Kat Lupin: Wolf Girl

I wanna go home.

Don’t get me wrong. The forest is nice and all. Sure, the pine trees smell great and the stream sounds real peaceful, like mom singing a soft lullaby when I was little. But honestly, camping isn’t my thing. All the hiking hurts my feet, and campfires make my hair smell all burnt and smoky. And I don’t even want to talk about the whole toilet situation. Let’s leave that a mystery, okay?

I miss PS5, my cozy bed, and frozen four-cheese pizza.

At least I have Bizbee with me. She’s a cute black and brown mutt with yellow eyes. Part Australian cattle dog, part who knows. Usually, Bizbee is the best girl in the world. But right now, she’s annoying the crap out of me. As we walk across the campground, she tugs hard on her leash.

SNIFF. SNIFF. SNIFF. She’d smell every pinecone in the forest if I let her.

We find my mom in a clearing, busy scooping up branches and twigs off the ground. “To feed the fire,” she says. I ask her if we can leave early.

Mom dumps the wood in a pile and wipes her hands on her shorts. It’s the end of summer and the sun is shining. She squints down at me. “Katrina, we’ve only been here three hours.”

“Seriously? It feels like three days.”

“You’re so dramatic,” Mom says. “Give it a chance, okay Kat? We’re just staying one night. We’ve got to check this place out for the trip next month.”

Oh yeah, next month. I almost forgot. Mom is not only my mom. She’s also my troop leader. Next month, she’s taking me and a pack of Sunflower Scouts up here for a whole weekend. That’s two days of achy feet and annoying campfire songs. Two days without Youtube or video games. YUCK! That’s why we’re here today, to check out the campsite and get the “lay of the land.” Those are mom’s words. No thirteen-year-old would ever say something like “lay of the land.”

ZIPPPPP.

I hear the zipper of our tent behind me. My little sister Emily crawls out. I say little, but she’s only a year younger than me and just as tall. She’s got that evil, vampire smile on her face. Full on Nosferatu. She always shows it when she teases me. I’ve seen that smile a lot.

“Maybe Kat is scared,” says Emily. Unlike me, she loves camping. Loves hiking boots and sleeping bags. Loves campfire beans more than frozen pizza. Crazy, right?

“Scared?” I bend down close to Bizbee, giving her neck a hug. “What’s there to be scared of?”

Emily doesn’t speak at first. Just keeps smiling that evil smile and points at the big old mountains behind us. “You know what they call those, right?”

“The Silver Creek Mountains,” I say. “Everybody knows that.”

Emily shakes her head. “No, I mean do you know their real name?”

My mom sighs and rolls her eyes again. She does that A LOT. “Emily, stop teasing.”

Emily ignores my mom and stares at me, all spooky like. She’s got blonde hair and light skin like my mom, but her eyes are like black marbles. “Their true name is the Wolf Mountains.”

“Yeah, right,” I say. “Next you’re going to tell me it’s full of huge, man-eating wolves.”

Emily opens her mouth to answer me. But before she gets a chance, an eerie noise echoes through the forest. Bizbee’s tail goes between her legs and she lets out a whimper.

The noise was a blood-chilling howl… A wolf’s howl.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” says Mom. “Wolves mostly stay away from humans.”

“Mostly?” I ask. My voice sounds all squeaky.

“We’re perfectly safe, Katrina.” But Mom doesn’t look so sure. She glances at the trees nervously. Even in the middle of the day, it’s dark under those pines. Too dark.

We freeze like statues, listening…, waiting for another howl. I feel my heart beating, faster and faster. I peek over at Emily. She looks nervous too.

But that’s impossible, I tell myself. Emily isn’t afraid of anything.

The forest goes quiet. All the bugs shut up at once. The birds in the trees stop chirping. Even the wind seems to quit blowing. It’s super creepy. Then, after a minute of weird silence, everything goes back to normal.

“I think I’ll read my scout manual,” says Emily. Her voice shakes and her skin turns pale. She walks backwards a few steps then turns and scampers into the tent. I hear the zipper, then she’s gone.

“Now can we go home?” I ask my mom.

Mom shakes her head. “If we left now, it’d be dark before we got to the jeep. We’ll have to wait for morning, when the sun comes up.”

“So what do we do until then?”

Mom scratches Bizbee behind the ear and grins at me. “We’ll build a great big fire and make smores. Not just any smores, but the best, most chocolatey smores anyone’s ever tasted. Deal?”

“Deal,” I say.

Together, we walk around the clearing and gather more firewood. I try not to think about the howl, but I keep peeking back at the trees. I imagine a pair of black eyes deep in the shadows, all glossy and shinning. Those eyes… they’re watching me.

But that’s just my imagination going crazy.

Isn’t it?

***

At dinnertime, Emily chomps a hotdog and teases me about being a vegetarian.

“Hey Kat, I got a snack for you,” she says, and tosses a pinecone at me.

I try to bat it out of the air, but I miss completely. The cone bounces off my forehead with a thump. “Ouch. Very funny.”

Emily laughs. I ignore her and go back to eating my dinner—ranch house beans out of a metal cup. The beans aren’t bad. Not as good as a four-cheese, deluxe pizza or anything, but they taste okay.

I spoon out the last mouthful and watch our crackling fire. The sun has gone down and the campfire embers float in the dark like fireflies. For a moment, I forget all about my iPad and Youtube videos. Of course, I’d never admit that to Mom.

After dinner, Mom keeps her promise and lets us make the greatest smores the world has ever tasted! We use an entire Hershey bar for each smore, melting the yummy cholate with gooey, golden-brown marshmallows. I tell you, my mom is wrong about a lot of things. She likes weird music and boring TV shows. But the woman sure knows how to toast a freakin’ marshmallow.

With our bellies full of chocolatey goodness, we crawl into the tent and slip into our sleeping bags. It feels good to lie down after such a long day. Bizbee curls up next to me, her fur warm and soft. Crickets chip and the wind whispers through the trees. It’s so peaceful, that I forget all about Wolf Mountain and that scary howl.

I wait until Emily starts snoring, then I dig Miss Hoppy out of my pack. She’s a cute stuffed kangaroo with button eyes, floppy ears, and a pouch to hold a kid’s secret treasures—Pokemon cards… pretty marbles… shiny new quarters…. I’ve loved this thing since I was three years old.

“Don’t worry,” Mom whispers in the dark. She lies on her side next to me, smiling. “I won’t tell Emily.”

I hug the kangaroo tight. “She calls it my emotional support stuffie. Seriously, I know it’s immature that I can’t sleep without it. But she doesn’t have to tease me so much.”

“That’s just what sisters do, honey. But it won’t be forever. She’ll grow out of it. You both will.” Mom reaches over and strokes my hair. “Everything changes, Kat. Whether we want it to or not.”

I hug my kangaroo again and drift off to sleep, thinking about my mom smiling at me in the dark.

Everything changes.

***

SNAP!

The sound of a breaking twig wakes me up… to a nightmare!

I’m not in my tent. Not tucked into a comfy sleeping bag. I’m not even lying down at all. I’m standing in the middle of the forest. All alone in the dark.

Oh no. No! No! No!

I must have been sleepwalking again. Sometimes back home, I would stumble around the house late at night, in a deep slumber. But now, I was a long way from home.

“Mom?!” I call out. “Mom, where are you?”

But nobody answers.

How far have I gone? My bare feet are all scratched up from walking on pine needles and rocks. I can’t see our campsite anywhere. My heart races. My throat tightens up. Then I hear it…

SNAP!

Another twig breaks in the night. But this time, it wasn’t me who stepped on it. Slowly, I turn towards the sound. Deep among the trees, I see a pair of eyes, gleaming in the dark. They’re low to the ground—right where a wolf’s eyes would be.

And they’re coming closer.