Raised by Wolves

Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

“I DON’T GET why you’re so worried about her, though,” Waylon says as we walk east along the road toward town. “You’ve never even met Julissa Hill.”

“Well, the chief’s worried.” I point to the rangeland, the mountains, the forest—all the wilderness that surrounds Kokanee Creek. “It’s dangerous out there.”

And I know all about it.

“She didn’t get eaten by a bear, Kai.”

“How do you know?”

“Because we’re juniors at Kokanee Creek High School. We aren’t elk and wolves in a nature show about how only the strongest survive.”

“For your information, no one survives,” I say. “Nature’s a battle that all of us lose.”

“How cheerful,” Waylon says sarcastically.

“Sorry for being honest.”

“Uh, you’re obviously not.”

“Okay, I’m sorry that I’m not sorry. Maybe living in a city cuts you off from the realities of life and death, but it’s a fact.”

“Last time I looked, Kokanee Creek wasn’t actually a city.”

He has a point—what’s the population, three thousand? But still. “It might as well be Paris as far as I’m concerned.”

Waylon laughs and knocks his shoulder into mine in a friendly, maybe even flirty way. When his skin slides against mine, I feel its smooth, delicious warmth. And I just freeze . Every muscle in my body goes tense. I actually stop breathing.

“Kai?” he says. “Are you okay?”

No, no I’m not.

My heart’s pounding.

Get it together, Kai. Breathe.

“What happened?” he asks.

I inhale and blink at him. Try to smile and brush it off. Start to move again. “Tonic immobility,” I say.

Waylon looks at me blankly.

“After a predator has made contact with its prey, the prey freezes to prevent further attack,” I explain. “It’s called tonic immobility.”

He shakes his head. “Kai,” he says, “I’m not a predator.”

“I know,” I say. Of course you’re not. “I just—oh, never mind. I’m sorry.” I start to walk faster. I can hardly admit that one touch of Waylon’s skin sent me reeling. Made me feel something I’d never felt before.

Get it together, Kai.

Waylon hurries to catch up to me. “Don’t growl at me for asking, but don’t you think it’s ironic that you’ve gone from being a convict to an aspiring crime solver?”

This ridiculous question breaks the spell that Waylon doesn’t even know he put on me. “I’m not a convict, because I was never even charged with anything, let alone convicted,” I say. “And I really hope there’s no crime we’re going to uncover.”

As we walk past the diner, I catch a glimpse of Holo through the window. Lacey had promised him ice cream after school. I wave, but he doesn’t see me.

You don’t need fangs for three scoops of ice cream, Holo. Hell, you don’t even need teeth .

But why am I annoyed? Isn’t this what I wanted for us—to live like everyone else? I shake off my weird feeling of unease and keep walking.

“Do we have far to go?” I ask Waylon when we’ve reached the far edge of town.

“Define ‘far,’” he says.

I think about this. “Ten miles.”

His mouth drops open. “You’re joking.”

A wolf pack’s territory is a hundred square miles or more. “No.”

“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” he says.

“There” is a faded yellow house overlooking a weed-choked pond. A couple of dogs on the front porch get to their feet as we approach. I check for stiff legs and raised hackles. But I don’t see those signs of aggression.

The dogs sniff our legs as we climb the steps. One of them wags its stumpy tail. Waylon gives it a pat and then knocks on the door.

After a while a twentysomething guy with pale, scruffy cheeks and a confused expression opens it and says, “What are you doing here?”

“Hey, Carl,” says Waylon. “How’s your score on Red Dead Redemption ?”

“Better than yours, bro, that’s for sure,” Carl says. His bloodshot eyes shift over to me. “You two selling Girl Scout Cookies or something? I only like Samoas, so fuck off with your Thin Mints and your peanut-butter whatevers.”

Waylon gives a tiny shake of his head and mouths He’s not my bro at me. I try not to laugh. Then he says, “I had to quit the Girl Scouts, Carl. I just couldn’t earn my sewing badge.” Then he gets serious and his voice goes lower. “I’m wondering if you’ve seen Julissa around.”

“Julissa?” Carl repeats. “Who’s asking?”

“Us, obviously,” I say sharply. I don’t like this guy. He smells sour. Weak. He wouldn’t survive a day in a state park, let alone a lifetime in the wilderness.

Carl frowns and starts to close the door on us. But Waylon puts his foot in the way and turns to me. “Carl is Julissa’s secret boyfriend, Kai, so we should be polite to him.”

I look more closely at skinny, greasy Carl in his sweat-stained T-shirt. That guy? Ewww.

Carl starts to protest, but Waylon calmly keeps explaining things to me. “Carl’s twenty-five, so Julissa hasn’t told her mom about him. She hasn’t told her friends, either. They definitely wouldn’t approve. No offense, Carl.”

“Then how do you know about him?” I demand.

“Because I’m an observant person. Generally I’d rather watch people than talk to them.”

How come you keep talking to me , then? I think. But I say, “You didn’t notice that Julissa was gone.”

Waylon ducks his head, acknowledging this. “True. But she skips school a lot.”

Carl says to Waylon, “So you’re Nancy damn Drew now, huh?” He looks mad.

“I guess,” Waylon says good-naturedly.

Carl stares at Waylon for another minute, like he’s trying to decide whether to punch him or invite him in to play video games. Eventually—probably because he knows he’d lose the fight—Carl opens the door wider and says, “All right.”

Inside, the living room’s dark and it smells like old cigarette smoke and stale beer. There’s a dark-haired girl lying on a lumpy brown couch with a Coke balanced on her stomach. She turns to Waylon and says dully, “What are you doing here?”

“Funny, that’s just what your boyfriend asked us,” Waylon says. “I told him we were looking for you.”

Relief floods my body. Julissa’s safe.

Well, mostly.

Julissa yawns. “Here I am,” she says.

“Your mom misses you,” Waylon says.

“Bullshit.”

Waylon goes, “Fine, your mom sucks. But you really need to call her.”

Julissa rolls her eyes.

“Seriously,” Waylon says.

“ You call her,” Julissa says. “Tell her I said hi.”

“You want me to send Carl’s best wishes, too?” Waylon asks.

Julissa puts the Coke on the floor and sits up. “You little shit,” she says.

“I’m not little,” Waylon points out. “The shit part I’ll give you.”

“You should go back home, and tomorrow you should go back to school,” I say.

My voice wakes Julissa up a little. “Who’re you?” she practically snarls.

I shrug. “Just the new freak in town.”

Julissa waits a beat and then—total surprise—she actually smiles a little. “Okay, freak,” she says. “Whatever.”

“I’ll see you in math class tomorrow, right?” Waylon asks.

“Whatever,” she says again. But she’s still smiling.

It’s a nice smile.

“The way I see it,” Waylon says as we walk back toward town, “is that people want to disappear sometimes. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want someone coming after them. It doesn’t mean they don’t want to be found.”

I reach down and grab a fistful of pigweed from the roadside. I start stripping the leaves from the stems. What I don’t point out to Waylon is that it’s possible to be found and lost at the same time. And Holo and I know all about what it feels like.