Cedric smiled. "Red," he said, "I think you might just be too smart for your own good!"
10
"The way of the wild is our way, too"
I got to know all of the Wolves by name―or at least by the nicknames Cedric had given them. There was Warhead, who was always ready for a fight. There was the kid with a head shaped kind of like an alien's, called Roswell. There was El Toro, Moxie, and the kid named Sherman, who everyone called "the Tank"―twenty-two in all. By the end of my first week, I knew where most of them lived, and they knew where I spent my time, too, because there was always someone tailing me. Cedric wasn't about to trust me entirely―not considering my family tree―so lessons with Grandma on the craft of wolf hunting had to be in short sessions so as to not arouse suspicion.
"Twenty-two Wolves are gonna be hard to put down for a boy, a girl, and an old woman," Grandma said one afternoon. "Especially if we got no master plan."
Grandma was big on "master plans." Me, my plans kind of came to me in spurts. I liked it that way. It kept me on my feet, able to move with the flow of things. But lately that flow was taking some strange new directions.
"It's a dangerous game you're playing, Red," she was always telling me. But at the same time I could see a glimmer of admiration in her eyes. Like tricking Cedric made me worthy of being her grandson.
By the end of the second week, I was the Wolves' official errand boy. They laughed and called me "the Wolverine," like I was a werewolf Cub Scout. I guess they didn't know that a wolverine could be fiercer than a wolf.
All that time I was learning things I couldn't have learned any other way. Like which famous citizens from history had been werewolves (like Frank Sinatra), and how that crazy old woman with the golf-ball eyes managed to get a lock of his hair (you don't want to know).
On the night when the moon had slimmed to a dying crescent in the sky, Cedric took the gang up to the roof of his apartment building, to get away from the heat and humidity that fell on the city like a hot, sopping rag. There was something the others didn't like about going up there. I could tell from the moment Cedric kicked open the door to the roof.
There were a bunch of chairs thrown around up there, still wet from an afternoon rain. In a corner was an old, rusty weight set, and I almost laughed at the thought that werewolves needed to pump iron. Rather than moving into standard hang poses, the Wolves just waited at the door. Loogie coughed up a wad and spat it, hitting Klutz's shoe. They fought about it until Cedric shouted at them, and they stopped.
I didn't like this. I didn't like the way they were all acting, like they were scared of something up here. Just then Cedric came up behind me and kicked me to the ground.
"Ow!" I scraped my arm on the gritty tar paper of the roof.
"The Wolverine's gotta toughen himself up," Cedric said. I tried to get up, and he put a foot on my chest, pushing me down again.
"You want my help, stop treating me like an animal."
"We're the animals," he said. "But you haven't earned your fangs yet."
I got up and readied myself for the next blow. "So I gotta let you beat me up? That's how I earn my fangs?"
A/C came forward. "The pack leader's gotta show his dominance," he said. "The way of the wild is our way, too."
"He fought us all up here," said Marvin, smiling like he couldn't wait to see me beaten to a pulp.
Cedric spun and did a roundhouse kick, smashing me in the side of the head. It would have been more lethal if he actually knew karate, but even so, it was pretty painful. It knocked me to my knees, but I got right back up. He tried it again, but this time I caught his leg and pushed him back.
The other Wolves backed away. The Wolf everyone called El Toro came up to me and whispered, "Don't fight back. Just take it."
Sorry, but that just wasn't the way I was made.
Cedric lunged at me. I stepped aside and threw my fist into his gut. It hurt him, because he wasn't ready, but he tried not to show it. He punched me in the stomach twice as hard, then grabbed me before I could double over from the pain. He lifted me off the ground, and before I knew it, I couldn't see ground beneath me at all―just air. He was holding me by the front of my shirt out over the edge of the fifteen-story roof. I couldn't see his eyes in the dim rooftop light, but I could hear his fury. It came in snarling breaths.
"You hit me!" he growled. "After all I've done for you, you hit me!"
"Self-defense," I said. I tried to squirm out of his grip, and then I realized how stupid that would be―if he lost his grip, I'd fall to my death. The panic was welling up inside of me like a bad school lunch. I tried to speak again, but only a pitiful squeak came out.
"Cedric, don't!" yelled A/C. "He's not a Wolf yet! He'll die!"
A sneaker slipped from my foot, but I never heard it hit the ground, because the ground was so far away. I could still hear the wild snarl in Cedric's voice. "Do you know what happens when one of us falls from this roof?"
"What?" I squeaked out, figuring that if he keeps talking, he's not dropping.
"I knocked Loogie off a few weeks ago," Cedric said. "Accident."
Yeah, right, I thought. Like Hiroshima was an accident. It seemed to me Cedric liked to use Loogie for experiments, like seeing what would happen if a werewolf fell off a roof.
"He landed flat on his back, got broken up real bad."
"Yeah," said Klutz. "It turned him into a sidewalk Loogie."
That started Klutz and Loogie fighting again.
"It sure did hurt, but he healed in a few days," Cedric said. "Werewolves do. But you won't."
"Drop me, and you lose your edge on the hunters," I told him.
"Beg," he demanded. "Beg me not to kill you."
I flashed to the time he had choked me, and I gave up Grandma's money to save myself. Money's one thing, but self-respect is another. I don't beg. Not even for my life. So I whispered so only Cedric could hear, "I think you showed enough dominance."
I thought he'd either drop me or throw me back onto the roof. Instead, he set me gently back on my feet. His rage had passed like a summer thunderhead, all rained out before you could find an umbrella.
"Good for you, Wolverine," he said. "You're one step closer."
"He didn't bleed! He didn't bruise!" Marvin complained. "Not even a black eye!"
"You got a problem?" yelled Cedric. "Maybe you want to take a flying leap today?"
That shut Marvin up. The other Wolves came up around me, to congratulate me for passing Cedric's test―I guess the only rule for passing is that you survive. They patted me on the back, they gave me the secret handshake. It took the edge off the anger I felt toward Cedric. In fact, in spite of what I had just been through, I felt an odd sense of accomplishment. A sense of pride.
But I'm just pretending to be one of them, aren't I? Aren't I?
Still, I didn't tell Grandma or Marissa about what happened on that roof.
I didn't see much of Marissa during my first two weeks as a Wolf pledge because Cedric kept me so busy. I went to the antique shop when I could, but the owner was there most of the time, or there were customers, so Marissa and I couldn't really talk. We did get to sit and eat hot dogs one evening on the end of a pier. We had to meet there because it was the only place I knew I could go where a spying Wolf couldn't get close enough to listen.