7: Manning Up


(May 6, 2015)

On Thursday morning—both Wendy and Gideon had a doctor's permission slip to miss school that day—Ford and Wendy went over to the Gleeful house around eight-thirty. "How's your leg?" Ford asked as Wendy got out of the car.

"It'll be OK. Stings and itches some, but the scratches weren't all that deep. There's Stan!"

Stan wasn't in the Stanleymobile, but in a nondescript, rather battered sedan. He got out and stretched. "Hiya," he said as the other two came up. "So, you got the—" he wriggled his fingers—"magic potion ready?"

"It's a serum and not a potion, but I do have it, of course," Ford said. "Fortunately, Wendy and Gideon have the same blood type, which simplifies matters. I also took DNA swabs from inside their cheeks, so the two doses are fine-tuned to their genetic make-up." He yawned. "Forgive me. I was awake all night, preparing the mixtures."

"My heart bleeds for you," Stan snarked. "Me, I been sittin' here all crammed comfortable-like in a used wreck from the Gleeful Auto Sales lot with nothin' to do but count all the beautiful stars. No werewolves, by the way."

"I really didn't expect them last night," Ford said. "They didn't anticipate the odds would turn against them the way they did. Wendy did an admirable job, Stanley."

"'Course she did," grinned Stan, and he gave Wendy a wink. "Man, if I could have met this redhead when I was twenty-five and she was fifteen, she'd be a top-notch con artist by now!"

"Oh, dude, you flatter me," Wendy said.

"I'm not joking," Ford insisted.

Stan guffawed. "Neither am I, Poindexter! So tell me about your evening."

"At one point we were all but surrounded by werewolves, and Wendy said just the right thing at the right moment."

"Huh?" Wendy asked, taken by surprise.

"You told them that to help a friend was the Law of our Pack," Ford said, his voice providing the capital letters. "If there's one way to gain a wolf's respect—it's that!"

"Yeah, wolves have a real peckin' order, sorta like politicians. That was smart thinkin'," Stan said.

Wendy shrugged. "Eh, it just popped into my head. Let's go get this jab thing done, OK?"

Gideon was plumped on a cushion in the floor of the living room, playing a first-person shooter game on his Waystation 4, when Mrs. Gleeful let them in. "Gonna fix ya up, kid," Stanley said in his boisterous tone. "Get yourself ready."

"Do I have to take it with water?" Gideon asked, pausing his game and standing up. Wendy couldn't help thinking that, slimmed down and taller and without the crazy bouffant hair, he didn't look half bad—except for the family feature, that piggy snub nose—at thirteen.

"Guess again," Stan said as Ford opened a small leather case and took out a disposable medical syringe.

"Not a shot!" Gideon said, turning pale. "I—I got a phobia about shots!"

Bud Gleeful said solicitously, "My little boy's right. He's never had but one."

"Not even immunizations?" Ford asked, sounding shocked.

"Well—we sort of fibbed and claimed a religious objection," Bud admitted.

Ford shook his head. "I'm sorry, but in this case there is no alternative. This has to be administered by injection." He had taken a brown glass vial, its label bearing Gideon's name, from the case and punctured its cap. He drew into the syringe 1.5 cc of a liquid about the amber color of apple juice. "This is a very thin needle—23 gauge. It won't hurt very much."

"But I'm so sensitive!" Gideon complained, backing away.

"Oh, dude, do me first," Wendy told Ford, plopping herself down on the sofa and hitching her green flannel shirt down off her left arm. "Gideon, if a girl can stand it, you can!"

"Very well," Ford said. He capped the needle, took out a second vial with Wendy's name written on its label, and loaded a second syringe with a dose from that one. "I have to do this," he explained, "because I prepared two sera, one specific to Wendy and one to you, Gideon." He tore open a couple of packages of alcohol swabs, pushed up the short sleeve of Wendy's tee shirt, and cleaned an area high on her bicep. "Just relax your arm. This is intramuscular. Now, this will sting a little, and for a couple of days the area may ache a little bit."

He jabbed the needle in and pushed the plunger. Wendy didn't flinch and even looked down curiously as the needle pierced her skin. "Hardly feel anything," Wendy said cheerfully. "Come on, Gideon. Man up!"

Ford pulled the needle free, capped it, and applied an adhesive bandage to a small ruby-red drop of blood on Wendy's arm.

Gideon looked as if he were about to cry. "Do I have to?"

"It'll cure your lycanthropy," Ford said. "You'll probably feel a little odd with the next full moon, but you won't transform into a wolf boy. And after that, you should be free of symptoms, even during full moons."

"But it'll hurt!" Gideon said.

Stanley sighed. "Kid, lemme tell ya something. Things in life are gonna hurt you from time to time. One little stick from a needle? Nothin! Turnin' into a werewolf once a month? Major pain in the tuchus! Sure, a shot hurts a little bit. But a man takes it and don't complain. You got another needle, Ford?"

"Yes, one spare—"

"Got some saline or somethin?"

Ford blinked. "Well—yes, a standard solution—"

"Give me a shot," Stan said. "Gideon, come here. Stand right there. No, right next to me. You watch real close. I want you to see how a man takes a shot."

Shrugging, Ford had Stan take off his jacket and roll up his sleeve. He jabbed Stan's arm and gave him 1.5 cc of the harmless saline. "See?" Stan asked as Ford bandaged the site. "I didn't even bat an eye. Wendy's right—needle's so little, you barely even feel it. Just a little sting right at the first."

"I—I just don't think I can," Gideon whimpered.

Looking out of patience, as well as sleep-deprived and irritable, Stan snapped, "Kid, mazel tov! For today you become a man." Without warning, he grabbed Gideon, lifted him up, and bent him across his knee. He jerked down the boy's jeans and shorts, leaving half his butt exposed.

An astonished Gideon bellowed, "WHAAA!"

He was so immobilized by surprise that he didn't seem to notice when Ford plunged in the needle and pushed the plunger. A second later, Ford said, "It's done." He slapped on a bandage, and Stan let Gideon down.

"You went too far, old man!" Gideon shouted, hitching up his pants as he did a frantic little jig. "You done humiliated me!"

"Gideon," Wendy said, a wicked smile on her lips, "you got kinda a nice butt."

Gideon spluttered, "I will never, ever forgive you—what? What was that? Oh, thank you, Wendy!"

Wendy grinned. "Yeah, only don't let it go to your head."

That cooled Gideon's anger, though he still grumbled, "I ought to sue Stanley for—OK, OK, I guess y'all made your point." Gideon sighed and rolled up his sleeve. "Here's my arm. Give me the shot."

"You must not have heard me," Ford said. "You've already had it. I just injected you."

All up and down the block people who happened to be at home jerked around as from the Gleeful house there came a great cry of "YEEEEOOOOWTCH!"


Afterward, Wendy went back to the Shack and back to work. Tourist season was in full swing, and she worked like a dog until six PM, wishing that Dipper and Mabel were back to share the load—and that T.K. O'Grady, Mabel's boyfriend, was back on duty as the short-order cook. Not that Abuelita didn't stand in well for him (though it's true her burgers and dogs tended toward the spicy side of the food spectrum), but Wendy had to do double duty at the cash register, taking money not only for souvenirs and—face it—assorted tourist junk but also for the food sales, from eleven in the morning until two in the afternoon.

What with that, and restocking the shelves as the merch got low, and cleaning up barf from kids who'd eaten too much candy on the bus ride in, and unstopping the occasional toilet, and what have you, Wendy emerged at six truly tired. Melody would have helped, but she had recently given birth to Harmony Rose Ramirez, her and Soos's second child and first daughter, and what with the baby and Little Soos, she had her hands full.

Tough it out, Wendy told herself. One more month, and Dip and Mabes will be back and then things will be all right again.

Exhausted though she felt, she couldn't miss her night classes at the community college—this was the final exam evening. She drove over, finished the two-hour history exam in forty minutes (it was almost a joke, a hundred multiple-choice questions, half of them verbatim from the mid-term) and wrote her summative essay for her English class (a cinch—she had picked up a lot of writing skills from Dipper via mind-meld and could even have exempted the exam, except she chose not to).

She also turned in her class list for the fall pre-registration. Since she would be taking only a couple of high-school classes to qualify for graduation then, she planned to take three college classes, not two. That would bring her total number of semester hours—assuming she passed, of course—up to twenty-one, just nine shy of a full year. With luck, she could take three more courses next spring and have her whole freshman year of college under her belt by the time Dipper was ready to begin as a freshman.

She could have snared even more hours if she'd taken summer classes—but on the other hand, no way she'd take summer classes, man! Not with her very own dork and her gal pal Mabel in town! A girl had to hang with her homies, didn't she?

She drove back to the Shack at a little past ten PM, secure in the knowledge that she had aced the history final and very likely would have a 97-plus average in English. Humming, she parked her Dodge Dart and started across the lot, the gravel crunching under her boot soles.

Something—she thought at first it must be a hurt kitten—whimpered in the shadows off to the side. She heard Widdles and Waddles grunting uneasily in their sty, a little way off, out of nose-shot of the Shack.

Wishing she had her axe, Wendy said, "Go away!"

"Please." It came from the darkness, a voice soft and sad with hopelessness.

The girl came limping out of the shadows. "I walked so long way. I keep them from finding me."

When she emerged into the mellow glow of the porch light, Wendy caught her breath. It was a girl, very thin, her face not ugly, not pretty, but drawn into a miserable expression. Dirty, lank light-brown hair, streaked with gray and tangled with twigs and matted with clumps of mud, hung down as far as her shoulders. She wore a thin faded lavender dress, the hem frayed, the cloth soiled, the garment too small for her. Her bare legs were eloquent of hard running, striped with blood from thorns. At first Wendy thought she was wearing shapeless brown shoes, but then realized her feet were bare, shod only with mud.

"Ulva?" Wendy asked.

"I—I want join your Pack," the girl pleaded. "Will be good. I never bit person. Only—only protect from Freiki!"

Wendy unlocked and opened the door. "Come inside."

When she did, timidly, and when Melody and Abuelita came to help, they learned that the thin cotton dress was her only garment. Nothing under it.

"You poor little thing," Melody said, sniffling.

"Where you got your dress?" Abuelita asked, stroking the girl's hair, gently untangling the twigs.

Haltingly, Ulva confessed that she had found it in the town dump, and she was afraid they would punish her for taking it. "No, no, child," Abuelita said.

Wendy got one of her red flannel shirts. It ate the little girl whole, hanging almost to her ankles, and she had to roll the sleeves up so her hands wouldn't be tangled in them. She was famished. Abuelita got out hamburger patties and fried them, but the girl begged her, "Not too burnt—I get sick."

As soon as they were cool enough, she ate three of them pink and rare, no buns, just the meat, holding the patties in her hands, gobbling them, licking her fingers. And she looked ashamed. "I—I only ever eat as wolf," she explained, staring down at the floor, her cheeks a dull red.

"Is all right," Abuelita said. "You will learn."

Abuelita, who had lots of practice with granddaughters down in Mexico, bathed Ulva and put her to bed in the guest room. "You sleep here," she said kindly. "My big grandson, he let no evil thing into this place!" And outside the door, she said some quick prayers, asking for even greater protection than Soos could give.

Wendy got off the phone. "Just talked to Dr. Pines," she told Soos and Melody. "Woke him up—he missed sleep last night. He says one of us should stay on watch. Tell you what—I'll take the first two hours, but I just gotta grab me some sleep before high school tomorrow morning. Can somebody relieve me at midnight?"

"I'll do it, girl dude," Soos said.

"You cannot fight the hombre-lobo," Abuelita objected from the hall doorway. "You do not know how."

Soos threw back his shoulders. "Abuelita, I'll just fight them the best ways I know," he promised. "And if they, like, swarm in, I'll make so much noise that everybody can come and help! I'll raise a ruckus! It's time for Soos to man up!"

Abuelita's face shone with pride. "That's my big boy who speaks now! Very well, I give you the silver dagger that was your grandfather's. It will keep them off."

"Heh," Soos said. "'Ruckus' is really a strange word, dawgs!"

Wendy punched his arm. "Thanks, man. Ford will be over early tomorrow morning, about seven o'clock, to put up wards that should keep the werewolves away—if Ulva can stand them."

"Do you trust her, Wendy?" Melody asked quietly. "I mean—you know—we have babies."

Wendy thought for a minute. "I've been fooled by people before," she admitted, "but I don't believe Ulva's one of them. She needs us as much as we need her right now—her pack has thrown her out. She needs to belong, needs a new one. I think she'll bond with us, and then—well, Melody, if anybody should mess with one of your kids, they'd have to put up a damn hard fight to keep Ulva from ripping their guts out!"

Before going on watch duty, Wendy looked in on Ulva and in the darkened room, she saw a little mound on the floor. Wendy flicked the light on and off. The exhausted girl had stripped off her human clothes and lay curled up naked on the throw rug, deep in an exhausted sleep.

Wendy gently covered her with a blanket, then locked her in. She patrolled around and around the Mystery Shack for two hours, her axe in hand.

Nothing threatened, and the pigs remained quiet except for contented grunting now and then.

Soos relieved her right at midnight. She got ready for bed, but instead of going up to the attic, where she had been using Dipper's room, she went down to the guest room and took the queen-sized bed.

At the foot of it, curled up on the rug like a puppy, Ulva peacefully slept out the night.