Tell the Wolves I'm Home (14 page)

Ben walked over to a cooler and grabbed a bottle. He handed it to me. “Beer?”

He'd already opened it, so there wasn't much else I could do except take it from him. I thought I'd have a sip and then pour the rest out somewhere.

“Thanks,” I said.

Ben eyed me up. “You're, like, way taller than your sister.”

“Yeah. I know.”

We stood there awkwardly for a while.

“You want to go for a walk or something?” Ben asked.

I thought about it for a few seconds. Maybe a few seconds too long, because Ben said “It's just a walk, you know. Nothing life or death about it.”

So I said yes. Not because I wanted to go for a walk with Ben Dellahunt, but because at least it meant leaving the party. I didn't want to stay around that fire. Near Greta drinking, with all those people I
didn't know. If we went into the woods, it would barely be like a party at all. And if anything went really wrong, I still had the corkscrew in my pocket. I'd folded it down halfway through the train ride with Toby, but I still had it, ready and waiting. And I had a flashlight, which I was pretty sure I wouldn't need but Greta had insisted I bring along.

As we walked farther into the woods, I heard one of the boys yell, “Go, Benno!”

“Ignore him,” Ben said, and edged closer to me.

We were heading toward the brook when he stopped.

“Do you hear that?” he said. “That sounds like, I don't know … dogs or something.”

“They might be wolves,” I said, and then regretted it right away.

He laughed. “Yeah, right. All the wolves were killed off here, like, a hundred years ago. You have to go way the hell up north to find wolves.”

“We don't know everything. Maybe wolves from the north could just walk right down here to Westchester. How would we ever know?” I took another sip of the beer, suddenly feeling bold.

“Shhh,” he said. “Let's listen.” He put two fingers up. “Anyway,” he whispered, “not all wolves are bad.”

I looked down. “No. Not all. Not bad. Just … just selfish. That's what they are. Hungry and selfish.”

He didn't know what to say to that. “Yeah, well, anyway, it's probably just coyotes or dogs. Probably mongrel dogs.” He looked around, then back at me, and picked up my hand. “If you want, we could try to find them.”

Behind us, the fire was still burning strong. People were huddled close to it, tipping beer bottles to their lips. Farther out in the woods were little specks of light, candles and flashlights of other people who'd left the fire.

“I don't think I want to know.” I didn't want to tell him that I liked believing in the wolves.

“Why wouldn't you want to know?” He reached into his coat pocket, then held out his palm to me. “You ever play D&D?”

I shook my head.

“Ah, well …” Ben kind of puffed himself up and started to explain
about percentages and character alignment and experience points. Then he handed me a weird-shaped die and told me to roll it.

“Go on,” he said. “Right here.” He laid out both his flattened palms. He had hands the size of my father's and a voice that was low and even. He had a small patch of stubble on his chin. We were alone together, and somehow the two years between Ben Dellahunt and me seemed wider and darker than the fifteen or twenty between me and Toby only a few hours before. I didn't really understand what I was trying to do, but I let the die fall from my fingers into his hands.

“Awesome,” he said.

“What?”

“I convinced you to go find the wolves.”

“You did?”

“Of course I did. You have, like, no experience points.”

I stood there for a few seconds, wondering whether I should turn back. What I really wanted to do was leave. But I couldn't see Greta near the fire anymore, and if I left, if I went home alone, Greta would be in for it. I wouldn't do that to her.

“Okay, then,” I said. “Let's go.” I pointed in the wrong direction, away from where I knew the wolves were, and we walked. Ben talked on and on about D&D and quests and his favorite parts of
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
. Once in a while we'd stop and Ben would pull out another can of beer from his coat pocket and we'd sit. I wouldn't say that I was exactly enjoying myself, but it was nice. Easy. It made the party seem okay.

I led Ben in a big circle, so eventually we ended up back on the hill above the fire.

“So, no wolves,” he said. He put his hand on my back.

He was the second person in one day who was not from my family to touch me on purpose, and it felt strange. Like he was made of different stuff than I was.

“Guess not.” I took a step forward so his hand fell away. Then I smiled and said, “Doesn't mean they don't exist, right?”

He started to argue, but I was already jogging down the hill to the fire. It was still glowing when I got back down, smoking from the leaves people were piling on it. There was a kind of yeasty smell from
the half-full beer cans, and even though it seemed pretty early, kids were starting to leave. Nobody wanted to push their luck at home. I scanned the faces. I didn't know how much time had gone by, but it was long enough that I expected to see Greta back there. But she wasn't. I saw her friends, but she was nowhere.

I stood there with no idea what to do. The weight of my backpack strained against my shoulders, and all I could think of was how much I just wanted to go home. I wanted to count out the money from Toby. I wanted to spread out everything from that crumpled brown paper bag on my bedroom floor. I wanted to sleep. All I needed was Greta.

I asked around if anyone had seen her, but nobody had. One girl said she thought she'd gone off with Rob Jordan, but she wasn't sure.

I didn't think Greta would leave me. Not this time. This time she'd be in big trouble if she came home without me.

A bunch of kids made their way toward the school. Ben was with them, and he shouted over, “You okay?”

I nodded and waved. “Fine.”

He waved back, then disappeared into the trees.

Only a few kids still sat around the fire. My eyes were burning from the smoke, and I was thirsty and hungry. I took a few steps back into the dark and, without even trying, I felt like a poor peasant girl from the Middle Ages. A girl out in the woods, desperate to find her only sister.

“Greta,” I whispered under the dark branches. “Come on, Greta, just tell me where you are.”

I walked down the hill, away from the school and the fire, until I was next to the brook. I kept calling Greta's name. Soft and then louder, listening for any kind of response, but the only sounds I heard were above me. An owl in the branches or twigs falling. I followed the brook deeper into the woods, the same way I did when I came by myself. There was only the thinnest scrap of moon that night, but I wasn't scared. I kept telling myself that I wasn't scared at all.

I remembered the flashlight and flicked it on, shouting out Greta's name.

“Come out. It's not funny.”

At first I worried about finding her with some boy. Doing things I
supposedly couldn't even imagine. I thought how embarrassing that would be for both of us—all three of us even—but I didn't care anymore. My toes were going numb from cold and I needed to go home.

I kept following the brook, because I didn't know what else to do. I almost turned back, but I kept telling myself,
Just another few steps
, thinking maybe that was all it would take. I scanned the ground with my light as I walked. I picked up the shine of a beer can and once a set of keys, which I put in my pocket. And I kept calling out Greta's name, louder each time. Maybe she was gone. Maybe she'd forgotten about me altogether.

That's when the flashlight glinted off something at the base of a big tree. I looked around. This was
my
tree. The maple. And there was the old stone wall. I was in my place. For a second it was a comfort to be there, but then it quickly faded, because at night there was nothing special about it. Nothing medieval. It was nothing but cold and dark.

I angled the light at the glinting spot on the ground and walked toward it, thinking it was probably a broken beer bottle, but when I got up close I could see that the light was reflecting off a pair of glasses. The glasses were on a face. Greta's muddy face. Just her face on the forest floor, her shiny black hair pulled back tight and those round silver-framed glasses. Her eyes were closed, and for that first second my body went rigid, because I really thought it was only her head laid down on the bed of leaves.

“Greta.”

I reached out for her, and right away I could feel her body, buried under a thick pile of cold damp leaves. It looked like the earth was her bed and she'd pulled up the forest floor all around her like a comforter. She looked peaceful, like she belonged in that place. If I wasn't her sister and if it wasn't so cold, I might have left her there, thinking she knew exactly what she was doing. I gave her a shake and she curled into herself.

“Greta, come on. Get up.” I sat her up and leaned her against my arm. I pushed the soggy leaves off her chest and tried to shake her awake.

She let out a groan and tried to lie back down, but I held her tight. I looked behind me and couldn't see even the faintest glow from
the fire anymore. Someone must have put it out. Everyone must have left. There was only Greta and me.

I shoved Greta's dirty glasses and the flashlight into my pocket and one more time I tried to wake her. I shook her by the shoulders and shouted, “Greta. Michelle. Elbus. Wake. Up.”

Her eyes fluttered and she twitched her shoulders to push my hands away.

Usually I would give anything to shrink, to be small and graceful like Greta, but on that night, under that nearly moonless sky, I was glad to have strength and size. I dragged her to the tree trunk and propped her up in a sit against it. I slung my backpack onto one shoulder. Then I crouched down in front of her, my back to her belly, and stretched her arms around my neck.

“One … two … three,” I said, then leaned forward and teetered to standing. Her fingers were weak, drunk person's fingers, so I stayed stooped over to stop her from falling off. I thought of all the times when it was the other way around, Greta piggybacking me around the backyard when we were little.

I didn't know what I would do when we got home, I just knew that I had to get us there. I chewed a piece of gum until it was soft and then put it in Greta's mouth, which I know is gross, but it was the only way I could think to hide her breath. Then we left, just me running with my sister, the wolves at our backs. It was like we were a story, us two. A real story, not just one I made up.

I walked, stopping to set Greta down a few times when I started to get tired. I stayed in the woods for as long as I could before coming out onto Evergreen Circle, where I knew I could cut between the Morellis' house and the Kleins' and onto Young Street, which connected to our own. Right there, in that stretch of weedy grass between those two houses, Greta whispered into the back of my neck.

“Remember invisible mermaids?” she said. Her voice was hoarse and tired. It sounded like someone else was talking, not Greta. I was breathing hard. I stopped to catch my breath.

I nodded. I did remember. There was this tropical fish place in Queens. Neptune's Grotto. A huge dim room, like a warehouse. Fish tanks stacked at least six high, almost right up to the ceiling, towering
over the heads of Greta and me. Yellow tangs, lyretail mollies, emerald rainbowfish, kissing gouramis.

Greta would grab my hand and we'd run between the aisles. The story we had was that all the fish had been trapped and we were free because we were invisible mermaids. We would hide, even though nobody was looking for us. The owner of the place was a friend of my grandfather's, so even though we didn't live anywhere near Queens anymore, my dad was still the accountant for that place.

“Remember the blue place? That little blue room,” Greta mumbled.

I nodded. That was the fish nursery where they kept the newly hatched stuff.

My back ached and I wanted so badly to put Greta down again. She was awake. She could stand. I could set her down on the curb and we could talk about invisible mermaids. But I knew if I did that, the moment would be over. As soon as she saw my face, she'd remember to be mean. She'd remember who she was.

“What about it?” I said.

“I don't know, just sometimes … sometimes I think about things like that. What it used to be like.”

I almost told her that it could be like that again. That if she stopped being so mean we could go back to being like we used to be. But I didn't say it. I wasn't sure it was true.

So instead I said, “Maybe we could try to go there sometime.”

“Yeah. We could, couldn't we?” And right in my belly I felt how much I'd been missing her. The real Greta. The old Greta.

“Greta?” I felt her nod. “What did Mr. Nebowitz want the other night?”

I knew asking her was risky. She struggled free of my back and stumbled onto the street. She pulled her coat tight around herself and looked down at the ground.

“Nothing,” she mumbled. “He didn't want anything.”

“Did he, like … ?” I gave her a look that implied whatever she needed it to imply. That whole idea seemed to wake her up, to turn her back into herself.

“Ugh, June. Don't be so gross.” She waved the back of her hand at me in a kind of drunken flap.

“Well, what, then?”

She eyed me up, then suddenly her frown turned into a big leery smile. “Opportunities, June. Opportunities galore.” Then she twirled around and headed down the street toward home. A few seconds later she stopped and turned to face me. She must have spun too fast, because she lost her balance and ended up grabbing on to somebody's mailbox to stay upright. When she'd steadied herself, she focused on me.