Thursday, October 23

The fire drill had all of New Gorlan High School on the front parking lot. Sirens wailed as the fire trucks sped toward the school. Any fire drill was a breeding ground for gossip, but there was only one topic on anyone's lips today.

"Did you hear?" Jenny hurried to spot where Cassie and Alyss were leaned against Cassie's car. "Hal's in the hospital!"

"Hospital?" Alyss hadn't seen Hal in class that morning, though she'd thought he'd accidentally slept in. Once, he had made his own alarm clock, but the AM and PM functions were flipped. His next alarm clock had used strictly 24 hour time. "Why?"

"He was attacked by a wolf!" Jenny said. All around, she heard 'wolf' and 'wolves' and 'bitten' repeated by a score of other small groups. "Apparently, he was in the woods with a backpack full of explosives. Before he could set anything off, he was attacked. His leg was bitten. Some people say it was bitten off, but I don't think that's true, but my brother said Hal might have to have it amputated."

Cassie exhaled in relief. She caught her twin brother's gaze across the lot. He was looking pale, his brown eyes were wide, and Cassie knew he'd heard the news. "Will was going to go in the woods last night," she said to herself more than her friends.

"To meet Hal?" Alyss asked.

"I told him not to, because of what Halt said, you know? He may be a creepy forest man, but if he says we should worry about wolves, I'm not going to be stupid enough not to. Will was … he's a boy, right? So he's dumb."

Jenny nodded sagely, saying, "Boys are so dumb."

"He was pissed last night," Cassie said. "I told him … I told him I'd tell dad if he went."

"Thank God he didn't go," said Alyss. "Poor Hal. We should visit him. Bring him flowers."

"Do boys like flowers?" Jenny asked. "What if we bring him Red Bull or Mountain Dew?"

"Does he need more energy?"

"He was bit by a wolf! I think so."

"Maybe something he can use while he's resting up, like a puzzle book."

Cassie drifted away from her group and sidled up beside Will. She didn't have to say I told you so for him to know she wanted to. Instead, she said, "Alyss and Jenny are going to visit him. You should go to."

Will stared at Alyss. He pulled his jacket sleeves over his fingers and crossed his arms. "Can I do that? That'd be weird. Maybe I should go alone. Yea, I should go alone."

"How is it weird? You're classmates."

"But …" she's Alyss, and I'm me Will wanted to say. "Hal and I can't talk, really talk, if other people are there."

Cassie grimaced. "'Really talk?' The hell does that mean?"

"You know. Guy stuff."

"What, like tits and asses?"

Will's face turned bright red. "No!" A few nearby groups looked his way after the shout. Will pulled his hood over his hair and hunched; his five-foot-one frame got even smaller. "No, like rocket stuff."

Cassie rolled her eyes. She didn't understand how her brother could have the courage to go into the woods at night but not the courage to join Alyss and Jenny at the hospital. "Fine. Whatever." She walked away. "I told you so, by the way!"

"This way, Sheriff," Ferris O'Carrik opened the door to his younger son's room.

Sheriff Deparnieux stepped inside. "You were right to call. It's a hard choice for any parent to make."

"Adoptive parent," Ferris said. He always corrected people's assumptions. He was only thirty-four, and with his oldest adoptive son now twenty-three, he did not — absolutely NOT — want people thinking he'd knocked up a girl while still in middle school.

"Adoptive, of course," Deparnieux said. He started with Will's closet, shining his flashlight across the top shelf, between hanging clothes, and around the hamper. "Has he showed signs of delinquency?"

Ferris gnawed on his thumbnail, then forced himself to stop. "Not that I've seen." Not that I've looked, he thought. Gilan took up most of his mental faculties these days. "But he's friends with the Hal boy, and you know his older brother is …"

"Trouble, if you don't mind me saying, Mr. Mayor."

"Not at all. I'd hoped it was just a bad choice or two, but Gilan is insistent on flaunting his inability to contribute to society. I worry that it's genetic, this anti-social willfulness."

Deparnieux searched through Will's dresser drawers. He found a thin book in the sock drawer, an old atlas of the area. Flipping through, there were topographical maps of the forest, with different areas circled and notated.

"Mr. Mayor." Deparnieux pointed at one such circle on the map. It had a caption flat, open. "This was where Hal Northolt's things were found. The explosives."

Ferris covered his eyes with one hand. "Dear God. Where did I go wrong with that boy?" He couldn't look at Deparnieux. "You're certain Hal will be charged?"

"Judge Gareth has signed the search warrant for the boy's home. By the time Hal is out of the hospital, his grandfather will have secured a lawyer." He pushed the atlas at Ferris. "This doesn't have to be part of that case. Officially, I'm not here, if I don't need to be."

Ferris shook his head. "He looks up to Gilan too much. If I don't do something now, both of my adopted sons will be stains on my reputation. Do whatever you need to."

"As you say, Mr. Mayor. I'll keep searching; there may be more. And what about your daughter?"

"What about her?" Ferris was waving away his own question. "She's the only one of the three with any sense. Search her things, if you want. I don't think she's up to anything but … but I'd like your professional opinion before I make that judgment." Ferris paused in the door; he trusted Deparnieux to handle the situation with the utmost care. "Sheriff?"

"Yes, Mr. Mayor."

"Gilan's room. At the end of the hall. I know he's guilty of something."

"Of course. By your leave, I'll root out every bit of illegality under this roof."

Ferris felt control returning. He'd adopted the children ten years ago — or what it nine? The past felt so flimsy at times — he'd had plans to turn them into respected town figures. One of the three was a lost cause, but the other two didn't have to be, not if Ferris scared them straight before they could humiliate him.

In the last class of the day, a rumor started that Will would be going to jail. It began in the second-to-last class of the day, when Bryn Keren, after a text from his police officer father, leaned over to Alda and whispered the goings-on at the O'Carrick house. The news had spread like the plague during passing period.

Will overheard a dozen different people talking about it. He'd never had so many people look at him. Some sized him up with appreciation, like they didn't expect him to have such gall. Others gaped, some glared. He gave a tiny wave to Alyss; she saw, then focused her eyes on the floor and walked right past him.

"So, O'Carrick," Horace shoulder-swiped Will, who landed hard against the lockers, "I hear you're kind of a badass now. What changed, huh?"

"Go away, Horace," Will mumbled. He rubbed his aching elbow.

"What was that?"

Will tried to slip around him. A gaggle of freshmen unwittingly blocked the middle of the hallway, and Will was stuck. To his right, Will smelled an ashtray. He didn't have to look to know that Alda, Bryn, and Jerome were boxing him in.

Bryn looked at Will like a cat watching a fish in a bowl. "My dad says the Sheriff is looking for drugs at your place."

"What?" Will hadn't yet heard what the cops were searching for, and he couldn't imagine why drugs would make the list.

"Who're you buying from?" Alda asked. "Your brother selling again?"

"Gilan's never sold anything. There isn't anything at my house to find!"

Jerome snorted and nudged Horace. "Word is, after O'Carrick dropped out, you could find him at the docks. He'd sell anything you like for cheap. Anything." He drew out the last word and turned a sneer at Will. "He ask you the join the family business? If I buy the two of you together, do I get a discount?"

Will couldn't hear much over the blood rushing in his ears. "Shut up!"

"You'd better watch yourself in jail, Will," Alda said. "You're so little, you might be able to slip right through the bars, so I bet they'll put you in solitary."

"They don't use barred cells at county," Bryn said in a moment of seriousness. "It's steel doors with small window sliders."

Alda shoved him away.

Will tried to bolt. Horace grabbed his arm, and Jerome grabbed his collar, and they hauled him back against the wall.

"We aren't done here," Horace said.

Will looked past him, trying to find an ally in the hall. There were plenty of people, but no one he saw who wanted to get involved with Alda and his gang.

"You know, Will," Alda said, "if it turns out you are charged, the four of us have sway. We could make your life easier."

"You've never made my life easier."

Alda slammed his hand on the locker, and Will's ears rang. "We could make your life easier; we could make your sister's life easier." Will stopped moving; a pit formed in his stomach as he contemplated what the four boys might do to Cassie. "You just need to a small thing for us."

"You want me to steal for you?"

"You're already going to be arrested. Besides, I've seen the way you sneak. It's downright creepy. You won't have an issue with this. Besides, you already know the family. It's Earl Northolt - Hal's grandfather."

Northolt was the owner of the radio station in town. Alda, Bryn, and Jerome had weaseled their way into hosting a three-hour slot a few nights each week.

"I-I won't steal anything for you."

Alda clicked his tongue. "This isn't stealing. You won't be taking a thing. All you need to do is go to Northolt's office and flip a switch." He shrugged. "That's it. Do this, and we'll help you out, pull some strings."

He offered a small paper to Will. It was a map of Northolt's office, with the location of the switch circled. "Flip that from ON to OFF." He patted Will's shoulder, grinning. "Bryn's dad says any arrests won't happen until tomorrow. Use your last night wisely, and you won't ever have to see the inside of a cruiser."

"You're just kids," Will said, "you can't do anything." Inside, he didn't believe it.

Alda shrugged. "Then enjoy juvie."

The three older boys each clapped Will's shoulder and back a bit too hard as they left. Horace remained, looking puzzled.

"You don't know what they have in mind, do you?" Will asked.

Horace shoved him back into the lockers then followed his friends.

In the hundreds of square miles of forest outside New Gorlan, there were a few hunting cabins and lodges, the latter owned by the rich families who wanted to escape the "hustle and bustle" of small town life. Most of the year, the cabins were empty. Only one was inhabited year-round.

Halt fought between loving and hating his cabin. He loved the isolation, the quiet. He hated the actual cabin.

"Roof leaks," he muttered to himself as he hammered at a shingle. "Door catches. Crawlspace infested. Well's collapsing." He paused and sat back on his haunches on the roof. The day wasn't warm by any means, but sweat coated his face and neck and the small of his back. At least there was a strong breeze that cooled him off. Every week, it seemed, he found a new leak in the roof. One of these days, he planned to redo the whole thing, but he never found the time.

Once, he'd been so fed up with it all that he looked for a room in town. Perhaps a loft or attic space that someone didn't need. There had been no vacancies. Even places he'd seen advertised informed him that those vacancies had been filled.

Bullshit, he'd thought and said. That hadn't helped his case, and he'd returned to his little home in the woods.

When he finished with the roof, he slid to the edge and hopped off. His cabin was a modified A-frame, so the jump was only about a yard. He startled a few geese waddling around the pond. They honked at him, and he spat in their direction.

"Halt!"

"Dammit," Halt said to himself. He knew that voice.

"Halt, a moment of your time." Sheriff Deparnieux had his thumbs hooked in his belt and his big hat on his head.

Halt leaned against his cabin. "What?"

Deparnieux narrowed his eyes in clear warning for Halt to show some respect. In return, Halt flipped the mallet in his hand, tossing it up then catching it by the handle then tossing it up again.

"You know why I'm here," Deparnieux said.

"Do I? Last time you were out here, you said I was half-rate forester with no social skills. Consider this my lack of social skills: get off my land."

"This land belongs to New Gorlan. It's by the city's — and Mayor O'Carrick's — goodwill that you are allowed to live on it." Deparnieux walked closer. He was well over six feet tall and looked like a giant in front of Halt. "Goodwill that is rapidly running out. Do you know what happened last night?"

"Did you finally take the stick out of Morgan's ass?"

Deparnieux raised his hand and realized he was about to slap Halt. Halt knew it, too, and looked at the hand, unimpressed. The Sheriff curled his thumb back into his belt.

"A boy was attacked by a wolf."

"Was he in the woods?"

"Yes."

Halt shrugged. "Didn't I warn you people?"

"Do you have no care for the citizens of this town?"

"Why are children wandering the woods at night while there's an excess of wolves? It sounds like a parenting issue; it always is, so I hear." Halt caught his mallet and didn't throw it again. "Is that it? I have work to do, and you have … what is it — no, forget it, I don't care what you do."

"His name is Hal Mikkelson. Hangs out with Will O'Carrick, the mayor's boy."

"And?"

"Have you seen them around here before?"

"Of course."

Deparnieux's dark eyes lit with interest. "You have?"

"Absolutely. Just yesterday, I made scones and sourdough bread, and I got them drunk off wine coolers, and we played charades all night long."

"Don't waste my time, forester."

"Ditto, sheriff. I've never talked to those boys in my life."

Sheriff Deparnieux pointed at him. "You'd best be telling the truth."

Halt waited until Deparnieux was down the dusty drive and back into truck before going inside. He cursed at the wind; the clacking of branches had hidden the sound of the sheriff driving up.

He locked the door and went to his small kitchen. That he'd never talked to Hal or Will hadn't been a lie, but he didn't feel as if it were the truth, either.

Halt picked up the metal scrap on the counter. Two names were etched into it: Hal and Will. The scrap had been there when he'd woken, and Halt had the oddest feeling that he had already returned it to Will. But when and where? He shook his head and gathered his tools to tackle the clogged up sink. If he kept his mind busy, eventually he'd remember it.

Thanks for reading!