Howl (Howl #1) (5 page)

Mrs. McKinley shook her head. “He might stay away longer this time. It’s never been so bad that your father ended up in the hospital. Seth might ac
tually feel guilty for once.”

Samara doubted that her brother would ever feel guilty for the things he said or did to their parents. She cringed thinking about how awful her dad’s face had looked when she’d peeked in on him while he was sleeping before she left for Emma’s house today. Both of his eyes had turned black and there were bruises and cuts all over his face. It was scary to think that her brother was able to inflict that much pain on
his own father.

“Mom, I think that Seth needs therapy sessions or anger management or something. He really needs
to get some help or this is ju
st going to keep on happening.”

“Oh, Samara, don’t be silly,” Mrs. McKinley replied, forcing a laugh and waving her hand in the air. “Your brother’s fine. He’s
just going through a phase.”

“A phase that’s lasted for months!” Samara exclaimed, feeling
her cheeks reddening
. She hadn’t realized that her mom was in such
deep denial about Seth’s anger issues
. “Next time, someone could get killed if you keep le
tting him get away with it.”

“He’ll grow out of the phase that he’s in soon, Samara. Don’t worry,” Mrs. McKinley replied, yawning and running an unpolished fingernail through her black hair. “I’m going to bed. You should do the same soon, so that you’re not too tired for sch
ool. See you in the morning.”

“Goodnight,” Samara grumbled. She felt a shar
p, jabbing pain in her wrist.

Once her mom left the room, Samara looked at the area
where the wolf had bitten her. The blood flow had slowed down a bit; it wasn’t seeping through the bandage. Samara breathed a sigh of relief.
She wouldn’t have to worry about getting her parents to take her to the hospital. H
er pa
rents would never have to find
out that she had lied to them.
 

Chapter 5

****

“So, you have got to tell me all of the details,” Emma said excitedly the next day at school. “What was the surprise? Did
you have fun? Did you kiss?”

“The surprise was that he wanted us to stargaze, which we never actually got to,” Samara said, pulling her biology book out her locker and slamming the door
shut.

“Oh, so it was that hot and steamy?” Emma replied, more of a statement than a question. “You guys moved really fast. It’s about time you lost your virginity already, though, so I can’t blame you. And, I have to say, Luke is pretty hot, so good ch
oice.”

“No, you pervert. That’s not what happened. It would have been a lot easier if that were the case. We were going to look at the stars in the telescope that he had set up before we even got there, but before we got the chance, I was attacked by a w
olf.”

“What? Oh my God!” Emma shouted, cupping her hands to her mouth. “Why didn’t you ca
ll me last night to tell me?”

Samara shrugged. “I guess I was in shock. It was really scary. The wolf just cam
e out of nowhere and bit me.”

“That’s crazy! Where did you get bit? I don’t see any bite marks,
” Emma said,
scanning her body up and down.

“On my wrist,” Samara replied, pulling up the sleeve of her pale yellow
sweater and peeling back her bandage to show it to Emma.

Emma raised a thin blonde eyebrow at her. “
Ha,
ha, very funny,
Sam!”

Samara stared at her best friend questioningly. “Umm, no,
it was actually really scary.”

“Okay, you sound a little nutso,” Emma replied. “You don’t have a bite mark. Obviously you weren’t attacked by a wolf. Are you okay?” she asked, pressing a palm to Samara’s forehead. “If your date with Luke just went really bad, you can tell me. We’ll have a Ben and Jerry’s night or something. You don
’t have to lie to me about it.”

Samara glanced down at her wrist. Emma was right. The wound was gone. There was no evidence that she had been bitten by the wolf
, except for the leftover blood that had soaked through the bandage the night before
.
“It
did
happen,” Samara insisted. “I swear to you. I don’t know what happened t
o the wound . . .
it was there this morning! You
can even ask Luke if you don’
t believe me. He saw it happen
. Luke wanted to take
me to the hospital.”

“Fine, fine. I believe you. That just makes no sense,” Emma sa
id unconvincingly.

“You’re telling me,” Sama
ra muttered, trying not to blame her best friend for not believing her. Even she had to admit that it sounded pretty crazy.

“I’ve also never heard of a wolf sighting in P
ennsylvania
,” Emma went on. “Ar
e you sure it was even a wolf?”

Samara nodded. “Yes, it was a wolf. You of all people should know that there are wolves in PA. One ruined one of your bo
nfire parties over the summer.”

The expression on Emma’s face told Samara that she was thinking back. “Oh! That wasn’t a w
olf. It was a really cute Husky
!”

Samara sighed. She had already explained to Emma several times
after the party
that it wasn’t
a Husky
, but she hadn’t believed her. Emma also
seemed to believe that the wolf’s growling meant that it was happy and that it wasn’t
ready to attack her if she had ta
ken only one step closer to it.

“So, how did the date go otherwise?” Emma asked
, casually changing the subject
.

Samar
a smiled, thinking back to her
kiss
with Luke
. “It went
good, actually . . .
really good
. After the bite, we both were kind of freaked out, I think. He ended up driving me home right away. He said he wants to
go out with me again, though.”

“Yay!” Emma squealed. “I knew that the two of you were going to hit it off
.”

Samara stared at Emma blankly, unsure if she was genuinely happy for her or
fake happy
for her.
When Emma didn’t meet her eyes, Samara was pretty sure that she knew the answer.

The first bell rang to let them know that class was starting in five minutes. Samara followed Emma to their homeroom class, whic
h was biology with Mrs. Shay.

As they took their seats next to each other, Samara couldn’t help but overhear the g
uys sitting in front of them.

“I almost hit it with my car last night, dude,” Ethan Miller said. “I thought it was a Siberian Hu
sky, but it was way too big.”

“I believe you, man. I saw two of them last week,” Mark Klein replied. “I didn’t even realize there were so many wolves in this area of Pennsylvania. I never sa
w any of them befo
re.”

“Me either. I‘ve never heard of a sighting in Gra
ndview before,” Ethan agreed.

“See,” Samara whispered to Emma. “They probably sa
w the same wolf that bit me!”

Emma shrugged. “They’re total losers. T
h
ey
probably didn’t see any wolf
or
a Husky. They were probably tripping and saw
a bunny
or something.
”

Samara s
ulke
d. She knew that it was hard to believe that she had been bit, but there was no
reason why Emma shouldn’t believe that there were wolves in Grandview.
It was almost as though she didn’t want to believe her. Maybe she was still hoping that Samara’s date
with Luke really had gone bad.

Mrs. Shay came into the classroom, interrupting Samara’s thoughts. She was wearing an unflattering brown maxi dress, a
cropped pale
yellow short-sleeved cardigan sweater, and red heels that clacked against the tiled floor. Mrs. Shay had a habit of never matching her clothes. It was like she put a blindfold over her eyes and randomly pulled
clothes out of her closet to wear
. Emma always talked about how she would lov
e to give Mrs. Shay a makeover and, for once
, Samara had to agree.

“Class, I’m really not here today, if you know what I mean, so I’m going to have you do a lab experiment,” Mrs. Shay said, pacing back and forth. “My niece, Lilly, is missing. Some of you probably know her. Lilly Phillips. Anyway, it’s been really hard on the family, so
I’ve been a bit of a wreck.”

Mrs. Shay whipped out a bottle that contained
tiny
strips of paper. “Your job is to test the PH level of water and compare it to the PH level of Pepsi and lemon juice. So, one of you should come up here to fill two cups, one with lemon juice and the other with Pepsi. Your lab partner should come get a cup and fill it up wi
th water from the back sink.”

Samara stood up and grabbed a cup. She headed towards the back of the room. She reached for the handle of the sink and immediately pulled away. The faucet had burned her skin. It reminded her of the time she had accidentally banged her arm on the oven tray when she was
pulling out a batch of cookies.

“Um, is everything okay?” Mark, who was standing behind her, asked. When she turned and looked at him, she noticed
the puzzled look on his face.

Sam
ara shook her head. “The faucet . . .
It bu
rned me. It’s scorching hot.”

Mark stepped forward and turned the faucet on
, running his hands under the water
. “It doesn’t feel hot to me,
” he replied over his shoulder, wi
th a confused look on his face.

Samara glanced down at her h
and. The feeling lingered, but there wasn’t a burn mark.
 

*

As Samara was filling up her
k
h
aki
green tote bag with books that she was going to need for homework at the end of the day, Luke came over to her locker. “Hey, Sa
mara. Can we talk for a sec?”

“Sure,” she replied, looking up at him. Luke looked really cute today. His light brown hair was slicke
d back and the forest green polo t-shirt
he was wearing brought out the gold flecks in his
emerald green eyes
.

“I had a really good time last night. I know that we said we would go out again really
soon, but . . .
now just isn’t the right time for me. Maybe in the
future, though?” Luke asked, studying her face.

“Oh, umm,” Sam
ara searched for the right words, trying to hide her disappointment
. “Yeah, okay.”

“Thanks for being so cool about it,” Luke said apologetically. “I’ll see you around.” He gave her a small s
mile before walking away.

Samara knew that she wasn’t going to cry over this. They had only gone on one
date, and to be technical,
it was barely even a date. Still, at the end of the
night
, he had kissed her. Why did he kiss her and suggest that they
should
go out again sometime soon if that wasn’t what he was really plann
ing on doing? It made no sense.

Maybe he had
already
met someone who he liked better since last night. Or maybe she had been wrong, and she hadn’t looked good enough
for him
. Maybe Luke wasn’t into curly hair. She probably should have let Emma use the flat iron to
straighten it instead.

Samara hadn’t expected this type of rejection to hurt so
badly
, but she really didn’t have much experience in the love department. In fact, Luke was the first guy who had ever taken her out on a date. Part of that was because her parents were so overprotective and didn’t want her dating until she was eighteen, but it was also because she hadn’t found a guy who she liked enough to bend the rules for. Luke had been the
first – and
when they had played beer bong together at Emma’s house on the night of the party, he had seemed really into her.
He was even nice enough to drink for her whenever a ball made it into their cup – maybe that was part of the problem. She wasn’t a big drinker, unlike the other girls in their class.

Samara wasn’t sure what had changed since last night that would make him not want to go out with her again. She wondered if their kiss had been bad enough to scare him away, even though it had seemed
really
good at the time.