The bell rang, and the kids jumped from their seats.
Only Ashley and Sid seemed to take their time, and though they weren’t talking, the significant glances that had passed between them as he spoke were not lost on Max.
“WE’RE FREE!” Ashley shouted as she and Sid fled down the steps.
They’d been careful to blend into the crowd of middle schoolers, knowing the Thrashers might try to single them out after school.
“That was pretty weird, what Mr. Wolf said,” Sid mused.
Ashley nodded. “I didn’t know Vern Ripley was missing. I thought he’d moved away,” she admitted.
“I didn’t either. My dad said the cops believe Simon got attacked by a wolf or something.”
Ashley frowned. “No way. Have you ever heard of a wolf around here?”
Sid shook his head. “No, but maybe it’s just a fluke - what happened to us and Simon. Maybe it’s not connected at all,” he said hopefully.
Ashley sighed in exasperation. “I’m going to Mr. Sampson’s Bike Shop,” she said. “Wanna go?”
Sid hung his head. “Mandatory last day of school dinner at Charlie Kang’s.”
Ashley laughed.
Charlie Kang’s was a Chinese restaurant a few towns over. The food was delicious, but every year Sid’s parents took him and his brother on the last day of school to spend the evening planning what classes and extracurricular activities the boys would enroll in next year.
“Grab me a fortune cookie,” Ashley told him, waving goodbye and turning onto the street where the bike shop stood.
“TWENTY-TWO DOLLARS and she’s all yours,” Mr. Sampson told Ashley, patting the seat on the Huffy Pro Thunder.
Ashley grinned and nodded, still touching one handlebar, not quite ready to walk away from her future wheels.
Mr. Sampson smiled approvingly.
She knew he appreciated her enthusiasm. A lot of kids walked into Sampson’s Bike Shop, and when their parents pulled out a check, the kid barely smiled, let alone offered a thank you.
Ashley had been visiting the bike shop at least twice a week since the previous fall when she first spotted the Huffy Pro Thunder in the store window. There’d been a moment, a long pause where the breath seemed pulled from her lungs as she gazed at the purple and gold bike. This was her bike. She knew it in her guts.
That day, she’d walked in and handed the dollar-fifty she’d stuck in the pocket of her coat meant for a candy bar and the arcade to Mr. Sampson. He put the bike on layaway, and though she knew other kids and parents had tried to purchase the bike, he’d always refused. She’d watched him do it more than once.
As Ashley walked home, floating on the fumes of being near her future bike, she gazed at the cloudless sky and felt the overwhelming joy of impending summer. The air smelled like freshly cut grass and the sweet intoxication of the Swirly Cone baking fresh cone bowls. A group of kids hooted and laughed from the baseball diamond as they played an early evening game.
Not even the strangeness of the previous week could get her down.
As she turned onto her road, she saw the birds. They circled in the distance, several blocks away. She counted ten, maybe eleven, buzzards flying in a slow circle above the woods.
She walked toward them, her legs simply pushing along despite her mind’s bumbling protests. As she passed in front of her own house, not even bothering to glance at it, her mother’s voice rang out.
“Ash! Where are you going?”
Ashley turned, surprised to see her mother standing next to her car, balancing a grocery sack on one hip and a pizza box in her raised hand.
“I got out early!” She grinned. “Pepperoni and mushroom.”
Ashley faltered, her mind blank, and then she trotted over to her mother.
“Yes, pizza!” She took the box from her mother’s hand.
“And cookies.” Her mother held up the paper bag.
As Ashley followed her mother into the house, she remembered the birds. She glanced back at the sky, saw them lazily drifting in the distance and shrugged it off.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Ashley woke with the fervor of the first day of summer. She climbed out of bed, sun already peeking through her curtains, and stretched.
Ashley heard her mother’s worried voice. “Oh dear.”
She finished pulling her hair into a ponytail and walked to the living room where her mother stood in a bathrobe, her hair still wet from the shower, watching the news.
“What is it?” Ashley asked, plopping on the sofa and searching for her tennis shoes in the dark cavern beneath it. “Sweet,” she announced when she pulled out her cassette tape of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts singing “I love Rock and Roll.” “I’ve been looking everywhere for this.”
Her mother didn’t respond, and when Ashley looked up, she saw her gaze still glued to the television.
“Wait, is that our woods?” Ashley asked, scooting down to the carpeted floor and crawling closer to the screen. She leaned forward and turned up the volume.
Technically, the woods weren’t theirs, but they ran along the back of their neighborhood and the kids had claimed them. Each section of town seemed to have its own set of woods, and the kids who lived closest declared ownership over them.
“Melanie Dunlop was last seen walking into these woods yesterday afternoon by her brother.” The reporter gestured at the woods behind her.
“I have gym class with Melanie,” Ashley murmured, picturing the girl who favored brightly colored tights and poufy, teased hair framing her heart-shaped face in a halo of blonde frizz.
“You do?” Deep grooves marred Rebecca’s face as she frowned at the television. Ashley saw her Grandma Patty in her mother’s face.
“I mean, maybe she just got lost,” Ashley murmured, but a memory was surfacing.
The birds circling over the woods yesterday afternoon as Ashley walked home. When had she seen those birds before? Just days earlier at the school when Warren had disappeared into the forest shortly before they’d found Simon’s dead body.
“It’s terrible,” her mom murmured, walking backward to the sofa and sinking down. “You haven’t seen anyone, Ashley? Anyone unusual hanging around? My boss at the nursing home mentioned they found a boy dead outside the school. It hasn’t even been in the papers.”
“Simon Frank,” Ashley told her.
“Was he sick?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t play in the woods, honey. Okay? Not until the police find that girl.”
Ashley didn’t mention the other missing kids or the warning Mr. Wolf had given his students the day before.
Through the living room window, Ashley spotted Sid walking up the driveway.
She hurried out to meet him.
“Did you hear about Melanie?” Ashley asked, rushing down the driveway.
Sid nodded. “My mom’s having a cow.”
“Mine too,” Ashley said, looking back and waving at her mother who watched them from the living room window.
“Hi, Ms. Shepherd,” Sid called.
Rebecca waved at the kids and then stepped from the window, letting the curtain fall back into place.
“Do you think he got her?” Sid asked, polishing an apple on his t-shirt and taking a bite.
Ashley considered the day before when she’d almost walked into the woods herself. What was the significance of the birds?
“The night I saw the monster,” Ashley said, “or Warren, whatever it was, there were birds in the sky. Big buzzards. I’ve never seen buzzards at night.”