“Kat, not Katie,” she said, her eyes taking in my every detail.
“My mother.” Bridger nodded to the blond woman. “And my dad.”
The man who’d bumped me a moment before studied me with curious dark eyes. He held his hand out and I shook it. “Nice to meet you …”
“Maggie Mae,” I said.
“And how are you and Bridger acquainted?” his mother prodded, her eyes never leaving mine.
“She’s my friend, Mom. From school,” Bridger said hurriedly.
One of Kat’s black eyebrows slowly rose, and aside from having pale blue eyes, she looked just like her brother for a second. “Nice to meet you, Maggie Mae—Bridger’s friend,” she said with a mischievous grin. She gave Bridger a look.
“Hello, Aidan. Vivienne. Nice to see you again,” Mrs. Carpenter said.
Bridger’s mom nodded at Mrs. Carpenter, a slight bob of her head. His dad smiled and said, “Opal. How are you?”
“I’m doing real good. Thought I’d take a picture of Maggie Mae with her friend Bridger.” There was an icy tone to her voice.
Kat moved away from Bridger without a word and looked sideways at me. I stepped to Bridger’s side, yet he eased away from me, making sure there was a good gap of space between us.
“Say ‘cheese,’ ” Mrs. Carpenter said. Before I had a chance to smile, the camera flashed. Mrs. Carpenter patted my shoulder. “I’ll see you later tonight,” she said, and got lost in the crowd.
I looked at Bridger’s family, all staring at me as if I weren’t good enough to be his friend, and I needed to get away. “Good luck. Don’t trip when you get your diploma,” I muttered to Bridger and walked toward the M section of graduating seniors. I could feel his family’s eyes boring into my back the entire way.
The sun set and I sat through two speeches and a choir performance. When the principal started reading the names for diplomas, all the graduating students stood. I got to my feet and took a deep breath of evening air. I’d been waiting for this moment since my first day of kindergarten.
The students at the front of the line started walking toward the stage, but paused, whispering and looking around, pointing toward the darkening skyline. The whispers traveled back, eventually reaching the M section.
“Did you hear it?” someone whispered.
“Hear what?” someone else replied.
“I don’t know!”
“Shh!” someone behind me hissed, and everyone fell silent and still, staring up at the purple sky. And that’s when I heard it. A shiver of ice trilled down my spine as the low, lonely howl of a wolf carried through the dusky air. Everyone started whispering again.
“It was a coyote,” someone behind me said.
“Coyotes yap, not howl,” another student answered.
“But there aren’t wolves around here. There haven’t been for years.”
“No, that’s not true. They tried to reintroduce them into the mountains a while ago. Maybe one or two survived?”
Mrs. Tolliver walked down the line of students, glaring at us. Everyone shut up as the line began to crawl forward. I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax and forget about the wolves and Bridger’s family.
I made my slow way with the other students toward the podium. And then Dr. Smith was reading my name. “Maggie Mae Mortensen, a new student who set a new Silver High fifty-yard dash record.” Coach stood and started cheering. Bridger and Mrs. Carpenter followed, along with Yana and Ginger. And then the male half of the freshman class joined in. Their cheering seemed contagious, as eventually the majority of the stadium was cheering for me.
My cheeks started to burn and a smile tugged at my mouth. I took the diploma from Dr. Smith, blinked against the flash of a camera, and hurried from the stage. I’d done it.
When I got back to my seat, a long, low howl echoed through the dark night. The students sitting beside me glanced around nervously. Dr. Smith stuttered through the name he was reading. When he got to Bridger’s name, I stood and cheered along with every other person at the graduation ceremony. The noise was incredible. Dressed in full Navajo garb, he took his diploma and waved to the crowd.
Within minutes it was over and everyone was throwing their caps, a snowstorm of white and navy-blue squares silhouetted against the almost dark sky.
I made my way to Bridger, excited about the prospect of having him all to myself for the night.
“Congratulations,” he said when he saw me, but he was distracted, looking over the tops of graduates’ heads. “I’m so sorry—I know we were going to hang out tonight, but my mom’s made other plans. I’ve got to cancel. So … I guess I’ll see you around. I’ll call you sometime. Or drop by and help you with the garden.” He smiled and then wandered away.
My jaw dropped open. “But … I … don’t have a ride.” My voice was swallowed in the noise of the crowd. Bridger never looked back. He found his family and left with them.
I stood for a long time in a mass of ecstatic graduates before I had the energy to pull my gown off and put it in the massive bin marked WHITE GOWN RETURN.
I wandered toward the place where Mrs. Carpenter had parked her truck. Of course it wasn’t there. Surely she was long gone.
Not wanting to walk home and explain why I wasn’t out with Bridger, I rummaged through someone’s trash can and found a used grocery bag. Next I located a dense patch of shrubs in front of an adobe house and forced my way into the center of it. I took my shoes and socks off and then unfastened my watch and the yo-ih, and set them all into the bag. Next I took off my jeans and T-shirt, removed my bra and panties, and dropped them on top of the watch, bracelet, and shoes.
I landed on all fours and the sounds haunting the night intensified—police sirens, dogs barking, people cheering, howling, laughing, screaming. My heart pounded against my cougar rib cage. I picked the bag up in my teeth and ran from the sounds, ran from population.
I prowled the uninhabited outskirts of the city, as far away from humanity as I could get. When the sounds of sirens and howling finally stopped, I made my leisurely way toward home, making sure to take a long time—as long as it would have taken to eat hamburgers, fries, and a milk shake at the mine, and then look at the stars.
In some bushes across the street from Mrs. Carpenter’s house, I shifted back to human and got dressed. When I crossed the street and stepped onto Mrs. Carpenter’s driveway, my feet skidded to a stop. Bridger’s SUV was blocking it. And so was yellow police tape.
My hands started to tremble. A shadow moved at the far end of the driveway and I leaped into the shrubs hugging the side of the driveway, just in case I was in danger. The shadow solidified into a police officer holding a dim flashlight. I stepped out of the bushes.
“Is everything all right?” My voice quavered. “Where’s Mrs. Carpenter?”
“Are you Maggie Mae?” he asked, stopping beside me and shining the light in my eyes.
I shaded my eyes and nodded, suddenly sick to my stomach. Something was wrong. Really wrong.
“I have some bad news for you,” the officer said. My windpipe constricted and I could hardly draw breath. “Mrs. Carpenter’s in the hospital.”
“What happened?” I gasped.
“Come on. I’ll show you.”
I followed him past Bridger’s SUV and under the police tape. At the front porch I paused. The porch light was on and something was … different. Deep scratches had been gouged into the red front door. Flakes of paint and wood littered the porch next to the cactus, which lay overturned on its side accompanied by its shattered terra-cotta pot.
Paint and wood chips clung to the soles of my shoes as I walked through the front door. Inside I stopped, too stunned to move. White fluff covered the floor, the furniture, the top of the gun case, even the blades of the ceiling fan—the stuffing from Mrs. Carpenter’s brown leather sofa. The cushions had been torn to bits.
I made my legs carry me down the hall to my room. The sewing table looked untouched, but my small dresser was tipped on its side beside my toppled clothes hamper. My clothes, underwear, and pajamas lay shredded on the floor beside them. The cot was bare and ripped down the middle, my two quilts part of the underwear-and-clothes mess.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Seems some wild dogs got into the house.”
Wild dogs? Demon dogs was more like it. Instinctively I knew—they’d come for me again.
“Tore everything up searching for food,” the officer explained, running his thumb and finger over his goatee.
I looked at my toppled dresser and questioned the food theory. There hadn’t been any food in there. Not even chocolate. And if my bedroom looked like this, what did Mrs. Carpenter look like?
“Is Mrs. Carpenter all right?” I whispered.
“She’s been injured, but it’s not life-threatening.”
“How’d she get hurt?”
“She tried to shoot the dogs and got bit on the leg. Practically tore her calf muscle clean off the bone. She’ll be in the hospital for a few days. In the meantime, do you have somewhere to stay for the night?”
“Um. I … well …”
The floor creaked outside my bedroom. The officer pulled the gun from his belt and pointed it out the door, sidestepping in front of me.
“Who’s there?” he barked. Bridger walked into view, his hands up. The officer lowered his gun. “Good gracious, son! I might have shot you! What are you doing here?”
I stared at Bridger, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, red headband still around his forehead, and wondered the same thing.
“I came to get my SUV, but wanted to make sure it was all right if I moved it.”
The officer nodded. “That should be fine.”
“Maggie, you can stay with me tonight,” Bridger said, glancing at my ruined cot.
I shook my head. “No. I’ll stay …” Where? I couldn’t stay here, not with the wild dogs roaming the area.