Free This Is Not a Werewolf Story by Sandra Evans Page B

helmet,” she said. “Like, that’s totally for sissies.” That made the dean upset too, when he saw us come riding back with my hair all wild from the wind, but it was the best hour of my life.
    Then April, the oldest, took me to the movies with her. The dean about exploded on Sunday morning when he found out which one we saw. I guess that movie was not for children. There were a lot of parts I didn’t understand, but I really thought the party scene was funny. Maybe the actors and actresses should have had on more clothes.
    One thing I know is that when I get my license, I’ll drive like May taught me—speed up into the corners and turn your headlights off when you’re going down hills on country roads at night. The goal, she told me, is to leave part of your tires on the road. Burning out, she called it. Totally an adrenaline rush, she said.
    Anyway. The dean apologized to me all the wayback to the school Sunday afternoon. It was the greatest weekend of my life, so I don’t know what he was so sorry about, but I could tell I wouldn’t be going home with him again. Which was too bad, since April told me she’d teach me how to use her rifle next time, and May said there was a beach party with a bonfire and she’d let me use her lighter and some gasoline to get the fire going.
    The next Friday, when the dean took me into his office and said my dad couldn’t make it because the car was at the garage, I had some hard thoughts. They don’t want to talk about the one thing that matters the most to me? I thought. Fine, then. I’m not talking about it anymore either. I was done waiting for the grown-ups to decide what to do with me.
    Later that afternoon I called the dean from the phone in the hallway of the top floor. I pretended to be my dad.
    â€œOliver,” I said, because that’s the name the parents call him, “the car is running good. It can’t make it up that big hill to the front door, though. Please have Raul wait for me at the bottom of the hill, by the turnoff from Highway Twenty.” Then I hung up.
    I knew the dean would be easy to fool. I knew he’d be too tired to walk the two miles down the hill to the highway. Plus, people are happy to be tricked if they’re getting what they really want from it. And the deanreally wanted to spend the weekend with his family.
    So when the other kids were jumping into their cars to go home, I went to the dean and shook his hand and thanked him for watching out for me the last few weekends. “I think my dad has figured some things out,” I said, then swung my backpack over my shoulder and headed down that hill.
    Really, I was the one who had figured it out. I decided right then and there, as my feet hit the asphalt and I looked up at the thin strip of blue sky above the tops of the cedars and pines that lined the road, I was on my own. One day I’d find my mom, and maybe one day my dad would come back with an excuse better than one the dean could think of. But until then, I’d take care of myself.
    I had a plan. First, walk to the highway. From there, take the footpath Tuffman makes us run through the woods. Then wait near the lake, and when everyone was gone, climb up the madrona and into my room through my unlocked window.
    As I walked down the hill, cars zoomed by me in both directions. Parents coming and going with their kids. The road twists and turns pretty good, and at some point I got worried the drivers might not see me. Becoming roadkill was not part of my plan.
    So I cut into the woods sooner. There was no path. The dirt was squishy and dark and covered with pineneedles and cones. The woods smelled alive. I was happy to be me, to be there, to have a weekend to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.
    Then my skin prickled. My ears stretched like they do when you’re in bed alone in a pitch-black room and you hear a sound that only something alive could make. Something