This Is Not a Werewolf Story (5 page)

“Watch out, Nicolette!” Dean Swift yells.

Ms. Tern looks up just as Gollum slides past her foot into the hallway and freedom, just as Mr. Tuffman lunges and raises the knife.

We all shout. I like Ms. Tern and her mouse-colored hair and her soap-bubble yells and her reading and walking. I don't want to see her get hurt. But I can't look away.

Ms. Tern drops her book. Her left hand flies into the air and catches Mr. Tuffman's right arm by the wrist. The knife clatters onto the floor. What a grip!

With her other hand she punches him in the gut so hard that he grunts and falls to his knees.

The room is so quiet I hear Gollum slither down a vent in the hallway. Tuffman gets back on his feet. He stands there, a little bent at the waist, rubbing his wrist, staring at Ms. Tern.

Ms. Tern shoves her glasses up higher on her nose. “Crikey. Are you very hurt?” she asks. Her British accent makes each word trip to the next.

She looks out at all of us and explains sadly, “I only just finished reading a self-defense manual. I'm afraid I took rather careful notes.”

She picks up her book and walks toward the kitchen, her nose down, her fingers flipping pages as she looks for her lost place.

And then, as she walks by me, it happens. Ms. Tern smiles.

I don't think it's the book. I can see the title.
Fifty Unsolved Crimes Against Endangered Species.
Not exactly the kind of reading that's gonna crack you up.

Ms. Tern is smiling because she knocked Tuffman to his knees.

The bell rings for class. I bend down to grab my backpack. I glance to see if anyone's looking at me.

Then I smile too.

Nobody can stop talking about Ms. Tern and Mr. Tuffman. Has he been packing a six-inch blade all along? Can you really get a death grip and a right hook out of a how-to book? Who knew her first name was Nicolette?

Then, as we're all heading to class, Little John finds some gross stuff on the bathroom floor under the ceiling fan. He comes running out in the hall saying that Gollum got herself killed.

Sparrow starts to sob. “It's all your fault!” he screams at Mean Jack. “Your! Fault!”

“I didn't want that snake to get whacked,” Mean Jack says, and he looks sad, like he means it.

“Look,” Mary Anne whispers in my ear. “Even mobsters experience remorse.”

I smile like a fool.

Mary Anne and the girls gather in the hall while the boys pile into the bathroom. We make a circle around the mess on the floor. It doesn't look like dead snake to
me. I'm not going to write what I think it is because I don't want this book to be banned.

I touch Sparrow's arm and shake my head.

It's not enough. The tears stream down. I hug him.

“It's not her,” I whisper. “I promise.”

Here's the thing. When you don't talk much, sometimes your words really matter. Sparrow wipes the backs of his hands over his eyes.

“Little John,” he says in a scolding voice, “that does
not
smell like snake guts.”

Everyone backs away slowly.

Whack. Another one down. It's Whack-A-Mole at school today. One creepy smiling critter of a problem after another.

But my feet have little puffs of air under them. Mary Anne noticed me. She likes my scary eyes. She laughed at my joke. She wants me to talk.

I'm a fool for Mary Anne. I grin like one until I get to my first class.

My first class is PE, so I stop grinning pretty quick. This could be bad. Mr. Tuffman and I have already spent a lot of time together this morning. And he did not enjoy my company.

The new kid is sitting on the bottom bench of the bleachers. He has a brochure about the school in his hand. The dean must have dumped him here while his mom fills out paperwork.

I gotta question the Dean's judgment here. First row seats to the Tuffman Torture Hour are
not
going to make this kid any happier about living here. Just further proof that when it comes to Tuffman, the dean only sees the word “Olympian.” Not “soulless psychopath,” like the rest of us.

First Tuffman makes us run lines until half the class throws up. There's actually a trough under the bleachers for that.

His bad mood seems worse when he's near me. He runs next to me, calling me a wuss and a wimp. Those are his usual insults, and I don't like it, but it's not personal.

“Sneak,” he hisses at me when I touch the half court line.

Sneak?
Now
that's
personal. I don't understand it, but I know it's personal.

I look back at the bleachers. I catch the new kid looking away. He must have been watching me and Tuffman.

“You takin' heat from some crumb, Coach?” Mean Jack asks all of a sudden in his big voice.

Tuffman cocks his head. We all stop running and stand there, gasping for breath, grateful for Mean Jack's special skill at distracting teachers.

“You got some serious injuries there on your neck, sir. Want me to settle the score?” Mean Jack punches his fist into his palm.

Tuffman rubs his neck. When he pulls his hand away, I see what Mean Jack saw. Huge puncture wounds barely scabbed over. They look like what would happen if a wolf decided to see how good you'd taste for lunch.

My neck juts forward. I can't look away from those bite marks. I feel weird—like those injuries have something to do with me. I can't explain it. But I feel like I'm involved. Woods magic. I try to push the feeling down. It just gets me in trouble.

I am staring too hard. Tuffman senses it.

“Get a good enough look, weirdo?” he asks.

I stare back at him longer than I should. I don't know why. Maybe it's because of what he said about my mom in front of Mary Anne and Mean Jack. Maybe it's because he made Sparrow cry. Maybe it's because he ran at Gollum with a knife.

Whatever it is, I'm in that kind of mood. The kind of mood where I don't look away.

He turns away first and I get a little surge of energy, like I won some secret game.

Then he pulls down the wrestling mats.

He calls me over. That good feeling goes away.

“Let's see if you can take down an Olympian, Raul.” He's circling me, his arms wide and curved like he's holding a huge beach ball. “After my injury they told me I could stay on and coach the Olympic team. Did you
know that? Big money, kids, that's what I walked away from. I came here. And you know why? Because it's my mission to teach you how to find your place in this big bad world—how to claim it and how to defend it.”

My nose twitches the way it does when I smell a lie.

Why would he leave everything for nowhere?

“Crouch, Raul, crouch and circle. I know you've got it in you. Every boy has a predator in him. How fierce is yours?”

Then he lunges at me. All six feet, three inches, two hundred fifty pounds of him. A big gulp of air comes out of my mouth. I think it's my courage escaping.

It's about the time when Tuffman is holding me up in the air to show everyone a wrestling hold called “the fireman's carry” that I begin to wonder if this is how the kids at his old school disappeared.

“I've got my eye on you, Raul,” Tuffman breathes into my face as he puts me in a half nelson. “No sneaking around. Got it? You stay out of my territory. It stinks anyway, right?”

“What territory?” Apparently terror makes me talkative. “What sneaking?” I ask.

He twists my arm back. I hear the watching kids gasp. From the corner of my eye I see the new kid stand up and take a step toward me.

Behind me, Jason says in a very thoughtful voice, “I didn't know your elbow could go that direction.”

The new kid cringes and sits down.

The pain is terrible. Like someone holding a hot iron to my bone.

“See?” Tuffman calls over his shoulder to the rest of the class. His voice is really upbeat. “Now he can't move, not an inch, or he'll break his own arm. Consequences, kiddos.” He tweaks my arm a tiny bit more, and I swear my bone
bends
.

He leans down over me so that only I can hear. “One wrong move, Raul, that's all. Just remember your place. Be the boy you are. You're not powerful enough to challenge me. So don't go trying to change things,” he says. “Least of all yourself.”

He pushes my face into the mat as he gets up off of me.

“See?” he says to the boys.

I'm splayed out like roadkill. My body feels jumbled, like a box full of puzzle pieces. So does my brain. Everything he says has two meanings. The one he wants everyone to hear and the one just for me. There's a picture here, but right now it's just a pile of pieces.

“All I had to do was stake out my space, my
territory
,” he says to the class. “That's all there is to wrestling, kids. That's all there is to life. Mark what's yours. Defend it to the death.”

Death? See, now
that
I get. That only means one thing.

I decide to lie on the mat until everyone has left. Especially the new kid. I can't look him in the eye. I
wanted to make an impression on him, but this wasn't the one I had in mind.

Finally I hear them open the ball cage. Everyone heads out to the field. I look at the bleachers. I'm alone. I might have a cold. My head is stuffy and my nose feels runny and my eyes are all watery.

Am I about to cry?

I head to my room to change. Why did Tuffman have to do that in front of the new kid? Why didn't he demonstrate that hold on Mean Jack? Mean Jack would find it useful for his future career as a crime boss.

It makes me feel sick. I shouldn't have let Dean Swift and his dumb idea get me all excited. Some of us are born loners.

Tuffman's voice rings in my head. What did he mean when he called me a sneak? That joke I made about his breath smelling like the Blackout Tunnel was disrespectful, not sneaky.

And what does he mean when he says not to change? Does he mean puberty? Do I have facial hair? I rub my chin, but it's smooth.

I'm the same as I was when Tuffman got here. He showed up a year and a half ago, in the fall. It was just about the time my dad stopped coming to get me on the weekends and the woods magic started happening and I decided to stop talking. I was as much a weirdo then as I am now.

Then a scary idea pops up. For a second the puzzle pieces start to make a picture.

I blink at myself in the mirror above my dresser. Does he mean the other way I change?

There is a window next to my mirror. I look out of it. On the far side of the ravine a deer and her fawn nibble on the short grass at the edge of the cliff. The cliff is red and brown and black, and tree roots stick out of it here and there. Every time it rains, chunks of it fall to the beach below, and the colors of the cliff change. The cliff changes every day and nobody notices.

How could Tuffman know my secret? I'm like the cliff. Nobody notices me.

I take a big breath. This calls for the scientific method. I organize the facts in my scientific journal. I use my most scientific handwriting.

Phenomenon (that means unusual event): Tuffman is picking on me and it's personal.

Duration (that means for how long): Targeting began during animal care and increased during PE.

Observations: How was today different than yesterday?

Item 1: Tuffman chased new kid, toupee mashed

Item 2: Tuffman made Sparrow hide in the Blackout Tunnel

Item 3: Tuffman overheard my joke during breakfast

It would make sense if he was trying to get back at me for the crack about his breath. But he didn't mention that. All he talked about was territory and changing and sneaking. I stare at the page for a long time. Then I write down the most rational explanation.

Theory: Tuffman is a jerk.

It doesn't make my arm throb any less or the embarrassed feeling go away, but it does make me smile. Maybe he's just a jerk. Jerks don't have to have good reasons for being jerks, that's what my dad used to say.

I decide to wait until the free period after lunch to go up to the new kid's room. After the Trauma With Tuffman I need a little sustenance.

“Pizza cut in triangles,” Cook Patsy says when I walk up with my tray.

My favorite. How did she know?

I take two slices.

Then she pulls my tray toward her and puts a little book on it.
Crack Any Code!
it says on the front.

“What are the odds?” she asks. “Two prizes in one day.”

“Thank you,” I say. I pick it up and flip through it. On every page it tells you how to decipher a different kind of code. This is very useful. I can already see myself showing it to the new kid. An icebreaker, that's what you'd call it.

Cook Patsy holds on to the tray and looks at me for a second.

“I heard Tuffman was pretty harsh on you in gym
this morning. I know you're no snitch, Raul, but can I tell the dean about it? It seems like something he ought to know.”

I shake my head. It's strange, but the whole “don't be a rat” rule applies to teachers, too. If a teacher is too mean, then the kids find a way to settle the score without getting the authorities involved. “Poetic justice” is a term we just learned about from Ms. Tern, but we've been doing it here forever. It means the punishment fits the crime. Take the last reading teacher—the one Ms. Tern replaced. He made Mark, the kid who wears the weighted vest, bend over and stand on his fingers in the corner for a whole class period. Yeah. Think about that. Now try it. Really, try it. How do your fingers feel?

Next morning that teacher picked up his coffee mug and couldn't let go of it again. Superglue. It was hard for him to pack up his desk with only one hand, but Mary Anne helped. She gave him lots of suggestions for ways he could make the most of a mug hand.
It'll be great when you stand on the street corner and ask for spare change.
And,
If anyone tries to break into your car while you're sleeping in it, you can just whack him in the side of the head.