No. That wasn’t right.
I pulled myself into a half-sitting position. A chill went down my back. A wolf didn’t kill Lizzie.
It was her idea to camp at Wolf Creek. Wolf Creek, where she looked for wolves while wearing a wolf pendant around her neck. I remembered the night after she disappeared, how I’d looked out my window, and the whole neighborhood was lit up because of the moon. The full moon. Lizzie the wolf lover wanted to camp at a very specific spot during the full moon.
I thought about how Lizzie had changed since high school. No more glossy-magazine-cover Lizzie. She became unkempt. A little wild looking. She became a girl who loved nature and had a thing for wolves.
All signs pointed to her walking into the woods that night of her own free will. She wasn’t dragged out of the camp. There was no evidence of a struggle. She left. Lorenzo Calvetti told reporters Lizzie seemed happy before she went to bed.
Some people thought Lizzie was lost, and some people thought she was dead. I’d been certain Lizzie took off because she was bored or wanted attention. But maybe we were all wrong.
Maybe Lizzie Lovett turned into a werewolf.
It was probably because I was so sleepy, but the image of pretty, perfect Lizzie Lovett turning into a wolf suddenly seemed like the most hilarious thing in the world. I started laughing. There, alone on my porch, in the middle of the night, I started to giggle like an idiot. If any of my neighbors would have looked out their windows, they would’ve thought I was insane.
Even after my laugher dried up, as my eyes were getting heavy, I couldn’t get the image of werewolf Lizzie out of my mind. Honestly, it wasn’t the craziest theory I’d heard in the past week. It almost made sense.
I was still thinking of it when I drifted off to sleep.
Lizzie the werewolf.
That explanation made her disappearance much more interesting.
Chapter 7
The Wolf Girl
A car door slammed and woke me up. I rubbed my eyes and shifted my weight. What was wrong with my bed? Then I realized I wasn’t in bed. I’d slept through the whole night on the porch swing. I groggily sat up as Connor climbed the front steps.
“Your parents kick you out?” he joked.
“You’re way too cheerful for this early in the morning.”
“Probably because I didn’t sleep outside on a swing.”
Connor smiled at me, looking like the perfect, all-American jock that he was. He tried to hide it with his stubbly beard and slightly too-long hair, but it didn’t work. It looked too intentional. He could have been on one of those TV shows where everyone was perfect and no one had real problems. I felt very aware of my messy hair and morning breath.
“Rush is inside. You can go in.”
“Thanks. Didn’t mean to wake you, Thorny.”
“Yeah, well, I guess that’s what I get for sleeping on the porch.”
Connor laughed and let himself in the house. As soon as the door shut behind him, I lay back down. My back hurt from the hard swing. My head was achy like I was hungover. Not that I know exactly how a hangover feels, since my experience with alcohol is pretty limited.
Though it seemed like I should have been drinking. Because, you know, falling asleep contemplating werewolf cheerleaders is a lot more acceptable if you’re drunk. Having those thoughts when you’re sober makes people wonder if you’re crazy.
Not that I really thought Lizzie was a werewolf. Obviously. That would have been absurd for a million different reasons. Starting with the fact that werewolves don’t exist.
But still.
There were some oddities about Lizzie’s disappearance, oddities that centered on wolves. It made sense that if someone isolated those details and kept an open mind, they could conclude that Lizzie turned into a werewolf. When you added up all the clues, the whole thing seemed very reasonable.
Well, maybe reasonable wasn’t the right word.
It wasn’t that much of a stretch though.
And really, as far as paranormal creatures went, werewolves were probably the least unlikely phenomenon.
An image popped into my mind of the police chief somberly leading Lizzie’s mother into his office and motioning for her to sit. Ms. Lovett would look at him with wet eyes, tissues clutched in her hand. And the police chief would say, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but your daughter has turned into a wolf.” And Ms. Lovett would be like, “We always knew this day would come.” Then the police chief would open a drawer and take out a box of silver bullets.
I started giggling all over again.
It was messed up to laugh. Totally disrespectful. But I couldn’t help it.
I was still laughing when Rush and Connor came out of the house. They stopped and looked at me like maybe I’d gone off the deep end.
“What’s wrong with you?” my brother asked.
“Nothing,” I said, trying to calm myself with a deep breath. “Or maybe everything. It could go either way.”
• • •
“Please tell me you’re joking,” Emily said when I called her on Sunday afternoon. “Please tell me you didn’t steal Lizzie Lovett’s job.”
“I would hardly call it stealing,” I said defensively.
“Hawthorn, what are you doing?”
“I need money to fix my car.”
“Did you even look for a job in the Mills? Or did you immediately go to Layton?”
“I looked here first. Everything sucked. And I knew the diner had an opening.” I was getting pretty annoyed about Emily’s reaction, especially since what I really wanted to talk about was my werewolf idea. If Emily couldn’t deal with my new job, then I couldn’t imagine her reaction to the rest of my news.