.”

Would it be rude to get my tray? Since Vincent is sitting between me and it, I'd have to climb all the way down the length of my bed. Or leap over Vincent.

I eyeball it. I could probably almost clear his head.

He blurts out, “
Everyone
likes me here. At my old school nobody would even sit next to me at lunch.”

“I promise.” I understand now. Vincent got typecast. That's when you get a reputation for being bad, or stupid, or a crybaby. You get stuck with that word and you can't get anyone to drop it. And when you come to a new school, you think you'll finally change that word.

There's nothing worse than finding out the word for you is always the same.

After a minute he walks over to my window. It's dark out, so all he can see is his own reflection.