Page 1 of The Wolves Come at Night
One
Radnor Lake, Nashville, Tennessee
“Carson? Carson! Hold up.”
Carson Conway halted on the trail, using the moment as an excuse to catch her breath. They’d been hiking straight uphill for thirty minutes now, and she was feeling every ounce of the dreaded freshman fifteen she’d put on since arriving at school. At home it was so much easier to stay balanced, to get the prescribed amount of exercise, especially with her doctor mother’s gimlet eye on her at all times. At school, with the massive course load she was taking and the stress of being away from home and the infinite choices in the dining hall and the sudden influx of excess calories in the form of alcoholic and cannabidiol treats, she was struggling.
She’d joined the Lat & Long Club precisely to start getting this under control. She set herself a number of rules. More fresh air, more exercise, salads during the week, beer/gummy enhancement on weekends only. She was already feeling better, though at this particular moment, she felt like crawling the rest of the way to the location the club’s random latitude-and-longitude generator had assigned them.
Randomness. Arbitrary, unplanned, unpredictable outcomes. That’s what the Lat & Long Club promised. Set an intention, plug in your location, and boom, a random sequence of latitudinal and longitudinal numbers would appear. The idea was to head immediately to those coordinates, and if all worked according to plan, you’d find something directly related to your intention.
It was all the rage on campus right now. The club had blown up after a sophomore Tri-Delt filmed herself saying she needed to find the meaning of life and had been led to a box of books in the free bins in front of McKay’s Used Books. On top of the stack was a book titled The Meaning of Life with a green frog on the cover.
After that, everyone wanted a piece of Lat & Long.
It didn’t hurt that the guy who’d started the club and built the app, a senior applied physics major from Cambridge, England, called Simeon Chase, was a blond god hottie of epic proportion. With a British accent, to boot.
If she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in Spanx, Carson needed to get back to fighting weight. Maybe then, Simeon Chase would look at her twice. And her mom wouldn’t look down her nose with that disapproving glare when they FaceTimed, as if she somehow knew Carson was now living in high-waisted yoga pants…
“Carson, my God, you’re marching up this damn hill.”
Carson’s roommate, Isabel Heathcote—Izz to everyone—caught up and bent over, hands on her knees, puffing air in and out so heavily Carson could smell the remnants of the brown-sugared oatmeal Izz had enjoyed for breakfast.
“What is the rush? We’re supposed to be finding enlightenment, not giving ourselves a heart attack.”
“Just trying to burn some calories. Are you okay? You look green.”
Izz stood up, adjusted the bun on top of her head, the tendrils floating around her face. “I’m fine. I shouldn’t have had so much to drink last night. How close are we?”
Carson checked the app. “Actually, we’re nearly there. We’re supposed to go another hundred feet, then turn right.”
“I still think we should have said we wanted to see a bear.”
“Oh yeah, I want to get caught up here on the side of a mountain with a bear.”
“You know this isn’t a mountain, right? Only a tall hill. It’s basically a geographic speed bump. We could roll down the side into the lake if we take the wrong step and not get hurt.”
Carson laughed. She couldn’t help herself. Izz was still red-faced and panting and looked so cross even while she made her amusing comments. She’d gotten lucky to be assigned a fun roommate. Izz was fearless and adventurous, and cute enough to draw the attention of all the right people, as shallow as that was. Carson brought the brains and a desire to fit in. They were a solid match.
“Come on. It’ll be worth it. I know it will.”
They set off again, albeit slower this time. The brush started to obscure the trail. The birds stopped singing. There was a distinct rustling to Carson’s right.
“Careful. I think I just saw a snake.”
Izz screamed and practically hopped on Carson’s back.
“Get off, you goof. We’re in the woods. What did you expect?”
Izz’s voice was shaky. “I don’t want to die out here, Carson. Maybe we should go back.”
“Because of a snake? This from the girl who wanted to see a bear. Where’s your sense of adventure gone?”
“Apparently into a slithery, nasty hole.” Izz reached down gingerly and plucked a branch from the path. She started off again, this time swishing the stick in front of her. “Go away, snakey snakes. Go away.”
Carson followed, still laughing to herself. She’d caught her breath now, and the app was showing that they were very close to their target.
What were they going to find? Enlightenment was a rather broad concept, yes. But the Lat & Long Club hadn’t failed anyone yet. Members had been coming back from their adventures starry-eyed for weeks now. Carson could do with some mystical starry-eyed shit, that was for sure. College was hard. Harder than she’d anticipated. It felt too close to the real world, to being an adult. Her mom hadn’t coddled her, not at all, but since her dad died, she and her brothers had been more sheltered than their friends, for sure. She missed New Haven. Nashville was cool, but it was different. She missed her bed. She missed muffins from the bakery. She missed—
