Silver (6 page)

“
This’ll be all over the
school by lunch,” he whispered excitedly.

“
Mr. Morrison,” the teacher
said in a threatening growl. “You better not be texting during
class.”

The student sat up. “No, Mrs. Poller. I was
just making sure the new guy wasn’t lost.”

The teacher studied him for a minute.
“Alright then.” She turned back to the whiteboard.

It was like that until lunch. Students
watched the fight and talked about it in, during, and between
classes. I saw myself wipe the floor with Chet's pack from several
different angles and heard accounts that made me sound like
Superman. I sat my tray down on the table next to Brock for lunch
and groaned.

“
Bombarded about the
fight?” Brock asked. When I nodded, he smiled sympathetically.
“Hey, at least they realize you were there. The most I get is,
‘Good thing you were on his side.’ Very demeaning if you ask
me.”

“
Very,” I mumbled into my
lasagna of questionable origin.

I looked across the lunchroom and found the
Alpha wolf sitting in his usual corner with his pack around him. I
took a grim pride in the fact that several of them were bandaged
and bruised and shot glares in my direction. But when they saw I
was looking, they turned away and ignored me.

I sat back and toyed with my food. Brock
glanced at me once in a while, but he left me in silence. Then
Mouse sat down.

Mouse was small and scrawny like his
nickname. He had light brown hair and glasses, and brought a sack
lunch. Everything about him was puny, except the smell. He was
definitely a werewolf.

At my surprised look, Mouse gave a minute
shake of his head. I stifled a laugh at the fact that Brock was so
interested in werewolves, and his friend who had been part of the
search for information was in fact one.

Brock turned the topic to a new thriller
movie about vampires that was releasing next weekend, leaving me to
my own thoughts. I studied Mouse who kept his eyes on his peanut
butter and jelly sandwich. The boy looked sick but relieved that I
didn’t rat him out. When the bell rang, he hurried away. He avoided
any contact with Chet’s pack, which was also peculiar.

Chapter 7

“
Maybe they’ve decided not
to mess with you,” Brock said hopefully when we reached his house
after school.

“
Maybe,” I said, but I
doubted it. They would probably take a few days to lick their
wounds and wounded pride, but two Alphas never lived peaceably in
the same city for long. Lucky for Brock, he told his parents about
the attack the other day in the alley but made it seem like an
attempted mugging instead of a werewolf death threat. They forbade
him from going to Mack’s anymore, paid off his debt on the car, and
set up chores for him to do at home instead. They also treated me
like royalty, making me wonder what Brock had said about his
‘rescue’.

“
Some pepperoni pizza to
take home?” Mrs. Nelson asked, hurrying out the door after us with
a large sandwich bag.

“
Uh, sure,” I replied. She
had sent me off that morning with a breakfast pizza of cheesy
scrambled eggs and sausage when I picked up Brock. I had been
grateful for it, but this was getting ridiculous. “You know you
don’t have to-“

She cut me off and shoved the overflowing
bag into my hands. “Now, now, every growing boy likes pizza, don’t
they, Brock?” She ruffled his hair and gave him a fond smile.

Brock grimaced and threw me an apologetic
look.

I shrugged. “Thanks, Mrs. Nelson. I really
appreciate it.”

“
Enjoy, and don’t forget to
tell your Mom that we would love to have you over for dinner some
night.”

“
I will.” I hurried away
before she could tie me into any other commitments.

“
He’s a nice kid,” I heard
her say to Brock. He mumbled something and they disappeared into
the house. I breathed a sigh of relief when the screen door creaked
shut behind them.

Mom had left a note on the counter. “Found a
job, have to go to training tonight. There’s leftovers in the
fridge and some money on the counter if you want pizza. I love you.
Keep safe.”

I filled a cup of milk and took a couple of
Mrs. Nelson’s pizza slices into the living room to watch TV, but I
couldn’t relax. I ordered Chinese food, figuring that Mom would
understand if I didn't get more pizza, then paced by the door until
the delivery boy showed up. Unfortunately, he turned out to go to
our school.

“
Hey, it’s you!” he said
when I opened the door.

I stifled a groan and handed him the twenty
Mom had left.

“
I was there during the
fight. You sure pounded those guys!” He gave a serious frown. “But
I don’t know if I’d go up against them. That Chet’s a bad guy to
mess with.”

“
Tell me about it,” I said
under my breath.

“
Huh?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. Thanks for the
food.” I shut the door before he could protest.

“
Hey, what about your
change?” he shouted through the door.

“
Keep it!”

It must have been more than I thought,
because a second later a surprised, “Thanks, man!” sounded.

I sighed, sat back down on the couch, and
began to flip through the channels in the search of something
interesting. I ate half the food while watching a documentary on
dingoes, then threw the bag in the fridge. The clock showed
10:33pm. It was past curfew, but I wasn’t tired. I went in the
backyard and punched the bag a few times to work out the soreness
in my knuckles from the fight, but when I turned with a punch the
knife wound opened and started to bleed again. I gave up.

The neighbor’s back door opened. The scent
of Chet’s girl tangled through the air.

“
Where are you going?” a
woman’s voice shouted after her.

“
Nowhere,” she yelled back.
“There’s nowhere to go.” She let the screen door slam shut behind
her and walked to the middle of the yard where she stopped with her
arms crossed tightly in front of her chest.

“
Parent
problems?”

She turned and glared in my direction. “What
business is it of yours?”

“
None.” I shook my head.
“But this curfew sucks.”

She gave a humorless laugh. “Not like my
parents would let me go out anyway with the wolves last night.”

“
Wolves?” I asked
carefully.

She walked closer to the fence. “Didn’t you
hear them? They were howling all over the neighborhood.”

“
I must have missed it. We
were dropping off a friend.” Before she could ask any more
questions, I switched to the next subject I could think of. “I
didn’t see you at school today.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, my parents made me go
to Council with them.”

“
A council about
what?”

She sighed. “The wolves again. The Council's
convinced that they’ve overgrown the city.” Her tone sounded
strange, like she wasn’t sure how she felt about the wolves
herself. I wondered if she knew that Chet was one of them.

“
Sounds like a strange
problem for a big city. Why don’t they just get someone to shoot
them?” My gut clenched at the question, but I knew it was something
a regular outsider would ask.

I could see her frown in the moonlight. “Who
says they’re the ones that have to leave?”

Her question caught me by surprise, but
caution outweighed my curiosity about her opinion. The talk about
wolves, the fight today, and the empty house behind me was too much
to take at the moment. I made my way past the punching bag to the
back fence.

“
Where are you going?” she
asked in surprise.

“
Out.”

“
Out?” She followed me on
her side of the fence. “You can’t go out; there’s a
curfew.”

Exasperated, I turned and faced her through
the wooden slats. “Look, my mom’s at her job, no one’s home, and
I’m fed up with being by myself. There’s got to be something to do
here at night.” I grabbed the panel that ran along the back of the
fence and levered myself over the top to drop in the alley behind
it.

“
You’re crazy,” she said,
but I heard her struggle to get over as well. She landed beside me
a few seconds later, a gleam of triumph in her eyes.

“
I’m Jaze.”

“
Nicole,” she said with a
beautiful smile. “But everyone calls me Nikki.” She combed her long
black hair back with her fingers and tied it in a ponytail with a
rubber band she pulled from her pocket. “Alright, I’m
ready.”

“
For what?”

She grinned. “Anything; bring it on. After
what I saw today, I don’t doubt you have more trouble up your
sleeves.”

I stared at her. “I thought you weren’t at
school.”

She laughed and held up her phone. “I got
five different views of the fight, five. Keep it up and you’ll be
the best known delinquent in the city.”

I shoved my hands in my pockets and started
down the alley. She waited for a minute, then ran to catch up.

“
Boy, you’re touchy. I
figured a guy who’d mess with Chet would have a thick
hide.”

“
He’d have to,” I said. I
watched her out of the corner of my eye, but she shrugged it off
and looked into the yards we passed.

“
This is exciting,” she
said in a loud whisper.

“
You’ve never been out in
the city at night?” I asked incredulously.

“
Not when it’s against the
law!” I laughed and she slapped my shoulder. “Shhh, do you want us
to get caught?”

I grinned and shook my head, catching the
enthusiasm that shone on her face. We made our way behind a grocery
store, through the parking lot of an abandoned gas station, and
into the next alley. Adrenaline began to course through my veins at
the thrill of the night hunt, the escape from society, and the cool
breeze that brought with it a promise of rain that smelled so sweet
it was all I could do to keep from standing still and just taking
it all in.

It wasn’t until we reached the back of a
run-down mall that someone spotted us.

“
Hey you two!” a security
guard sporting a reflective orange vest and a nightstick shouted at
us.

Nikki and I looked at each other. “Run!” I
shouted. She grabbed my hand and we dashed across the sparsely lit
parking lot toward the skeletal outlines of partly-constructed
houses beyond.

I could have run faster, but I didn’t want
to leave Nikki to the whims of the guard. Luckily, he stopped at
the edge of the parking lot and waved his stick at us.

“
Whoa, give a guy an inch,”
I said when we’d caught our breath. We made our way between the
houses. The frames made silhouettes like dinosaur bone shadows
along the freshly paved road.

“
Yeah, seriously,” Nikki
replied. “There’s a man on a power trip.” She must have realized
that she was still holding my hand because she let it go and gave
me a self-conscious smile.

“
Do you think he would have
run away if we turned around and started chasing him?”

She laughed. “Probably. We’ll have to
remember to bring our own orange vests next time, then we’ll see
who’s tough.”

The thought made me chuckle. “You’d be
pretty intimidating in orange. I don’t think it’d be fair to
him.”

She was about to reply when a yell caught my
attention. “Wait,” I held up a hand. “Do you hear that?” Another
yell sounded, followed by a shout of triumph.

“
What?” Nikki
asked.

I hurried toward the sound, afraid that
someone might be in trouble. She followed close behind.

We ran across two vacant roads, through a
bingo hall parking lot, and jumped over a ditch. A fence about
eight feet high stretched off into the night, and beyond it I could
see a dozen smaller roofs. Yelling followed by cheers came again
from behind it. “What is this place?”

“
It’s a giant swap meet on
the weekends. I didn’t think anyone came here during the week.” She
peered through the fence, but the only thing we could see was the
back of a building.

I laced my fingers together. “I’ll give you
a hand.”

She stared at me. “What? No way. I’m not
going in there.”

I pointed toward the sound. “Listen. There’s
no screaming, just laughing and yelling. Sounds like a bunch of
people having a good time. I just want to see what they’re doing.”
I gave her a smile. “It’ll take two seconds. We’ll just peek in,
see what’s up, and then leave.”

She gave me a suspicious glance. “You
promise?”

I nodded and put my hands together again.
She sighed, then stepped onto them. She let out a tiny squeak when
I hoisted her to the top of the fence, but she grabbed the top
pole, levered herself over, then lowered until she could fall to
the ground. “But how are you-“

I jumped and caught the bar with my hands,
then pulled myself over and landed on the ground beside her.

“
Oh.” She bent to tie a
shoelace. I waited impatiently until she stood. “Ok, I’m ready,”
she whispered.

I led the way around the back of the first
building, across a gravel pathway, then along a second. The noise
grew louder as we neared the center of the complex. We passed rows
of sheds with rolling doors pulled down and locked. The scents of
old books, furniture, tires, animal cages, clothes, cheap
electronics, stale food, and garbage filled my nose. By the smell
of things, the place was very active on the weekends.