Free Red Rider's Hood by Neal Shusterman

monster: an iron suspension bridge, with two towers rising like twin tombstones, cables spun like spiderwebs between them. It stretched across the mile-wide river, making you think there was a way out of the city. Like maybe if you crossed it you might find life a little bit easier. But, as everyone knew, when you got to the other side off the Troll Street Bridge, all you found was more of the same.
    The bridge itself was the sort of crumbling mess that always seemed minutes away from plunging into the river. Whole chunks of the roadway had fallen away, and you could actually see the river through the potholes. Beneath the roadway, where the bridge touched shore, was a walled-in space at least fifty feet high. In that stone wall beneath the bridge was a single steel door. For as long as I can remember, and before that I’m sure, there were stories about what was behind that door. Somepeople said there were bodies hidden there, back from the gangster days before even Grandma was born. Others said it was full of gold stolen from Fort Knox. Still others whispered that it held secret stockpiles of nuclear weapons the government had forgotten about.
    But the truth was worse than any of that. Troll Bridge Hollow was a werewolf lair.
    If there was a secret knock, I didn’t know it, so I just pounded on the door until I heard heavy bolts sliding on the other side.
    The door creaked open, and in the dim light I saw a pair of eyes, pupils open all the way, like a cat at night.
    â€œWho told you to come here?” It was one of the many Wolves I didn’t know.
    â€œI told myself,” I said. Although this guy was much bigger than me, I wasn’t going to let myself feel threatened. Rule of the jungle: Don’t show fear unless you want to be lunch.
    â€œLet him in,” I heard Cedric say from somewhere in the darkness of the hollow.
    The guy looked at me with a menacing glare.
    â€œYou heard him, let me in.”
    He grunted and stepped aside. I went in and he closed the door behind me. The metallic boom of the closing door echoed in the vast hollow chamber beneath the bridge.
    The place had a gamy, damp smell, like wet dog and mildew. It took my eyes a while to adjust, and when they did, I could see that the chamber was full of high brick arches that disappeared into hazy darkness above. I could hear the buzz of trafficon the bridge overhead. The only light came from a TV in the corner, and around it the Wolves stretched out on old couches, watching some bloody action film.
    â€œOur new pledge wants to hang with us,” Cedric’s voice boomed. He didn’t bother to get up from his comfortable couch. “Should we let him?”
    â€œOnly if he lets me use him as a footstool,” said a kid called A/C, who I guessed was Cedric’s second in command. I don’t know what his real name was—everyone called him A/C because he always claimed to be “too cool for the room.”
    Cedric laughed. “You heard him, Red. Go be a footstool.”
    â€œNobody uses me as a footstool.”
    Cedric’s eyes turned from the TV and looked at me, meaner than I thought they could get. “You’re a pledge. That means you gotta do whatever we tell you until you’re a full-fledged Wolf.” Then he grinned a nasty grin. “Or would you rather run crying to your grandma?”
    â€œHe knows our hangout,” said another voice in the darkness. “If he tells her…”
    â€œHe won’t,” said Cedric. “See, we keep a watch on that old witch. If she starts sniffing around here, we’ll know Red told her, and that will be the end of Red’s story.”
    I tried not to think about what end Cedric had in mind.
    â€œDo you want to see what I brought you, or not?” I said impatiently.
    Finally he got up and stalked toward me. He glanced down at the bag in my hands. “For me? And it ain’t even Christmas.” A few of the other guys