Free Red Rider's Hood by Neal Shusterman Page B

you turn into a werewolf right before her eyes. You’re right, Red—letting her live will be a much better revenge. It’ll be sweet.”
    He grinned at A/C, and although A/C grinned back, he looked a little worried—like maybe he really
would
end up being my footstool.
    Cedric pointed at me. “You go back to your grandma, but keep your eyes and ears open. Then report back to me.”
    â€œI’ll be your man on the inside.” I turned to go, but Cedric called to me.
    â€œHey, Red!”
    When I turned back to him, something was flying through the air toward me. I snapped my hand up to catch it, and thesecond it hit my hand, jingling slightly, I knew what it was. My car keys.
    â€œIt’s parked near the corner of Moat Street and Troll,” said Cedric.
    I clasped the keys in my hand and felt my heart speed to near breaking. I had my Mustang back! I could have just walked right out of there, gone to my car, and driven off into the sunset, but instead, I threw the keys back to Cedric. “If Grandma sees me with the Mustang, she’ll be suspicious. She’ll wonder how I got it back. Best if you keep it, and we play enemies for a while.”
    Cedric smiled. “Red,” he said, “I think you might just be too smart for your own good!”

10

“The Way of the Wild Is Our Way, Too”
    I got to know all of the Wolves by name—or at least by the nicknames Cedric had given them. There was Warhead, who was always ready for a fight. There was the kid with a head shaped kind of like an alien’s, called Roswell. There was El Toro, Moxie, and the kid named Sherman, who everyone called “the Tank”—twenty-two in all. By the end of my first week, I knew where most of them lived, and they knew where I spent my time, too, because there was always someone tailing me. Cedric wasn’t about to trust me entirely—not considering my family tree—so lessons with Grandma on the craft of wolf hunting had to be in short sessions so as to not arouse suspicion.
    â€œTwenty-two Wolves are gonna be hard to put down for a boy, a girl, and an old woman,” Grandma said one afternoon. “Especially if we got no master plan.”
    Grandma was big on “master plans.” Me, my plans kind of came to me in spurts. I liked it that way. It kept me on my feet,able to move with the flow of things. But lately that flow was taking some strange new directions.
    â€œIt’s a dangerous game you’re playing, Red,” she was always telling me. But at the same time I could see a glimmer of admiration in her eyes. Like tricking Cedric made me worthy of being her grandson.
    By the end of the second week, I was the Wolves’ official errand boy. They laughed and called me “the Wolverine,” like I was a werewolf Cub Scout. I guess they didn’t know that a wolverine could be fiercer than a wolf.
    All that time I was learning things I couldn’t have learned any other way. Like which famous citizens from history had been werewolves (like Frank Sinatra), and how that crazy old woman with the golf-ball eyes managed to get a lock of his hair (you don’t want to know).
    On the night when the moon had slimmed to a dying crescent in the sky, Cedric took the gang up to the roof of his apartment building, to get away from the heat and humidity that fell on the city like a hot, sopping rag. There was something the others didn’t like about going up there. I could tell from the moment Cedric kicked open the door to the roof.
    There were a bunch of chairs thrown around up there, still wet from an afternoon rain. In a corner was an old, rusty weight set, and I almost laughed at the thought that werewolves needed to pump iron. Rather than moving into standard hang poses, the Wolves just waited at the door. Loogie coughed up a wad and spat it, hitting Klutz’s shoe. They fought about it until Cedric shouted at them, and they stopped.
    I