Wolves, Boys and Other Things That Might Kill Me (14 page)

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I nod to the houseplant and say, “Just tell him your feelings. Boys love that.”

I walk around my room and look at different editions of the paper I’ve posted up. Virgil’s pictures make our column look impressive, but Addie’s column is the hit of the year. How can un-extirpated wolves compete with bad breath?

I read more entries from the wolf watchers. There’s a buzz about the Crystal Creek pack’s invasion of the Druid’s territory. The mighty Druids got stomped. Outnumbered and outmaneuvered, the Druid Peak pack was chased off Specimen Ridge like a bunch of rank puppies. One report says, “Druids tucked their tails and ran.”

I imagine mean old Number Forty barking the retreat to her pack. I turn to my plant. “You just never know, do you?”

I’m eating my third bowl of Cap’n Crunch when there’s a knock at the door. I jump to my feet. I look through the kitchen window at the front door and see a dark hood. I take a kitchen knife out of the drawer. The hood is creepy.

“Hello?” I say through the door.

“It’s Virgil. . . . I want to talk to you . . . about the newspaper.”

I open the door. He’s covered in two inches of snow. “You came over at ten thirty at night to talk to me about the newspaper?”

He smiles. “I don’t know which is scarier, the knife or the train pj’s.”

“Do you want to come in?”

He sits on my tiny couch. I put away the knife and turn on the TV set because I don’t know what else to do. I sit on the floor. When I’m alone with him everything inside me purrs like a giant cat. I have to actually control the impulse to rub my back against his leg. We look at the TV and listen to a man talk about killing his wife.

After a minute he says, “Do you like this sort of thing?” “No,” I say. “But it gives me and my dad something to talk about.”

“You talk about killing people?”

“He was a trial attorney before he moved here. It’s like watching football with an old jock.”

Virgil drags his wet hair back with his fingers. If I didn’t know better I’d think he was nervous. He says, “Can you come up here? I can’t talk to the top of your head.”

There isn’t room on the couch for both of us. When I sit down I’m sandwiched in so tight I have to twist into his side to face him. His clothes are wet and cold.

He looks into my eyes and says, “I really love my mom.”

“That’s nice. . . .” I say, totally grossed out.

He sighs. “But this isn’t working.”

“What isn’t working?”

“Trying to make just
her
happy. I want to make
everybody
happy.”

“Everybody?” I say. “That’s a whole lot of happy.”

He looks at the floor and then takes my hand. He rubs my palm and fingers with his thumbs. It’s weird but I’m a cat so I really, really, like it. I don’t talk because I know it would come out
meow
.

Finally after my hand is about to fall off from happiness, Virgil looks up and kisses me. He touches my shoulder. And then I scoot up out of the torture couch halfway into his lap. He puts his arms around me. His shirt is soaking. A shiver runs up his back. We seem to have a thing about weather and making out.

I say, “How long were you standing out there?”

“I don’t know. Forty-three minutes.”

“You must be freezing. And a stalker.”

“No, I’m fine. But this couch is impressively uncomfortable.”

“My dad doesn’t believe in furniture that encourages laziness.”

“Smart guy,” says Virgil, and pulls me to the floor. We start kissing again, but Virgil keeps shivering. I go to my dad’s bedroom and get Virgil a T-shirt and then to my bedroom and get a blanket. He changes his shirt in front of me. His skin is paper white, but for a guy who never picks up anything heavier than a tripod, he’s ripped.

“Holy smack,” I say.

“What?”

“You have, like . . . muscles.”

He grins stupidly. “I do Tai Chi.”

“Yeah,” I say, wishing I hadn’t given him an extra shirt.

“I used to be big into Tae Kwon Do and that stuff,” he says.

“Were you good?” I say, fascinated.

“I got my brown belt when I was thirteen.”

“Why’d you stop?”

“Umm . . . I shattered my best friend’s nose at a tournament.”

Virgil’s face is quiet, gentle. I can’t see a trace of what he’s talking about. “But it was an accident, right?”

“No . . . I was hurt and I was angry. I wanted to keep hitting him after he went down. The blood just made me angrier.”

“Wow,” I say. “You don’t seem like that.”

“I think everybody’s like that. You just have to push the right buttons.” He smiles weakly and a shiver runs through him. “So I don’t push those buttons anymore.”

I put my hand on his arm. “You’re ice.”

“Do you mind if I try on your blanket?”

He gets under the blanket and pulls it up around his wet head. “Nope. Still cold.”

I get under the blanket with him. Nothing crazy happens. It doesn’t have to. Just being next to Virgil, having him want to be next to me, makes me feel delirious. Of course the whole kissing thing is good, too. It takes a while, but eventually he stops shivering.

I don’t hear my dad and Eloise come in until the front door closes. I peek out of the blanket. They’re standing in front of us.

“Hey,” says Virgil calmly.

Dad says, “What the hell do you think you’re doing with my daughter?”

Eloise steps between us and Dad. “Looks like pretty much the same thing we’ve been doing.”

I’ve never seen my dad look so furious.

“It’s not the same and you know it, Eloise.”

“I think you’re overreacting.”

“Overreacting?” repeats Dad.

Eloise says, “Virgil, do you have your clothes on under there?”

“Sort of,” says Virgil. “I borrowed Mr. Carson’s shirt.”

“How about you, honey?” says Eloise.

I nod my head and stand up. I realize too late what I’m wearing. I shuffle in my Elmo slippers. Virgil stands up, too.

“Wow, trains,” says Eloise, laughing. “I need to get you some new things.”

“Do you think this is funny?” says Dad.

“Samuel, of course I do. It is funny.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Virgil, we’d better go,” says Eloise.

“Yes, I think you’d better,” says Dad. “And I want my shirt back.”

Virgil looks at me sadly and then strips off the shirt. I’m so mortified at this point I’m covered in welts. Virgil, on the other hand, is bizarrely dignified for someone half naked, and just busted by a girl’s father. He’s like Gandhi with hormones.

Virgil folds the shirt neatly and puts it in Dad’s hand. He looks at me again and then at my dad and says, “I’m sorry.”

“Life’s too short,” says Eloise, and walks out the door into the cold, dragging her shirtless son behind her.

MAN OF MYSTERY

MONDAY VIRGIL COMES to school in a good mood, which really hacks me off since I’m been scooting around on my belly thinking about how I’m grounded from him for the rest of my life. Plus Baby has assigned me to do a story on creative dating. Holy smack. In this town creative dating is wiping the dog hair off the seat before your date climbs in your truck.

“You’re chipper,” I say.

“I’m working on something, a new project.”

I wonder if Baby asked him to write about dating, too. Maybe he can talk about being busted warming up with your date under a blanket. Not creative, but has a recognizable story line. I say, “What kind of a project?”

“A you’ll-have-to-wait-and-see project.”

“Are you building my dad a new brain? I’d like that.”

Baby waddles over and taps my desk with her pen. She’s in a foul mood this morning. “I didn’t say you should start your date right now, KJ. Work, please.”

Virgil gives Baby the kilowatt smile. “That’s a great dress, Mrs. Brady. Blue’s a beautiful color on you.”

She smiles back. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

Virgil waits until Baby goes back to her desk and whispers, “Dennis is helping me. And Aunt Jean.”

I pretend to be writing my story, when actually I’m writing my name backward. It relaxes me. “No offense, but I don’t really want Dennis and your aunt Jean working on my dad’s brain. He’s already angry Spock.”

“Your dad is just trying to protect you. You two are big on safety.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m a man of mystery,” says Virgil.

He’s got that right, but what man isn’t?

 

All week long Virgil keeps his secret with Dennis. And since I’m grounded, I can’t see him or call him after school. Friday he misses class altogether. I’m experiencing Virgil withdrawal.

During lunch break Kenner bumps me in the hall. “You part of Vergee’s secret mission, too?”

“What?” I say.

“Dennis semi-squealed. Virgil and Dennis are doing something—besides each other, I mean.”

Great. Even Kenner knows more about this than I do.

“Got me,” I say.

“Yeah,” says Kenner. “I heard about that, too.”

I hurry out of the hall so I can blush in the bathroom. I should never have told Sondra and Addie. I hate small towns.

 

After school I head over to the bookstore to see if they’ve got the book I ordered for my dad for Christmas. They don’t, and Eloise is in my spot.

“What’s up?” I say. We haven’t talked since the blanket incident.

She raises an eyebrow. Apparently Virgil gets that from her. “You tell me, hon.”

“What can I say? My dad’s crazy.”

She sighs and puts her coffee cup down. “He’s not crazy. He’s protective. If I had a beautiful girl like you in my house I’d be protective, too. I should be more protective of Virgil, but he’s seems to be turning out all right. At least I think so anyway. How’s he doing in school?”

“Why?” I say. Mostly I want to know why she’s asking me.

“Because all of the sudden he and Dennis are doing an awful lot of homework. It’s not like him. Even Aunt Jean seems to be in on it. But nobody wants to say what’s going on. You don’t know, I guess?”

“It’s a mystery,” I say, doing an impression of Virgil.

“My grant advisor is in Bozeman this week so this isn’t a real good time for mysteries. I’ll get it out of Jean when I get back. That boy has pulled a few stunts in his life. I feel stunt in the air and I don’t like it.”

She looks me over, from my boots to my beanie, and smiles. It makes me feel as warm as coffee. I wonder if my mom would have looked at me like that. She says, “Virgil told me some kids are giving you a hard time about this wolf column.”

“No big deal.”

“Hang in there, kid. If you don’t have a few enemies, you aren’t doing your job.”

THE CHRISTMAS STROLL

EVERY YEAR THAT I can remember I have gathered with my town on the second weekend in December to light the town tree, share some cider and doughnuts, and have a parade. It’s always below freezing, so it’s kind of a celebration of who we are. If you’re standing on that street corner with a red face, stoically freezing your fingers off, you’re a resident. Everyone’s invited. Everyone belongs.

I meet Sondra and Addie in front of Mr. Muir’s Sticks and Stones store. He has a festive wreath of knives in one window and new sculpture of a wolf pack playing in the snow in the other.

“I love this parade,” says Addie with a sigh. “It always makes me feel like singing Christmas carols.”

“Oh, me, too,” says Sondra. “Deck the halls with gratuitous consumption. Fa la la la la.”

Addie pouts.

“Sondra,” I say in my jolly voice, “how about some peace on earth tonight?”

Three blocks of Canyon Street are decked out for the festivities with red flashing lights, plastic gold stars, and tinsel streamers. Everything sparkles in the falling snow.

“They wouldn’t accept my entry,” says Sondra.

“What was it?” says Addie.

“I was going to call it ‘Rudolph’s Revenge.’” Sondra rubs her nose.

“Festive,” I say.

Sondra nods at me enthusiastically. “I was going to take a blow-up doll in fatigues and tie it onto the top of my mom’s truck and then drive up and down the street dressed up like a drunk elk.”

Addie whines, “Oh, Sondra!”