Well, that wasn’t what I expected to hear.
“Wolves?” I asked.
“Weird, right?”
It was weird.
“Personally, the last thing I’d do is go looking for a wild animal,” Christa said. “I don’t even like domesticated ones. My sister has a dog, and her entire house is covered with fur.”
Before I could pump Christa for more information about Lizzie, a nervous-looking man with a ruddy complexion came out of the kitchen and told me to follow him to his office. I hadn’t planned on taking the charade that far. I wasn’t ready for another mini golf experience, especially when I’d probably get fired as soon as Lizzie decided to come back.
But I sat down in the manager’s office. I answered his questions and told him I thought I’d be a really, really great waitress. At the end of the interview, when he shook my hand and said I’d be a welcome addition to their staff, I knew I’d reached the point of no return.
• • •
I couldn’t sleep that night. It was close to midnight, and I was lying on the swing on the front porch. Maybe my insomnia wouldn’t have been a big deal if I had Saturday night plans like everyone else in the entire school. Everyone else was probably at parties. Everyone else was enjoying what some people would call the “best years of life.” Not me. I was hanging out alone on my front porch.
Sometimes, when it’s late at night and I’m feeling especially lonely, I think about middle school me. Eighth-grade Hawthorn knew what high school was supposed to be like. I’d watched movies, read books, attended high school football games, and heard stories from Rush. I knew exactly what to expect.
And then I got there, and it was all wrong.
Actually, my expectations weren’t wrong. I was. High school was full of crazy adventures and friendships and dating and stuff. It’s just, it was wrong for me. I didn’t know how to be a part of all that or even if I really wanted to be.
Which made it impossible to get excited about applying to college. Because I had certain expectations of that too. And if they were as spectacularly misguided as my expectations for high school, I had another string of disappointments waiting right around the corner.
I closed my eyes and tried to clear my head. Tried not to think of next year and how dissatisfying it would probably be. I tried not to think of anything at all. I just wanted the night to end. The whole week, really.
But I couldn’t turn off my brain. Even though I was tired, I couldn’t stop thinking of high school and college and everything that came after. Sometimes, it felt like I’d already missed my chance to become something awesome. I was too old to find out I was a musical prodigy or a child genius or a superhero. I wasn’t even awesome in an ordinary way. Like Lizzie.
I bet she was never alone on a Saturday night. Not in high school for sure. A party wasn’t a party unless Lizzie Lovett showed up. My brother was at those parties. Him and all the other jocks. He was probably at a party that very minute, drinking beer with his friends while they discussed their old friend who was lost in the woods.
Where was Lizzie Lovett? Six days in the woods without any supplies. She couldn’t have gotten far. How did she just disappear? How was there no trace of her around Wolf Creek when so many people were looking so hard? I wondered how many people would search for me if I went missing. My guess was not a lot.
I yawned. My mind kept skipping around like it usually does right before I drift off. But I didn’t want to go inside yet. Was Lizzie outside too? Was she looking up at the moon at the same time I was?
I wondered why it was called Wolf Creek anyway. For that matter, I wondered what Lizzie was doing looking for wolves in the first place. There aren’t wolves in Ohio. Except…
When I was eight or nine, there were these reports of a wolf in Griffin Mills. People saw it in the woods, in neighborhoods, at the edge of downtown. Maybe it was just a big dog that escaped from someone’s backyard. It probably was. I never found out one way or another.
Back then, it wasn’t Emily and me against the world. We had a whole group of friends. I felt like I belonged, and life was an adventure where anything could happen.
We spent the whole summer searching for that wolf, scouring the woods, setting traps, collecting evidence. There was never a moment when we lost hope, when we considered that we might not find it, that there might not be a wolf at all.
Then, in the fall, the wolf disappeared. There were no more sightings. Everyone got distracted by school and forgot all about the search. Everyone but me. I kept thinking about those magical few months when we really believed it was out there. We were certain we could find the wolf and make it bite us so we could change too. Because, of course, we didn’t think it was an ordinary wolf.
I missed being a kid. I missed having friends who would spend the entire summer hunting for a werewolf.
If there were werewolves, they’d probably hang around a place called Wolf Creek. I smiled at the thought. Maybe that’s what got Lizzie. Maybe it was late at night, and she had to go to the bathroom, so she’d slipped away from camp. Only in the woods, something wasn’t right. Something was watching her. She knew she had to get back to the tent. She wanted to shout for Lorenzo but was too afraid to make a sound. So she silently crept toward the clearing. The thing in the dark growled at her. She froze. It stepped out into the moonlight. It wasn’t an animal or a man. It was both. She opened her mouth to scream, but before she could, the beast lunged, and its teeth were at her throat, sinking into the soft skin and—