Page 38 of Raised By Wolves

Inside, the living room’s dark and it smells like old cigarette smoke and stale beer. There’s a dark-haired girl lying on a lumpy brown couch with a Coke balanced on her stomach. She turns to Waylon and says dully, “What are you doing here?”

“Funny, that’s just what your boyfriend asked us,” Waylon says. “I told him we were looking for you.”

Relief floods my body.Julissa’s safe.

Well, mostly.

Julissa yawns. “Here I am,” she says.

“Your mom misses you,” Waylon says.

“Bullshit.”

Waylon goes, “Fine, your mom sucks. But you really need to call her.”

Julissa rolls her eyes.

“Seriously,” Waylon says.

“Youcall her,” Julissa says. “Tell her I said hi.”

“You want me to send Carl’s best wishes, too?” Waylon asks.

Julissa puts the Coke on the floor and sits up. “You little shit,” she says.

“I’m not little,” Waylon points out. “The shit part I’ll give you.”

“You should go back home, and tomorrow you should go back to school,” I say.

My voice wakes Julissa up a little. “Who’re you?” she practically snarls.

I shrug. “Just the new freak in town.”

Julissa waits a beat and then—total surprise—she actually smiles a little. “Okay, freak,” she says. “Whatever.”

“I’ll see you in math class tomorrow, right?” Waylon asks.

“Whatever,” she says again. But she’s still smiling.

It’s a nice smile.

“The way I see it,” Waylon says as we walk back toward town, “is that people want to disappear sometimes. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want someone coming after them. It doesn’t mean they don’t want to be found.”

I reach down and grab a fistful of pigweed from the roadside. I start stripping the leaves from the stems. What I don’t point out to Waylon is that it’s possible to be foundandlost at the same time. And Holo and I know all about what it feels like.

CHAPTER 27

“WHEN ARE YOU going to go to the class you’resupposedto be in?” I ask my brother as he follows me into Ms. Tillman’s room.

“Never,” he says. He waves to Ms. Tillman, snatches a book from her desk, and wanders over to the corner beanbag.

“Remember to cite textual evidence, people,” Ms. Tillman calls to the rest of us. “Don’t tell me that Hamlet can’t make up his mind without quoting his famous ‘To be or not to be’ speech. Although I hope your essay topics will be slightly less obvious than that.”

I sink down into my desk. I’ve never written an essay before, and I don’t really want to start now.

Outside I can hear two ravens calling to each other. The thing about a raven’s call is that it can sound like a kid screaming.

Ifeel like screaming. What am I doing here? I should be in the woods, watching spring explode all around me.

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